All done

I am now in Zanzibar wondering where the last two months have gone! My time volunteering went by so fast. I haven't really had time to stop and think about all the things i have done as i have been so busy trying to arrange travel plans for the next few weeks. The painting went really well, it really is amazing what aesthetic changes can do to an environment. What was a depressing dark space is now so bright and cheerful. It was hard work and i am still covered in oil paint, but it was well worth it to see the children's faces, they were so shocked at first then they were just really happy. I had painted this little mural of flowers and stuff in the girls dorm on top of the green we had already done as a base and a group of them just sat on the bed staring at it and smiling telling me how happy i had made them it was soo cute. Oh my time is about to run out and i want to post this, i will write soon

Schools out

So i got a bit of a surprise last week when i found out that we only had one week left of school as there was a holiday coming up that we weren't told about. Kristen told us with only a few days notice that this would be our last week with the kids. I was so disappointed, you get attached so quickly and you really feel like you are making a difference in their day, then all of a sudden you have to leave. It was an amazing but sad last day. We threw a big party for the kids and brought in loads of food for them and we played games and sang songs with them. It was a really good day. Normally there are children in the neighbourhood who stand at the windows and watch us play each day. It is the saddest thing as they can't afford the $1 Canadian a month to come to school so they just watch through the bars but on Friday they came in with us and we fed them and they were playing games and doing the limbo it was soo cute. At the end of the day when we were taking class photos, we took one of all our students, then our teacher lined them all up and they had a class photo too. Yacini (the teacher) is such a nice guy he made them all feel like part of the school that day and they were so happy. I wish i could post pictures then i could put them both up but i don't think i will be able to till England so you will have to look back then! The last week went by so quickly as Krystina and i had so much we wanted to do with the kids, we managed to cram in lots of crafts, new games and tooth brushing! We also took one of our students to the hospital as she has these painful sores all over her body inparticular her hands and they were all open and weeping. The hospital was a little scary, definatly not somewhere i want to go while i am here, i was shocked at the conditions. After a lot of confusion and only 50 cents to see a doctor! she was seen and got the treatment she desperately needed but no one could afford to give her. It amazes me still how much can be done over here with so little money. For only $25 Canadian we had a class of 50 students see a doctor and get a medical, including blood tests for HIV, its nothing and yet all i hear are stories of people donating money and it falling in the wrong hands and by the time it reaches the people it needs to there is a fraction left of what was originally donated. Anyway i won't get started on that now, otherwise i will be here all day.
Since we no longer have to teach we have taken on a new project for our last week. Dollah, the little boy i wrote about before is doing great and he has settled into his new school really well. It is just the most amazing group of people that run that place and we wanted to do something there to help out. 60 kids live at the school and they sleep in very dark horrible dorms and we have decided to paint them this week home improvement style. So we will be very busy this next week giving it a facelift, i'm quite looking forward to getting creative with all that space to work with, right now i am thinking an ocean theme..... we will see

Chaos in Dar

On Tuesday we went into Dar Es Salaam, to run some errands. What is normally a few hours excursion there and back turned into a very wet and crazy scramble out of the city that took about 8 hours!!
When it rains here it really rains, you can be outside for less than a minute and you couldn't be any wetter than if you jumped in a swimming pool with all your clothes on. This was the type of rain that we were greeted with when we stepped off the Dalla Dalla (little minivan that they cram as many people as humanly possible into) into the city. In any city rain like this would cause problems, however in Dar there are no drains to speak of and in a matter of minutes the streets started to flood. People were taking shelter under anything they could find, not wanting to waste anytime we decided to brave the wet and just go about our business. Big mistake. Within a matter of minutes we were soaked, now being wet i don't mind but add to that the fact that we were wading through water up to our calves, wearing flip flops and trying to dodge any floating objects of questionable nature that were coming our way, Gross doesn't cut it. The narrow streets were wall to wall water, you couldn't see pavement just a river with shops on either side. Not wanting to have a totally wasted trip we decided to still have some lunch and do some e-mailing until it became painfully obvious that we needed to get out of the city asap. By obvious i mean the fact the the police we now escorting us across the street as the water was so high that cars were now out of control boats. For some reason we decided it would be a good idea to buy umbrellas at this point (i know, a bit late for that) as we had seen some really tacky ones that we thought would be funny. After 20 minutes of deciding if a built in whistle was really necessary we left the store with the ugliest umbrellas we could find to be greeted by what can only be described as chaos. The city seemed to have come to a unanimous decision while we were buying umbrellas that it was time to leave. The streets were filled with people all wading out of the city, they were looking for buses, dalla dallas, basically anything that could get them out of there. As the cars could no longer come down the roads everyone was walking to the outskirts with hopes of finding transportation. Not wanting to be left behind we followed the crowds. Any bus that passed us was so full there were people hanging out of the doors holding on the person in front of them, it was madness. After about 30mins we found a bus that had about one square foot of space left so the three of us piled in counting ourselves very lucky to be getting out of there. However 1 hour later we had only moved about 10 feet, it was traffic as far as we could see, which i would be okay with if we had a seat but there wasn't even room for both of our feet to be on the ground we all had one foot down and were only balanced as we were sandwiched between so many people, i think i could have picked up my other foot and still been upright! Three hours later (it normally takes 20 mins) and in the dark now we arrived at the big station where we change buses . If we thought it would be any calmer here we were very wrong, everyone seemed to be in a state of panic, it was chaos. You would have thought it was the end of the world the way people were behaving. They were jumping in front of cars and buses trying to make them stop, jumping into the back of trucks as they were trying to drive away, some people were even climbing through windows of buses while they were moving. It was madness. I looked at Krystyna and Sarah and we just held hands and ran to the side where the bagamoyo dalla dallas normally are. We knew we were going to have to be aggressive if we wanted on the bus, so the second we heard someone shout 'Bagamoyo' we ran for the bus and elbowed our way on, we couldn't believe we had made it. The bus filled up in seconds and we had made it not only on the bus but we had seats!! feeling rather proud of ourselves and only a little wet, we then made the three hour journey home in relative comfort. We arrived home very tired and many hours later than planned but we made it and that's all that matters. Needless to say i won't be heading into Dar again if i can help it, especially if it is raining.

