{two weeks left!}

I have finally come to the realization that one day this trip of mine will end and that I will have to return to the land of mzungu's and high prices. Today while we were at our orphanage we let Mama Cecilia know that we would be leaving in two weeks on May 2nd and that M'Liss and Cami would be gone for a week in Zanzibar. She started crying and telling us how much she would miss us and of course as we are sitting there with all of the kids, we three start crying as well. The little kids, especially Juma, were having fun pointing and laughing at us, because I'm sure four grown ups crying in a room full of little kids is a bit of a funny sight, usually its the other way around. I've realized that I am going to miss my little ones so so much!

Juma, Juma, Juma. What to say about him. He can be the sweetest boy, yet he can also be such a pill, but do you ever really get one without the other? He loves to fan us with books while we get there, and often times he is my little translator. When he knows I'm getting frustrated with one of the kids he often sits them down and points at them speaking in swahili, I'm assuming telling them to "sit down! and listen to the teacher!" ha. I'm not sure what he says, but I love that he tries to help.

Shamimu. She is the sweetest little girl you've ever laid eyes on. She never yells, she waits her turn, and she's brilliant! She is the smartest one of them all. She knows all of her colors, her numbers, and most of her letters. She is always the first one to answer, or is a cheat and whispers the answers to the other kids when they don't know it.

Jessica has the biggest smile on this earth. It literally stretches across her entire face, I love it! I have a million pictures of her because her smile is so gosh dang beautiful. When we first got there she was so stubborn, she didn't have to listen to any one, and my goodness, if she didn't want to tell you the answer, she didn't have to tell you the answer. We have made so much progress with her though and she's turned right around and shouts out all the answers and is so obedient and considerate. She loves to be held, and I love to hold her, it works out perfectly.

Bonny. Everyone knows that he is my favorite. He is the cutest, funniest, quirkiest little child to roam the planet. I love when he goes off on his little spills and he talks and talks and talks in swahili and of course we don't understand him. He also has a tendancy to lunge at me, perfectly trusting that I'll catch him no matter what. I love throwing him in the air and reading with him. He also made a huge improvement over the past while. He knows the colors better than anyone, and thank goodness, we've finally got him sitting up straight instead of on his head the entire time.

Anitha, I wouldn't exactly say she has made a whole lot of progress, but she definitely is up there for the most entertaining. It is always a gamble as to what type of mood she'll be in when we get there. If she's grumpy, she's grumpy and there is nothing we can do about it. She doesn't like listening to people or being told what to do. However, she gets in these quirky attitudes where she walks around singing and dancing and you can't help but laugh at her.

Lastly, I'll miss Mama Cecilia. She is the most gracious, brave, and determined women I've ever met. She is in her twenties, working on a masters degree, and raising five children. Can you imagine that? And she still finds the time to get us treats or presents for coming to visit, whether it is a necklace, banana's, or cucumbers, she always shows her gratitude. I love her so much and respect what she's doing with these kids.

Anyway, that is all I have time for today. I hope that all is well back at home. Everything is great here, except for the fact that it hasn't rained in ages. It's getting too hot, rain is essential. Talk to you soon!

Kels

{hello from newlands}

This week has been a bit of an adventure, although I feel like I say that each week. Each week there is something new or exciting. My favorite part of this week has been my adventure to Newlands to work at Born To Learn. Born to learn is a school that was set up by a group of volunteers about a year ago out in a small village about forty minutes away from Moshi. The kids that attend school there are from ages 6 to 14 or 15 years old and, of course, are so adorable.

