Another sweet trip to the orphanage

It had been too long since I'd been to Cradle of Love, and we have a temporary volunteer at Joshua for 3 months who hadn't been, so we went this past Sunday. I usually go with Sarah, so I knew they'd ask about her (which they did), but they were glad to see me, anyway!

We timed it so we were there when they woke up from their afternoon naps and stayed till suppertime, playing, reading, cuddling. Even the older children (up to 3 years old!) don't mind just sitting in a lap for hours at a time, and I was so happy to oblige! A friend from Perimeter was there visiting along with Jenny, my friend from Imara, and another couple of ladies I knew from church, so there were plenty of laps! Carolyn, from Perimeter, got to talking to Lazaro. He's 3, and has such wonderful English you can have real conversations with him and his twin sister Hope. Lazaro told Carolyn he'd like to go to America, and she said, "Would you like to go back with me?" He said, "No, I'll go wth Miriam." Since I've always said I would one day come home from here with children in my suitcases, that sounded great to me!

There's this really sweet younger little boy named Paul. Not sure how old he is, but he should be walking and talking by now. However, he rolls everywhere he goes, and he only stands if you support him. He also has something wrong with his eyes, as he never really quite looks at you. In fact, Grace, our Joshua volunteer, thought maybe he was blind, but he's not. Several times ago, I started playing games with Paulie where I put my fingers on his mouth and tap while he makes sounds. He got to where he'd take my hand and place it on his mouth, so we could play. Or I rub his tummy or whatever, just always touching him so he'd know friendly touch. Even after all this time, when I saw him and sat down beside him where he was lying on a mat, he pulled my fingers to his mouth! I fed him his dinner later and he started a new game, because he's really old enough to feed himself, too, but can't without making a huge mess. He would reach for my hand and I'd let him help me feed him. Or, he'd hold his hands together, and I'd put mine over his, then try to get the spoon in his mouth! I'm sure he's a very bright little boy, but I wonder what will happen to him once he leaves Cradle. (Children are supposed to leave when they turn 3.)

Peopple have said they thnk t must be the saddest thing to visit an African orphanage, and I'm sure that's true for some of them. But I've been to places of such love and hope and Cradle is definitely one of those! As they came back after dinner, washed and dressed in little pj's, I just thought, "I wish all Tanzanian children were this well cared for." My heart is still all about the children!

Visiting...Tanzanian style!

I've been to a couple of our workers' houses over the past few weeks, and it's such an eye-opening experience I decided to write about it. First, it's considered a blessing to have someone visit in your home, so they love having visitors and ask us all often, "When can you come to our house?" or even say, "You are welcome to our home." The latter is usually the one we hear, so we had to start telling them, "Name a day." Otherwise it never happens.

Several weeks ago, Joelle, Corinne, and I went to our gardener's house, only he wasn't home. He was working on their farm (after putting in a full day working at En Gedi), so we visited with his wife and daughter. His wife spoke a good bit of English, Corinne speaks almost fluent Swahili, and both of them had been to Abraham's house before. We took a gift of oil and sugar and were warmly welcomed (after our walk of about 30 minutes). While we were there, we were taken to see the cows, a couple of neighbors, and mostly got told several dozen times how welcome we were! We played with the little daughter, chatted with Abraham's wife, and finally had to leave. She walked with us for most of the way home, because that's polite, and then turned around and walked back to her home, welcoming us for another time!

Yesterday, Sarah, Shelley, and I went to visit our night guard and housekeeper's house. Godfrey came to collect us, and walked with us for the hour's journey to his house, greeting everyone we met along the way, several of whom also welcomed us to their houses! All the way there Godfrey kept telling us how hapy Mama Agape was "this day" because we were coming. Their daughter, Agape, goes to our school at En Gedi, and got out at 12:30. She walks home with friends who live nearby, and when we were closer to Godfrey's house, we saw her and her friend Angel, up ahead on the path. It was about 3:00 by then! I couldn't help thinking that at home if your 5 year old was 2 hours late getting home from preschool, what a panic everyone would be in!