Doolah Update

Sorry i haven't written in a while but the Internet in Bagamoyo has been down so today i made the big trip into Dar Es Salaam to e-mail and get supplies for the school. First of all Dollah is doing great. After i last wrote he was taken to the police station where his mother signed over custody of him which allowed us to start the ball rolling with finding him care and a school. It was actually very easy considering things like that normally take weeks to do over here because of "Africa Time", but Dollah has already had his first week at his new boarding school and is loving it. Amy and Vicky took him around to schools to see what they were like and they found this amazing school that already has lots of orphans ( even though Doolah technically isn't) so when all the other children go home for holidays there is still a big group of them left to hang out and play for the summer. It is a full time boarding school, he will receive all his schooling, food and care in one place so he won't be going back and forth from place to place and best of all it is a five minute walk from our house. Doolah obviously has a connection with Bagamoyo because every time he would run away from his dad he would walk for several hours to get back there to sleep rough so it is nice he doesn't have to leave. It turned out he has been on the streets a lot longer than we first thought and he is older then he realized as well, he didn't know his birthday. Dollah is 9 years old and he was born in June. We sent him for a full medical and amazingly he got the all clear, which was a big relief. It was shocking to me how easy it was to change someones life. Dollah now has a bed, food, education and people to care for him and all it took was three days of running around and $800 (all inclusive yearly boarding school fees), Thats it, and now he has a future. When i first came to Africa, the whole idea of making a difference seemed impossible as there is so much need out here for everything, money, education, food, care, just to name a few, that it seemed like a mammoth task that no one person could even make a dent in no matter how long you are here. Doolah has taught me that you don't have to do big things over here to make a difference, it can be as small as giving one child a future. Seeing Doolah playing with other children in a playground and just being a child is so rewarding.
The children at my school are happy just to see Krystina and i everyday. When we bring out puzzles and games or colouring pencils or do a craft with them they are so happy to be doing anything other then reciting words on a board you can see it on their faces. I leave each day feeling like i have made a small difference in that childs day and it feels so good. Yacini and Mohammade (the teachers) are great and they have given us free reign of all teaching so we have been coming up with lots of ideas for lessons. Tomorrow we want to discuss the importance of cleaning out your cuts as lots of the children have nasty infections from little scratches, so we decided to do a play for them in Swahili. I have no idea if it will work but i will let you know how it goes!!

