Today was our last day at the orphanage. It was especially hard for us because we all had those one or two kids that would cling to us for the 2 weeks we were here. My special friend, Happiness, and I had an especially hard time saying goodbye. I spent the evening jump roping with Mwanaid and Happiness, but when it came time to sing our goodbye song, I couldn't hold back the tears. With Happiness holding my hand, we walked to the exit of the orphanage. I hugged her and whispered ''Naku penda'' (i love you) in her ear. I was crying really hard, and I couldn't believe that our trip was already nearing our last day. Then, the most amazing thing happened to. One of the house mothers, who I had also gotten close to, (and doesnt speak any English) hugged me and dried my tears. She put her hand on my heart, and then put her hand on Happy's heart. As if she was saying ''you will always be in eachother's hearts''. It was the most memorable experience of my trip! This whole trip has really taught me that it doesn't matter where you come from, or what language you speak, but just being with the people here in Tanzania has made the biggest difference in the world. In my eyes, bringing 18 people to Tanzania has made a huge impact on these kids, as well as their caretakers. I will never forget this experience.
Audrey
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Special Project
The two Projects that are happening right now are the hand washing station project and the painting the School. The team that I am with for the hand washing is doing very well, while the painting still needs a lot of work to complete in two days.
By Sam Belliel
By Sam Belliel
I had a dream the other night. I was sitting drinking coffee and across from me was Michael Jackson. People know how he worked with helping children of the world. In the dream he told me how great of a job he thought we were doing, and the progress he saw. He told me "there is not one thing I can see wrong with the job you are doing. I really believe he was telling me this, that I was talking to him.
Triumphs in the picture for Tanzania Team
Jambo Everyone!
I'm so excited to finally blog. Since I haven't had a chance to blog yet, I have a lot to say about the whole trip in general. The entire experience has been remarkable!
In particular, it has been really great to see all of the plans we have to improve the school and orphanage come to life. The cabinets and storage have now been officially put into the school, and the hand washing station is really coming along. In addition, all of the little projects we have been doing are having a visible effect on the children. Alex Stern organized making dolls for the orphanage kids and they were handed out today. Seeing each child grab their doll that they had made and hug it was just priceless. We handed out the shoes and uniforms today also. It was almost like taking the kids shoe shopping as they tried on sizes and chose their colors. At the end of the day it was really great to see every student smiling in a new uniform.
One thing that I have personally loved about this trip is the bonds I've been able to make with some of the kids here. A girl at the school named Martha is so smart (she showed me her immaculate exercise book) and it is so much fun to be able to identify her and run up to receive her greeting everyday. Hussein is a 15 year-old boy (although he looks closer to 12) who is the son of a teacher at the school and he comes to help out everyday. I've gotten to know him a little and today we talked about American music he knew. He recognized JT, Beyonce, and we even sang Temperature by Sean Paul together. When Michael Jackson came into the conversation he broke out into dance; he was pretty good, too! I love to see all these connections pop up that I never would have though we had. Two other girl, Mwanaid and Miriam, help out at the orphanage and I talk with them everyday. As we were walking to the orphanage the other day Miriam was also walking home from school and she yelled "Alex!" and ran up to me; it totally made my day! I love how she remembered my name and was so friendly. Mwanaid is 14 and the other day we talked about our shared hatred or physics, haha-- if she lived in the US I could totally picture us going to Starbucks together after school and being great friends.
The culture and atmosphere here is surprisingly comfortable for an African country. Even the people on the street wave and say hi. Honestly, I am loving it here and I feel so good about what we've been able to accomplish. I feel like by this point the group camaraderie is strong and we're making some big strides towards helping the kids we've come to love.
Well it seems like there is never enough time to explain everything I want to (time to go to a before dinner meeting), but hopefully through all these great posts you're getting an idea of whats going on here.
-Alex Miner
P.S. Before I'm late for the meeting, I wanted to share some cool things I've seen.
1. People are really resourceful; you can see a bunch of people wearing shoes made out of cut tires.
2. Today we visited a Bitik maker. It's an art form along the lines of tie-dying. There were some beautiful pictures and he was telling us all about the whole process of painting on wax and adding different colors.
