Can't escape the Legos

    Just observing that Legos know no boundaries.  Messe enjoyed herself this afternoon in our afterschool program just as much as the little Lego munchkins I know several thousand miles away from here!  Hugs to them!

What we do every day

The vision for Give a Heart to Africa focuses on empowering women through improvement in their education. In our free school, students study English, business principles and computers. Many lack the confidence to greet, turn on a computer or enter numbers on a basic calculator when they begin their 6-month semester. The progress each individual makes is astounding. Though our classes begin at 9 AM and continue until 12 PM, more than half of our students arrive by 8 AM. They have a chance to work in pairs, practice on the computers, or simply socialize. Imagine 42 students, most of whom did not know even one other person, hanging out, laughing, making plans together. They clean the classroom floors and the tables and benches. Some scour and mop the area in and around the student’s bathroom.  A few green thumbs water our herbs, pick up any debris that has blown onto the grass, tidy up the shrubbery, sweep the dirt area all around our gated entry. On Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons between 2:30-4:30, students can get extra help in small groups or one-on-one. They actually come and spend 2 more hours! 

  I have been trying to learn their names. It’s a challenge because they change seats every morning! This Monday morning, nearly every woman had a different hairstyle—I’m not kidding! So far I know the guy who always (even in this heat) wears a knitted beanie; I know the woman whose husband was my taxi driver on every airport pick-up of volunteers last year; I know the two who are brother and sister; I know the one who has an attitude; I know the one who was soooo excited because I am older than she is! Like them, I am a work in progress here.

What I learned about Halloween today

  We used a short text about Halloween incorporating noun plurals for our English class today.  Our students did not know anything about this occasion, so we told them about pumpkins being carved into jack o' lanterns, children saying "Trick or Treat" for candy, costumes, bonfires and parties.  The lollipops (a kind of Blow-Pop) were definitely a hit, regardless of what they understood about today in the USA.  What did I learn?  They eat pumpkin, roast the seeds AND eat the leaves--majani ya maboga.  We have a wide variety of "salad" greens here, so it may be that we have eaten them already--gotta check with the cook.  They also told me that we could try to bake a pumpkin pie using the same method as they can bake cakes:  put about an inch of sand in a big pot; place your cake pan with batter on top of the sand and cover with a lid.  "Bake" over a charcoal fire.  This sounds like Girl Scouts!  We plan to try it--stay tuned for the results!  They are very interested in tasting pumpkin pie for the first time!  Happy Trick-or-Treating!

Being generous

As you get ready for church this morning, I have already walked to church and back, had lunch, and am now settling down to some lesson planning;  wouldn’t want to spend every Sunday afternoon with this task. Wait a minute; I DID do that for nearly three decades!

  St. Margaret’s Anglican Church is 20 minutes’ walk at a leisurely pace. Nevertheless, the heat and heavy air left me dripping sweat by the time I arrived.  The Swahili-language service was ending with beautiful music as the members began to recess behind the ushers and priests. Some of you remember my surprise last year when I saw that 2 live chickens were included in the offering. Today, in addition to baskets that perhaps contained cash, there were the following generous gifts:  a flat of hen’s eggs (probably 30); one live chicken; 3 long canes of sugar cane; and one huge stalk of bananas (probably at least 10 of the “supermarket” bunches). The ushers must have to pump iron just to carry out the weekly offerings if they get a stalk of bananas very often. So, if you are reading this on your way to your worship service, consider your offering well; be generous!

 

Just another day in paradise

Wow, it is very hot here, and our classroom is small.  Put 20+ bodies in there, and we are cookin'!  After 3 hours of classes, we take a 30-minute lunch break (5 people in the kitchen at once) before we offer 2 more hours of extra help.  We are loving the fact that so many students are coming for help.  Feel like I could wring myself out when 2:30 PM comes around. Whose idea was it to come in their summertime???  Yearning for the October weather of GA, but getting used to the HOT sunshine little by little.  Victoria and I have been jogging--out the door at 6:15 AM while the sun is just coming up and the traffic is light (well, as light as it gets) plus we get to see all the kids on their way to school.  This morning we left the house WITH power and returned to find it out again--that meant cold showers (yeah, the alternative was no shower)!  John is on his way in from Dar es Salaam on the Kili Express, so we'll have 6 in the house for a bit.  More about the 3 Australians in another post.