Doolah

On my second night here i was invited to a wedding. One of the volunteers, a lady from the US who had been volunteering here for a month, met a local, fell in love and was getting married! So on Friday night i found myself at a wedding reception. It was held outside in the open air theatre of the music college in town. Loads of people were there and lots of the locals did amazing drum and dance performances, everyone had an amazing time. The other volunteers and i we sitting together throughout and we were accompanyed by locals aswell, but one boy in particular caught our attention as he didn't seem to be with an adult, we didn't think too much as it is quite common for children to move about an event like that without a parent as it is a community atmosphere. When it came time to go we were the last ones to leave and we noticed that he was still with us, we asked around everyone that was left but nobody knew who's he was. After we got someone to translate for us it turned out he was a street kid and had been homeless for a month! Now this boy was no older than 8 and he was all by himself for 4 weeks fending for himself and sleeping outside. It broke my heart, he was such a sweet kid aswell he was just standing there blowing bubbles (left over from the wedding) and playing with balloons. He explained to us that he was there as he has learned it is safest to be where there are lots of people and he knew there would be food for him there. Some of the men said they have seen him at a few beach party's as he likes to be around people, but they didn't know he was homeless. We started asking him questions and he said his mum was on Zanzibar and his dad is in Dar Es Salaam but neither of them want him and he was supposed to be living with his uncle but he lost him. He gave a few different stories to people about his mum and dad all slightly different, but it all came down to the fact that he had no where to stay. It was the saddest thing, i knew we couldn't leave him so we tried to figure out what we could do, we needed a place for him to stay then we had to try and locate, his mum, dad or uncle. We tried to bring him back to the house but when we asked we were told we couldn't, so we were going to pay for a room for the night, but in the end one of the local guys said he could stay at his and we would go to the police station in the morning. We all talked that night and decided only 2 people should go with him to the police station and Amy (from PEI) and a lady called Vicky(from the US) went with him. After two days of police stations and visits to his mum and dads, Doolah's story goes like this. His mum kicked him out when she got re-married, he went to his dads, his dad beats him so severely he has permanent scars on his face, so he ran away. Doolah is 8 years old and his own mother put him on the street. His story is so heartbreaking and he is just the sweetest child. Apparently when they located the mother she wouldn't even look at him or acknowledge he was there, when they went to the fathers house he was so scared, when they got back in the car with him to leave(after he thought they would just drop him off and leave)he said "if you left me there he would have killed me". This boy has done nothing to deserve this kind of life and you think he would be lucky as he has a mum and dad, which so many children here don't, but the two people that are supposed to protect him from the world have abandoned him. Thanks to Amy and Vicky the ball is now rolling to get Dollah into a home and into school. The parents have happily given up their rights and now it is a slow process but we are all helping any way we can. You should have seen his face when he got given some clothes by some of the volunteers, it was so heartbreaking as you could tell he is not used to kindness and he doesn't no how to react. He is living in Amy and Vickys room for now and we are feeding him, but we are not allowed to have him there. so it is a strange vibe at the house, as if the program coordinators come we will get in trouble. Amy feels that it is fate and Dollah is the reason she came here so she is happy to leave the program if need be and get a room where thay both can stay till it is sorted so i will keep you posted! Again

Bagamoyo

Bagamoyo is a very cool town. It couldn't be any more different from Saikeri if it tried. Instead of Maasai warriors i am surrounded by rastas, artist, musicians and poets. It is a town of teaming with creativity and a very lively history. I live in a very small house with 8 volunteers, i share a room with a girl from Toronto called Krystina. We have a lady who cooks all our meals for us her name is Happy but she lives in town. Our house is down a dirt road about 5 mins walk from the beach. I had my first day at school and it was really good. There are 50 children all pre-school age and we are with them from 8am till 12pm. It is very basic, a small room about 15ft by 30ft with a blackboard painted on the wall, no table or chairs but it does have a concrete floor which is nice as the kids can sit and not get filthy. There are two teachers both male and they are open to all and any suggestions that we give them. The children only speak Swahili which makes it very hard so the two teachers give the lesson and Krystina and i assist (as opposed to Kenya where i was teaching classes of 46 science and English by myself!!)the children. We have already approached them about having an hour of structured play for the children each day, where we will set up 3 stations of Art and Crafts, Reading and Games using supplies we have brought. As all they seem to do is fight during their play time. We are also going to start a hygiene session each day where we will provide the children with toothbrushes and paste and soap, in the hopes that they will carry on the good hygiene even when they leave the school. It is small steps right now but i have only been there one day and i am sure there is a lot more i can do in one month! So i will keep you posted.

Rain Rain Rain

It has been raining hard for about 9hrs, i guess that is why they call this the rainy season! I am absolutely soaked to my skin but i have been indoors all day and i was starting to get cabin fever so i braved the wet to come and e-mail. I just read what i wrote last time and i was in such a hurry i forgot to write the date of Dominics big race, the Mombassa marathon is on the 26th of March. I am trying to find somewhere that will have a TV in town so i can watch it, he is defiantly my favourite Kenyan by far, such a lovely sweet guy, it was soo hard to say goodbye to him, he was running with the pickup as i was driving out of Saikeri and i was balling my eyes out like a baby. Saying goodbye at school was awful, it was a two day ordeal of speeches gift giving and crying, even the teachers were crying i was soo touched, they really were the nicest most welcoming group of people, one teacher David was so upset on my last day he was sobbing and couldn't even speak to say anything to me, it was heartbreaking and made be cry even more! You should see the gifts they gave me. I have a shopping bag full of traditional Maasai jewelery and 2 kangas, which are the sarongs that they carry their children in. I wish i could download pictures but i can't do it here and this is the only place to e-mail for the next month. When i do you will be amazed at the places i have been and the people i have met!