Living the African Life!

Landon and I with our Country Directors Chanel and Sarah  at our favorite restaurant Family and Friends. Nothin' beats a cold Fanta Pineappleafter a long day of work!

 It's a miracle! We now have our very own internet chip and no longer need to rely on the local restaurant's wi-fi, which took one hour to upload one picture. Lucky us!! Hopefully now we will be able to share a more constant stream of updates.

It is so hard to believe we have been in Tanzania for 3 weeks. We are basically pros now, talking with people, making our way around the city, and even getting past the normal "Mzungo" price for tourists. We have still been exploring several more options for volunteer work and have begun scheduling our time with meetings and projects.

Since I never had the chance to post pictures, this was the garden project we helped with for the HIV+ Support Group. It was a far different experience gardening in a jungle! We all got a taste of Safari Ants and their vicious biting! Landon had some fun using a machete to tear down dying leaves on the banana trees. 

 The Faraje Centre is an orphanage where we are planning to build a Rocket Stove. The cook currently sits in a small shack cooking the food over an open fire and inhaling lots of thick smoke. The orphanage is already very well established, so this is something small we felt we could give them. So far we have been building different versions of the Rocket Stove at our own house to test and approve the design so that it will be sustainable and well used for years to come. This stove was built from instructions provided by last year's HELP team. We want to improve the stove to reach a higher temperature using less fuel by creating more openings and possibly using charcoal instead of firewood. We would also like to design an option to enlarge the stove for situations like ours when a large amount of food is needing to be cooked.

The Faraja Centre Orphanage

Keeping the kids laughing and smiling, while I myself got a good arm workout!

Rocket Stove trial building at our house

A nearby neighbor of ours, Christopher, has been very interested in building his own stove as well. He has been very helpful in seeking out bricks and transporting them for us and sharing his ideas for he is also an engineer. He has also been really excited to help us bring power to the Step-by-Step Learning Center, a school for children with disabilities, through a solar panel setup. The school is run by a woman named Martha and has so many wonderful aspirations for assisting these kids. In Africa, most people with disabilities are shunned and are believed to be cursed. Martha has taken the opportunity to nurture them each specific to their condition with their own personal curriculum and teacher. The school is currently constructing another building that will allow expansion to the program. We have been looking at building the Solar Power system and possibly a playground. The Step-by-Step School has shown incredible efforts in making this an enjoyable experience for each of the students individually.

Step-by-Step School Building

We have also recently visited another orphanage just up the road which HELP worked with last year to begin a pigpen business. The business has grown substantially and the owners are now ready for the next step. We are hoping to organize a formal business plan to regulate an income for the orphanage. We plan to teach the owners how to budget, when to breed and sell pigs, and how much feed to buy in order to keep the business up and running. Budgeting is sometimes a difficult concept for the people here to understand, but as long as they are willing to try, we are willing to help.

Many volunteers have begun organizing the Inside Out Learning Program in Tanzania. This is a program designed to train teachers to use a variety of learning styles and methods when teaching in schools. The groups have begun spreading to many of the local schools and the teachers are excited to learn these new ideas for teaching. Some people have also been pursuing health promoting projects. There is a large focus here on Malaria prevention and treatment. Volunteers have began to seek out donations of medicines and mosquito nets to provide to rural Maasai Villages that will aid Malaria prevention efforts.  

Overlooking Arusha, Tanzania

On the weekends, we have the opportunity to explore the area with a little extra free time. We spent one Saturday on a beautiful hike to an amazing waterfall. We found a completely foreign world at the top of the steep hike. High above the clouds was this large flat plain of farmland. Somehow, these people managed to carry all their supplies up the dangerously steep slopes to settle in the beautiful area. We continued to hike through a forest, picking roseberries as we went, came across a humongous tree pulled right out of Tarzan, and hiked back down the steep and muddy trail to the river. Landon found some vines and decided he wanted to swing around like Tarzan. It didn't turn out so great.... :)

 After a short walk upstream we came to the waterfall. It was incredibly powerful. The water fell with tremendous force, creating a large gust of wind at the base. We pulled out our soap and shampoo, excited to bathe after 5 days of our water being turned off. Nicely sunned, cleaned, and exhausted, we hiked back out and made it home safely.

Landon showing off!

Oh so cooooooooldddd!

 And let the adventures continue... :)

Once in a while the clouds clear and we get a fabulous view of Mount Meru  right in our backyard basically. This is an area called Suye. Our house is just up the road.

Plenty of DalaDalas driving all around town. They make living here with no car much easier, just as long as you get on the right one and can find a seat :)

This is our marvelous room and bed! It's taken a little adjustment...

