Blog Update: Safari Njema

I’ve been back in Moshi for a few weeks now. My parents, two Amani volunteers (Laura and Jennifer) and Laura’s friend Joe visiting from New York and I went on safari for five days to Lake Manyara, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater. The trip started off pretty rocky when my dad collapsed outside Laura’s house. I thought for sure he was having a heart attack but he was just extremely dehydrated. The first park we went to, Lake Manyara, was really lush and green with big Baobab trees dotting the landscape every now and then. We saw a lot of bald butted baboons crossing the road and a whole family of elephants. I loved the elephants wrinkly paper like skin. We camped out the whole time we were on safari although the first night was the nicest with actual beds and a campfire. It was a lot of time to be in the car but still worth it. The Serengeti was the best place to view lions, and zebras and impalas were everywhere. We also saw cheetahs, leopards, monkeys, hippos (smelled awful), hyenas, giraffes and a rhino.

The last day of safari I was really sick and by the end of our trip I had definitely lost weight. I had what I can only guess was something between giardia and ecoli for four days. I felt like a dog that needed to be put down, which was pretty unfortunate luck since I’d been reading about Zanzibar since January. My parents went on a spice tour in Stone Town and then we spent three days in Kizimkazi on the south of the island at this place called Karamba Resort on the beach.

I didn’t realize how much I missed the kids while I was gone and I’m so happy to see them again. They are real pests some times but at the end of the day I really love them.

There’s a new little boy at Amani named Naftari who’s around four years old I would guess. He wasn’t speaking at all at first but has opened up a little. I want to find out more about him from the social workers because he doesn’t say much and I’m wondering what happened to him. He’s super cute but super quiet. I don’t think he had ever colored before because I sort of had to explain to him how to use the markers to decorate the teddy bear on the paper. Today he was running around and ran straight into the wall so he had this big whopper bump on his head, so Christina (the new special ed volunteer) and I put ice on his head and wrapped a big kanga around him. He couldn’t really see out of it to well while he was playing since he’s just so darn small. It’s great to sort of see him realizing how to play and have fun. He was chatting for a bit the other day when I showed him how to use a kazoo. Eventually I had to kick him out of the playroom because that kazoo was really starting to get to me. *

We have a new roommate named Anna who was living in Dar es Salaam. She’s working at Amani also as the health educator, which is desperately needed.

On Friday I went to visit the two little girls who left Amani (Zulfa and Amina). I’ve missed them a lot so it was really sweet to see them. They would always be running around in kangas like little fairies in the morning. They are living with Suzie, a night mama at Amani, whose husband runs a nursery school right next door to the house. The kids in nursery school are adorable. Amina and Zulf were really shy at first but opened up later on. They were so quiet and focused on practicing writing letters I was really proud of them. They showed me their beds and brought me some chai. I gave them a My Little Pony coloring book and crayons and some paper, and two little black cloth dolls wearing little dresses. Zulfa named hers “Whitty” and was combing the little gal’s hair a little rough. It’s amazing what different people they are out side of Amani- so quiet and collected. Not that Amani isn’t great but there are so many kids the little girls really had to be aggressive and assert themselves.

That’s about it for now. I still get a little lonely here sometimes but all in all things are going well. This week I taught art classes on drawing trees with the older kids and made paper dolls with the younger ones, which turned out really cute. A volunteer who was living in Moshi went back to Germany and donated his guitar to Amani so that is pretty great and I’ve started teaching the kids some chords (they’ve already broken a string!).


*I wrote this a few days ago and Naftari has disappeared with his older brother James. They might be in Moshi or Arusha but I haven’t heard anything.

Blog Update: Life as of Late

After experiencing a sufficient amount of rage resulting from the daily bullshit that goes on at times while living here, my friend Sarah and I checked into a nice hotel in Arusha a few weekends ago where I was actually able to take a bubble bath. A freaking bubble bath. I forgot those existed. I had a different kind of culture shock at this really nice hotel; watching tv, having so many lights in one room, showering in a sterile enclosed area, etc etc. We also saw “Slumdog Millionaire” at the one movie theater in Arusha but it irritated me somewhat. Not that it wasn’t a good movie and a nice story, but I also work with former street kids and know current street kids and kept picturing all these Hollywood bastards in their designer dresses feeling happy after seeing this movie. In reality a majority of kids don’t get rescued, and those who do get help aren’t living fairytales and are navigating their lives alone. They are abandoned by relatives at bus stations or beaten by the police and fairytales are not in the cards for them. Although another volunteer and I did find it pretty hilarious that one of the twelve year old kids left over winter break to be a pool hustler and was able to make a pretty penny/shilling.