She and Angel walked the rest of the way with us, and even their 2 year old son Christian (he's the one I took to the hospital at midnight several weeks ago)came out and down the road looking for us!

Mama Agape was cooking for us when we fnally got there, so Godfrey entertained us by showing pictures that they had from their wedding, baptisms, friends' weddings, etc. We also met his brother-in-law, Angel's younger sister, another neighbor child - having Wazungu (white people) visit is such a rare thing that people come just to sit and watch and listen to us. We took lots of pictures, entertained the children with a couple of puppets Sarah brought with her, then it was time to eat the rice and beans mama had been cooking. They eat huge portions and gave us twice as much as we could finish, so we shared ours with them. I had made banana cake, and we shared that for dessert. I had Home Bible Study last night, so we got to get moving for our hour's walk back. Mama Agape, Godfrey, and the brother-in-law walked us back. Along the way, we met a friend of Mama Agape's, so she walked wth us, too! Godfrey had to work last night, so he stayed once we got to En Gedi, but the brother-in-law turned around and walked another hour back! The whole time, everyone thanked US for coming! They are such gracious people, and shared their sweet mud home and beans and rice with us so freely. We invited all of them to our house for a meal soon (even though Mama Agape cleans for us, she doesn't cook, so we can at least cook for her!), and they are looking forward to it!

2nd most exciting thing this week

This would probably have been the most exciting if I had seen it instead of just hearing about it, but there was an elephant in Karanse this week!

Abraham, one of our student teachers, and I were working in this little room that we use sometimes, and we heard what sounded like a crowd of people just yelling and screaming. I have to admit it kind of went over my head, as I was concentrating on something else, but sweet Abraham is so ADHD that he jumped up and was looking out the window in no time. I asked, "What is that?" and he said, "I will rush and find out!" Abraham rushes pretty much everywhere he goes, so that was no surprise! He came back to tell me that an elephant had gotten away from the game reserve nearby and was being chased through Karanse by screaming people trying to get him back to the game reserve! Teacher Moses rushed home to tell his wife not to go anywhere as he was afraid she would encounter the elephant, and she said it had already run past their house, and she saw it with her own eyes! Eventually they called the game warden, and he had to come shoot the elephant, but the villagers were given the meat.

As a tie-in to that, I think, the following story says that children are children everywhere. Manase, another of our student teachers, gave a short writing assignment to the 2nd graders to write about an animal. One child drew a picture of an elephant and wrote, "This is an elephant. I love the elephant. I want an elephant." We could only imagine that that came from the excitement over the elephant in Karanse (which I think would be a great title for a children's book!).

REAL Football in Africa!

I've waited literally weeks for today - the first American football game ever played in Africa, and it was here in Arusha, TZ!

Started off as a comedy of errors, though. As of about Wednesday I had no idea how to get tickets, and I was in Karanse for the week, not to get back till late Friday afternoon. I emailed our Joshua team about how desperate Janet and I were for tickets, and if anyone found out how to get them and got some for us, we'd gladly pay for them when we got back. (Not knowing how much they'd cost, even!)
Yesterday, when I picked Janet up at the school where she mentors, I was about to tell her about my email since I knew she hadn't had computer all week, either. She said, "Didn't you get my text? Don (a Joshua visitor and friend of Janet's)sent me a text saying he has us VIP tickets." I was so excited! I didn't know or care what VIP meant in Tanzania; I just was excited about having tickets! This morning, she came to my house at 9 just frantic, saying she'd spoken to Don, and he hadn't sent her a text about tickets, and she didn't think we had any, and it was the day of the game, etc. I asked her more specifically what the text had said, who did it say sent it, anything else I could think of to undestand where "our" tickets were. She said she showed Don her phone (she's pretty technology-limited!), and they tried calling the number that the text had come from, but got a message that the number was unavailable (only she thought that meant it was not a real number!) So she thought this was a big scam and was worried about someone having her number, etc.! We decided we'd just go into town early and see about getting tickets, so she left and I raced around getting ready. In the meantime, I realized she'd left her phone at my house, and she received a message saying the number was now available. Almost mmediately she showed back up at my house to see if I had her phone, and so I had her call the mystery number again. It was Allan Stephenson, our Joshua head! He had us 4 free VIP tickets! We just had to go into town and pick them up.