TIA

It doesn’t take long before you hear someone say “Well, TIA!”  The acronym is standard here:  “This is Africa!”  Why is it so common?  Let me count the ways.   Roosters crow at all hours of the night and day.  We have a night watchman who arrives just before dark and stays until dawn—outside—in a plastic lawn chair—inside our locked compound.  We ate dinner tonight with the ambiance of a kerosene lantern, and I was writing this by the same means of illumination, but now, praise the Lord, the power has just switched back on.  It is so unpredictable when the power is on or off.  Today was more off than on.  We wash our dishes in cold water, but we DO have running water at the tap and can take hot showers, if the power is on for the mini water heater!  25 people ride in a minivan called a dala dala, where a young man hangs out the window soliciting more riders!  The back seat is almost always available on a small bus called a “coasta”—the engine is in the rear, and the seats in the back not only get all the bumps, but they are “heated seats” at no additional cost!  We took one of these to Arusha twice last weekend, and it was plenty warm.  BTW, you can negotiate the price of the trip, but it is chaotic business at the bus station.  As soon as you are in the area, swarms of young men accost you trying to get you on his bus because there is a commission for him to fill the bus quickly.  Often these competitors engage in shouting matches or even fisticuffs!  We like to choose a bus that is nearly full, because it won’t leave until it is.  On a final note, TIA also applies to the differences in teaching here.  This afternoon, students stayed an extra 2+ hours to get extra help after their 3 hours of classes.  It was stifling in our classrooms, but they didn’t want to leave!  “I love English,”  “Thank you for coming to teach me,”  and the clincher after I have known these students for 2 whole days (counting today!) “I love you; you teach me English so well.”  You know why I’m here now!

Chapati and Sukuma

When we turned left onto the Atlanta Highway, Pam finally asked where we were going..surprised at our route since it didn't seem likely to take us to Clarkesville.  Ahhh, but we were going to Clarkston, so it actually made sense to head west on Route 78.  The UN has resettled lots of refugees in Clarkston, and we have been visiting the Refugee Sewing Society there as volunteers for a few months.  Women sew, knit, bead, and prepare various items for sale as they chat in languages I don't know.  The smiles and the laughter and the pleasant atmosphere are far removed from their lives in refugee camps in Nepal or Kenya.  I sat beside V during our lunch break and learned that she had fled Somalia as a young child.  Her eyes lit up when she heard I had been in Tanzania--mine lit up when I noticed her lunch:  "Is that chapati?" I inquired.  "Yes, and sukuma, too."  The next thing I knew she handed me a portion to share!  Thoughts flooded back to me from Moshi, where our students prepared late breakfast or lunch when we made house visits.  Though their poverty was indescribable, their generosity was astounding.  The joyful hospitality and genuine pleasure they displayed because we had accepted an invitation to their homes bored deep into my heart.  Today, V rekindled those emotions as we shared her chapati and sukuma and my eggless, butterless, milkless cake.  (Most of the women do not eat meat or eggs, so creativity is needed.)  Less than a week now until chapati, sukuma, ugali, Chai, maandazi will be staples...

10 more days

  Unterwegs: German for "on the way" describes what a lot of my adventures have been.  Funny how you grow up in a tiny place, live in the same house practically from birth, think that everyone knows what "Kuchen" is, have no telephone (of any kind) before the age of 16, then suddenly begin to travel the world when college ends.  I regret now that I didn't have a grateful heart to tell my mom how much her sacrifices meant--what she gave up so that I could begin to find "unterwegs" the place to be.  From the Meyerbroeker family of Germany to the GHTA house in Ushirika, oh the places I have been.  Just ten days until my everyday neighborhood view will change from hay bales to Mt. Kilimanjaro, from white to black, from English to Kiswahili, from teenagers to mamas!  Oma is on the road again.