{last week in bagamoyo}

june 25-29, 2012

my last week in bagamoyo i had the opportunity to work with a non-profit women's empowerment organization called bawodene. it was a very eye-opening experience, and one that left me feeling very appreciated and that I had actually made an impact.

bawodene is an organization whose purpose is to aid women in tanzania to become more financially independent. this central organization, which manages over 400 smaller groups across southeastern tanzania, collects dues from it's members, obtains grants and donations from various organizations, and uses the money to hold women's conferences, hire people to train the different groups (i.e., if one of the groups earns money by selling jewelery or baskets, they will find someone to train the women on how to make the product), and also help the groups obtain loans from the bank. it sounds like a great concept, and it has a lot of great potential, but unfortunately is lacking some serious organization.

bawodene wants to apply for additional grant money, but in order to do so, needs financial accounting records to submit with the applications. since our program director knew i was a cpa, he asked me if i could help.  in just a week, i sorted through a few years of their books, records, receipts (which in most cases didn't exist or were just shoved in a desk drawer), computerized all of their data, created a detailed instruction and to do list, created monthly reporting packages, created annual financial reports, and trained their "treasurer" on how to keep this up going forward. i really do hope that they will continue this process in the future, but realistically, i'm just not sure.

i have to admit that working with this organization and learning more about the tanzanian government and other non-profit organizations was a bit disheartening. the government is so corrupt that probably only 10% of money that is donated (in which 100% is intended to get to who needs it) probably makes it down to the people who need it. So so so many of the people in tanzania are poor (72% of the country is illiterate and 60% are women) that there really is so much need and so much room for improvement. in order to really make a difference though, i really think you have to be based in tanzania permanenty.  or at least longer than a month.

that being said, i am still so thankful for the opportunities i had in bagamoyo and really did enjoy my work and the community where i lived.  i guess i just wish id had more time. perhaps that is a good thing though, i'm sure that this won't be the last time i travel to africa to do something like this.

though working was my main focus this week, there was still time for a few other things:
-i picked up ALL of my items from pili's. pili is the seamstress in town who can make absolutely anything you want from the beautiful kanga and kitenga fabric they have here. as she only charges about $3 per dress, i had her make me quite a few things...my wardrobe will be a lot more colorful when I get back home!

(pili, the amazing seamstress!)
-we enjoyed one more entertaining performance by the zawose family
-we took the ccs staff out for a nice goodbye dinner

what I think I'll miss the most:
- 545 am runs with my friend Lauren down to the beach and back. we got to see the sunrise just about every morning and it was beautiful!
- walking to and from school each day with at least 10 kids holding on to my hands
- playing games with the kids in the dirt outside the school house
- swahili lessons
- free time at the beach
- unlimited supply of safe drinking water
- robert's delicious pumpkin and vegetable soups
- sharing stories about our different cultures with the people in the community

it's crazy how quickly my time in bagamoyo flew by. i'm so thankful for everything I experienced there and am so hopeful i can go back again in then future!

now - on to the travel part of my african adventure!

{the neighborhood}

here are a few photos of the house and some photos of the neighborhood...
i felt uncomfortable taking photos of a lot of the homes people lived in around town.  most are small, run down shacks and in all, are just a very sad sight.

what never ceased to amuse me were the names of the stores and the different signs around town. my favorites were the "hilary clinton shop" (sadly, i didn't get a photo) and the "obama '08 shop" (no photo of that one either). whenever people would ask me where i was from and i would tell them new york city in america, i always got this response: "obama! jay-z! rihanna!"


(main ccs house where i lived)






(bagamoyo's version of a strip mall)

(winner's driving school! god is able)

("manhat" beauty salon.  i pretended they meant manhattan and got really excited.)

and here's the internet cafe where a lot of this magic was happening.  well, not really that much as the connection was pretty awful.

bagamoyo was such a sweet, little town! unless it was dark.  then it was scary. 

{lions, zebras and little miss sunshine?}

june 22-24, 2012

weekend at mikumi national park

most of the schools and our other placements were closed on friday, so a few friends and i took the opportunity to take a weekend safari to mikumi national park. in short, the weekend was beautiful, hilariously entertaining, and the epitome of "hakuna matata" (as i've now just come to expect in africa).

our guide picked us up in bagamoyo in our safari land cruiser and we began the 5 hour drive to  mikumi - which is a bit northwest of dar es salaam. for the first hour and a half, we enjoyed our first "african massage" on very bumpy back dirt roads. people here LOVE to make their own speed bumps and there is absolutely no way to exceed about 10 kph when you are dodging massive mounds of dirt and tree branches. anyway, i digress....

once we hit the 1.5 hour mark, we had just gotten to the bottom of the hill on a main road when our car died. i was sitting in front and when I gave our guide, rashidi, a nervous look, he said to me "don't worry, give me 5 minutes, I'll fix it." fifteen minutes later, rashidi told us he'd be right back and he just took off. 

meanwhile, the other girls and i started talking about what we'd do if we had to start walking home...

