Open the big metal gates to a stark cement courtyard filled with two to six year old children. This is the parking lot behind Women’s Education in Gender Monitoring Aids, or WEMA, that also serves their community with a daily daycare center for children too young to enroll in public school. Mothers drop their children off at 8 AM for four hours of supervision by two teachers, who paid measly wages, and a couple foreign volunteers for a fee of 100 Tanzanian schillings per day (the equivalent of 0.08 USD). The fee, we were told is used to pay for the watered down half cup of porridge the children are served midmorning. Today, Elana, Faina and I arrived to 50 children talking, playing and crying in a disorganized mass. It was a slow day, usually children number close to 90.
As Elana pulls out some small notebooks and crayons, the older kids scramble around her to get first dibs and immediately start to scribble on the blank paper. On the other side of the parking lot, Faina patiently tries to draw animals on the ground in chalk to teach the younger kids some English words. The children, obviously not used to any sort of organization, immediately start to smudge the drawings into an unrecognizable swirl of color. Sometimes the staff tries to get the kids all to sit down so they can listen, even though the process bores the little ones who end up staring sadly at nothing. As the morning progresses, Elana and Faina through trial and error find ways to keep the children entertained and tend to pay attention to a few children at a time and teach them letters, numbers, animals, etc.
It’s a long frustrating morning, but something the volunteers are getting used to. There really isn’t too much more that can be done, especially with a language barrier and lack of adequate local staff. There are just too many kids for too few teachers. In essence, it’s a different culture they face more than anything; a culture where kids take care of themselves, where four and five year olds parent their younger siblings and where kids are allowed to walk themselves home at the end of the day. Any form of discipline as we know it is shunned, as this is the children’s “time to play”. This means if they are hitting and biting each other or falling on their heads, it’s ok. If they are lifting up a grate and climbing down the hole, it’s fine. If they are crying, they are left alone to figure out their own situation.
We’ve regarded WEMA has been a controversial organization for a few reasons, but we still help out because if we weren’t there, these children would receive little attention and even less education. It’s a paradox: leave and let the organization struggle, or help this community center even though we don’t fully trust and believe in all of its policies. But it’s the people we want to reach, and by being there, we are. Still, for us Americans used to a very different form of parenting, the kids still cry just as much, and it’s hard to let that pass.
-Kaia
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Sunday was a trek… We left early in the morning for a short hike on Mt. Meru to see a waterfall. “Short,” we soon realized is a very subjective term. The drive was quite long up a dirt road that is usually only traveled by pedestrians and big safari cars with four-wheel drive. Alongside the road are small dirt waterways that serve as the rural population’s main water source. These ditches often cross the road and make it very challenging for a low chassis. Our driver, Gilbert, did a pretty good job with our dala dala, but we still got stuck in a dried out water ditch. After a while, with everyone out of the car, a local man with a pick-axe digging out the back wheel and all of the guys pushing, we got out and continued for another hour or so to an unmarked path that apparently takes you up to Mt. Meru. We followed a sequence of paths in between Maasai Bomas and plots of cultivated land, acquiring a slew of local children and a few dogs that followed us long the way.
There are no directions to get here and no marks of a tourist industry, but in this rural village, the kids are still quite accustomed to visitors who come to climb the mountain or hike to the waterfall and obviously practiced in asking for money: Money to take a picture of them, money to carry your things, money to show you something, or just money for money. The disparity of wealth is so vast here that it shouldn’t be too shocking that “money” is one of the few, if not the only, English words rural children learn to say, but it’s still a blunt reality check.
Next door to the sprawling farms, the forests on this side of Mt. Meru region are used by Tanzanian military for training and the creeks are regularly patrolled, but tourists, with a valid permit (purchased from another unmarked location), and their guides are for the most part unrestricted. After a couple hours down a path scaling the slightly slippery wall of the riverbed, our guides told us the waterfall was just around the corner of the creek. “just around the corner” doesn’t really mean the same thing I guess. Another hour later, after walking in calf deep water and passing smaller, beautiful waterfalls, we made it to the big kahuna. Probably about 150 feet tall, the waterfall sprayed us with a massive force that made the area feel like a helicopter was landing.
The way back through the picturesque landscape and foreign vegetation (a mix of tropical ferns, leafy plants and pine-like trees) was much shorter. Our followers were waiting for us at the top of the hillside, and persisted in their requests for money. Starving, we finally reached the car, but felt too bad to eat our packed lunches in front of the most likely malnourished children and instead distributed some cokes to the group before taking off down the bumpy hill home to Kwa Idi.
