working hard - playing hard :)

07/06/07
Today we finished digging the foundation and started to make the cement and poor it on. 

Me and Monica digging the foundation

Mixing the cement - by hand

 While making the cement we had to get buckets of water from the water hole. It was absolutely filthy! There were other children getting water from there when I was. I asked them what they needed it for and they said to make dinner and to wash dishes. The water was brown. Its something that I take fro granted back at home – running clean healthy water. 

After our long hard day of work we had our first session of Swahili lesions.

The weather is nothing like I expected it to be!! It is cold and cloudy. We are all praying for sunshine tomorrow!

07/07/07
We nearly slept through breakfast- Melissa had to wake us up. Our meals are cooked by the “Moms” They are people hired to come to hour house and cook and clean. There are 3 of them and they are very sweet ladies. We are all buying them a gift to show our appreciation.
The children call me Tonia not Toni.  I like it...
Today we went to the school and finished HAND mixing cement, pouring it into the foundation and move very heavy bricks. There are a few local men who are leading the construction and helping us...today he said to me “I love you because you are powerful” hahahahaha I laughed really hard. 
We only worked half a day...a bus picked us up from our house and took us into town (Arusha). We went to the Maasai market and bartered for awesome gifts.  
07/08/07
We woke up early on our only day to sleep in so we could go to the Roman Catholic Church in Barra. Barra is the village across the street. It was amazing! It was all in Swahili. Then we hiked up this huge mountain thing and they told us it was only going to be a “brisk walk” but it was straight up for ½ the way. Kijenge was the name of the mountain. Here is a picture of the group hiking up :

                                               -                                        A view of Mt. Meru

I forgot to mention that we have a security guard outside our house during the night time. His name is Libruce Malala. He is from the Maasai tribe. In order to become a Maasai warrior you have to kill a lion and bring the tale back to show everyone. He hasn’t accomplished that yet. 

Our house

Front porch.

7/10/10

The school is coming along..

Playing with the children makes for great work breaks.

Izzy, Samuel and Me.

Muzungos playing football!

So after work we went back to the house for a little while and then we totally went to the field with our new rafiquies (friends) to play some more hardcore football – Aka soccer. I was actually doing OK today. I stole the ball from this one really good guy. But just once. He totally schooled me all the other times. He was super fast. Deus (Day-oh-s) is our new friend - he is good at soccer and actually passes to us Muzungos (white person). Oh and they totally made Karson kick the penalty goal cause they knew he would suck. And it was so funny.   

Sawa-sawa means “ok – ok” we say it all the time to George and Augustino. George and Augustino are the locals that help us build the school.

(Forgot his name), Augustino, and George.

All of us went outside tonight to hang out with our "watch man". We talked to him and sat by his nice fire that apparently he makes for us every night (but we didn’t know until today). He is totally Maasai!! I brought him some tea and Monica brought him some bread. He’s so nice. He speaks English, Swahili and Maasai. I asked if I could be in the Maasai tribe and he said yes. He “baptized” me and my new name is Nemburis! I love it. So we all made him American/Canadian. His name is now “bob”. It feels like we have been here FORever. NOT in a bad way though. I love it here. I miss my friends and family and…normal life but this is absolutely amazing. Oh, Monica and I totally had to go pee in a random hole today. It was the funniest experience ever! Yea but our Maasai security guard has 4 children and a wife named Elizabeth. His real name is Libruce (Not Bob) I can’t wait until the safari. Kwaheri means good by. Only 2 more full days of work left until the safari!!

07/11/07
The school is coming right along...

Me and Monica working hard!

Primary School is free in Tanzania, but the problem lies in the cost of the school uniform and materials for class (books, paper, pencils, etc). Our leader asked the School Principal for a list of children (1 for every volunteer) that we could financially support and who would otherwise have to discontinue their education for lack of funding. This is Ronald and for only $100 I put him through his next year of primary school :)

Ronald getting measured.

After work we cleaned up and went to a local orphanage. This woman started her own orphanage from NOTHING. She told us about a 2 different dreams that she had and she concluded that God was telling her that she needed to build an orphanage...and it worked out. She has 23 children, all but 2 of them are AIDS orphans.

