We had a tough week this past week. Without going into details, here's the gist...

Village Pressures - If a student gets circumcised, it takes them out of school for a month while they are healing. However, they get beat by the other boys who are circumcised until the deed is done. Plus, there's a big expensive party that the family has to throw when it happens. Some of our families can't afford it. So, from the school's perspective... just wait until June when we have a month long vacation! From the kid and families perspective... yeah right!

Sickness - We have a complicated medical issue concerning one of the students. Thankfully the school is there to give it even this much attention... I doubt it would have gone much beyond the traditional medicine if the student was somewhere else. We sent the student one place and finally felt like we had an accurate diagnosis. Then, we had to send the student to a different place for the medicine. They refused saying the diagnosis was wrong. Cripes! Who are you supposed to believe? And, in the midst of things is the student who just needs help.

Being a girl - It's really difficult to be a girl around here. They are valued less in the eyes of the community in every situation. Sometimes things happen that remind you how tilted that scale really is. I guess that's why we'll continue to do the work we do to fight that fight.

Health care - A friend of ours was in the hospital. But, since it was the Easter weekend there were no doctors around. Went in on a Friday... didn't see a doctor until the next Wednesday! By then, it was necessary to do an emergency surgery. Ah! How can this happen!

Anyway, I had to electronically vent a little today I guess.

Photos from Lushoto and Pangani

Irente Viewpoint near where we were staying in Lushoto

Irente Viewpoint

Hiking in the Usambara Mountains

A village in the Usambara Mountains

Trying to catch a chameleon

Waterfall at the end of our second hike

Learning about cheese production at Irente Farm

Flat tire on the way to Pangani!

View of the Indian Ocean

A cool sailboat

We stayed at the Beach Crab Resort... there were hundreds of these guys on the beach!

Travel to Pangani

Saying Goodbye to Jane and Whitney
The week of March 19th we said goodbye to Jane and Whitney. They both returned to their homes after finishing their volunteer terms at Orkeeswa. We went out for drinks on a Tuesday night with several of the volunteer and Tanzanian staff. Jane had been teaching English to many of the Tanzanian staff. One of her students jumped up in the middle of the evening and said “Hey you guys, it’s not Friday yet. I’m going home.” It was great!

Vacation in Lushoto
This past Saturday Lisa and I headed East for a vacation. We began in Lushoto, a town in the Usambara Mountains. We stayed at a place called the Irente Farm and Biodiversity Area. It was great because they make cheese and fruit preserves there! The showers were icy cold, but the view was great.

We did two day hikes from the farm. The first day hike was through the forest. We saw many areas of reforestation projects. There were also many chameleons! The second day we hiked through many villages to a waterfall. The waterfall wasn’t anything special but the hike was good. We were also greeted at the falls by a group of teenage boys doing their laundry in their underwear!

Travel to Pangani (A.K.A. This is the song that never ends...)
On Tuesday, after a tour of the Irente Farm cheese making facility, we took a bus to Panagani. Our destination was the Tinga Tinga lodge since apparently everything else was booked for the Easter weekend (who knew right?). The bus from Lushoto to Tanga took nearly 5 hours and we arrived sweaty and tired.

From there we found a taxi to drive us the rest of the way. Our taxi driver had a bandage on his left hand and was a big guy. We negotiated the price for him to drive us to Tinga Tinga.

We depart on a rough gravel road. We get a flat tire. We fixed the flat tire with the donut tire and were off. We rode along forever! We passed the signs to the places we wanted to stay which had such nice looking signs and driveways. We finally arrive at the sign for Tinga Tinga – faded, slanted…frightening. We drove in to discover what can only be described as bunkers dotting the landscape with cows grazing between. Needless to say, we didn’t stay there!

Back in the cab. Bandage fisted driver is getting angry. We try calling another place. It seems they have vacancies. We try to drive there and get lost. Part of the difficulty with that one was the name was Beach Crab. Our driver, you know the big one with the bandaged fist, kept pronouncing it as Beach Club. So, people kept directing us to all of the clubs in Pangani! Fun, but not helpful.

Finally, we get good directions and start driving toward the Beach Crab (now with every sign the driver would phonetically say Beach Crrrrab and roll his ‘r’s a bit. Spooky…). We cross a ferry. We drive. We follow the signs. We continue to follow the signs. The signs seem to be leading us into the middle of nowhere! We arrive (finally) at Beach Crrrrab (roll the r’s). Lisa grabs the bags and goes in. Even if this place is awful, we’re staying here! I renegotiate the price with the cab driver. I get it wrong. I’m very afraid now. I re-renegotiate the price. It’s done like this. Seth – How about this much. Driver – Add a little. Seth – OK – How about this much. Driver – Add a little. Seth – How about you just tell me what you want. Driver – This much. Seth – (coughs) – OK.