-Kaia
Yesterday, Richard, founder of Tumaini, came to Kwa Idi (our town) to tell us his story. The organization, founded to encourage individuals to get tested for HIV/AIDS and promote accurate discussion about HIV/AIDS, has succeeded in breaking down existing social stigmas by creating a co-ed soccer team comprised of HIV infected individuals that play against non-infected teams and use part of the game time to educate the public about HIV/AIDS and testing. Although the concept seems simple, the results are quite complex and influential. The team members, originally discriminated against and not accepted onto existing teams due to their HIV/AIDS status, have fought to get recognition, respect and finally financial support for their organization. They have watched their friends and teammates pass away, sometimes from simply not having the means to buy the medicine that could have kept them alive, yet they have dealt with this grief by sustaining a sense of hope and faith.
In the day, Tumaini also serves their members’ children as well as local children who are HIV-positive or children of HIV-positive couples with pre-primary education. This morning, Barbara, a returning volunteer, and I arrived to about 40 energetic kids in well worn uniforms tossing around a small soccer ball with three volunteers from another non-profit who are finishing up their few remaining day/s at Tumaini. As I entered into the office, I was interrupted as the children all standing in a circle began to sing from memory quite lengthy tunes in perfect English. On the side, others diligently studied and proudly shared their homework with us.
Not interested in anything else, one of the smallest children, too short to write on the blackboard, struggled to reach it in Tumaini’s hand painted classroom. The common thread throughout orphan/at-risk/disadvantaged children’s educational organizations here in Arusha is turning out to be the actual children’s eagerness to learn and sheer joy in response to any attention volunteers and teachers give them.
-Kaia
Our volunteers have jumped into their placements and are loving their work, rapidly learning survival Kiswahili and adapting to the time change quite impressively. Yesterday we made our first dala dala (that’s what the vans used for transportation are called here) run to drop off volunteers at their respective placements throughout Arusha. I followed Niki to her English class today to get a glimpse of what she does at Children for Children’s Future (CCF), a decade old school dedicated to counseling and educating high risk children and youth. As we walked down the dirt road, one of Niki’s students ran up to us grinning, reached for her extra bag of teaching materials and insisted on carrying it into the school for her.
A few minutes later, the soccer ball Niki bought yesterday to replace the existing ball made of rubber bands was found and the small cement school yard turned into a big free for all game with all eyes fixed excitedly on the ball. After Chris, the translator and teacher for the few older boys, arrived, the class got started. Children jumped over each other to draw their hands and names on big pieces of paper that would cover the walls, wrote out Kiswahili translations to simple English words on the blackboard and clamored insistently in front of my lens.
Patiently Niki worked through the language barrier, and brought the children from an excited and slightly disorderly bunch into more than less cohesive group testing simple English conversations, singing “head, shoulders, knees and toes…”, and acting out action words such as dancing, running, clapping etc. They learn fast and seem to want to learn more than anything.
-Kaia
We (the staff) are fully settling into our new house located in Kwa Idd, just outside of the city centre. The house is quite large, with three bedrooms and two common rooms filled with bunk beds and tables constructed by our new friend Masawe, a local woodworker. Our yard, complete with a fire pit and local straw furniture, is filled with banana, papaya and avocado trees, just to name a few. Earlier this week, teachers from the Tekua school hung student and teacher artwork on most of our walls, and it feels much more homey now.
This past week has been filled with numerous meetings with local organizations and last minute errands. Cheryl had a busy time of meeting with many womens’ groups to explain our microfinance structure and is now reviewing loan applications from individuals and non-profits.
Jennifer found a great plot of land on which to start planting (it’s just around the corner from our house) and is in the process of getting a chicken coup set up on our property. Valerie, probably the busiest of us all, has finalized our support staff (drivers, cooks, matrons, guards, etc.) and secured the last bit of furnishings and extras we need and is about to run to the airport to pick up a group of volunteers. Chris and Dina, our two head chefs, spent a good 5 hours on Saturday shopping for food to fully stock our kitchen. We are all very excited to welcome our first group of students who will get to experience some traditional cuisine and a local singing and drumming performance tonight before they start working with their respective organizations tomorrow.
-Kaia
Arusha Project 