So, crisis averted! We had to go to town anyway to run errands, so Don and Neil, another friend at Joshua (both are from Australia/NZ) were going to meet us in town in time to go to the game. That all went very smoothly, except traffic was particularly atrocious today; we blamed it on the game, with me saying there was always extra traffic on game days at home!

We took our VIP tickets into the "special" area reserved for us, and then it got even funnier. VIP meant we got to sit under a roof in plastic chairs instead of in the sun on concrete bleachers, but there were no assigned seats, and as near as I could tell, no real correlation between how many seats were sold and how many seats there actually were! We found 3 seats together by booting out the children of 2 guys I know from Imara (both from Australia with no knowledge of the game), and Neil sat in a row somewhere behind the 3 of us. Darran, Bruce, and Don kept us busy with questions about what everything meant, and thankfully we knew most of the answers! I was wearing my "normal" football game clothes: a USC t-shirt and black jean capris, only missing my earrings and stick-on tattoos that I usually wear!

Drake University won pretty handily, 17-7, and a good time was had by all.
Missed tailgating, national anthem (we may have gotten there right after that, if it was sung), but made it in time for kick-off. Took lots of pictures and hope to get them downloaded soon. Big fun!

What I do in my "off" weeks

This really is misleading, but some people think that when we're not in the villages for our weeks there, we're "off" since we're here on base not teaching!Well, some snapshots of this past week would include:
our weekly education department meeting on Monday morning (usually lasts the whole morning)
writing units for an upcoming national Christian Schools convention (we're the workshop leaders for that, too)
grading assignments from the previous week in school
having a Joshua team lunch and meeting on Friday
shopping for groceries after having been gone all week
doing laundry (for the same reason)
attending Wednesday morning prayer and Sunday evening team worship
emailing various people at home and at Perimeter and SBC
sendng out this month's newsletter
cooking, cleaning - "regular" life
getting ready to go back out to school!
The week really does fly by, and before you know it, it's Sunday night again, and I have to try to get to bed early so I can get up at 4:30 to drive us out to school!

NO, I DON'T WANT A TAXI, CD, SPICES...

OR ANYTHING ELSE YOU'RE SELLING! Or, my recent trip to Zanzibar, especially Stonetown!

I actually love Z'bar and never turn down a chance to go! So when my friend Jenny said she really needed to get away, and would I mind going during my week holiday (Spring Break is how I think of it), even though I'd just been in December, since she'd never been and wanted someone who knew the ropes, I couldn't say yes fast enough! Another mentor, Shelley, had also never been and had no plans for that week, so the 3 of us took off. We stayed in the same place Sarah and I had stayed in Dec., and it was lovely and restful and relaxing and beautiful. We went snorkeling on an all day trip and just loved it. Jenny loved it so much that she rented gear the next afternoon and we went again just off the beach from where we were staying. Ate lots of seafood, slept, read, watched sunsets, had a great time. We were there from Sunday till Thursday when we left for our Spice Tour on the way to Stonetown.