One thing that is kind of strange is I spend all day with neglected kids and then come home to a bunch of neglected dogs. Our useless “guard dog” Luna is becoming fatter and lazier each day. She used to be really “street” and skinky and desperate and stand offish. Now she is a fat snob. Her three friends hang out here, and all smell pretty funky except for one we call Shy Girl who got her leg chopped with a panga/machete. We had to get Shy’s leg amputated and the idiot vet didn’t give her any antibiotics or pain killers. I forget if I’ve written about this already. Coming home to all these unclaimed dogs after being at Amani all day is a little exasperating at times.

Anyways; on to something positive. A few weeks ago Sarah and I also went flying in a four-seater plane to West Kilimanjaro which was so amazing! Flying over Moshi was so surreal, especially seeing the big market (Mbuyuni) which looks a bit refugee like from above. Once the plane landed we were out in the middle of open land and could see Kenya in the distance beyond the grass where the farmland met red earth. It’s hard to put into words but I felt really blessed to be hanging around in such a beautiful untouched part of Africa, while the pilot was sipping his whiskey (yes, a little disconcerting).

We had a field trip at Amani a few weeks ago and went to a place called Mweka, which is a wildlife college. I thought my immune system would be better by now but I seem to be picking up most viruses the kids have maybe because they are always trying to braid or pull out pieces of my hair like little monkeys or trying to sit on top of me. Lately they’ve been asking if they can give me hair cuts or shave my head. I say no. The kids were mostly excited about seeing elephant bones and beastly heads. Their vacation has officially started for the next month, which means I get most of the kids during the day and they all demand to watch Power Rangers or vampire movies. Joy. My dad sent me some more animal coloring books for the kids, which they love, and they are basically like currency along with the dancing monkey pens he donated.

Some of the kids were circumsized last week (about 15), which I really don’t feel like going into for my own personal psyche. It’s a process most East African kids go through at a later age, and most of the kids have been recovering together in one of the classrooms. In other news, a few of the kids are playing in the East African soccer youth cup this week and I’m excited to see them play.

Really I’ve just been working and busy preparing for my parents to come. I truly cannot eat any more rice that has a slight taste of intestine to it or other lovely Tanzanian delicacies. My stomach is just refusing to do it anymore. It has officially rejected the funk at the six-month mark.

Today I looked at the “Daily Nation” headlines at the local grocery store. The “Daily Nation” is a Kenyan newspaper in English (significantly more Kenyans speak English than Tanzanians) and it tends to be much better written than any of the Tanzanian gems. Thank heavens I do not live in Kenyan, although at some point I’d like to go to Nairobi to see this elephant/giraffe orphanage and eat Thai food (Nairobi is six hours away). Nairobi also has the largest slum in East Africa, which I wish I could visit with the company of an African of course but that probably won’t be happening.Anyways the main headline was about the gun trade in Kenya and how it costs 3,000 Kenyan shillings per hour to rent a pistol and 15,000 k shillings per hour to rent an AK-47. Granted, Kenyan shillings are worth more than TZ shillings, but still. I’m sure the police and the government help this to happen. No wonder organized crime squirms like a snake through Nairobi’s crowded streets.

I feel pretty cut off from the world here, but I have to say sometimes it’s a relief. Sarah lent me a Time magazine yesterday and reading the news can be such a downer.