(unfortunately this is the only shot of the breakdown i got)

rashidi returned 10 minutes later with 2 farmers, flagged down a dala dala and two other men on bicycles, and here's where little miss sunshine comes in.  everyone that rashidi had recruited to help (8 men in total) started pushing the jeep from behind, and once it was picking up speed, rashidi ran to the drivers seat, hopped in and tried to start the car. no luck. so then everyone came around to the front of the car and started to push us backwards up the hill, then went around to the back and pushed again - this time we had a bit more speed as we were going downhill, so rashidi hopped in and after a few attempts, was able to get the car started.

we made a few more stops along the way, including lunch at the high classic hotel - supposedly the nicest place to eat in town, but I'm convinced you get a huge meal plus a stomach bug for about $3.

("classy" menu)

(the meal that made me sick.  yes, it LOOKS harmless.)

finally, 7 hours later, we made it to mikumi. it should be noted that not once the entire day did rashidi turn the car off.  we just stopped asking questions.   

(yay! we made it!)

our first game drive was incredible, even before entering the park we had seen baboons, monkeys, giraffes, zebras, elephants, and impalas. we drove through the park until just before sunset and were continually amazed by all of the animals - in addition to everything i mentioned already, we saw hippos, warthogs, buffalo, wildebeests and so many beautiful birds. it was absolutely breathtaking and so fascinating to see these animals in their natural habitat.

(hippos)

(warthog)

(one of the many families of elephants)

(i think buffalo are so funny looking)

we spent the night at a permanent campsite, which although there was no hot water, there were real toilets, and for that reason alone, it felt like pure luxury.

(the tent i shared with my friend lilian)

(delicious cucumber soup!)

saturday was a day long game drive which was just as incredible as the day before. it is baby season so we saw a lot of baby elephants, giraffes, and buffalo. we also followed some vultures to a fresh buffalo carcass and after going offroad (which is illegal), we found the 3 lions responsible for the kill relaxing with full bellies under a nearby tree. incredible!

(adorable baby elephant)

(oh hi zebra!)

(poor buffalo)

(happy lions)

(more elephants)

(me being weird in my "silk cocoon" during our picnic lunch)

the great snake escape

we finished our game drive about 4 pm and our guide asked us if we wanted to check out the snake zoo nearby. i'm not really one for snakes, but we all figured, why not?

big mistake.

the snake zoo has probably not been renovated for about 50 years and lets just say the "cages" are not very secure, with a glass wall in the front, and an old (often defective) wooden door in the back. we made our way around the zoo, checking out all of the disgustingly ugly deadly snakes (including watching one cobra kill and then eat a bird), and also saw a massive crocodile which was only caged by about a 2.5 foot wall. our guide told us the croc could probably jump 5 feet, so when we asked the zoo keeper why the fence wasn't higher, he simply replied "oh, he's sitting in the shade of the tree and he's happy, he won't jump." we made our way back to some of the cobra cages and that's when we saw the snake escape.

there were 4 cobras in this one cage, and we noticed one of them had made himself almost completely vertical against the back wooden door. the snake then proceeded to squeeze his head through what must've been a tiny hole in the door. we watched as he wiggled his entire body and finally his tail through the hole. my friends and i started screaming, our guide started yelling at the zoo keeper in swahili, and the zoo keeper ran behind the cage, grabbed the snake with a pole and threw him back in. we just stood there completely baffled that he didn't doing anything else about it. we watched as the snake proceeded to escape through the hole 2 more times.  each time, we'd scream, our guide would yell at the zoo keeper, and the zoo keeper would throw the snake back in. after the third time, we counted to make sure there were 4 snakes in the cage, our guide told us to run to the car.  we all sprinted to the jeep and rashidi drove away as quickly as possible. then he drove us to a bar in town so we could ease our nerves over a beer. what an afternoon!

(snake eating bird. gross.)

