chasing waterfalls

me getting the board ready for a class on the parts of a plant

this is just the afternoon baby bus with Anniken in the backseat too. there are about 3 times as many kids in the morning squeezed into this little van. 

this is dereki, hes a trouble maker but so cute. 

last weekend we went to moshi and did a waterfall hike. we had to trek thru banana fields to get there.

moshi waterfall!

a day in the life

6:00 AM: wake up to my alarm clock or Andrea coming in and telling me i've slept in too late. roll out of bed to eat a slice of white bread with jam and drink a cup of joe

6:30 AM: out the door with Anniken and Andrea. walk up the street to where the "bus" comes and picks us up with only a few students in the bus which is actually a minivan that would normally fit 8 people. we fit about 30 small children into the damn thing. bounce down the road. pick up a few more kids.

7:00 AM: get out of the bus around a banana patch and walk with 3 other teachers thru a maze of funny shack houses, bananas and cement gardens. the walk is just over 45 minutes. mzungu is yelled at almost every corner. mzungu means white person. we are just the only white people on that side of town. ive never seen another there yet.

7:45 AM: arrive at school. sit and watch the students play on the "swing set". the swing set is a bar with chains on it that the kids tie together and then sit on their backpacks as a cushion. many play animals in the grass in front of the school.

8:00 AM: the kids all line up and do morning exercises, tell stories to the school in english, sing their school song and pray. then we all go into class and start teaching. they learn english, math, science, vocational skills, handwriting, and kiswahili.

8:30 AM: the kids from the bus arrive and being to catch-up.

10:15 AM: break time. the kids get a cup of porridge and we teaches leave the class to enjoy a cup of sugar tea and either 2 massive fried mendazi rolls each or 4 pieces of white bread each. its too much but we can't say no. it would be too rude. class starts up again at 11.

12:15 or 12:30 PM: we get into the bus again with the baby school and head back to down town. we are dropped off at a dala stop and catch a dala back to down. the trip takes about 25 minutes. we either take it to the dala station and catch another to go home for lunch with mama or we then get off and walk to get lunch at another spot in town. then we nap or read.

we could stay until 4 and get home at 6 but normally we just do the mornings because the kids mainly do kiswahili after class and one of the employed teachers teaches that due to our lack of swahili.

once home we normally now run up and down mama's driveway, nap, read or go to the internet cafe. its a nice way to end an always hectic morning.

6:00 PM: mama serves dinner. it is always good. it is always a lot but what can you do. its africa.

then we normally read more. talk. talk to people on skype.

9:00 PM: we are normally in bed by now passing out. this day wears me out every time. its nice tho.

TANZANIA!

tanzania is the new kenya!

just arrived in arusha two nights ago. its a town about an hours drive in a dalla dalla (a big van) from the mouth kilimanjaro international airport. the flights were uneventful but i have to say flying from joburg to nairobi during sunset and seeing mount kilimanjaro was like nothing ive ever seen before. it was spectacular. i arrived late to
mama liz's. i know i will fit in well because you call any women who are older or who are responsible for you, "mama". :) the second thing i noticed other than how different it was from cape town was the amount of english spoken is slim to none. within the first minute of being picked up from the airport by my placement leader, Jessica, she inquired into my Swahili background.. the kids I am working with apparently know almost no english and I will have to communicate with them in either body movements or Swahili... should be interesting. all i know how to say now is "mambo"- "whats up" and the replay "poa" which means "cool" then i can say "sante" which means thanks. i will definitely need to work on that but i was given a list of about 100 words that i should work on learning so i will have to try my best because school starts tomorrow at 8 and goes till 3 every day. this 7 hour school day is sandwiched by 2 hour long bus rides to get to school in the first place. thank god two of the other girls at mamas
house are going with me. it wasn't so hard as i thought it would be much worse. there were 4 classrooms and today i mainly just watched the 5 year old classroom and the 6 year old class room. today we taught them how to sew... i'm not qualified but i try. anyway, more later. my new african mama is so nice and seems to take very good care of us girls. there are 5 of us living there with just mama and her grandbaby emmanuel. she seems like a good mama :) anyway i am already planning on doing a 4 day safari this coming weekend! im soooo excited apparently it is just amazing! one of the girls who lives at my house says she cried twice on the trip because it was just that good. OH! also im thinking of going to see the Rwanda trials tomorrow! they apparently end on friday! i was talking with some girls that said they went and it was so cool and enlightening. 

what i cannot stress enough is the heat. as you bounce down the road packed into a dalla dalla the beads of sweat that collect on my brow and drip down my spin is significant. if the diet mama is providing wasn't almost entirely carbs and friend fruit i would be loosing a ton in water weight. however, no such luck. ill try to upload pictures soon.