On Sunday mornings I’m usually rudely awakened by the fire and brimstone preacher who lives next door. Today, it turns out, some idiot gave that fool a microphone and I don’t think Jesus would mind if a big rocket fell out of the sky and smushed him. Speaking of Jesus some obnoxious missionaries (high school girls and their teachers) came to Amani on Friday and were preaching to the kids about accepting Jesus into their lives under the guise of Bible themed coloring books and Dora the Explorer frisbees. Did I mention some of the kids are Muslim? At the end of the day I tried to tell some of the kids it’s okay to believe in Jesus or to believe in Mohammed; you don’t have to be Christian to be a good person. I’m not Christian but I believe in God, and I don’t think Jesus has any beef with me volunteering in Africa. I did not approve of the high school girl’s pro-life sticker-ed guitar case either, or the bracelets given to the kids with the different color beads on them. Black represented sin and white represented purity. Give. Me. A. Break. These kids know that the group talking to them have white skin, how is a kid supposed to interpret that? Not too mention the talk about sin and guilt. If one of those missionaries even slightly influenced the kids to believe that their misfortune is their fault, I would not hesitate in directing my rage towards their insolence. Really, they don’t know the kids or how these kids have suffered, and instead of using the one day they have at Amani to tell the kids how to live their lives, maybe they should take the time to find out what their lives are like. That’s probably what infuriates me the most about missionary work. It really makes me wonder about the foreigners here.Anyways, my parents are coming tonight, so we’ll be taking two weeks together to see the Serengeti and Zanzibar (the island Aladdin and Alia Babba’s stories were set in). I’m excited to see some lions, and cheetahs and hippos (oh my!).

The Kids Aren’t Always Alright

I am stressed. Definitely stressed. Almost like my body is a test tube and the stress is the liquid rising slowly to the top. Some people might not think that volunteering for nine months in East Africa in the land of Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti ever gets stressful, but I assure you, they are wrong. Without going into too much detail, I’ve felt pretty overwhelmed and alone at work lately sometimes taking care of thirty kids at one time and I don’t feel like the kids are getting even close to enough attention as they both need and deserve.

More so than the stress, I am silently in shock. The shock shows itself gradually like an entity unto itself. I used to feel guilty seeing small children carry giant water buckets from the village taps, but now I just feel grateful that I had such a labor-free childhood without the early onset arthritis, etc. There are things that are harder to confront: the lack of healthcare access, the pain and excessive work that comes with being a woman, the inequality of life on a global scale and of education, or hearing stories of people dying that didn’t have to day after day after day. I mean, there is a point where my emotions just can’t handle anymore stories, anymore tragedy, anymore outrage or either my mind will burst or there will be nothing left to feel.

The thing is, I love the kids I’ve come to know here. But I want better for them and I feel so powerless and so terrible sometimes. I’ve gotten in the habit of visiting the kids living on the street in Moshi every week or two and buying them some bread and water or some bananas. It’s really not too often, and it doesn’t make that much difference in the end, but it’s something. At Amani, I don’t feel like I can do anything after a certain point, and I think that’s the worst feeling of all. It’s not that I’m trying to be God or something but I do want to feel like I am helping. I didn’t have high expectations before I came here. I can feel myself starting to submit to pessimism with a side of cynic. There are people that come to poorer countries and because they are white or educated or comparatively wealthy, they think they will institute social change, like they are entitled, which when you think about it is really pretty racist of them. There are plenty of people like this living in Moshi now. But I really just thought that I’d come here and be a friend. I didn’t want to become too emotionally involved with the kids although I already have, but I don’t know how to stop caring for these kids, how to leave here and go about my life and forget that I’ve stopped fighting for them. Stopped being a mother to them. Stopped hugging them. Stopped teaching them. Stopped listening. I am so heartbroken for them sometimes. Comparatively of course, I know that their lives are much better than before. Street life is not easy, particularly when you have nowhere to go but an alcoholic father or a relative that doesn’t want you. But still, I want so badly for each of them to have homes and loving parents and happy days at school and hopeful futures, and the security and success that comes as a result of a nurturing environment. But the world doesn’t work that way for everyone. I can’t be their parent. With the amount of kids at Amani right now (93), it’s really not possible that each child is receiving enough care both emotionally and simply in terms of logistics. It’s not right; I feel it in my gut that it’s not right. But is it better to turn a child away? I don’t know. I do know that their hygiene, their education; everything could be improved. Nothing is perfect and this is how we learn as we live. Maybe I’m expecting too much, but I want to leave the kids lives better than they are now.