Monday morning I woke up early, had breakfast, and walked out the door with Huw and Fredrik. We walked all the way through town to the opposite side (about 35 minutes), down a dirt road (10 minutes), and waited for a truck (20 minutes). The truck we caught was pretty big about the size of a truck that would carry tons of bricks or wood back home, and rode on that with a bunch of locals down a dirt road, which eventually turned into a paved road, past all of the acres and acres of sugar cane until we got to the junction (30 minutes). P.s. All the drivers here drive way way to fast and really crazy. I am convinced I will be hit by a car, or at least get into a car accident by the time I leave, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. Anyway, at the junction we proceeded by catching a few bike taxi's which are guys with small racks tapped onto the back of their bike (10 minutes). Ha so fun! I loved it! They rode us down to the middle of town where we then walked down the street to the school (10 minutes) totaling about 2 hours in travel time to get there.

Once we got there we took about six of the younger kids aside to work with them on writing, math, and let's face it, play around. Babu was my favorite. He was about 6 years old and loved to dance. We could barely get him to sit down he was dancing and singing the whole day. It doesn't matter where you go in this country, you'll find an adorable little boy or girl. After school the little kids took our hands and walked us back to town while we sang lion king the whole way there and the kids did their best to teach me a bit of swahili. I can't remember a think... ha We got lost a little bit in the village, but eventually made our way back to the road where we started back for the junction hoping to catch a truck. While we were talking tons of little school kids from the private school started walking behind us and I kept turning around to peek at them and they kept laugh so we all put our hands out and in a split second we each had four kids attached to each hand. I will miss that! Where else can you walk down the street and hold a million little darling children's hands? Ah...I get sad just thinking of it.

While we were talking a brick truck passed by which we ran and caught up to, and jumped on while it was still moving resulting in a few cuts and bruises but no major damage. We road the brick truck all the way back to Moshi where we got off and walked back to town, had lunch, and headed back to the hostel. Can I just explain to you that there is one thing that I love oh so dearly here, and that would be an ice cold fanta, out of a glass bottle, in 100 degree whether. Hardly anything can beat that. Anyway, that was my adventure of the week so far, and hey! It's only Wednesday, this week has just started.

I hope that everyone is doing well back at home! I love and miss each of you and hope to hear from you!

Love,
Kels

{a little taste of africa}

This week has been pretty awesome. This last weekend was really fun! M’Liss, Cami, Fredrik, Matt, Julie and I all went to the hot springs which are about an hour and a half away on the most horrible roads here. You wouldn’t believe the drivers here. We have a certain taxi driver, Juma, that we always call and he’s got a little, yet really nice black car and he drives it through things I would never drive my truck through. Its incredible. The road to the hot springs was absolutely horrible and we even drove straight through a forest in part of it because the road was blocked. The hot springs were this little oasis in the middle of the desert but they were way cool. It was crystal clear, turquoise blue water that was pretty warm.

After the hot springs half of us continued on to Arusha for the weekend to go the circus! Luckily we met up with our friend Ben who has been here for about 8 months now and speaks way good Swahili so he helped us girls get a good hotel room and such. We went out to dinner and the circus was really cool. It wasn’t an animal type circus like we have at home though. It was a lot of gymnastics and weird tricks like spinning tables on your feet and such. My favorite part of the weekend though was riding on a motorcycle taxi! We got 3 bikes for the 5 of us for 3000 tsh each so like $1.50 which was sweet. It was so much fun! I want to ride one again.

We ended up going to church on Sunday and we felt all special and cool because we actually remembered how to get there on our own without the missionaries. The ward is really great but its really different than I would have expected. Its not one of those situations where these people put so much effort towards going to church like you might think, its pretty convenient for most of them. But its different in so many other ways. The members there don’t know a whole lot about the gospel, yet they are still so faithful. They aren’t very educated and have so many questions all of the time. We talked for like 15 minutes the other day about the cross and why we don’t use it so much in our church because it was simply a tool used to kill the Savior, nothing more.

After church we met up with Fredrik and Ben and made our way back to Moshi. We actually got extremely lucky with our bus because it barely ever stopped and they didn’t make us squish five people to a bench like they usually do. The only downside was that the seats were just a little uncomfortable. It was a really fun weekend though!

