Tanzania!: in upendi, where the passion fruit grow sweet!

Mambo! Once again I have had a great week here in Tanzania! Our team is making lots of progress on projects which is really exciting. I knew first wave would mostly consist of meetings and organizing projects but I think all of us feel ready to start on something! If I have learned one thing here so far it is that there is no such thing as urgency in Africa! A lot of times it is frustrating because we can only move along with our projects as fast as partners will allow us and there is a ton of coordinating, meeting, planning, and communication that goes into every single project. Also, there is always information lost in translation which brings up other issues and slows down the process even more. Although this is hard and frustrating I really kind of think it is neat that we, as HELP volunteers, get to be a part of the full process. It would definitely be easier to have come as a volunteer with an organization that just sets up all of our projects for us, but this is teaching us so much more about humanitarian work! Anyway, things are coming along and partnerships are starting to fall into place.

This week we met with a partner named Margaret who runs an organization for disabled children here called Step by Step. She is a really amazing person and has such a neat plan for the children that attend her school! She plans to start a center where children can come to school and learn trades that they will then use to earn money for themselves. We also travelled to her school this week and got to help pump water for the garden, plant some trees, and play soccer with some of the kids. Oh my heck the kids there were so cute we all wanted to kidnap them! : )

We were also able to meet with a partner who runs a safe house for women and children called the Shalom Center this week. We talked with them about projects in first aid, women empowerment, maturation courses, and maybe even some business mentoring. On Saturday we had the chance to go visit and we taught a short lesson on hygiene with a group of kids there! It was super fun. I am excited to work with this organization because they seem really organized and know what they are doing. I am finding that that is hard to come by here. Haha…

Besides going to visit both those places this week and preparing our inside-out learning lessons I have one more exciting thing to announce!.....me and Heather wrote up a business proposal for Martha who is the founder of the Albino Peacemaker Group aaaaaaaaaaaaaand SHE LIKED OUR IDEA! I am more excited about this project right now than any other! What our idea is is an online jewelry business! Me and Heather will run the marketing, inventory, sales, accounting, and shipping back in the United States and they will make the jewelry! We felt like this was a good idea for this specific group because their skin is extremely sensitive to the sun and it would allow them to work inside. Because they are discriminated against they usually can only get the worst jobs available here, if they get a job at all, and those are always outside labor jobs. Also, sun screen is hard to come by here and it is really expensive so they really have no way to protect themselves. This is a really serious issue because they can get skin cancer from their sun exposure. Another reason we feel it would be good for the business to be online is that people here have stigmas against albinos and won’t make purchases from them, so they have a really hard time selling goods themselves. But if we handle sales in the states they won’t have to worry about that. Anyway, this project is going to be huge! We have so much to decide and design and it makes me so soso excited! That news basically made my week!

Ok those are my updates on projects for today! I also want to write about our cook’s birthday party we threw for her on Friday! So our cook’s name is Pendo and we all love her so much so on her birthday we took her and her family out to some new Mexican restaurant here. It was delish! After that we came back to our house and ate some gorilla poop cake (a.k.a. no bake cookies) and then had a dance party! We had a lot of fun! She is so sweet and was so excited to celebrate with us.

Funny story of the week this week is that we were in Arusha on Monday and we needed to catch a daladala to get back home. Well, when we mzungus (white people) are walking around town everyone surrounds and hassles us usually because they are trying to sell us something. So when we went to the bus stop where tons of daladalas wait to be filled we got totally surrounded and we were getting grabbed on and pulled because everyone wanted us to choose their daladala. I guess we took too long to decide because at one point a man bent over and picked Heather up and plopped her right in the front seat of an empty daladala! Ha haha! We were laughing sooooo hard, which probably wasn’t the best way to react since they are like two year olds and feed off of attention. Anyway, Chanel our director didn’t want to reward them for their inappropriate behavior, so we chose another daladala and hopped in. Well, I guess the owners of that one were so excited we picked them that they kissed Deseret and Emily on the cheek before they could get in!.....along with urgency, there is also no such thing as personal space here.

Alright, here are some more pics!

this is me, Heather J., Heather, and Emily hard at work in our living room. notice that we only have one light bulb lighting the whole room. ha...Africa makes me laugh. : )

this is our little neighborhood in Suye. the taller mountain is Mt. Meru! it finally decided to show itself!...for the first week we didn't even notice it was there because the clouds usually hide it cause it is so tall!

this is also in our neighborhood! it is sooo pretty! i love our walk from our house to the main road where we catch dala dalas. we always walk down this little dirt path and usually cross through cows, sheep, and goats.

this little hop over the stream is also included in our walk to the main road from our house. this pic was taken a few weeks ago though and now there is another obstacle...cacti! someone stacked a toooon of it across all the paths crossing the stream! haha...it doesn't stop us though.

this is our stupid pet spider above our kitchen. it doesn't look big in this pic but IT IS. chanel is enforcing "save the spiders" so we aren't allowed to kill it. she best be careful though cause me and heather are feeling pretty creeped out by it lately...

these are the puppies we rescued a few weeks ago! their names are rafiki, timon, and pumba! we also have two dogs that are named mufasa and simba. another puppy showed up in our yard last night randomly...and of course we had to keep her! we named her Nae Nae.

this is our favorite restaurant here!

this is the playground at Family & Friends and these are our friends John and Adelaida : )

Jessie, me, and Heather at churchie.

this is me using the contraption at the Step by Step school to pump water for the garden. i was leaning over like an idiot to get a better leg workout!