There is an eleven-year-old boy at Amani named Kalisti whose mother died of AIDS when he was a baby. With his father gone, he lived on the street with his grandmother until she was too weak to take care of him. His smile is a little funny because of a bad case of malaria he had when he was little which paralyzed part of his face, but when he smiles, he really smiles. He never gets angry or impatient. He loves to play the piano and draw and he has this inner warmth that is so contagious and comforting and calming that it makes you feel more beautiful. He deserves to have someone constant in his life that returns this beauty too.

Blog Update: Lushoto, an African birthday and Amani life

Sometimes this place is ridiculous. I mean, really. On the way home from work the other day I got a lift from a guy on his way into town (a lot of times my coworkers and I will get “lifties” from the village area out to the highway where we can get a dala-dala). Anyways, there was a serious problem with his automobile. He said he had gone to Arusha earlier and it took him four hours (it’s supposed to take one hour and a half). I’m not sure how he got the damn thing there and back and was still alive to tell me about it, but somehow it happened. People die on that road all the time in functioning vehicles. Anyways, every 10 meters or so he would have to go in reverse because the car would start to veer off to the left and head for the ditch or farm on the side of the road. It was kind of like getting one of those irritatingly dysfunctional shopping carts with the one bad wheel that makes you have to redesign your whole steering technique. Except this was a car. So while he was driving down the road he’d have to physically use his weight to push the steering wheel all the way to the right to keep the car going straight, or end up reversing to straighten out. To actually make a turn (which I was silently panicking about in my mind before it happened) he’d have to reverse a whole hell of a lot to pull it off so that the car’s orientation was all set up. Yes. Ridiculous.

Anyways, I digress. Here’s what’s been going on recently:

*A few weeks ago I met my friend Sarah (who works for Visions) in a small mountain town called Lushoto. It’s close to four hours east of Moshi, edging toward the coast. The Usambara Mountains surround Lushoto and are often referred to as “the Alps of Tanzania.” I don’t know about being comparable to the Alps, but they are really beautiful, and strangely enough, waking up at our lodge hidden away from town further back into the mountains I felt like I was in Europe somewhere like the Basque country in Spain. I met Sarah on a Friday and took the bus from Moshi (by myself!) to Mombo, where I caught a ride with a medic driving up into the mountains. Lushoto is fairly small with some old German buildings including a church leftover from the colonial period. It was definitely a nice break. Sarah and I stayed at Muller’s Lodge and spent our down-time reading old magazines in our long underwear. There was a fireplace and delicious soup and heavy comforters. We spent most of the weekend hiking with our guide Babu Francis. He’s seventy-four years old and still witty and spry/incredibly fast despite the fact that he is a smoking fiend and skinny as a stick. Babu knows all these random facts like who has assassinated who in U.S. history and he grew up in Tanzania when it was still a colony so his English is excellent. I loved the way he would eat a little plate of cookies and drink a cup of coffee back at the lodge smiling like he was so content with life. He knew all the names of the plants out in the jungle and their medicinal properties (malaria, nausea, stomach pain, etc), which was so interesting to hear about.

Together with an older man named Richard from the UK who works in the Selous, a national park in the south, we hiked and rock climbed up a crack to the top of Kivulga Point and reached Irente view point which overlooks the whole valley surrounding the Usambaras. It felt like we were up in the clouds and it made me think of friends I’ve known who’ve climbed Kili and hike above the clouds on only their second day out. The villagers were all shouting greetings at us, which made me feel like a spectacle, but my favorite villager by far was the man sitting outside his house with a tea cozy on his head. It was a perfect hat (the tea cozy was of an English country house) and it reminded me of an E.E. Cummings poem. One of the last places we went was Irente Farm which makes fresh cheese, jam, yogurt and granola and is tucked away in a mountain valley. Babu, of course, was pretty pleasantly pleased with the picnic lunch.

*On Wednesday night I went to a local outdoor bar called Glacier (again with Sarah) to watch the final game of the European cup. People here are so into European soccer/football that when FC Barcelona made their goals people would scream and dance up and down and say happy things in Swahili. I’m really glad Manchester United didn’t win as Ronaldo is a big creep (the waxing and the fake tan don’t help). He’s also a real ball hog and takes a lot of cheap shots. Ok, enough.

