the teachers, helen and janeth, in the kitchen.


UGALI!


On wednesday i learned how to cook Ugali with two of the teachers who are my age. ugali is a staple here and one of the two choices for meals, the other being rice. it is water and flour which you cook for a very long time together over the fire and stir continuously. it's tiring and since no one else was bothered by the wood smoke i tried not to be also. we also prepared pumkpkin leaves by stripping off the fuzzy skin and cooking them in oil with onions and tomatoes. it was surprisingly delicious. it was a good feeling to cook a meal (almost) by myself. this weekend i'll be moving out to simon's area of the village and will be living by myself which also means cooking for myself. i'm excited for the change. even though it was beyond nice of simon to set up a house for me with electricity and a super-generous family, i am anxious to live like the majority of the people here.
i'll let you know how it goes.

salima swinging


did it work?

there are such intense highs and lows here. every day someone is sick and going to the hospital. last week the niece of one of the teachers died and our neighbor's young daughter died, simon's son was sick and went to the hospital at 2am and the boy who lives in my house was sick and went to the hospital three times in one night. so there is all that. there are families who can't send their kids to school because they need them to help look for food during the day. there is that.
then there is salima swinging from a coconut tree and the village soccer match (we won 5-0) which leaves everyone hooting and hollering and hugging.
i don't know. everything is about surviving but i guess all the happiness or whatever is part of it too. more later
lots of love

the crowd at the soccer match

From top to bottom!
Simon and I catching a ride to the bus station.
The rest are all of the kids because they are possibly the best part (they tie with the pineapple...)

Everything is awesome. The heat is impressive and sometimes draining but I'm getting use to it. We wake up with the sun and keep busy until 9 or 10pm at which point I crash into sleep. Sleeping here is kind of nice but it's really humid which is never fun plus every morning at 5am the Mosque right next door starts doing their loud-speaker prayers trying to get people to join in. It usually lasts for about 10 minutes which is way too long in my opinion.

The kids are hilarious. They watch me constantly and tumble over each other to kiss my hand. They dance and cartwheel and sing at the top of their lungs to get my attention. The boy above in the yellow shirt is one of my favorites. His name is Deo and he and his brother are the poorest in their class. But he's so smiley and tubby and loves to practice writing the letter A. The poverty here is outstanding. I need to write more about that later but I just wanted to say hello here since I promised I'd do it. Right now I don't have a lot of free time or confidence in getting around and this internet is about 20 minutes away from the village. So I will try to get here as often as possible!

Tutaunana ba dae.

Karibu!

Welcome!

If you're here that probably means you at least saw one of my posters and were interested enough to check it out, or you donated something and want to see what's become of it! Either way, thank you for your time, curiosity and effort. I hope that you feel good about partaking in whatever way you are and, in my wildest dreams, I hope you feel inspired to go do something great for someone. Anyone, really.

I am in the midst of preparing to leave. Right now this includes vaccinations, working long hours to save up some money and (my strongest skill) list-making. This is one of my favorite parts of traveling. I love the pre-departure day dreaming and the scribbled notes of things to remember. I love building piles in my room of stuff I might want to bring. And, in this case, I am loving the collecting of school supplies and useful gifts for the community I'm about to meet. I'm in a constant, hazy African state of mind. January 13th couldn't get here soon enough.

For those of you that are interested the following link will bring you to Simon's profile on Couch Surfing. Couch Surfing deserves it's own blog post entirely, but I hope you take the time to look around a bit and get a good sense of what it is. Because it's by far the most amazing network of people that I've ever encountered.

http://www.couchsurfing.org/people/simodani/

Feel free to check out Simon's profile as much as you want. It's a public page and there are no rules of privacy. He has some good pictures of his Learning Center as well as his students and the cool wood sculptures that he carves.

Tanzania is a country on the East African coast. It is one of the poorest in the world with the average household earning $1 a day. Kibaha is a small village located about an hour outside of the largest city- Dar es Salaam.

<<<--- The highlighted country is Tanzania

and below a detailed map of Tanzania including a rough showing of Kibaha.

Be sure to check in with updates on what we've managed to collect for the school and stick around for my take off in January!