What Lisa's Been Busy With

Allison, Lisa and Juliet. Allison and Juliet are volunteers at Orkeeswa and also competed in the triathalon. Juliet did two of the legs! I couldn't figure out how to flip this picture so you'll just have to tilt your screen a little. It's easier on a laptop. 

Lisa's team - Beth and a dude I don't know. Beth is from Montana and has been our friend ever since language school.

These are our kids who competed at the cross country meet.

Lisa's story while I was in the USA
Here's the Reader's Digest condensed version. Basically, Lisa had a rough week...

• She got sick
• She had to do my job
• She competed in a triathlon after being sick (she did the running portion)
• She helped volunteers in the middle of the night
• She took sick kids to the hospital
• She taught one of my classes

Trying to leave a lasting impact
Ever since I returned, I've been thinking about after we're gone from here.  How will I know we've done anything?  Will anything continue like we're doing it after we leave? I know growing new leaders and new systems is really important. But, have we done that?  I don't know, but it's a bit where our minds are now.

Students participate in a cross country meet
Our kids went to a cross country meet last Saturday with Allison and Lisa. They were second out of eight teams. They also only competed in two of the four events. So, I'd say they did pretty well!

Where do I begin...

So much has happened since my last post. I suppose I should start from where I am and then work my way back.

Grandpa Pannell passed away
I'm home in the USA now. I got the call Friday and was able to book my ticket and board my plane on Saturday to return here for a week.  Grandpa had been sick for just a short time. He was 91.  He was a hero of mine.  Lisa and I had seen him in January and celebrated his 91st birthday. He was fine (and by fine I mean he had no physical or mental problems) then. I could say a lot about Grandpa.  Let me suffice it to say that I hope to live a life half as full as him.

Dissapointments
Just before I left I was dissapointed in a few things.  Students had not returned some borrowed books and I was dissapointed in the choices they were making.  Teachers were showing up late to work and I was dissapointed in what I considered to be lack of respect for the school.  Some students had created issue with their attendance because of choosing to get circumcised in the middle of the school year and I was dissapointed in that.  But, more than anything, I was was dissapointed in myself. I was dissapointed in my lack of forsight with the books. I was dissapointed in not being a better leader with our teachers. I was dissapointed with being completely clueless of this cultural issue of circumcision and also my own incompetence in being able to react to the situation.  I've been trying to help build the school a goat house for nearly a year now.  For SO many reasons the house isn't finished. For some reason, it's been a constant reminder to me of my own short comings and failings.   I think a person who does this sort of work has to continue to remind themselves of that serenity prayer... Lord give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

New Volunteers Arrive
A few weeks ago we got three new volunteers. Andy and Ming are from the UK. They're staying for 6 months to set up a computer network in our school. Alex is also from the UK and staying for a year to serve as the office manager.

Audi Got Married
Audi, a teacher with us for the past 2 years, got married a few weeks back! Allison's dad was here at that time and we all went to the wedding. It was quite a lot of fun and was even televised on three Tanzanian television stations!

Juliet turned another year older
We celebrated Juliet's birthday this past Friday night.  We whooped it up Monduli style!  Then I got on a plane and flew to America.

We went on Safari in Teringeri
We had a one day holiday on May 1st and went on Safari with Lisa, Alex, Juliet and myself (Allison was hanging with her dad).  We saw a pride of nine lions walk right next to our car! We also saw many elephants, giraffe, etc... It was Alex's first safari, so he was really having fun!

Thoughts now from home
I return from here on Sunday.  I really miss Lisa.  I am cleaning out Grandpa's stuff from his house and bringing it over to Mom and Dad's.  I moved his saddle today. I like being able to see my family.  I'm excited that some of them are coming for a visit in June.  All of these recent circumstances have made me wonder about how to transfer farms (or any family business or property for that matter) without tearing a family apart.  I enjoyed seeing our friend Joe, a young guy my age who flew out  all the way from Ohio just to say good-bye to Grandpa.

I'm always struggling with geography.  I want to be there but I don't want to leave here.

Final thought... Grandpa was a really good neighbor.  He was kind to pretty much everyone.  He liked to make pies or just give away random things to people (Joe was just telling me Grandpa had given him a car to get back to Ohio one time...).  The Bible says "love your neighbor as yourself."  I like to think Grandpa did that.

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.