And, in the process of all that we forgot our trail mix and salted almonds in the back seat!

Beach Crab Resort
It’s hot at the Beach Crab. I’m a gushing river, so to speak. We throw our bags in the room, head to the restaurant and eat. We discover fellow teachers Allison and Juliet are there! They tell us the nights are HOT at this place! Hmm…
We finish eating and go back to our room. Thankfully, Lisa goes to the bathroom and I’m getting things unpacked. I move one of our pillows and what should fall out but two baby mice. Yep, two fairly hairless and still living baby mice. I calmly walk out, find Lisa, find the manager, and explain the situation. They look at us like, baby huh. Then we showed them and sure enough, it was what it was. So, we moved to a new room.

Finally, after a thorough inspection, we were able to settle into our sweat box of a room, some 12 hours after we began the journey!

We woke up hating Pangani, the whole idea of being there, and convinced we were going to leave that same day. We walked along the beach complaining about the heat, the trashy beach, the baby mice in my pillow… Then, for some reason that day things changed. I really don’t know what it was, but we started enjoying the place. Maybe the temperature dropped a bit. Maybe we ate a bit of food and relaxed. Maybe it was simple resignation. I don’t know! But, about mid-afternoon, both of us said, this place is OK. And it was. We enjoyed ourselves until we left yesterday.

The Wheels on the Bus

Sabore receives a certificate from the Tanzanian National Soccer Coach for participating in a soccer program called Future Stars.

Helena, Neema and Flora practice their netball skills.

Teachers at the staff retreat we had a few weeks back.

Saingorie, our recently elected student body president, gives a speech that had students clapping and cheering!

The Wheels on the Bus....

The following is an account of a series of events that happened recently on a dalla dalla ride to a sporting event. This is Lisa's rendition of the tale...

8:30 AM Realize that due to a change in who our dala dala 'guy' is, we had a misunderstanding and no one was there to pick up the kids for their 10:00 game at ISM.

8:40 AM New dala guy is contacted and says a dala is on the way

8:55 AM Peter, Lisa and Whitney arrive at Dr. Danny's and meet Mzee and the students that walked from Bombani. No dala in sight, so Mzee, Peter, Whitney and the boys leave in the Hilux because the boys are playing at 10 am. Lisa and the girls (going to watch the boys and the awards ceremony) start walking to meet the dala.

9:20 AM Still no dala…. Now at Ngarash Primary School

9:35 AM Still no dala…. Now arrived in Monduli Town and are waiting at George's Corner. Find out the dala is late because of a flat tire.

9:42 AM Dala finally arrives, girls and Lisa head to ISM.

9:47 AM Get a call from Alfred, the league coordinator, that we have a girls game as well. Dala waits at Lashaine Corner while Lisa goes to school on a boda to get jerseys, etc.

10:50 AM Leave from Lashaine Corner, hoping to make it for an 11:30 game at ISM.

11:04 AM After getting stopped by the police near Snake Park, dala driver realizes he has another flat tire. While we are still inside the dala, he jacks it up and changes the tire. When he lowers it down, there is no emergency brake, so we start rolling down the hill. Thankfully, Langoi was able to find the brake and stop us.

11:20 AM Leave Snake Park after changing the flat tire. Can't drive over 50 kph because the whole dala shakes and rattles A LOT at that speed.

11:40 AM Arrive at ISM… Boys finish their game, girls play a game, we watch the awards ceremony, it starts downpouring.

2:00 PM Waiting at ISM for the rain to let up because some of the kids have to ride home in the back of the Hilux.

2:17 PM Depart ISM, even though it's still raining a bit.

2:25 PM Torrential downpour! Peter has to stop because boys are soaked, cold and angry.

2:38 PM Dala stops, we think it's another flat tire.

2:42 PM Peter and Hilux catch up to broken dala. Find out it's not a flat tire (which is good because now there's no spare), but instead the axel or something is falling apart. They tighten some things and we head into Meserani at 5kph. The good news is we got to watch a flash flood happen right before our eyes while we are waiting for them to fix the dala.

3:13 PM Dala pulls up to a random welding fundi in Meserani. While we are still in the dala, they jack it up again, and some guy starts welding things underneath us. Thankfully they remembered that there's no emergency brake, so Isaack is in the driver's seat to apply the brakes so we don't roll away.

3:23 PM Welding guy finishes, we leave Meserani. We can travel a whopping 5kph, so we slowly head towards Monduli.

3:37 PM Still trying to get to Monduli. Stopping every 3 k or so to tighten whatever is falling apart under the dala. Oh, and then we got to see a Maasai dude herding camels. Entertaining except the fact that the camels were walking faster than the dala was moving...

