Usa River and A Warp Speed Week

I can't believe it is Friday night and this week has come to a very, very fast close.  Very happy it is the weekend as, save for the asakris (guards), there will be an opportunity to sleep in tomorrow!

I wanted to write about last Saturday and my first trip to Usa River.  Caroline fetched me at about 1000 and we set out for the 45 minute drive down the Nairobi/Moshi Highway (read: road corridor of death) toward Moshi and Usa River.  I don't really know what can be said for this road to adequately describe how insanely bad it is.  It is a two land road with no directional division stripe so you can find at varying points cars overtaking semi trucks with traffic having to pull off so the overtaking car can finish his maneuver.  The packed-beyond-capacity dala dala's dart into traffic from their stops at the side of the road (it could be anywhere and is random where the dala dalas stop) to cram more human life into the volkswagen-type mini vans.  I have been on a dala dala now three times not by choice but out of economy.  The dala dala can run me 30 cents while a taxi will run between $7-$10 each way to town.

Our day to Usa was to include a stop at St Jude's School, Usa Campus to collect some books that were no longer required for the expansive library of the new $12 million St Jude's School Usa Campus complex and library and best of all, an afternoon at a lodge swimming pool and lunch.

The campus at Usa River shows one what money can buy.  Very well funded, to say the least, St Jude's operates two campuses in the Arusha area (the other is in Moshona nearer to where I am in Njiro) providing free education to the brightest of the poor--some 1200 in all.  The multi-acre campus is surrounded by concrete walls and a huge gate.  Signs from the "Tanzania Highway 2" welcome visitors to the compound and indicate where to turn and how much further you have to travel before arriving.  Big place.  Multi-story buildings with windows, electricity, water, proper toilets for students, a music room, the fantastic library I mentioned, green, well watered grass, playgrounds; it is a real school in an area where water is available and it shows in the lush green vegetation surrounding the school inside the walls and out.

Margie, a lovely Australian lady, is the librarian.  We coincidentally ran into she, her husband Ian and another colleague Gordon and joined them the weekend before for lunch at the Njiro Complex.  While we were talking about what I was doing for outreach to collect resources for our library at Umoja Margie told us she was in the midst of her processing her own collection of books and was able and willing to get rid of quite a lot of books.  Caroline and I said immediately, "taken"!

It was like Christmas.  There was an entire section of the library being staged for the processing and sorting of books and there were selves and shelves and shelves (you get the point) of books.  Margie, seemed almost embarrassed by the quality, age, condition and selection of the books but Caroline and I were beaming!  We started at separate ends of the shelves and worked toward one another pulling books from the shelves.  Margie had already taken her favorite picks for us.  We ended taking 9 boxes of books, book sets, atlases, animals of Australia (all books were sourced from Australia.  St. Jude's founder is Australian), books for girls, boos for boys, dictionaries...it was so incredible for us to have this opportunity to fill the shelves of our little (spare bedroom) library!  We made arrangements to return this Saturday for more!

We bemoaned the fact the weather was not clearing as it expeditiously dos each Monday through Friday and now that it was Saturday and we had out suits with us we were choosing not to pay the pool charge to enjoy just mediocre weather.  Instead we stopped at River Tree's Lodge for lunch.  What a beautiful 10 acre retreat with proper, beautifully appointed accommodations, beautiful gardens, vegetables growing and monkeys in the trees.  We had a great lunch.  I hesitantly ordered fish and chips thinking about what I would expect such an order to look and taste like and worried it wouldn't be that way!  It was awesome.  Caroline must have thought me so strange all I could say and do was talk about my damn fish.  Mom, I got it from you!  We had a great meal together and even better conversation (fantasy?) about having a multi-acre compound for the Umoja Center.  We went on-and-on about accommodating traveling volunteers, dormitories for students and proper classrooms.  I thought about becoming a real fundraiser.