Mother Crisbina

The orphanage

Orphans playing on the jungle gym

When we got home, Bob had water boiling for us and he also brought his son.

Bruno, Me, Hailey, Bob/Libruce drinking tea.

a new home...moshono village, tanzania

The first time I was in Africa I traveled with a private school based in Toronto, Canada called Blyth Education. Our mission was build a school room for a small village in Tanzania. After the school was built we went on safari. I kept a journal on my computer and here is some of what I wrote.

07/03/07
My day started at 3 am with my first flight from Ironwood, MI to Milwaukee, WI and then on another flight to Toronto, Canada. I must have looked very lost because Alexander (from the view foundation) spotted me and asked if I was looking for the View Foundation. That is when I started to meet my group. 

Hailey, Me, Karsen, Monica, Ella, Kathy
Melissa, Michelle, Izzy

There are 8 volunteers and 1 leader. The leader of the group is named Melissa. There are 7 girls (including me) and 1 boy. The United Airlines plane took us from Toronto to Washington DC. In Washington we had about a 3 ½ hour lay over. I said my last good byes to my family and friends and packed me cell phone away for the rest of the month. We boarded the Ethiopian Airlines plane at about 7:45pm. The total flight from Washington DC to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is 15hours.
 We stayed over night in Addis Ababa but left early the next morning for Kilimanjaro International Airport. Not enough time was spend in Ethiopia so I definitely want to go back.
07/04/07
From the Kilimanjaro International Airport we took a bus to our village that we will be staying in (Moshono). On the way I took a lot of pictures of people, houses and scenery. The ride to Moshono was when it hit me – I am in a third world country now. It was a big culture shock. There were children running around without supervision wearing no shoes. Women walking on the road with baskets on top of their head as full as they could possibly fill them. I saw two women who were carrying bundles of sticks on top of their heads that were bigger than they were! Yet everyone looked so welcoming and cheerful to have us there. A little girl came running down her driveway towards our buss waving both hands yelling “JAMBO!! JAMOBO!” (Jambo means “hello”). When we got to the house we were staying at, we were greeted by teachers of the school, Munka (our chief organizer/Melissa's "go-to guy"), and 10 amazing school children; one for each of the volunteers. They also had a flower for each of us. My girl was named Jessicar. She is 14 years old and speaks amazing English for her age. She told me that English is her favorite subject. 

Me & Jescar

Munka took the whole group on a walk around the village. We met tons of adorable little faces just waiting to get their picture taken. The children absolutely LOVE to see their picture after they take it. They get such a kick out of seeing themselves and their raffikies (friends). We saw many children playing soccer at a field right next to where we will be building the school. Before I knew it we had a train of children following us down the road.

One woman (pictured above with baby) invited us into her home. What I saw was totally unexpected and heartbreaking. The woman brought us inside to show us her sick and dying husband. He was lying helpless on a bed unable to move himself. He was dying of AIDS. All of us were shocked by her tragic tail; we gave our condolences and went home.
07/05/07
Today is the first day we start building the school. We left the house at 8:30am ready for a full day of work. I love how all of the children come to greet us at the end of their driveways when we are talking to the school were we are building. The school is called Moshono Primary School.  We got a tour and I saw Jescar and went into her class room. Jescar said, “The boys love to do hip-hop”. So Ella and I asked the boys to show us a thing or 2. A young boy named Dennis, who you could tell was the leader of the pack, had his friends crowd around him to decide on what song to do for us. One boy broke out into this beat he was making with his hands and a wood stick on a desk. Dennis and his friend Hassani stood up in the front of the room and started rapping!!! They had awesome dance moves. 

When they said that we were going to be building a school...they really meant it. We started from nothing. We have to dig the foundation for our new school and build up from there with cement blocks and everything was done by hand. Talk about hard work. They only supplied us with 4 shovels and only 1 had a handle. Jescar took me to her home. She lives there with only her Aunt who is a schoolteacher. She said, “My Aunty isn’t here right now. She is away with my Grandmother who is very sick. I live with only my Aunt because my mother died.” As she said that her eyes filled up with tears. My guess is AIDS. 
There was also a little boy named Samuel (pictured below) who attempted to help us on our job site all afternoon.