3. Obama is loved here, as you could probably guess. We've seen multiple guys with Obama belt buckles! Whenever we say we're American the first response is usually "Oh, Obama!!".
4. T.I., Rihanna, and some other American artists are pretty popular here. Today our guide Nelson was playing us some of his ringtones (even Deb was jamming out, since she's so up on the hip-hop music ;)
I'm so excited to finally blog. Since I haven't had a chance to blog yet, I have a lot to say about the whole trip in general. The entire experience has been remarkable!
In particular, it has been really great to see all of the plans we have to improve the school and orphanage come to life. The cabinets and storage have now been officially put into the school, and the hand washing station is really coming along. In addition, all of the little projects we have been doing are having a visible effect on the children. Alex Stern organized making dolls for the orphanage kids and they were handed out today. Seeing each child grab their doll that they had made and hug it was just priceless. We handed out the shoes and uniforms today also. It was almost like taking the kids shoe shopping as they tried on sizes and chose their colors. At the end of the day it was really great to see every student smiling in a new uniform.
One thing that I have personally loved about this trip is the bonds I've been able to make with some of the kids here. A girl at the school named Martha is so smart (she showed me her immaculate exercise book) and it is so much fun to be able to identify her and run up to receive her greeting everyday. Hussein is a 15 year-old boy (although he looks closer to 12) who is the son of a teacher at the school and he comes to help out everyday. I've gotten to know him a little and today we talked about American music he knew. He recognized JT, Beyonce, and we even sang Temperature by Sean Paul together. When Michael Jackson came into the conversation he broke out into dance; he was pretty good, too! I love to see all these connections pop up that I never would have though we had. Two other girl, Mwanaid and Miriam, help out at the orphanage and I talk with them everyday. As we were walking to the orphanage the other day Miriam was also walking home from school and she yelled "Alex!" and ran up to me; it totally made my day! I love how she remembered my name and was so friendly. Mwanaid is 14 and the other day we talked about our shared hatred or physics, haha-- if she lived in the US I could totally picture us going to Starbucks together after school and being great friends.
The culture and atmosphere here is surprisingly comfortable for an African country. Even the people on the street wave and say hi. Honestly, I am loving it here and I feel so good about what we've been able to accomplish. I feel like by this point the group camaraderie is strong and we're making some big strides towards helping the kids we've come to love.
Well it seems like there is never enough time to explain everything I want to (time to go to a before dinner meeting), but hopefully through all these great posts you're getting an idea of whats going on here.
-Alex Miner
P.S. Before I'm late for the meeting, I wanted to share some cool things I've seen.
1. People are really resourceful; you can see a bunch of people wearing shoes made out of cut tires.
2. Today we visited a Bitik maker. It's an art form along the lines of tie-dying. There were some beautiful pictures and he was telling us all about the whole process of painting on wax and adding different colors.
3. Obama is loved here, as you could probably guess. We've seen multiple guys with Obama belt buckles! Whenever we say we're American the first response is usually "Oh, Obama!!".
4. T.I., Rihanna, and some other American artists are pretty popular here. Today our guide Nelson was playing us some of his ringtones (even Deb was jamming out, since she's so up on the hip-hop music ;)
Monday-Back to school
Although the safari was very fun and exciting to go on, all of us were happy to go back to the children at Kilimanjaro Children's Foundation. Like us in America, they only have school on the weekdays.
In school, we went to our regular classrooms, and with our regular groups. Instead of starting out the day with the schedule that we planned, we actually got to see the kids work in their classes. We were really impressed that they were learning things that we learned but at a much younger age than we did. In my classroom we did science. The kids, specifically, were learning about animals. Their assignment was to draw the animals and fill in the missing letters. One of the girls I worked with kept on asking for the answer. I didn't give it to her, but I helped her understand what they were supposed to be. I attempted annunciating the word and emphasizing the missing letter, she didn't get it. Then I realized that it was okay, that she should try it on her own, even if it is advanced. She showed me when she was done, besides one, she got them all right.
