Babies babies!

About 5 times a day here I see the cutest baby I have ever seen. Today I got to play with 2 precious, happy, and healthy baby girls - doesn’t get much better than that!

 Enjoy the cuteness pictured below.

Faces

Sunday in the Village

I wish I could take my camera to church so I could record the singing I heard this morning. It was absolutely beautiful. We went to church with the children around 9 in an empty classroom that they transformed into a place to worship with benches and tables. The kids led practically the entire service. They would take turns leading songs up front, and every single child sang and danced and clapped their hands for half an hour. Tiny little 7 year olds with their hands clasped and eyes shut tight sat still better than I did! Mama Jane preached about Isaiah 43 in English for us and one of the older girls translated into Swahili for the children.

 Once their service was finished around 10:30, I walked into the village with Mama Jane to go to another church that had apparently started earlier but wouldn’t be finished until 1. By walked I really mean hiked... it has been raining for the past 48 hours and the streets are rivers of mud. There is only one road here, so when you walk out of the City of Hope compound you have limited choices: left or right. The road is the main hub of activity for the village and is always packed with villagers milling around, children playing in the dirt front yards of houses on either side, various cows, goats, sheep, and chickens running all over, or women selling fruit. Today we veered onto a side path off the road that I hadn’t noticed before. Since bushwhacking through the Tanzanian village countryside isn’t exactly the best thing to do by yourself, none of us had strayed from the main road before. Luckily I had Mama Jane to lead the way so I waded through a river of mud for about 20 minutes in my long dress! The views were incredible. I was able to see Ntagacha from a different angle, and see many more village houses that are tucked back away from the road. I could see the church in a valley up ahead, and could hear the pastor the entire way there.  Once we arrived Mama Jane kindly kept up a running translation of the sermon for me. I have never seen such an enthusiastic pastor. He was jumping and yelling and never took a breath for about 40 minutes. And we were an hour late! I didn’t catch what the scripture was, but from what Mama Jane told me he was discussing how to be rich spiritually, and how to not run from your troubles but to have faith in where God has placed you and to trust in Him. Applicable to the City of Hope organization in many ways- these children are proud to be Tanzanian and they want to make the lives of others around them better. One little boy said he wanted to be the President of Tanzania so he could eliminate child poverty here. Another little girl wants to be a nurse. I am amazed by their grateful spirits, faithfulness, and their willingness to give. 

After the sermon the church suddenly erupted into song and dance. People started filling the aisles, little boys were break-dancing at the front, and I ended up in a circle of little girls from the village. The children at City of Hope are used to volunteers coming in and out, but the other village children are not used to interacting with visitors quite as much. As soon as the songs stopped I sat down with the children in the front of the church and they crowded around me and starting playing with my hair, examining each of my fingernails, and touching my dress, sweater, bracelets and necklace. They didn’t speak any English, but I was able to figure out that one little girl was named “Nice!” By the time the service ended around 1 it was pouring rain- I ended up just taking my shoes off and wading through the mud to get back to City of Hope. Needless to say I definitely needed a good old bucket shower tonight! We fixed a big Sunday meal this afternoon and spent the rest of the day teaching the kids games and trying to learn how to dance like they do- it’s still a work in progress. 