3:45 PM Finally make it to the Monduli turn-off.

3:57 PM Decide to start taking kids in the Hilux to town to meet Seth to go to the village. First group of kids leaves with the Hilux, the rest of us keep going at 5kph with stops along the way in the dala.

4:07 PM Peter returns with Hilux to take group number two of students.

4:23 PM Dala finally quits completely. Tanzanian hazards are put out on the road (ie: leaves and branches). The remainging students and teachers start walking to town.

4:42 PM Peter finds us on the road and takes us to Monduli. He drops off the teachers with Seth to go home and takes the last group of students to the village.

5:02 PM We are finally home from the two soccer matches at ISM that were scheduled for 10 am and 11:30 am.

National Soccer Coach Visits Orkeeswa

This past week we had a two visitors from the Tanzanian national soccer team - the head coach and the director of the youth soccer program. They were doing a coaches training in Arusha (which some of our coaches attended) then traveled to our school for a visit. It was HUGE for our students to see him since they had seen him on the television!

Lisa travels to Dar Es Salaam

Two of our students are traveling to the U.S. for two months. They needed travel documents, a visa and passport, to make that happen. That's not easy to make happen in Tanzania. Especially when the passport office stops issuing passports two weeks before the trip! Nevertheless, with the influence of Rapha and the persistence of Lisa, the girls got their documents. Lisa spent Tuesday through Saturday in Dar chaperoning and helping the girls with their interviews. Long week in a hot place! But in the end, amazingly enough it worked out!

Students Elect Leaders

Student government elections were a couple weeks ago. Students gave speeches and elected leaders for school president and vice president, class representation and sports assistants. It was a good election and I think we got some really good students. The president was elected on the platform of "vote for me and I'll change your school lunch food." Now, what student ANYWHERE in the world doesn't want to vote for that guy?

Flora and Anna are headed to the U.S!

As we speak two of our students, Flora and Anna, are heading to the U.S. to spend two months studying at a private school in Boston called Groton. They will also travel extensively with Peter to do fund raising. It's really exciting for them to go but they will be sincerely missed while they are away.

Pastor Justin dies and there are a huge number of people in our yard

Our neighbor, Pastor Justin, passed away on Friday. He was a retired pastor from the Luthern church here in town. We've really never had much interaction with him, but have talked more with his wife, Mary. There have been LOADS of people around here to be with Mary. I think our house must be the overflow because we've had people in our yard pretty much for the last 4 days. Plus, they hired a DJ, so we've had church choir music starting at 6 am to the late night hours. It is cool to see so many people come together like this. There is a rumor some will be camping in our yard tonight.

Whitney and Jane are also leaving this week

Well, the ending of an era! Whitney and Jane both leave this week. They've been working as the office manager and English teacher respectively. They will be missed!

Hip Gyrations and Kinesthetic Teaching Techniques

Students and volunteer teacher Allison at the Kilimanjaro 1/2 Marathon two weeks ago.
Isaya and Tumaini in cooking club. Notice Isaya's hat and apron!
Isaack and a university student paint rocks for the garden during the university student's visit.

Clubs

Every week we do clubs. I'm still doing the woodworking club. Lisa is now doing a leadership club. They are fun! One of the clubs that students really enjoys is cooking club. Go figure! Every week Jane leads students in cooking something they enjoy. Then, they feed the teachers and club members!

University Guests

We had a group of visiting university students this past week. They were all students focused on community development and were doing a month abroad through a university. They visited our school for the day and did a tour. One thing I had them do down in the garden was to paint the names of our students on rocks to help label individual student garden beds. It seemed to be a hit! Lisa organized the tour and I think they all enjoyed themselves.

Form 4 Examinations

We were required to send in pictures and signatures of every student for the national Form 4 Exam. We did this. But, of course, they weren't the right size. So, on Friday, we (and by we I mean Lisa) had to re-take the pictures, re-size them, and then Thomas raced to Monduli to get them to the correct office in time. Thank you bureaucracy at work!

Student Elections

In addition to the race-to-the-deadline picture taking, Lisa was trying to prepare students for the student elections on Thursday. Her efforts paid off because we had a great turnout of students running for student government positions! Our president is a student named Saingorie and vice president is a student named Margaret. Only two votes separated them! They each had to give speeches and were GREAT! Students were cheering and clapping. It was a good way to end the day on Thursday.

Staff Retreat

Yesterday we cancelled classes and had a teaching and support staff retreat at the school. We did workshops on classroom engagement such as group work, celebrations, visual/auditory/kinesthetic input and board work. I thought the day went well. It was especially good to have volunteer and Tanzanian staff interacting in a more casual environment. My favorite part of the day was our school counselor, Paul, practicing kinesthetic movements to teach girl's life skills to a group of us teachers! He would get really animated with his point. It was fun watching him try something new.

