Week Seven

I returned to my 3rd and 4th graders this week, after the school reopened from the Easter holidays. But sadly, it was only open for four days. The school is officially closed for the rainy season long break, so I will spend the rest of my time in Tanzania working at the Kili Kids orphanage. My last week at school was incredibly bittersweet, I was very heartbroken to leave my wonderful students, but thankful for the time I have had with them and touched by their sweet goodbyes.

I asked one of the teachers at the school to explain to the kids in Swahili that I would not be returning when they came back to school after rainy season, because I wanted to sure they all understood what was going on. I was glad I explained my departure to them, but it was hard to listen to their responses. I was flooded with questions of when I would return to Tanzania and if I would ever be their teacher again, on top of many of them flat out begging and pleading with me not to go. Despite their sadness, and my own sadness over saying goodbye, we enjoyed our last few days together and learned some "fun" English as well as played games and sang English songs.

On my last day I brought the kids lollipops, and you would have thought I was handing them a million dollars! We had a great celebration of our time together and most of them had made me precious goodbye cards with touching notes written in clever mixtures of Swahili and English. When I get home I plan to laminate everything they gave me and bind it together so I can always have something to remind me of just how wonderful and special my Tanzanian students were! My favorite notes were the ones where the kids made an obvious effort to include their favorite English words I taught them, such as eye and chicken!

My 4th graders sang to me for about ten minutes straight a traditional Swahili farewell song, it filled my eyes with tears, but I was able to pull myself together when they all cracked me up by asking for my autograph! I'm not sure why they wanted it, but I thought it was quite funny and it helped me laugh rather than cry as I left their class.

I actually just found a note one of my fourth graders hid in my book-bag as I was sitting down here at the internet cafe and rifling through to pull out my camera. It says verbatim:

"Thank teacha Elice fo teach me English. I lave you. - Eliwiza" I of course choked up again when I read it. I cant believe in such a short time how much these kids touched me! I hope they learned half as much from me as I learned from them. Here are some pictures from our celebration:

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Parsley

I have mentioned earlier in my posts that I have particularly bonded with one special little boy, Parsley, at the orphanage I visit. Parsley is HIV positive and since I have known him his health has been sadly declining. The week before Easter he had to be hospitalized because he had a very high fever, couldn't eat, and was losing weight rapidly. Because he was admitted so close to Easter, the doctors were not working and it was hard to get the tests and medical attention he needed. I was very worried I might not ever see the little guy again, but then on Easter morning I got a wonderful surprise! After all the rest in the hospital Parsley was well enough to come home! When I saw one of the orphanage workers walk in with Parsley in her arms on Easter my whole heart smiled!
Last week I got to play with Parsley several times and although he is much weaker than before (he can not stand anymore) he was in good spirits and as cute as always. After the kids saw the Lion King a few weeks ago, they play "Simba" all day long, and Parsley loves to craw on the floor after them making growling noises.
This Thursday however, when I went to visit him his whole body was covered in a rash, so he had to be taken back to the hospital. I have yet to hear his status, but please keep this precious boy in your prayers! He truly needs all the love and prayers he can get. Thank you.

Week Six

To begin with, I am so sorry it has been so long since I have updated this blog! I have suffered many obstacles in the past few weeks which prevented me from getting to the Internet. To begin with, Easter is a very important holiday here and so from Thursday to Tuesday of Easter weekend, EVERYTHING was closed in Tanzania. I know longer have Internet access at my house and even after the Internet cafes re-opened, because of rainy season the internet has become very unreliable and usually cuts out as soon as rain begins to fall (which is all the time!) Being cut off from my usual form of communication has been difficult, but nonetheless I am continuing to have a very wonderful time here in Tanzania.

I spent all of the days that my school was closed for Easter break working at the Kili kids orphanage, which was a blast and allowed me to get to know the older kids who were home from school. We threw an Easter carnival for everybody and had face-painting, three legged races, bean bag tosses, ect! The kids had never done anything like that so watching them enjoy these type of games for the first time was a real treat! Here is a picture of me and one of the older girls, Wittiness, she painted a heart on my cheek for me! And did quite a good job at it, I told her she should be an artist!

On Easter day I went with the orphanage to church. An African church on Easter is quite an amazing place to be! The music was so celebratory and exciting. The service consisted of nothing but singing and dancing with overwhelming joy, it was very different then what I am used to on Easter morning at First Presbyterian, but I cant imagine a more spirited atmosphere to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. The kids were adorable too! Getting to church with 23 kids is a challenge, but it was worth it to watch them enjoy the service. I had a wonderful surprise too, but I will divulge that in my next post!