The entire team stuffed tight in one Dala Dala! 

Week One

Jambo!

We have finally arrived in Tanzania along with 14 other volunteers like ourselves! We have come to the beautiful Arusha, Tanzania, which is in the northern part of the country. Arusha is extremely fertile and green with lots of hills and mountains covered with trees and farms. Our house is in an area called Suye, about a 45 minute walk from the city. There are two main paved roads that I am aware of, they are a type of highway. Majority of the roads are dirt and get very, very muddy when it rains. The traffic here is very busy and somewhat chaotic, with basically no laws whatsoever. There are no speed limits, just large speed bumps every so often. It is surprising that we have yet to experience any sort of wreck, and good thing because nobody wears seatbelts. Some people can afford their own cars, but most either walk the distance or catch a ride. The dala dala is a 15 passenger van usually stuffed with 22 people or more. However, it is very cheap and costs about a quarter to go into the city. Dala dalas are everywhere. There is a driver and another boy hanging out the window or the sliding door finding potential passengers. There are also tons of motorcyles (Landon is in heaven), which you can hop on the back for 1500 shillings or about one dollar. The city is an interesting place. People going every which way and everyone with something to sell. Most things are used, broken, dirty, and far too expensive to buy. As we walk by, everyone says "Mozungo, mozungo!" meaning white people. Even today we passed a woman walking with a child barely 1 year old and he said it. Some will just stare, other will say "Mambo" or "Jambo" which means hello. We have noticed that the locals are far more friendly than those in the city and don't just ask for our money.

We are barely beginning to catch onto the language. We know the basic greetings and a little more but still have much to learn. It takes lots of practice. Most people think it is great when we respond correctly. We have two guards that help teach us some words and phrases. Forestn is our day guard. He is such a sweet man. He has a 14 yr old daughter and recently lost his wife. He is so grateful to have a job. He cuts our grass with a machete, rakes our yard and watches our two dogs. Zicayo is our guard during the night. They both do a very great job.  Our house has two floors, 5 bedrooms and two bathrooms. We have running water and electricity but not much furniture. Most volunteers are on rusty metal frame bunkbeds, while Landon and I have a twin foam mattress wrapped in plastic on the concrete floor. We all have mosquito nets to keep away from the bugs. Our toilet flushes and sometimes we get a hot shower. We just barely found an electric burner to cook some food, but so far we have been living off bottled water, dry oatmeal, PB& J, and an assortment of fruit. I think with time we will be able to expand the menu.

Although it is the rainy season right now, it is still very hot and humid for us. It usually rains during the night and some in the morning and then clears up throughout the day with some blue skies. We basically walk everywhere we go, which can take a while in the muddy mess after the rain. It also seems that most homes put their bags of trash on the side of the road, which eventually ends up trailed down the streams and all across the road. We have found it is so hard to stay clean here. Even after a shower, we usually are covered in dirt again in less than 30 minutes, especially after walking 7 or 8 miles a day in the mud!

The kids here are absolutely adorable! We went yesterday to till and clear out a garden for a HIV support group then visited an orphanage in the area. On the way we picked up several little kids that followed us around. Some would run up and hold our hands and were just so excited to see us. We had a good time playing "London Bridge". They just laugh and giggle and hug you. They also love taking pictures and seeing the pictures of themselves. Landon and I were able to visit again today to talk with the owner about a new project we have been looking into called the "Rocket Stove". It is an improved way of cooking that would send the smoke out a chimney and keep the heat contained so that less fuel will be consumed. We are currently checking out prices for bricks and mortar needed to build the stove. We have just started to look into a variety of projects and opportunities for working with different organizations. Hopefully soon we will get some idea of the things we would like to do here and get going on them. The 12 weeks we have here seem to go by so quickly.   

Kenya to Arusha

Flight after flight, we got so jet lagged! Luckily our long flight to Kenya was empty enough to give basically everyone their own 3 seats to lay down and sleep the ride away. It was great!

This is the sweet little plane we took from Nairobi, Kenya to Arusha. Landon was pretty excited about it!

Mount Kilimanjaro from the airplane! It is the highest point in Africa. 

A Day in London!

With a 12 hour layover, we decided to make a quick trip to London! Lots of tourism and fun accents. After a long 9 hour flight it was so nice to get out for a walk and wear us out for another 8 hour flight to Kenya. We had the chance to see some excellent sites!

Big Ben was super cool to see and hear! All the buildings were very detailed. 

As we got off the train, we saw everyone crowding the street. Suddenly the Queen of England came parading down the road in a carriage. 

How are they always so serious?!

Kissing in the Phone Booth! :)