*I turned twenty-four last week and went out for Indian food with people from Visions and Amani. It turned out nice even though the power was out most of the time so we ate by lantern light. I was given a khanga (large African fabric with a Swahili proverb on it) and a batik purse, which were thoughtful. During the day the kids gave me a card after stampeding the art/play room singing “Happy Birthday” which another volunteer Laura arranged. It was really sweet but at first I had no idea why they were all running in there and felt like the captain of a ship facing mutiny. Most of the letters they gave me basically said happy birthday and please teach me this and that, thanks.

*Work was great last week. The kids had been driving me crazy but on Friday their craziness was actually pretty entertaining and somewhat productive. The kids once again did not have class (I’ll talk about the ridiculousness of this later) and it was a beautiful day- the sun was shining with a cool breeze, Kili had finally come out after four days or so in the clouds, etc etc. Anyways they kept asking me if they could watch a movie (psh!) and instead I brought out…the slip-n-slide! Yesss. Kudos to the donor who sent that handy contraption over this way; it is hilarious to see the kids’ sheer joy on sliding face first down that piece of plastic not to mention pretty constructive when soap is added. (Some of the kids smell real bad).

This Friday is not as exciting. This is because the last Friday of every month everyone at Amani cleans the entire compound. The kids like to wear the mops on their heads and say they’re Bob Marley haha. Last time I got the girls’ bathroom downstairs (yay…); this time I have the boys’ bathroom upstairs, which is bad enough, with the added company of some of the worst behaved kids. For instance: the teenager who orchestrated the robbing of 500,000 shillings (a little less than $500) from Amani’s storekeeper. Yea, he’s been to jail and he also wrote a rap song about me. This should be awesome.

Blog Update: Learning from poverty

I keep having these reoccurring dreams (besides the one where I’m stuck in high school again even though I’ve graduated from college) that I’ve gone home to the U.S. and regret that I’ve left my life here. It’s strange the different stages you experience adapting to a new life somewhere else, within the framework of such a different culture. I think somehow subconsciously I’m a little afraid of leaving here. This probably sounds surprising since there have definitely been weeks where I’ve just wanted to leave and get the hell out, but I guess I’m also shocked that I’ve been here for close to five months now and how fast the time has gone. I’m not sure if I’ll feel ready to leave in September and I know that if I do leave it will be very difficult to come back (because of the no income factor…kind of important) and even if I do it might not be in a long-term capacity. As much as I complain about certain things, I do like my life here, more so than I did in New York. I felt like I was waiting for my life to happen before, and now I’m not waiting anymore. I love that I get to spend my week with the kids. I love having a break from American news and pop culture and being forced to know things I don’t want to know. I love traveling here and knowing that the seasons will actually affect what I eat and buy, for better or for worse. I love that most people are willing to help me when I ask them for no apparent reason.

Of course there are a lot of things I don’t love. I don’t love my health problems (malaria et. al) or being asked for money by literally everyone and their mothers or never having anonymity. I don’t love being called a mzungu even though when I tutored immigrants from Latin America in English in the South Bronx I was called “vanilla face”. I don’t love that because I’m a woman, and only recently were women allowed to own property here, I have less of a voice. There’s no sanctuary for victims of domestic abuse or alcoholism and most people in position of power want bribes. Still, I do wish I could stay here longer. I can’t imagine having to say goodbye to the kids in four months, but I also can’t be a volunteer forever.

***

Part of the difficulty that comes with living in such a poor country like Tanzania, is the eventual and painful realization as an outsider that the world is and always will be an unfair place. I do love being able to experience the culture here and feel incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to travel half way around the world largely for the purpose of my own education and self-growth. But at times there is a lot of sadness. I think the hardest part of seeing poverty or learning the intricate details of people’s hardships, listening to their stories, and forming friendships is that it makes me feel more powerless than I ever have before.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the world when (say with HIV) certain people’s lives are valued more highly than others simply because of their nationality. As an example, Tanzanians are denied access to anti-retrovial drugs if they are HIV-positive. However, if their C-4 level or white blood cell count drops below 200 (a normal C-4 rate is around 1000), at which point they no longer have HIV but have fully developed AIDS, then the government is allowed to distribute the necessary drugs. I guess I always knew this before, that the health care industry is a business in the interest of making money, but to see and interact and live with people in a country where this is happening is something different entirely. The hospitals too are a frightening subject. There was a foreign volunteer who died outside of Arusha because the men who were trying to break into his home shot the lock with a gun and didn’t realize he was standing behind the door. The gunshot punctured the left side of his abdomen, but this did not kill him. What did kill him was his failed attempt to access healthcare. The first hospital he visited lacked the doctors to treat him, the second hospital lacked the equipment, and by the time he and his wife reached the third hospital it was too late.