I've never stayed in Stonetown before, just spent time there, but Joanna had and suggested a place to stay that was in walking distance of everything we'd want: shops and restarants, as well as historic places to see and the market. That was where the title of this cames from! Because it is such a popular place for tourists, hawkers just hang out on that street jumping at anything that even remotely resembles a tourist! Apparently, the following things are true of tourists: we never walk anywhere (so we must want a taxi!), we can't get enough Tanzanian music (so we want to buy the one CD they sell!), and we've come to Z'bar for spices (so we have to buy more!). Unfortunately, I haven't perfected the knack for rudeness that other poeple have, so I was often the target of these pitches. One man practically followed me around Stonetown and ended up asking me to take him back to Arusha with me! On Friday night, we were at a very public outdoor garden with lots of families and locals, as well as tourists, and we were just bombarded by hawkers with artwork, spices, etc. One woman was heading our way, and I jokingly said, "Wouldn't it be funny if she tried to sell us something?" Since no women had approached us up to that point, it was highly unlikely, I thought. HOWEVER, she walked right up to me and asked if I'd like a henna tattoo! I said no, but just had to grab Jenny and Shelley to keep from snapping!From then on, Jenny would just look at me at random times and say, "Don't you want a taxi?"

On Saturday, because we had almost a whole day before our plane took off, we went snorkeling again! It was a perfect thing to do and a great end to our stay. I'll definitely go again, but I'll work on rudeness before that!

Saturday night in an Arusha hospital

Yes, I'm fine; I was the driver of a sick little boy and his parents.

Saturday night I was in my room on skype when one of my housemates and fellow mentor, Joelle, came to say that one of our night guards was on the phone. I had seen Godfrey earlier that day, and he said they were just taking his young son Christian to the hospital as they thought he had asthma. His wife cleans for us, and his 5 year old daughter Agape was in the preschool class I spent so much time with last year. He is good friends with Joelle and Corinne, another housemate and mentor, and so he called Joelle because he didn't know who else to call. It was 10:00 at night, and their son was worse and they wanted to take him to the hospital but couldn't get there at night. I got on the phone and asked if he wanted me to take them. He said, yes, please, and that they would be there as soon as they could get there.
About 11 they arrived at our compound gate, and I picked them up and off we went. Christian was very warm, sleeping, but didn't appear to be having trouble breathing. We arrived at the hospital around 11:30, and waited to be seen. While there, I saw more drunk men than I've seen in awhile, some brought in by people who looked about as bad off as the men they brought in! One man who brought his friend in was apparently himself the victim of a knife wound, as I saw the hole in his shirt and the blood on the side of his shirt. As far as I could tell, no one paid any attention to that! There were also a couple of women and one or two other mothers and fathers with children. No one was unruly or dangerous in any way, and I thought I was in a documentary of third world hospitals! Mama Agape took Christian back, and he got some kind of injection because Godfrey and I heard him yelling, "Maamaa!" It was so pitiful!
Eventually it was decided the mother and son would be admitted to the hospital, but not the one we were at, and I couldn't take them because they had to go in an official hospital car. I knew Godfrey didn't want to leave them so I told him we
could stay as long as he wanted to. Another mama there finally sad she'd look after them and we should just go. It was about 1:00 by then, so we left, giving Mama Agape Godfrey's phone and my phone number, so she'd be able to contact someone. On the way back Godfrey admitted he didn't know where to sleep as he couldn't go back to his home in the village that late. I offered him one of our guest bedrooms, and he took me up on it. I asked him if I could get him water or milk and he said, "Can you help me? I have hunger." I warmed up some soup and made him a cup of tea, made his bed, showed him where the bathroom was, and said good night.
I did think momentarily of putting a note under the doors of my sleeping housemates, but decided he'd be gone before they woke up. However, Sarah got up in the night, saw lights (I don't think Godfrey knew how to turn them off so he left them on!), and went to turn them off, including the one in Godfrey's bedroom! She saw male legs and had no idea what they were doing there, as she'd already been in bed when I left! I told everyone about it the next morning, but it did give her a rather troubled night!
Mama and Christian ended up staying in the hospital till yesterday (Tuesday), and he had pneumonia, it turns out. Godfrey just came by to thank me again and welcome me to his house any time. He also wants to bring the family to see me, so I told him we would make plans for both of those things. He apologized for the trouble, but I told him I had originally named my car Saidi, which is Swahili for "help," as I prayed that God would use the car to help others. I told him, "It's really God's car. He just lets me drive it!"