After they had all gotten their work checked, and the other classes were done with their work too, the kids went out to play with the new balls we brought them. It was really great to see how happy they were to play soccer (football). We also brought a couple of frisbees. A few minutes before lunch was going to be served, one of the frisbees got stuck in the big tree. The kids that got it stuck in the big tree came up to me and showed me what had happened. I then called Harrison, seeing that there was not really a way to get the frisbee out of the tree, because of it's placement around the 35 foot area. He immediately tried to get a soccer ball and throw it at the frisbee. It kind of worked, until he threw it too high and went over the frisbee and landed in the tree. This time it didn't come down. We didn't want to get a third thing stuck in the tree, so we asked Jackie if she could try to climb the tree, if Harrison helped her up. I would have tried to climb the tree too, but of course I chose to wear a skirt that day. Jackie got up to a protruding part of the tree, and she couldn't climb up anymore because there was nowhere to put her feet, or arms. She descended the tree. We started to think of other ways to get the toys down, when this kid, we later found out his name was Idd, started to climb the tree. Now, you have to understand that this is a very awkward tree to climb, and there is nowhere to put your hands or feet until about 20 feet up. None the less, he climbed swiftly up the tree, with no obstacles. He got both the ball and the frisbee down, it was incredible. I later got a picture of him, and the tree. After lunch we went back inside and decorated backpacks. We then continued to leave.
Sorry, I would write more, but we have a meeting planned, and i am late already.
Madeline Aybar
In school, we went to our regular classrooms, and with our regular groups. Instead of starting out the day with the schedule that we planned, we actually got to see the kids work in their classes. We were really impressed that they were learning things that we learned but at a much younger age than we did. In my classroom we did science. The kids, specifically, were learning about animals. Their assignment was to draw the animals and fill in the missing letters. One of the girls I worked with kept on asking for the answer. I didn't give it to her, but I helped her understand what they were supposed to be. I attempted annunciating the word and emphasizing the missing letter, she didn't get it. Then I realized that it was okay, that she should try it on her own, even if it is advanced. She showed me when she was done, besides one, she got them all right.
After they had all gotten their work checked, and the other classes were done with their work too, the kids went out to play with the new balls we brought them. It was really great to see how happy they were to play soccer (football). We also brought a couple of frisbees. A few minutes before lunch was going to be served, one of the frisbees got stuck in the big tree. The kids that got it stuck in the big tree came up to me and showed me what had happened. I then called Harrison, seeing that there was not really a way to get the frisbee out of the tree, because of it's placement around the 35 foot area. He immediately tried to get a soccer ball and throw it at the frisbee. It kind of worked, until he threw it too high and went over the frisbee and landed in the tree. This time it didn't come down. We didn't want to get a third thing stuck in the tree, so we asked Jackie if she could try to climb the tree, if Harrison helped her up. I would have tried to climb the tree too, but of course I chose to wear a skirt that day. Jackie got up to a protruding part of the tree, and she couldn't climb up anymore because there was nowhere to put her feet, or arms. She descended the tree. We started to think of other ways to get the toys down, when this kid, we later found out his name was Idd, started to climb the tree. Now, you have to understand that this is a very awkward tree to climb, and there is nowhere to put your hands or feet until about 20 feet up. None the less, he climbed swiftly up the tree, with no obstacles. He got both the ball and the frisbee down, it was incredible. I later got a picture of him, and the tree. After lunch we went back inside and decorated backpacks. We then continued to leave.
Sorry, I would write more, but we have a meeting planned, and i am late already.
Madeline Aybar
Uniforms! Shoes! Dolls!
After squeezing everyone in our group into one van, we made our way to the school. Today, Tuesday, was one of the most rewarding days because the children at the school received their brand new uniforms and shoes! Each of the children stood up in front of their peers and teachers and received a uniform. Everyone sang "We are proud of you!" to each kid. The kids had the brightest look on their face and seemed immensely proud. We started fitting the kids for shoes after each uniform had been distributed. To me, seeing the kids with new shoes was a treasure. Before today, some of the kids wore shoes 4 sizes too big or shoes that they could not run in. Now they each have a sturdy pair of shoes! Later they got a chance to run around and play in the new outfits.
My favorite part of the day was when our team walked over to the orphanage. As soon as one of us steps foot into the orphanage center we are swarmed by the children wanting to hold our hands. On Monday we started making stuffed dolls with the kids from the orphanage. They each got to stuff their doll, draw a face on it, and then kiss a heart and place it into the doll. When we arrived at the orphanage today, all of the dolls had been sewn shut and brought back. One by one we called a child's name to come and get their complete doll. To the children it seemed like Christmas! They all played with us and their dolls. Before it was time to leave we gave each child a Starburst to eat to top everything off!