I guess one thing that fascinates me most when reading about global poverty or war is the level of pure hardship and inhumanity which human beings are able to survive. I went on a beautiful hike a few weeks ago through the jungle and across mountain villages surrounding Kilimanjaro National Park. There were tall waterfalls and glowing green banana trees and thick mud the color of coffee. Then I visited the house of my friend Samora’s grandmother. She is close to 79 years old; her sole source of wealth being the two sheep that live with her in a small shack of wood (and these sheep are loud and smelly!). Her possessions are few. She sleeps on a “bed” of her own clothes on a mud floor. She cooks for herself, lives on her own and has little to no access to the medical care she needs. It was shocking for me to think about existing for 79 years and having so little, while still struggling so much. And here I am. Sitting on my bed, with a mattress and sheets and a roof over my head (which works most of the time but not always!).

People are not miserable here; that is definitely not the case. But they are fully aware of their poverty and the hope for a better life. I feel some sort of search for an explanation stirring inside me that will tell me why some live so well while others hang on to the edge of survival; why these great juxtapositions exist and what kind of world allows such difference to ensue. I don’t think that anyone who consumes him or herself with guilt lifts the weight of the world that others carry with them each day. But I do think that there are small acts of kindness and consideration and in turn a deeper awareness that can gradually tie together the threads among different peoples to create greater understanding and perhaps encourage more universal ideals about humanity.

Blog Update: Things I've learned

I’ve been living in East Africa now for four months and have been an official resident of Tanzania for two, so I feel like it’s about time for some self-reflection. So…things I have learned:

-How to pick a perfect mango
-The best spots in the yard to dry my clothes
-What buses are most likely to lead to my eventual death and how to survive an African
bus ride (this one must be put into practice to truly understand)
-The recognizable signs someone is trying to rip me off (i.e. talking about the white
woman in Swahili…ha!)
-Leprosy still exists
-The happiness a hammock brings
-What to do when there’s no power in the house….for days
-Signs I have malaria…or an amoeba (both wretched)
-How to light the back-up propane stone and the kerosene lamps without burning any
appendages
-What to do when customs tries to abduct my packages
-How to avoid being peed on by little children
-African time and the realization that appointments, and most everything in general, is
never guaranteed
-How to spot street children and know where they are found
-To be more grateful for what I've been given
-The necessary and/or obligatory importance of having a sense of humor

Blog Update: Life at Amani

Right now it’s 8:00 on a Monday evening. The mosque is calling people to worship, while my roommates and I are writing and reading by candle light as the power has failed us, once again. (I am also eating some funky tasting cookies I made out of maize flour.) I thought that after a while I would feel somehow comforted by the mosque calling that goes on five times a day, but no. I find it irritatingly flat in pitch and it sounds more like moaning most of the time than something that should inspire people to pray.

The road to Amani is increasingly treacherous in the rainy season and everyday I feel a ridiculous sense of pride when I make it to and from work without making a butt imprint on the ground. The other day this ancient truck carrying a mountain of hay flipped over right in front of Amani’s gates. (These trucks are always driving along this road because we are out in the country). The ridiculous part is the driver popped his head out the window with no noticeable expression of surprise, like this had happened 100 times. Kind of like a “here we go again” face. All I could think about was how I would be screaming.