Thieves and Honest Folks Too

The chicken coop where Form 2 manage the flock.
Some Form 3 girls plant vegetable seeds in their garden beds.
This is the partially finished goat house.
Each student working in the garden was given a section of the land to make a bed, plant and manage as they wish. The beds in this picture are being managed by the Form 4 (upper part) and Form 3 (lower part). Form 1 and 2 beds are further to the right.

What Once was Lost is Now Found!

When working at any school around the world, one must be concerned with theft. I had things stolen from my room in North Bend. I've had things stolen here. Mostly small things... candy, pencils, etc...

And, in a developing country you have to assume there will be a bit of theft. Lisa and I both lost our rain boots off our front porch (which no doubt took some effort on the part of the thief due to the fact that our porch is barred in much like a prison cell)! It's a constant understanding that you need to watch your stuff.

On our way back from Moshi this weekend Lisa lost her bag. Did we leave it in Arusha? Did we forget it at the pool we stopped at on the way home? Did it fall out of the back of the pickup? Lots of speculation led to Lisa still not having her bag. Sad deal too. She had her running shoes, her I-pod, her school keys, her digital camera, her Bible and her favorite running shirt all inside. Oh, and of course the back-pack she uses every day. BUMMER! We called around, drove around and moped around looking for it. By Monday night, we assumed it was gone.

Then, the unthinkable happened. A man in Monduli came to one of our students and told him he had Lisa's bag! Our student found us, we drove to Monduli and found the man, we drove to his house and boom... there it was! But, would all of the stuff be inside. Lisa looked and sure enough, it was all there! Unthinkable! The only thing out of place was her I-pod was dead and all of the pictures had been deleted off of the camera. Replacing the pictures was a short video of the picture of Jesus the man had on his bedside stand.

I'm probably going to keep watching my belongings pretty closely here; most people should. But, my hope was certainly renewed by this young man.

Kilimanjaro 1/2 Marathon

We took 36 students and 6 teachers to Moshi on Saturday for the Kilimanjaro 1/2 Marathon and 5K fun run. We slept on the floor of a church! Jane cooked a HUGE pot of rice and vegetables. There was one toilet for all of us and it rained that night. Ugh... Then, Sunday morning we awoke, fed and shuttled the students to the race. They did really well! We had two boys who ran around a 1:20 1/2 marathon, one boy ran around a 16:30 5K and one girl around an 18 minute 5K. These guys are fast! Lisa ran the 5K with the students. I had to drink coffee.

Agriculture Work

I've been so proud of our students for the work they are doing on agriculture projects. We selected 16 agriculture leaders at the end of last year to help implement projects around the school. They are responsible for the current chicken house and garden. They are also helping to develop projects related to rabbits, goats and beekeeping. The garden is really taking shape as are some of the other animal related projects. Hopefully, with a little rain, we'll have a good crop.

Zanzibar Rest and Moshi Basketball

Lisa and Lindsey relax at a restaurant in Zanzibar.
Beautiful Zanzibar sunset.
Our students and Peter at the Moshi basketball tournement where the girls placed 1st and 2nd.

Lisa Returns From Zanzibar

After three whole days of work, Lisa needed a vacation! So, she headed out to the tropical island of Zanzibar with our friends Lindsey and Liz Moore. Besides laying on the beautiful beaches, her highlights include:

• Having a bee in her drink and the bartender saying "why don't you just take it out and drink it anyway..."
• Liz getting to be co-pilot on the flight there
• Having a good time with two great friends

Moshi Basketball Weekend

Lisa returned on a Tuesday and on that Friday, we went to a basketball tournament in Moshi which is about 2 1/2 hours away. Our girls won both first and second place (the two teams played each other in the championship game! Our boys didn't fare so well, but they played with everything they had! Lisa and Peter coached and I got to be the referee. No, I didn't have to give either of them a technical foul or eject them from any games!

New Volunteers

We have new volunteers here to teach English - Allison and Juliet. Things I know about them - they like to run, they live in the other house, they are always happy. Hmmm... apparently I havn't rubbed off on them yet!

Goodbye!

This past week we said goodbye to Quinn (works for IEFT), Cindy (board member), Lizzy (shot video) and Brendon (took pictures). Thanks for the good times! Quinn should be able to sleep in now that she's not having to live in our living room!

Garden and other Ag Projects

The students have been busy working in the garden. I gave each student a plot to manage as they want. So far they seem pretty motivated! We're going to have a contest for the best gardener (individual) and grade. We're also working on getting projects going for goats, bees and rabbits. We have the chickens already...just need to start hatching some eggs with our incubator Jeff and Kim sent.