("happy" crocodile)

(lucy, elle, emma, and rashidi trying to forget about the snake escape)

(emma, lilian, and me)

saturday night was an entertaining evening with a delicious dinner (though i did lose my appetite when i saw a massive spider run across my dinner plate), warm campfire, and some burning elephant poop (which, to our guide's amusement, disproved the myth we'd heard about elephant poop).

(yay! rashidi got us some elephant poop)

(i love my headlamp)

(the group around the fire)

after an early morning game drive on sunday, we had a thankfully uneventful drive home, complete with another dreadful african massage. definitely an amazing weekend!

{weekly highlights june 18-22}

june 18-22

this week was another great week with the kids (photos to come once i can track down an internet connection good enough) with a lot of great afternoons as well.

i'm very excited to say that over a few afternoons a group of us started and completed laying the concrete floors for 2 classrooms at a local pre and primary school.  after this work, i have a serious appreciation for cement trucks and anyone who has made a career out of manual labor - it is tough work! we carried buckets of dirt, rocks, and water to a mixing machine, once mixed with the concrete powder, we shovelled the cement from the machine into buckets to carry to the floor area. very tough work and i'm almost embarrassed to admit how proud i felt admiring the finished product!  especially since (hopefully thanks to our help) this is actually the first time this school has ever completed a project ahead of schedule.  

after we finished the work each afternoon, as if we weren't tired enough, most of us ran the 2 miles home as it is always much faster to do that than to wait on a ride.      

there is a famous musical family living in bagamoyo called the zawose family, and one afternoon they invited us to their house for tea and to show us their instruments as well as some traditional african dancing.  later that night they actually put on a real performance for us at a bar closeby - full costumes and everything.  i have some amazing pictures and videos which i cannot wait to share.  i have never seen people move their bodies the way they dance here - it's very impressive!  i don't think i was blessed with hips that move the way theirs do...but i'm definitely trying!

and finally a few of us have gotten to know some of the local artists down at the market in town.  when they offered to teach us to paint, we could not turn that down! we spent an afternoon learning to paint the traditional masai warriors with knives and oil based paints.  very cool - and surprisingly pretty easy and quick to paint these!  photos of these to come as well.  

i often catch myself wondering what my co-workers are up to these days.  it's crazy to think of you guys working so hard on your computers every day and here i am laying concrete in africa...there are definitely some things i miss these days from home, but i am definitely VERY happy to have this chance to spend my time in such unique ways!

{paradise in africa}

june 15-17, 2012

 

six other girls and i decided to make a weekend trip to zanzibar this past weekend. i thought i'd visited a lot of beautiful beaches in my lifetime, but i can honestly say zanzibar has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. i kept pinching myself to make sure i wasn't dreaming.

we all finished work by about 11 am on friday morning and rented a dala dala to drive us to the ferry in dar es salaam. first class seats on the ferry are only $40, so since the ride is SUPPOSED to be only an hour and a half (and they advertised that they also had free wi-fi on the boat) we decided this option was much cheaper and faster than flying. but, as seems to be the case so often here, our ferry left at 3 pm and, thanks to an engine failure, did not reach zanzibar until about 6 pm (the wifi also didn't work). the usual response when things go wrong here though is always "hakuna matata." rather than getting upset, I've already gotten used to it and am pretty sure once i get back to work i won't even understand what it means to have a deadline. and you guys thought I was laid back before...

back to zanzibar - we enjoyed a delicious dinner in stone town on friday night and then a car picked us up ton drive us the 2 hours to our hotel on the northern part of the island. due to some miscommunication, we couldn't stay at the hotel where we thought we had rooms reserved, but again, hakuna matata, and we walked next door to the paradise beach hotel and i negotiated a rate of $40 a night for the weekend. though Zanzibar is definitely paradise, the paradise beach hotel is not. but for $40 a night split 4 ways (with a surprisingly delicious free breakfast and an amazing view), we couldn't exactly complain...

saturday we spent the day soaking up the sun on the very white beach, eating delicious food (lots of octopus and other freshly caught that day seafood), talking to the locals, and swimming in the clear blue Indian ocean. seriously heaven on earth.

sunday we enjoyed a beautiful drive back to stone town, a quick stop through the spice market, meat market, and fruit market, another amazing lunch of swordfish, and we caught our 315 ferry back to dar. unfortunately, the ferry ride back to dar is always much worse than the ride zanzibar, and not even 20 minutes into the trip i started throwing up from the seasickness. a miserable 2 hours later we made it to dar, hopped in our dala dala and got back to the house in bagamoyo by 730 pm.