There have been some serious shida (problems) at Amani these past few weeks and it’s a little stressful to be around. It all started when two weeks ago three teenage kids (who live at Amani) stole 500,000 shillings. This is probably around $470 dollars U.S., maybe a little less. But in simpler terms, this adds up to about five months pay for an average Tanzanian. Shida, sana. The three kids that did it ended up steeling from the storekeeper at Amani who is in charge of purchasing general items (foods, clothes) each week. A lot of the older kids hang out down there helping to lift food items or just talking to the two men that manage incoming shipments. Rather than trying to deal with the theft internally, it was decided that the three boys should be sent to juvenile detention/jail in town for three days. Now jail anywhere can be a nightmare, but without trying to sound to judgmental, this is Africa. I’ve read reports about street kids periodically getting rounded up and thrown in jail because the police find them to be “pests”. Without going into detail, they are frequently beaten or made to due manual labor or do things like carry giant stones on their heads. This is a country where stoning and hanging are still practiced in some regions. The strange thing is, now the teenage kids are back but aren’t allowed to be in class so they’re really doing a whole lot of nothin’. They also haven’t been able to recover all the stolen money, so it’s somewhat of a mystery what happened to it. I heard today that one of the main masterminds took 30,000 shillings to his uncle, who denied it. He must be a real gem of a guy. There’s also been some speculation that this same kid spread the wealth so to speak. Then last week, a teenage boy named Damiano disappeared. He went out for a run on a Monday afternoon and never came back. Finally last Friday he made an appearance after the social workers found him in town on the street. He had some nice new clothes with him, so the staff is guessing that he sold his new running shoes (a gift from Amani) for some personal items. Last week, 3,000 shillings were stolen from my wallet, because I let a kid into the playroom to listen to music and didn’t realize he was one of the kids who stole the money.

On top of this headache, I have noticed one funky stench coming from the preschool age kids. Their hygiene problems have become way more noticeable. I can tell they are not washing their hands after they go to the toilet because I can smell their urine on them and this one little boy’s clothes smell like rotten meat. The boys’ bathroom smells incredibly foul as well. So I’m going to have to suggest some kind of solution so the little ones don’t all get sick. Really I’m hoping the nurse will talk to them about cleanliness, but I think the root of the problem lies in the fact that there are too many kids and not enough staff to be sufficiently looking out for four/five/six year old kids. (PS on Friday I am assigned to clean the girls bathroom; awesome).

In the art room lately I’ve been doing more crafty projects with the kids. I found a lot of foam letter/animal/shape stickers which are hot items for the younger ones, so we’ve been making signs with their names and drawing backgrounds for where the animals live. Another volunteer and I started a picture wall about a month ago of the kids filled with candid photos, so I’ve been periodically printing photos and adding them on. A lot of the kids are growing up there so it’s nice to have some mementos and a feeling of belonging. The keyboard was finally fixed this week so I taught a class on reading music to the older kids. I also brought my computer and played all different types of music for them from around the world. They seemed to like it but they’re kind of an intimidating group and it hurt my brain to try and teach with such foreign vocabulary.

With all of this in mind, sometimes I feel like I’m doing a disservice to the kids. I don’t really quite know how to balance being in their lives. I’ve grown really attached to many of them, and seeing their faces is the highlight of my workday. At the same time, I know that in a matter of months I have to go back to the U.S. and it hurts to know that I won’t be here to watch them grow up or to be a part of their lives. It’s actually pretty distressing. I don’t want to leave them behind. Maybe what I think of as a fear of them getting too attached to me is actually just a realization of how attached I’ve become to them.

Sometimes it’s difficult to think about how unfair the world is, and always will be. Many of these kids come from slum areas around Tanzania where they had little to eat or were beaten by their parents, while others have traveled for hours on a bus to Moshi looking for a better life. I think about myself at 8 or 9 or 10 years old and how much fear and desperation I would have to feel to be motivated to flee. There’s a little boy named Baracka who’s around 8 years old. I met him on the street in Arusha and he is such a handsome little guy. His face is like a little panther and he has the longest most beautiful eyelashes. Before he came to Amani his parents made him work a job where he had to do hard physical labor, and when he asked them if he could go to school, he was beaten. The boy who asked to live with me, Augustino, lived in a slum with an abusive father and eventually left at 7 years old with his brother, living off collecting and selling scrap metal for a year. He has lived at Amani for half his life. Zulfa, a four year-old girl at Amani, is a little firecracker (although it may have been a definite mistake to introduce her to balloons- she makes them squeal and fly around the room). She has the brightest personality and is filled with so much love, but only last year, she and her two siblings lived on the street with their mother who was both abusive and an alcoholic. Not to say that the parents are always the problem (I think that’s a real cop-out), and not to stay Amani is perfect- there are definite problems, but I’m happy to know these kids, be a part of their lives if only for a temporary period, and see all that they have to offer the world.