After church I was invited to the home of the John, who drives me to my school every morning. I loved getting to see his home, it was very humble but a very happy place. All six of his adult children live with him in the small space with their children. The meal was absolutely fabulous, and I felt honored to have the opportunity to experience a true Tanzanian Easter feast!

My Birthday!

I was lucky enough to spend my 22nd birthday here in Tanzania! I wanted to post a picture of my cake, it was shaped like Africa!!! Also, it snowed on Kili last night, so I had the joy of waking up on my birthday to one of the most breathtaking views of the mountain yet!

My 22nd Birthday Cake!

Kili on 3/17/2008!

Palm Sunday

On Palm Sunday I attended a service at Moshi Antioch Presbyterian Church. It was such a beautiful service, although I could not understand much because it was in Swahili. The church was founded by a husband and wife from Korea, who were so nice and welcoming! The whole congregation was overwhelmingly kind. During the service the children stared at my pew the whole time, and eventually one little girl came and sat in my lap. My favorite part was singing "I have a friend in Jesus" in Swahili! At the end the whole congregation left the sanctuary together to the beat of an African drum and then shook every single person's hand as they formed a big circle and sang a traditional African hymn, it was just beautiful!

The kids watching me from their pewThe Sanctuary

The outside of Moshi Antioch Presbyterian Church

The Lion King

On Sunday we had a special treat at Kili Kids Orphanage. We showed the kids there the movie The Lion King. For those of you who dont remember, not only does the Lion King take place with Mt. Kilimanjaro in the background, but there is a lot of Swahili throughout the movie, such as Simba (lion) Rafiki (friend) Hakuna Matata (no worries) Asante Sena (thanks).
Most of these kids had never seen a movie, so that was a treat to begin with, but to see a movie that takes place right in their own backyard with bits of their own language was such a neat experience for the kids! And all the volunteers

Nema Orphange

Last Saturday I went on an adventure with one ohter volunteer, Nicki, to a new orphanage called Nema. The orphanage is about 17 Ks away from where we live, so we had to travel by dala dala to get there. The dala dala is a size of a mini van, only with about 25 people in it, needless to say it was a bit of a tight ride. We went all the way up a mountain before we finally got out at our stop. The only problem was, we werent sure what to do from there, so we wandered down the mountain until some nice people finally understood our botched Swahili and were able to point us in the right direction. It was worthe the logn journey to get to Nema though because our help was much appreciated. The orphange has 30 babies, all under the age of three and only about five nuns on staff. So we spent the day holding the smaller babies and giving them some one on one attention that they never recieve. I even got to hold a baby that was only a few days old! Here are some pictures:

Pictures of me with Students

All about da U

The only American television that makes it all the way to Tanzania is the WWF (wrestling). So, all of my kids in school love the wrestlers of the WWF (or WWE). They are constantly running around doing the "moves" of the different wrestlers. They do the move and then shout the name of whatever wrestler. Their favorite is to make a claw in front of their face and shout John Seina, and their second favorite is to run their thumb across their necks like a knife and shout "The Undertaker"

At the beginning of this week, I decided I was tired of the wrestlers, so I told my kids if they absaloutly must do a gesture and shout something, then they can make a University of Miami 'U' and shout "its all about da U." They absaloutly loved this, and free time the rest of the week was spent with them chanting its all about da U. Its the cutest thing in the whole world!

A note to Mountain TOP friends

The orphanage that I visit often, Kili Kids, asked me and a few other volunteers yesterday to come out back of the orphanage when we arrived. We all walked out back and the leader of the orphanage showed us a spot in the yard and asked if we thought it would be possible to build a sand box. My honest first response was to reach in my back pocket and look for a flippy to right down measurements!! My next brain process was thinking how a sand box is really just an an 8 x 8 porch with really short sides. It made me miss the mountain and it made me want to move here and start a Mountains of Tanzania Outreach Project =)

A good day!

I was very worried about teaching school today because I have been sick for the past few days and my voice is completley gone. When I arrived this morning I used a mix between Swahili and English (swinglish) to try my best and explain to the kids that my voice was hurting today and I needed them to be extra quiet so everybody can hear me. I really didn't expect this to work, but boy did my kids surprise me! They were the most well behaved groups of third and fourth graders on earth today. I was shocked!!!
And, as I was checking my third grade classes' papers today they would all kiss my throat as I leaned over their desks, and say "pole mwalimu" Which means sorry teacher (for my sore throat). It was so kind how much they wanted me to feel better; all I have is a simple sore throat, while many of them suffer from TB, malaria, and HIV among other things. These kids never cease to amaze me!