We woke up early today (kind of hard not to when there are roosters crowing and children yelling in Swahili outside your window starting at 6 every morning) and headed to Tarime, a village about an hour away that is bigger than Ntagacha and has a market. We were almost out of food at the guesthouse back at COH but fixed that problem by buying about 25 mangoes, a basket each of lemons, tomatoes, oranges, pineapples, avocados, and onions, and due to a small miscommunication ended up with some baby formula as well. And thanks to witnessing the purchase of meat at a roadside stand today I think we are all vegetarians for the remainder of the summer. Tarime is not exactly a place that gets a lot of tourist action, so the market isn’t filled with lots of touristy craft type things, but rather fresh fruits and vegetables, spices, beans, fabrics, and any other necessities the villagers might need. Everyone managed to find some beautiful authentic treasures including handmade bracelets and fabric to make pillows. Given that Tarime is the farthest thing from a tourist destination, we were mini-celebrities of some sort. Mostly they just laughed at the “American girls” and wanted to shake our hand and make fun of our Swahili. Occasionally we heard bride prices being discussed. Thankfully we had Maria from City of Hope with us so she could demand 500 cows and 200 monkeys for each of us. We learned that many of the older women and men in these villages think that we make money off of any pictures that we take, so they will get very upset and demand money from you if you take pictures. Having a market full of women approaching you and yelling in Swahili is a little unsettling so that explains the lack of pictures. I need to learn how to say “Hi I think your culture is really beautiful and would just like to capture it in this photo really quick so I can remember it. I promise I will not sell this picture” in Swahili. I’ve discovered that getting past the “rich American” stereotype is really difficult. Integrating yourself into a culture like this takes an incredible amount of time, energy, and trust. It is not a hard bridge to build with the children, but the adults are a different story. After exploring/shopping for a few hours we stopped for lunch at a restaurant with no name or menus… hmmm. Maria was translating for us and what I thought was going to be fish and potatoes was actually an entire plate of french-fries and a small chicken bone on the side. No complaints I guess! Now it is just a monsoon back here at City of Hope so we are hanging out here in the guesthouse listening to the rain on the tin roof and occasionally discovering new spots where it leaks. Families, here is a picture to let y’all know that Mary, Alice, and I are alive and well! 

Recap: First Three Days at TCOH!

We are hereeee after a long 3 days of traveling and a little delay getting the Internet working! I can’t believe I am actually on the Internet given my surroundings right now. Thank you little safaricom internet modem! We just finished up a day of painting, chai tea and mandazi (a homemade sweet bread thing that one of the students, Eliza, made), and a long walk with some of the kids to a beautiful lookout at one end of the village. Until we get the Internet totally figured out, here is a recap of the first few days and some pictures!

After 3 plane rides and a night in Nairobi, we took a 9-hour bus ride across Kenya to the Kenyan/Tanzanian border. The ride here was beautiful but tiring! No stop for lunch and only one bathroom stop (side note: Kenyan village bathrooms are bring your own toilet paper. Who knew?) meant we were exhausted when we finally got to the border.

Primary school in Kenya by the side of the road

Driving through a small village 

Where we crossed the border was basically a slab of cement between the dirt road in Kenya and the dirt road in Tanzania. We were the only Americans/foreigners for MILES. People were staring at us and mobbing us to buy things the second we stepped off the bus. We could not have looked more out of place! Mary, Alice, and I were traveling with 2 City of Hope employees who spoke Swahili, so we had zero clue what was going on but we just followed their directions! We WALKED across the border casually, got our passports stamped and visas accepted, and an hour later on a bumpy, narrow, dirt road we turned into City of Hope! We could see the children singing and jumping as we drove up, and the second we stepped out of the car they mobbed us! So many little hands and “what is your name what is your name?!” The kids are amazing. So smart, hardworking, and they come from the most unbelievable circumstances. I can’t wait to learn from them over the next 2 months.

View from the guest house at City of Hope

We are settling into our tiny little room. Mosquito nets and only one light bulb- niceee and cozy! It is going to be a long 2 months of “bucket showers”. If we want them to be warm we heat up water on the little stove in the kitchen and then pour it in the bucket and shower fast. It is a process! 

Home sweet home for the summer!

Loveee the bucket shower!

We’ve spent the first couple days getting settled, meeting the 90 kids who live in the children’s home here (school will be back in session in about 3 weeks and then there will be over 400 kids here everyday!), learning Swahili, and working on a small painting project for the new school “mother”, Mama Jane! More on that once we finish!

The First Grader

If you haven't seen The First Grader, I highly recommend it.

The People in Mission interns gathered to watch it tonight, and we were amazed by the true story.

When the Kenyan government promised free primary education in the early 2000s, an 84 year old man named Maruge attempted to attend his local primary school in a remote mountain village in the Kenyan bush. The movie follows his struggles and triumphs, and truly shows the power of education.

The movie was filmed in Kenya and the children and majority of the people in the movie are not actors, but rather locals who actually live and work in the small village where the movie was shot. The children in the classrooms are real students from the schools used for the film, and they had never even seen a movie before.

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