Marie in Tanzania
Marie volunteered in Northern Tanzania, in a village near Arusha.
Mama Gladness
Mama Gladness (host family mother) with 2 of her adopted children, Nema and Mandu. Mama is a truly amazing and strong woman and she laughs at everything. She has 2 sons, but adopts and cares for many children without families. She runs the Tengeru Cultural Tourism Program and is the treasurer for all the cultural tourism programs in Tanzania. Even though she didn’t get very much education through traditional schooling, she works very hard to improve the schools in the area and to ensure that her own children and the children of her neighbors are able to be educated.
Tengeru Falls
Two other volunteers from another organization with Crispin and Moody (center). We went on an all day hike into the hills above Tengeru to see the big waterfalls. Crispin is the director of the Tanzanian Millenium Hand Foundation, and Moody is the assistant director. The organization would not function without either one of them. Crispin is always pushing to reach out to more and more orphans and widows in the area and Moody works tirelessly to make it happen. Even within the 4 months that I was there, I saw the program improve, grow and develop.
Village Children
The neighborhood kids all know about the volunteer house and go to meet the new volunteers. Jesca and Ireni were two of the girls that would come over often to color with me and try to teach me Kiswahili.
Orphanage
This was a special day at the orphanage. Visitors (wageni) came and brought them all knitted hats that their church group had made along with a chocolate and a toy car for every kid. There were 36 kids at the orphanage when I left, and I want to say that these two little girls are some of my favorites, but really they were all my favorites. While I was there, I saw them improve on learning more English phrases, being able to count, and becoming familiar with letters… they were also just really fun to play with.
POSA
I taught the kids how to sing a song I knew from camp as a kid, “Baby Shark”… a huge hit. Their uniforms were made by the students at POSA (Positive Step Arumeru). The organization will pay to send older orphaned kids to school, but the Tanzanian school system is so bad that it is very easy to fail out. POSA was started as a way for these kids to learn skills so that they could get a job and not be dependent on someone else for the rest of their life. POSA began with 15 girls, but in November, more boys and girls were added to the program.
Typical Lunch
Ireni and Moody eat lunch. Lunch was usually rice or corn with beans and some vegetables, but it varied a little depending on availability. They also got porridge for breakfast made from corn, beans, peanuts, and sugar.
Lollipops
Everyone in Tanzania loves sugar. I brought lolly-pops over to mama’s house… a big hit but turned Mandu’s tongue red.
Mother and Child
One of the widows living with HIV that the program helps out. This picture is from our Christmas lunch, her baby is very distracted by the fried banana. The organization helps the women set up their own small business and has a vegetable project, a poultry project, and now a pig project that the women assist with to earn some income. We also did home visits to make sure that they were taking medication correctly, had enough to eat, and were healthy. On the home visits, we would deliver vitamins and sometimes toothbrushes or food.
Buying Pigs
The other volunteers and I went to a farm nearby to buy a boy pig and 3 girl pigs to start the pig project. The pigs will be bred then sold so that the women can make money.
Christmas Shopping
We went shopping to buy food for the Christmas lunch. In addition to vegetables, spices, fruit, potatoes, and rice, we bought live chickens which we brought back on the bus (called the “dalla-dalla” in Tanzania, pretty much just a van that 25 people plus their kids, vegetables, chickens… and sometimes goats… all pile into).
Vegetable Project
Brian holds the rooster we bought in front of the vegetable project. There was also a second vegetable project for the women in front of POSA. Brian is a 5 year old orphan boy who lives at the orphanage. Some of the orphans still have grandparents to go home to, but they are all greatly in need of attention and affection.
Grinding Corn
Queenie is the niece of Mama Gladness. I ran into her in the road, so I went with her to grind her corn to make flour for ugali, a polenta that is a staple of the Tanzanian diet. Queenie washes the corn before we take it to the machine.
Coffee Beans
I help Bibi and the neighborhood kids to remove the husks from coffee beans. Bibi is the mother of Mama Gladness and lives around the corner from her with Queenie and Memu (Mama’s youngest sister). Even though she is very old, she still works very hard in the fields. Memu and Bibi grow bananas, corn, bogus grass for their cows, beans, and coffee. Even though coffee is the “cash crop”, it is sold for about $1 USD a kilogram and requires a lot of work to harvest and prepare to sell. Bibi has really led an amazing life and has seen dramatic changes in her country during her lifetime.
Processing Coffee
A neighborhood girl helps to pick out coffee husks that didn’t get removed by the machine.
Harvesting Bananas
I go with Memu and Bibi to get bananas to sell at the market. Memu and Bibi have to cut down the whole tree to get the bananas and carefully maneuver it so that it does not crush the coffee plants. The tree is cut up to feed to the cows and Memu carries the bananas back on her head.
Cow Shed
Carol is the youngest daughter of Mama’s neighbor, Mama Pendo, and is a very willful three year old. She is standing on Mama’s cow shed. Tanzania is a very dry country. The Arusha region has better rainfall and a lot of good land for farming, but there is not enough land to farm and to use for open grazing, so cows are all kept in home-made sheds. Land in the Arusha region is also very expensive so people work very hard to get as much produce from it as possible.
New-born Calf
Mama’s cow gave birth in the beginning of October. Her son, Ceasar, is trying to give it milk from its mother in an empty Fanta bottle. Mama had to stay up all night with the cow to help the mother recover and teach the baby how to stand. The baby cow was named Michelle after another volunteer.
The Calf Grows!
Baby Michelle on Christmas day, now a lot bigger. Cows require a lot of work to care for and often are the main source of income for families and ensure that they will have money for food. Memu’s house she was building was built from the money she made from selling milk.
First Communion
Jesca and Ireni received their first communion while I was there. I went with them to church, then went to Jesca’s home afterwards. Here, her sister is helping her to get ready to greet her guests.
Celebrations
Jesca dances with her other sister on the porch of her home. For this important day, we danced and celebrated until dark. Jesca’s mother is the seamstress in Tengeru and made the dresses for Jesca and her sister.
Langata Giraffe Center
I took a brief trip to Nairobi and went to the Langata Giraffe Center. Here, Kenyan orphan children who lost their families in the violence of last year get to feed a giraffe!
Baby Elephants
Poaching for ivory is still a big problem in Africa. There is an elephant orphanage outside Nairobi where orphaned elephants are raised then re-introduced into the wild.
Saying Hello
Linda, one of the girls at the orphanage, greets me on Christmas day. Greetings are very important in Tanzania, everyone takes the time to stop and say hello and ask how the other is before moving on to discuss business.
Cook's Daughter
Umi is the daughter of the cook at the orphanage. Everytime I see her, she usually has some kind of food in her hand.
A Special Lunch
Brian enjoys his Christmas lunch of pilau, fried banana, potato, chicken, beef, fruit, and fanta. It was a very special day for the kids… and for me- it was my last day at the orphanage.
Fanta and Zulfa
Zulfa savors her fanta. She lives with her grandparents and is one of the sweetest most angelic little girls I’ve ever met.