Week Four

Week four of teaching has flown by! It is amazing how every week goes faster and faster. As I was leaving class today I was having my students repeat "see you tomorrow." About a minute after I walked out I realized today is Friday so I wont actually see them tomorrow! I hope I didn't confuse their English too much!! I recieved some good news this week as well. I was accepted to Teach For America, so I will be teaching middle school language arts in St. Louis next fall! I am very excited about this oppurtunity and everyday with my kids in Africa gives me more passion for teaching.
This week my third graders have been working on the difference between present tense and past tense. Its very hard to teach, I'm not sure how much they understand yet, but we are going to continue working it with it next week. I've done so many concepts with this class I think I am going to prepare a test of some sort for Monday just to see what has stuck and what I still need to return to and review while I'm still here. There are no tests or reviewing in Tanzanian schools so I think the kids are going to super confused when they see questions from two or three weeks ago in front of them, but I hope it will ultimately help me more effectively teach them.
I've been doing some vocab with the fourth graders, which is so much fun! Most of our words are verbs so the kids have a great time acting everything out. I gave them a word search with their vocab words in it, and I was very nervous about how it would go over, but they loved it! They want more of it, so I think I'm going to start making word searches for both my classes.
Today at recess the kids taught me a really fun Tanzanian game. We stood in a circle and skipped around trying to keep a ball in their air. The kids had a song that went with the game, I wish I knew what the words to it meant!!

The best part of the week was my visit to Kili Kids Orphanage. There is a child at the orphange that I have formed a special bond with named Parsley. He is 18 months old, but looks more like six month old because he is HIV positive. He is very developmentally behind where he should be, he can not walk or talk yet. But he loves to laugh and mimick noises like "woohooo"
Every time I go I hold him up by his hands and try and get him to walk, he is getting so close! In fact last week he took about half a step on his own. Watching him do this was one of the happiest split seconds I've ever experienced. I visited the orphanage on Tuesday, and he was not up to trying to walk because he had some sort of ear infection. But I really hope to see him toddling around the yard at the orphange before I leave!

Here are some pictures of Parsley and another boy who makes me heart melt, Andre who is 2.
Me and Parsley, isnt he adorable?My friend Joe holding Andre while he kicks everybody else! I love this picture though because you can see Parsley's floral print pants, he is so cute with his flowery ensemble.Andre reading a book upside down =)

Parelsey LOVES to stick his head through anything it will fit through.

Safari

I am home safely from my three day safari! It was such an incredible experience, I felt like I was in a movie the whole time. From the moment you begin to enter the outskirts of Africa all you see for miles and miles is rolling hills with picture-esq trees on top. Before we even arrived at the national park to begin the safari, we saw a giraffe on the side of the highway! The first park we went to on Friday evening was Lake Maranyara. At this park we saw a lot of giraffes, zebras, baboons, and few elephants in the middle of the road! Friday night we set up tents at a camp ground and had a blast camping (despite the lack of showers) The stars were my favorite part of camping, the night sky was so clear and lit up with stars! Because we are in the southern hemisphere it was a whole new set of conselations too!

Saturday morning we got up early to go to Ngorongnoro crater. The drive to Ngorongonoro was straight up a side of a mountain and then down into the crater. The crater was full of zebras and wildabeast everywhere you looked. We also saw one lion, a rhino and a baby rhino, a hippo out of water (very rare) and Egyptian Ibis (my favorite of course) Sunday we went to Terangarie National Park which is an elephant sanctuary. We saw so many elephants!! My favorite was a baby elephant we saw that our guide said was probably about two weeks old. It was the cutest animal on the planet. We also saw elephants fighting with their tusks, which was very exciting and a bit scary because of how loud they got. And an elephant charged our jeep! We got away in time, thank goodness! I took more than 200 pictures over the three days, here are a few of my favorites!!

Me with a Lion behind me!

The Lion napping

Some Egyptian Ibis and Zebera

African children playing amongst the wild animals, I was fascinated by this

Me in front of Ngorangoro Crater

Elephants fightingThe elephant that charged our jeep, I took a picture as I ducked into the car!Laughing Hyenas, they really did look like the Lion King cartoon characters

A lion, after he woke up from his nap Me with a big group of elephants under the tree behind me

The two week old baby elephant, walking behind its mom

I didnt have time to put up all the pictures I wanted to put up, but hopefully later this week I can finish!