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!