Napenda Afrika sana

Its Sunday evening and I have nothing else to do so I figured I would blog. This past week has been productive and I feel rather accomplished. Monday morning I went to Tuamkeni and helped teach, mark, and just showed the kids some love. Kids at their age need so much love and affection especially when you consider the unpleasant situations they are growing up in. That said, I know fortunately enough that my kids are better off than many other kids in Arusha. Tuamkeni has 40 kids split between 4 classes, 2 teachers, volunteers, and 2 bibis (grandmothers) each day to cook for them. When volunteers are at the school the kids are never left alone in a class for more than a few minutes, and because the classes are smaller they are able to get the individual attention they deserve. Obviously the quality of education is severely lacking but that is something that can be improved upon through better resources and enough teachers per classroom just to name a few.
I spent the afternoon sitting with Bibi Monaca helping her sift rocks and sticks out of the bag of beans. Monaca and her husband Mathew run Tuamkeni but Mathew works as an accountant for a pharmacy in Arusha so he comes by the school very rarely. I was surprised to learn this week that Mathew earned his masters in accounting from the University of Glasgow and worked as a CA in Scotland for 2 years before returning to Tanzania. An accountant is a good job no matter where you are in the world but its funny the differences in life styles. Mathew is paid well for Tanzania and he dresses well but his house is essentially just a slightly bigger mud shack accompanied by a mud yard. Mathew chose to leave the UK to come back to the simple Tanzanian lifestyle. He obviously speaks very good English but his wife Monaca on the other hand does not. In fact I speak better Kiswahili than she does English so we had a basic conversation about life and marriage in Swahili. I understand Swahili significantly better than I speak it which is extremely frustrating because I can understand the questions and discussions but I can’t always formulate a proper response. Hopefully by the end of these 3 months I will be much better.
Tuesday I went to visit Kimondolo Primary School which is a private primary school located just 10 minutes outside of Arusha. I was a little shocked at the state of the school considering that the children’s parents are paying to send them there. The building was bare and practically falling apart, each classroom did have a teacher but the most alarming aspect was the teachers’ lack of care for their students. They would just leave the kids to run rampant for half hour periods at a time while they sat in the office drank tea and marked. It made me realize how lucky my kids are to have teachers who care about them.
Wednesday Katie and I went with Mathew to look at a possible land option for Tuamkeni. It was ¾ of an acre located 12km outside of Arusha in a gorgeous, safe, and quiet area. The location is incredible except for the fact that it is outside Arusha and thus a bus would need to be purchased to transfer the kids. Land is an extremely vital step for Tuamkeni because they can’t grow as a school until they have a solid home. The land we looked at costs 6 million Tanzanian shillings which is around $4500 plus there are fees of a few hundred dollars for transferring titles. Land is the difficult part; once you have the land it is relatively easy to build a building and then when other volunteers come through they can easily add things to the building and land. One of the biggest issues with buying land is trust, which is unfortunately really difficult to build in Tanzania. 2 of the past volunteers who were at the school for 3 months don’t trust Tuamkeni but Marcell a volunteer who was there for 9 months does, and Andrew another volunteer who came back to the school say he trusts them too. I took everything the 4 of them told me and for the past month I have been figuring out the trust situation for myself and I have come to the conclusion that I trust Tuamkeni completely. I sat down and made a list of all the reasons I should trust Tuamkeni and all the reasons I shouldn’t. My only 2 reasons for not trusting Tuamkeni were because Amanda and Emily don’t, and then also because it’s Africa and corruption is unfortunately such a major issue. My list for why I should is significantly longer.

1.) As a returning volunteer I have the advantage of already having established a relationship with the school so they now know that I will definitely return and continue to return to check up on things. I must add that last year Heather and I bought food, mosquito nets, a few books, and sand toys for the kids, and we delivered it all on our very last day which looking back might have been a stupid idea because they could have just sold it for their personal benefit. However, all the items are still located at the school and the mosquito nets are in all the kids’ houses, which has been beneficial for my ability to establish trust with Tuamkeni. I truly believe you can determine a lot off of gut instinct and last year my gut instinct was to trust them and obviously that was a good decision.
2.) I sat down and talked to Mathew about the school and their finances this week and he was completely honest about how much money they have in the bank account. In fact a former volunteer informed me that they had 800000 ($550) in their bank account and Mathew told me that they actually had over a million tsh and that that money was to be saved for a rainy day. I was really impressed to hear someone in Africa talking about savings and money for the future. At that point I was unaware that Mathew had his masters in accounting.
3.) Mathew has a good job as an accountant in Arusha so he doesn’t rely on the school for money. Furthermore, he could have simply stayed in Scotland if he wanted to make a lot of money and live a frivolous life.
4.) My gut instinct is telling me to trust them.

So that is a brief overview for why I trust Mathew and Tuamkeni. Now my focus will be on trying to buy land so that the school has a place to grow. I also have the advantage of having friends who are now living in Arusha who can go and check up on things for me. I am going to talk with some locals about the land procedure to ensure it is done properly and correctly.
Thursday Katie and I went and did an HIV talk for 6 12-14 year old boys who are sexually active at Faraja Orphanage. It was a really great talk and I think (hopefully) that the boys took a lot away from it. They asked crazy questions about whether goats blood and milk could cure it and if you could tell whether or not people had it, it was truly an eye opening experience and solidified everything I had learned in school about why HIV spreads like wildfire in Africa. At the end of the conversation the boys all had terrified looks on their faces so we offered to take them to get HIV tested. All the boys wanted to go get tested so that’s what I did on Saturday. Testing is free at the local government hospital and luckily everyone, me included, was HIV free. I was obviously not at all nervous for my own test results but I was praying that none of the kids test would come back positive. The nurse who did the tests was herself HIV positive which was an excellent example for the kids of how someone can look entirely healthy and have a good job and still be positive. Furthermore, she was able to tell them her own story of how her husband told her he was negative and she didn’t need to worry and that they should use a condom every single time if they are going to have sex. It was a really good day and the boys took even more away from it. Its important to talk to the guys here in Tanzania because unfortunately the women don’t have much of a say at all and it is entirely up to the man for whether or not a condom will be used. I knew the boys had taken important information away from the talk because at the end of the day they asked us how to convince their friends it was cool to use a condom.
Friday I went to Tuamkeni and we helped the kids decorate the masks we bought them, blew up balloons, sang songs, and helped them clean the school. It was a really productive and tiring day. I am so happy to be back with those kids and I love them to bits. Hopefully everything with the land is able to work out.
So I let this blog sit on the computer for a while before I finished typing it but it is now Tuesday and my mom has arrived in Arusha. Yesterday I took my aunt and my mom on a tour of Arusha and today we went to visit Faraja orphanage. Tomorrow is the big day when they get to meet my kids and see the school. The teachers and grandmothers are really excited to meet my mom and aunt as well, tomorrow will be a great today. Cayley has been MIA for the past few days; unfortunately she got malaria and has been in the hospital. She had a high fever but they only admitted her for precautionary measures because she is a foreigner and has no immunity to the disease. She just got home a few hours ago and she already looks much much better. I hope everything is better and I swear I will be better at updating this!

Over and out
Catherine
p.s I still love and miss you all