During the day Sam worked extremely hard building a hand washing station for the school. It will enable the kids to wash their hands before they eat lunch or whenever their hands are dirty. Liz also made great progress on the large painting of our team logo on the school wall! Good job to both Sam and Liz on their projects!
Tune in tomorrow to hear about the handing out of backpacks!
Alex Stern
My favorite part of the day was when our team walked over to the orphanage. As soon as one of us steps foot into the orphanage center we are swarmed by the children wanting to hold our hands. On Monday we started making stuffed dolls with the kids from the orphanage. They each got to stuff their doll, draw a face on it, and then kiss a heart and place it into the doll. When we arrived at the orphanage today, all of the dolls had been sewn shut and brought back. One by one we called a child's name to come and get their complete doll. To the children it seemed like Christmas! They all played with us and their dolls. Before it was time to leave we gave each child a Starburst to eat to top everything off!
During the day Sam worked extremely hard building a hand washing station for the school. It will enable the kids to wash their hands before they eat lunch or whenever their hands are dirty. Liz also made great progress on the large painting of our team logo on the school wall! Good job to both Sam and Liz on their projects!
Tune in tomorrow to hear about the handing out of backpacks!
Alex Stern
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Safari days!
JAMBO!
So today and yesterday we went on safari! It started out driving in the car for 4 hours to this lake (with no water...) I was with Deb, Alex, Alex, Maddie and PK
We all got kind of sick in the car, and tried to sleep. Henry was our driver, and we stopped at this overpriced tourist place but we got to eat lunch with wild cats! (not lions though...) But we did see elephants! They came 10 feet away from our trucks! My favorite part of the trip was when we handed out our extra food. Deb collected everyone's uneaten food and we passed it out to random kids on the side of the road! The look on their faces and their smiles made that experience just the most amazing thing ever. We slept at the Highview hotel (at like 2000 feet) after watching and dancing with native dancers. This morning, Sam, Gary and I woke up at 6 to go running. Turns out if your all wearing hiking boots, EVERYONE will hear you. So we didnt... we just sat and watched the sunrise (which was good because i did NOT want to go running...) We then ate breakfast and left at 8. We drove for a really long time, and ended up in the Ngorogoro crater, which is like 9 miles all around. It was part desert and part swamp, and we watched a lion and a wildabeast fight... pretty cool i must say! On the way home, we got a flat tire in pitch black so it took us a while to get home. I have loved going to the school everyday and being with Masa, and the other kids. I am LOVING it here and will be sad to go home :( but excited to make my photoalbum with my 600 pictures! (is it bad that that is what ive beent thinking about the whole trip?) Haha Kwaheri!
Audrey
So today and yesterday we went on safari! It started out driving in the car for 4 hours to this lake (with no water...) I was with Deb, Alex, Alex, Maddie and PK
We all got kind of sick in the car, and tried to sleep. Henry was our driver, and we stopped at this overpriced tourist place but we got to eat lunch with wild cats! (not lions though...) But we did see elephants! They came 10 feet away from our trucks! My favorite part of the trip was when we handed out our extra food. Deb collected everyone's uneaten food and we passed it out to random kids on the side of the road! The look on their faces and their smiles made that experience just the most amazing thing ever. We slept at the Highview hotel (at like 2000 feet) after watching and dancing with native dancers. This morning, Sam, Gary and I woke up at 6 to go running. Turns out if your all wearing hiking boots, EVERYONE will hear you. So we didnt... we just sat and watched the sunrise (which was good because i did NOT want to go running...) We then ate breakfast and left at 8. We drove for a really long time, and ended up in the Ngorogoro crater, which is like 9 miles all around. It was part desert and part swamp, and we watched a lion and a wildabeast fight... pretty cool i must say! On the way home, we got a flat tire in pitch black so it took us a while to get home. I have loved going to the school everyday and being with Masa, and the other kids. I am LOVING it here and will be sad to go home :( but excited to make my photoalbum with my 600 pictures! (is it bad that that is what ive beent thinking about the whole trip?) Haha Kwaheri!
Audrey
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