Hi, hope everyone is well!
It’s Friday, August 6th here and I can’t believe I only have
about one week left before my mom, sister and her husband come for safari and
Zanzibar! I really can’t believe how
fast this summer has flown by! Also,
congratulations and best wishes to my friends, Dan and Caitlin who are getting married
today, wish I could be there!
Last Friday was my final day of school at Shepherd’s and
they are now on break until the beginning of September. This week I’ve been tagging along to other
volunteer projects and have visited an amazing orphanage with my friends Clare,
Maia and Evan who are placed there. Glorious Orphanage is run by two of the most
genuine and sweet people I’ve met here, Alice and Julius. www.gloriousorphanage.com
for their story and more information.
The kids are super sweet and cute, love bubbles and getting their nails
painted. My friend Ali brought a bottle
of hot pink nail polish one day so now there are about 50 orphan children
running around with one or two hot pink nails, boys included. Of course I have two random hot pink nails as
well. Why not? I also spent a day with a few girls at the
special needs wing of Pangani school.
Much different than special needs schools in the U.S. as obviously they
do not have the necessary resources to help many children. The rooms I observed were mainly mental
disabilities, a few Downs Syndrome children but for the most part the teachers
are not really sure what is wrong with the children as testing isn’t readily
available. There were a few deaf and
blind children who live at the school because their parents gave them up as
well. Unfortunately, most disabled people
are not accepted as members of society here and very few children even have the
chance to attend school.
Last weekend was another weekend full of strenuous hiking. I have a bunch of amazing pictures, we were
gone for about 7 hours. We walked
through a few villages and into the jungle, had to walk down the river for
about 30 minutes, on painful rocks, of course I wiped out, luckily the water
was shallow at that point so I didn’t get too wet. Anyway, we finally made it to an absolutely
stunning waterfall, much taller than the waterfalls in Marangu last week. There were tons of local kids there playing
and it was really fun. The water was freezing
but none of us went swimming or anything, didn’t really seem all that
safe. They were like something out of a
movie, the vegetation was so green and it was so beautiful, can’t wait to post
pictures in a few months when I get home (or if I ever find high speed
internet)! Of course by the time we got
home we could barely walk and had to rest for a few hours, but don’t worry, we
all still made it out Saturday night. Went to a local bar with some guys we met
through our volunteer organization.
There was a band playing live music and we had tons of fun learning
African dance steps although all of our legs and feet were in pain all day
Sunday when we got up.
Back to my last day of school and the huge production we put
on for the parents and visitors. The
entire lawn at our campus was transformed into a huge tented seating area for
the parents. The school rented a huge
tent and chairs, set up a small stage and decorated with fresh flowers and it
really looked amazing, wish the internet was fast enough and I could post
pictures! The show was supposed to start
around 9 AM but of course none of the parents started showing up until closer
to 9:45, with the show finally starting at 10:50. “African time.” All of the classes did fantastic with their
songs and poems. The 5th
graders made up a dance routine to “The Twist” which was super funny. I think I was most impressed by the 5th
graders who spoke about women’s empowerment and about how educating a woman is
educating the entire family as a woman will take her knowledge and pass it on to
her entire family/ village. In between
the songs various speakers from different career fields were invited to present
information to the kids and parents regarding their educations and jobs. It was really great to see the kids,
especially the older ones listen attentively.
I was very excited to see the number of parents that showed up, it was
easy to see that I was placed at a rather wealthy school comparing only the
dress of the parents to the dress I see in my village everyday which is one of
the poorer in Arusha.
The day went great until the end. I had a translator sitting next to me most of
the day as almost everything besides the kids performances were in Swahili because
most of the parents aren’t fluent in English.
The headmaster started speaking and silence took over the crowd. One of the level two girls, Irene Peter, 7
years old, was hit by a dalla dalla on the way to school that morning and
killed. Some of the teachers had known
about it but didn’t tell anyone until this point. Everyone started crying and I was so
upset. There are almost 50 children in
the second grade class, however I was running around all morning saying goodbye
to everyone and visiting all the classrooms and never noticed anyone
missing. Apparently she left that
morning, so excited for the production and the last day of school before break. Her mother wanted to bring her to school when
she came for the performance but Irene wanted to ride the bus with her
friends. Her mom left to run errands and
didn’t find out until she arrived at school and was quickly ushered away before
seeing anyone by the headmistress who broke the news. I was just so upset all day and keep thinking
about her. One of the last images in my
mind of Shepherd’s is teacher Ruth sitting in an empty classroom by herself
holding Irene’s file with tears streaming down her face. I had a fantastic time there before September
break but can’t believe Irene won’t be starting level 3 next fall as she was
one of the smartest kids in the class.
That’s it for now, I’m going to visit a few more volunteer
placements next week before everyone arrives for vacation. Tomorrow (Saturday) we’re heading to a
hospital about an hour away to visit a little boy from Glorious Orphanage. He’s 5 years old, unable to walk and his
parents have to carry him everywhere. A
few of the volunteers did fundraising at home before they came and paid for two
weeks of physical therapy for him and crutches for the next two years as he’ll
need new crutches approximately every six months when he grows. His mom is spending the next two weeks with
him at the hospital and was so happy and overwhelmed when she found out he was
going to receive proper medical attention as they could never afford crutches
and therapy. There are a bunch of other
children at the hospital we’ll be able to visit and spend some time with so
tomorrow should be a sad but great day.
Take care, Cath