We made it back from Usa River to keep up our commitment to walking the dogs (Dizzy and Benji) around the neighborhood.  We have motivated each other to keep up on this small amount of exercise but nonetheless something.  The dogs love it and already now expect it each night by 1730.

I dala dala'd into town for a quick trim at Ali's.  He arranged for his driver to take me back to Njiro now that it was already dark after dropping him the Aga Khan Mosque only about 5 minutes in the opposite direction.  BAM!  We were rear ended on the Dodoma Road.  Ugh.  Another shaky moment making me realize just how edgy things are here.  The driver who hit us didn't even get out of his car as everyone else stuck in traffic started screaming "he hit you, he hit you"!  "Lets just get the hell out of here", I thought.  Willie, the driver got out of the car, surveyed the damage, got back in, put it in gear and on to the mosque we went.  The rest of the ride to Njiro was uneventful, thank God.

Sunday was a quiet day alone at the center blogging, emailing and checking websites for funding.

Monday came and the speed by which the week days speed by boggles my mind!  I love my 3 hours per week teaching English speaking classes.  I have the students ask each other questions, answer them, make a follow up, role play conversations and I just leaving each class with the most satisfying feeling and a huge smile on my face.  Sponges; each and everyone of them just wants so desperately to learn, to better their life.  Each has a dream of becoming someone, something and earn a living wage in the country they love.  I must say we have a pretty good rapper, an acrobat, artist, carpenter, DJ and wanna be 'chief chef', electrical engineer, nurses, secretaries, lawyer for women's rights (I could shed a tear or two over how this lady makes me feel with her desire to improve the lot of women in Tanzania) and teachers, teachers, teachers.  The intermediate speakers ask adolescent questions like "who is your girlfriend?" or "how many babies do you want to have?" and everyone laughs as those asked the questions  blush and cover their heads.  Sweet.  The beginners on the beginners, on the other hand, stick with the standard questions, "where did you go yesterday?" and "what will you buy at the market?"  One girl seems as though she will wiggle right out of her skin when I call on her.  Now fourteen, she never finished primary school.  She struggles and is overcoming her shyness and remedial level showing more confidence everyday.  Love, love, love, this!

My weekdays are pretty standard in the office or classroom during the day with the exception of tagging along with Caroline for an errand or two.  After the dog walking I cook dinner, which I might add are quite the little culinary creations.  Thank God for onion and garlic!  I am eating rice and beans twice a day (oh, I can hear some of you laughing at me now) with vegetables and occasionally some meat (goat, lamb--I've given up the beef it could cause dental damage it is so tough) or chicken.  Lettuce comes wilted and dirty so I have to reconstitute it in the pot of cold water in the refrigerator.  Sometimes it comes back to life and others, well it goes in the bin. When it works I have a salad.  You can buy avacado here for about 20 cents each.  The other food, however, is not cheap.  Another reality byte:  Africa is not cheap.  Food is becoming more scarce and prices are going up (how people living on less than $1US per day are going to get by I do not know.  The World Food Program UNWFP is running out of money and things will take a turn for the worse before things get better).  I do live on about $75 per week all in but I am buying only food, eating out once or twice per week and trying to buy things like beans and rice that go along way.

On Wednesday Caroline suggested we go to the New Arusha Hotel for a couple of hour poolside meeting and attitude adjustment break.  I obliged her and (very happily) went along.  Ah, lounging has not been part of my program here and I realize how much I miss it.