It was such a beautiful, fun, cheap, heavenly weekend and I cannot wait to get back there again!

{watoto wadogo}

here are a few pictures of some of the kids i teach. they're adorable and absolutely LOVE to take photos. they always say "mwalimu, mimi, mimi" and then laugh hysterically when they see the photo i've just taken of them. it's the cutest thing.  there are 2 classes at this school, which is just one large cement structure with 3 rooms and open windows, one of about 20 3-4 year olds, the other about 30 5-6 year olds. 

what i've really enjoyed the most about these kids though is just how happy they are ALL the time; well, except for today - the kids all seemed to have a serious case of the mondays. i don't think I've said "acha!" (enough/stop) or "hapana!" (no) so many times in one day. no matter the country or school, it seems most children have similar ideas and behaviors (some of the boys were hitting each other constantly with sticks). though despite the fact that these kids really have nothing, most of the time they are so happy - delightful, fun, loving, excited, the list goes on. they all usually come to school in dirty, ripped or ill-fitting uniforms and carry tiny backpacks, that are also ripped or have broken zippers, with a small pencil and maybe a piece of dirty paper. my class sits on the dusty cement floor and the room has only a small chalkboard. i've been able to take in construction paper and crayons as well as some childrens books and they get so excited to see this stuff.

the kids get porridge at 1030 every morning, which we help cook in a large metal pot over a fire, stirring the porridge with a large wooden spoon which resembles a canoe ore. they drink the porridge out of plastic cups which we attempt to wash (with the bad water) in buckets outside.  i'm never sure if the kids ever have anything else to eat besides the porridge before coming to school. 

during recess, we play outside under a tree in the dirt and sand and the kids love to sing songs, play games, draw pictures in the dirt and sand with sticks, and play tag.

public schooling in tanzania is so very different than in the states. one of the strangest things is that the classes for public primary school are all taught in swahili (except for english class), but there are no real books available in swahili. also, once you get to certain levels of secondary school (which is not compulsory), the classes are then all taught in english and the tests are given in english.  it's very difficult for those who grew up in public schooling to do well with this.

but anyway, there really is nothing better than when i walk up to the school house in the morning and at least 10 children come running toward me and grab my hands to walk with me the rest of the way.  i usually have about 8 of them walk with me home too.  definitely makes my day every day!

 (some of my kids in their classroom)

 (group shot outside the schoolhouse)

 (friday fun at the beach!)

 (beach day)

 (the view walking back to school from the beach)

 (best friends)

 

(posing)

 

(making kites out of the trash in front of the school)

 

(waving to the cows passing through)

 

(loved her almost as much as she loved books)

 

(will miss these kids so much!)

{day 3 - june 11, 2012}

monday, june 11, 2012

after a delicious breakfast - the food here is actually amazing! - we met with our volunteer placement leaders to prepare for our first day of work.  i will spend most mornings at a pre-school about a 10 minute walk from my house and will work with 3-4 year olds.  In my free afternoons, i'm going to try to spend time in the orphanage as well as the HIV clinic.

a typical breakfast - peanut butter toast, eggs, and pineapple!

 my morning tea - kiliminjaro tea is the best!

we also had our first swahili lesson (we have lessons 3 times a week) with mwahleemu (teacher) christine.  it has actually been a lot easier trying to learn the language while immersed in the culture.  the people here are so nice and friendly and want to help us learn swahili as well we can, and in exchange we help them with their english.  i can (i think, at least) already have a fairly long surface level conversation in swahili with a local.  it definitely takes a lot of practice and patience, though!

finally a local doctor from the town came to speak to us about the medical conditions here in bagamoyo and tanzania.  in addition to teaching us about malaria (about 1 child dies every 5 minutes in tanzania from malaria) and cholera (which i honestly thought didn't really exist anymore, but it does here), we spent a good part of the afternoon discussing HIV, which infects approximately 10% of the population here in bagamoyo.  there are so many contributing factors, the most disturbing of which is the fact that female circumcision still occurs in this country, despite being illegal.  16% of the female population here is circumcised, and since it is illegal, this is done with dirty equipment, in dirty environments, and if there is a complication, the girl will not be taken to the hospital for fear of getting caught. i cannot even begin to imagine what these poor women go through here (though it is typically the older women doing this to the younger ones).  it was a very educational afternoon, and one that has definitely affected me quite a bit.

will try to post more soon - it takes about 5 minutes to load one picture at the internet cafe here, so this is a slow process...

xo from tanzani!