Yesterday was also a really great day! Yesterday it was cold all day long! I actually wore a long sleeve shirt for most of the day. It was absolutely incredible. It also rained for most of the day and so Fredrik and I, in our boredom, built the most incredible card house you have every seen in your life. I’ll try to show pictures soon. Basically the entire house was standing on two cards. Awesome.

I know I say it every time but I really am loving it here! My kids are learning so much and I am so proud of them! They know 1-10 and all of the numbers individually, and how to count and how to add! They also know their colors in English and Swahili and A-I. It breaks my heart though because since Mama has been gone for the past few weeks her brother is watching over them and feeding them, but none of them have showered for at least a week and they all smell so bad. We wanted to help them shower but the shower here isn’t working and neither is their toilet. It’s horrific what these children have to live in, yet at the same time it’s so much better than where they could be. If they haven’t showered by the next time we see them we are taking them back to the hostel and cleaning them up a little bit. Other than that, everything is going well and I’m looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend after such a long, busy week.

Love and miss you all.

Kels

p.s. It is pouring outside right now! I love the rainy season! So so wonderful! 

{tab (that's africa baby)}

So far this week has been pretty good. I’ve taken a few days off from my project because of going to Arusha to see the Rwanda Genocide trials, and also because I wasn’t feeling very well a few of the days. Its not so much that I felt really sick, but its so miserable to be outside of the hostel when you aren’t feeling well, and half my kids are sick, and it’s a 4-5 mile walk so I didn’t think that’d help in getting me better. Plus, it’s the beginning of the rainy season here so everyone is getting a cold. Anyway, I wasn’t feeling very well, but it wasn’t too big of a deal, I just didn’t want to risk getting worse.

            The Rwanda Genocide trials were pretty interesting. It was difficult because everyone spoke different languages so in order to ask a question to the witness and get a response it took about 3 minutes. It was interesting though to witness it. Afterwards we went to lunch at Café Bamboo or something. We sat in the “garden” which is really a gravel pit on the side of a building covered with a tarp and a few fake plants to brighten it up. Ha The food was delicious though! The meat here is pretty sketchy and so you usually don’t find much good meat, but this place was great! I got enchaladas which reminded me of home just a little bit, and my friend Fredrik got pork which was to die for! I’ll definitely be going back there. After lunch in Arusha we took a few hours to go shopping around the Arusha Maasai market.

The Maasai, for those of you that don’t know, are a tribe here in Africa. They live in about the most desolate way imaginable. No power, no electricity, they live in huts literally made out of mud not even big enough to stand up in. They wear clothes around their bodies in bright colors like red, and shoes made out of bike tires. Wont lie, they are a bit creepy looking and aren’t the kind of people you want to get too close to but they are usually pretty nice. They have a great craft market too! They make all sorts of creations ranging from jewelry, scarfs, shoes, paintings, and sculptures.

That was the exciting part of the beginning of my week. The rest of the week has been spent at placement, swimming at the YMCA a 5 minutes walk away, walking around town getting ice cream (never even close to as good as the US) or sitting out back talking. One of the other updates of the week however was going to the Watering Hole. The Watering Hole is a bar run by mzungu’s (western’s/white people) and it is a little bit nicer. At the Watering Hole they have an outside cinema in which they show movies every Thursday. My friends and I booked it out on Tuesday, however, in order to have a Lion King party (we’ve all been craving the movie since being here). It was the cutest place! A wooden patio covered with a thatched roof and benches and camping type chairs spread out with a projector and a sheet in order to watch the movie. I’ll have to go back and get pictures because it was so cute and African. I loved it!

Anyway, not much else to update you on, but I’ll keep you informed! I hope that everything is going well back in the States or wherever it may be that you are at. I’m loving every second here and don’t want to come home (could someone just mail me some Café Rio, and I’ll be content). Thanks. :)

Kels