Tanzania!: UNAANDIKA A!

Well, another week has come and gone! I cannot believe how fast time is flying by here! : ( This last Sunday night I stayed up really late finishing up a sign that I was painting for Green Eden. Most of you know that I like to do time consuming projects in the middle of the night. Anyway, Monday we delivered the sign to Namanga where we did IOL along with award the teachers who attended our training their certificates. The teachers were super cute and really excited to get their certificates…and eat baboon poops! Haha…I am telling you, everybody loves them! We only stayed in Namanga for a few hours for our mini party and then we had to head back to Arusha.

On Tuesday night our team had a goodbye party for the 1^st wavers who would be leaving the next day. We had delicious food, played lots of games, and watched a slideshow. It was pretty fun. I also helped a teammate named Heidi with some posters for her French tourism class she taught this week to a vocational school in town. I had to draw pictures of the front desk/clerk, a receptionist, elevator, housekeeping, room service, hotel rooms, swimming pool, continental breakfast, and a housekeeper so that she could teach them those words in French.

From Tuesday to Friday I went to Kitulezo, as usual, from 8 to 11:30 with Kate, Heather, and Jessie. We started to split up the smaller kids this week and have them practice writing their letters on tracing sheets we made. It seemed to work pretty well and it keeps them pretty entertained. These kids are sooooo cute, I love them so much. But even cute kids can be beasts and every little one of these kids is completely violent! They beat on each other so hard and have a hard time listening to us...especially since we don’t speak Swahili. But they are slowly improving their behavior and we are improving our teaching!

I have two funny little things that happened this week at Kitulezo. First, on Tuesday the kids all decided to play “daladala” and rushed underneath the table in the main room. One of the kids, Vinance (who has total style for a kid), hopped up and started pretending he was the daladala doorman! He would grab other kids and shove them into the van and yell “UsaUsa!” (which is a place near Arusha). Anyway, it was the cutest thing I have ever seen! He was totally good at it!...I think I know what he is going to be when he grows up! Ok the next funny thing that happened is that one of the smallest boys in the class, Meshack, just layed across the desks one day while everyone else was misbehaving and started doing pushups! I should have told him to get down but it was too cute so instead I just told him “Vizuri,” which means good job, and he got down on the floor and did more for me! It was so cute! I could tell he just felt so proud of himself!

On Friday the team had a meeting with Martha from the Albino Peacemakers Group! After everyone was done discussing the chicken coop, eye camp, and documentary project with her, me and Heather met with her separate to discuss our jewelry business. We told her more about our idea and talked about a name and bracelet design and…she liked it! We are so excited to work with her! She is really an inspiring person and I feel lucky that I get to help her and her organization out! One thing she told us during our meeting was “you are the first people who stood by us and told us we can.” Chanel wrote it down for us when she heard it because she thought it was cool. I was glad she did because I remember feeling happy she felt that way about us when I heard her say it. People really do discriminate against Albinos here for basically no good reason and it makes me so mad! And Martha was grateful to us for coming up with an idea that allows them to contribute, instead of just raising money for them and handing it over. Anyway, I cannot wait to continue working on this project for the rest of the summer and even once I get home! : )

Well, after our week of hard work on Saturday we went to the cultural center just outside of Arusha! We had some fun there looking at Tanzanite and looking through the art museum. After the cultural center we went to pick out patterns and be measured for African dresses! : ) You will see pictures of those when they are done!

And that was my week! Here are some pics!...

me with the finished product!

our whole IOL group

me, Emmanuel, Miss Hope, and Damien (the teachers at Green Eden preschool)

cookies make adults act like children : )

they gave us jifts! jift is just how people here pronounce the english word gift! haha...anyway, they gave us fresh corn and one of our students gave me that elephant necklace : )