I arrived back to the center with the power out for the first time in a couple (maybe a few) weeks.  I pulled some pork from the freezer earlier to cook up on the gas camper stove by battery operated lantern-light.   I really do have my groove down in the kitchen, love cooking and listening to my iTunes but on this night my little finger got in the way of the rather big blade of the knife.  I knew right away I had done it and ran some water over the cut which bled more than the severity of the cut warranted I thought.  I held my thumb tightly on the cut and it did not bleed because of the pressure I applied.  I even went back to cutting, casually thinking about finding a band-aid.  I grabbed a couple of napkins and as soon as I removed my thumb the blood came.  I wrapped my finger in the napkins and it bled through right away.  I put some gauze on top of the napkins and that also soaked through.  More gauze and then it happened; I started getting light headed.  "You have to be joking" I thought.  Then the sweat came.  "You really have to be joking".  I don't know if I have ever passed out before (excluding being young, foolish and drinking too much) but there I was spinning and sweating and thinking "time to sit on the floor".  I reached for my phone and tried to call Caroline thinking how stupid I felt; no car, no electricity, no emergency services and a bloody finger and light head!  When I got my head back together I got up, put the pork away, took a pain pill for my throbbing finger and went to bed.

Yesterday was a really satisfying day.  Caroline and I took a student to an interview process with another NGO focusing on training young people in the hospitality industry including a 3 month internship to learn on the job training.  I met Kim (Dutch) through some other Dutch friends I was introduced to living here by my friends in Amsterdam.  Kim started Jobortunity and this was her first prospective pool of students for the program.  Zabby was pretty excited about the opportunity to chase his dream of being a chef and he was spot on in the process where nearly 50 willing applicants attended group interview and team building.  He received the highest marks on the math test and was the one in the crowd raising his hand or moving to the front of the crowd.  Caroline was like a proud mother fighting back tears.  Really wonderful to see what we do can move us as it does.  We met representatives from other NGOs who brought candidates for the interview while sitting under a garden gazebo over "tea and biscuits".  The chief of the Moivaro area was also there having brought 35 young people from his community.  We met "Mama Hindu"a lovely Tanzanian lady who has the Center for Women and Children Development.  She encourages "Masai families to send their children to school rather than to fetch water".  It is wonderful to keep meeting people everyday with opportunities to partner on services and ideas to help in our related and not related fields.

We left an elated Zabby back at the junction of the death road and the Moivaro cutoff which is about 30 minutes by car from the Umoja Center.  Some kids ride a bike for more than an hour to get to school  Pretty amazing!  Caroline and I beamed with pride at how alive Zabby was after this experience and the hope it gave him to really pursue something worthwhile in his life  I told him I would love to cook with him!  We took our dog walk whichis so nice at the end of the day with the African sun setting.  I greet everyone we pass and Caroline has to laugh at me.  "You are the meeter and greeter, aren't you Tom", she says.  I think people love it.  I'm trying to soften the neighborhood a bit.

I was able to get the pork meal complete without incident on this night, took a shower and was ready for Caroline to pick me up to join Paul for "just one" at Nick's Pub and then on to Via-Via for the big Thursday night bash (a bash on Thursday night?  What about work on Friday?).  There was a great African band playing some good guitar and synthesized metal drums.  It sounded a cross between Caribbean music and Hawaiian music.  Everyone was grooving to the sounds.  A bunch of volunteers at the center who stay at the local hostel met us and we had quite a group of people together.  The band finished and the party moved outside to the open air dance floor where a DJ played progressively younger and younger music as the night crept along.  I persuaded Paul at 0300 to take me home; Caroline was cutting loose and still on the dance floor!  She needed and certainly was worthy of cutting loose for the night.

Despite the late night I had a really productive day in the office (alone) listening to classical music and then to the likes of Den Martin, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and others making me think of my folks all day.  I startedt he application process to get the Umoja Center registered for non-profit status in the USA and a request to an Irish NGO that supplies refurbished computers to organizations like Umoja (I hope!!).

I love that I got this written!  I learned today that a lot of my address book did not receive the link to my blog so if you think of anyone you would like to send it along to or someone I forgot please do so!

I received some horrible news from a friend I went through training with at Alaska yesterday evening.  Tracia Johnson lost her husband JJ in a car accident yesterday.  Tracia and JJ have 2 daughters and had a life ahead of them of happiness and joy.  Life is so fragile and can be tragically changed in a moment.  Please keep my friends in your hearts and thoughts.  My heart breaks for Tracia and all those who loved JJ.

Good night everyone.