Tarime Thanksgiving Time

Well Thanksgiving is almost here. We are having the staff of Angel House out to lunch on Thursday. We are having African food with an American celebration. We will be hiring someone to take care of “The Littles” ages 18 months to 5 years, the rest of the kids will be in school. It will be nice to have everyone together at the same time. That doesn’t usually happen because someone always has to stay back and take care of our little kids who can get into a lot mischief. Did I tell you that the 2 three year olds got into the charcoal one day? Eric said, “I didn’t think black kids could get any blacker but they can.” Then they got into raw eggs and broke 6 of them. Yesterday they were adding water to dirt and making mud pies not only that but one of the boys decided there wasn’t enough water in the mud so he peed in the puddle. That ended the pie making! I scolded him in English and set him in time out. I have no idea what he understood, but he knew I was mad!

My daughter sent me “Thanksgiving in a Box” that arrived on Thursday. She had put in some of the truditional foods, green bean casserole fixin’s, a can of pumpkin, a couple cans of turkey (white and dark meat) a box of stuffing and decorations so I am anxious to fix that all up. I think I will make gravey and put the turkey in gravey and serve it over mashed potatoes and stuffing with green beans on the side. She also sent Thanksgiving napkins. How thoughtful! Thank you Deanne! The only problem is we do not have an oven or microwave. We do however have a toaster oven and hot plate with 2 burners so as long as we have electricity we’ll have Thanksgiving! We are thinking about buying a generator because the electricity goes off so often.

Speaking of getting boxes, Dr. Lisa, one of our main sponsors sent over 33 boxes. She is coming between Christmas and New Years with a team of 22 and will be building a playground for one thing. While Dr. Lisa is here she will be doing dental check ups on all the kids, staff, and we hope to invite the people of Gamasara Village to have dental check ups too. So, anyway, she sent over supplies and other goodies. We have been going to the post office every day to look for the packages. Thursday the post master finally told us that the packages were all in Musoma about an hour and 45 minutes away and they could only send up to 5 packages a week to Tarime where we live. It just so happened that Liz and Eric, and Holly were in Musoma and able to pick up all the packages. There were so many that the back end of the truck was full. It was like Christmas only Supersized!

This week I have been working with Lucy on getting things done that she needs to come to America. Mick, one of our visitors a few weeks back, who used to be an airline pilot, has made the arrangements on the American side. Lucy will be attending a private Catholic School in Connecticut where they have English as a second language and that teacher speaks Swahili! How perfect is that? Lucy and I went to the government hospital to have an AIDS test, a TB test and a physical. The paperwork from the school wanted her height in feet so they asked Lucy to take off her shoe and they measured her foot. I had worked with a doctor who spoke good english once before at the government hospital his nickname was Dr. Pepsi, (I’m guessing he drinks a lot of Pepsi?) I asked to see him again for the physical and the receptionist walked me across the street (the government hospital is made up of a lot of buildings so I was not suprised that we had to cross the street) to a small shop and she apologized that they only had Coke. We all got a good laugh out of that. Lucy is now about ready and she is so excited! I believe Mick is meeting her in Nairobe and Lucy will be living with him and his wife while in America. We are all excited for her too. Mick and his wife are so generous to do this for Lucy. I can’t wait to hear the stories she comes back with. She leaves on December 1. So prayers for a safe and uneventful travel would be appriciated.

Holly and Liz have now hired a Head Master and a Second Head Master and today they are doing interviews for teachers. I think we really ARE going to open in January. That will be a very happy day for our high school who have had to walk 90 minutes to school every day. Now it will be a 2 minute walk across the front yard:-)

I have taken pictures of some of the plants and flowers they have here but this blog is getting too long to add that so maybe next time. Believe me we have some Dr. Susse types plants around here. Now I know where he got some of his ideas for the pictures in “Horton Hears a Who”.

Happy Thanksgiving, think of me eating rice and beans.

Blessings and TIA, Pam

Lucy at Form 7 graduation

Nairobi Follow Up

Just a quick note on our Nairobi vacation and some more photos: You’ll notice the picture of the police with a machine gun, quite common both in Nairobi and Tarime. Like Pam says, “ You don’t want to upset someone holding a gun,” so that’s why you see I took the photo from behind.

Here’s a photo of the Masaii greeters at the crocodile farm, man could the one on the left effortlessly jump high!

Here’s a photo to give you an idea of what the traffic is like, and it really doesn’t do justice to all the cars and people. I had more than one taxi driver have me roll up my window when I had my camera out as the walkers would appear to be just crossing the street and snatch your camera through the open window.

Here’s the BBQ pit at the Carnivore restaurant we treated ourselves to. They had cuts of; beef, crocodile (yes we tried it), BBQ chicken, chicken wings, ox heart (passed), chicken liver (passed), spare ribs, lamb and ox bone (passed). They go to table to table with the various meats and you have a small flag on your table that you lay down when you surrender (can’t eat anymore).

Lastly here, according to our driver, is the second largest slum in the world, with over 1 million people.

The slum was a reminder to us about the needs here in Africa. TIA Mark

Nairobi Trip

While in Nairobi we were able to do some tourist stuff. We visited the Elephant Orphanage. The workers there talked about each elephant (18 of them) and how it became an orphan. Most were due to poachers killing the mother for the ivory. The baby can not survive without the mothers milk. Often the baby is found standing next to the dead mother. One baby had scars where there were spears. They weren’t so sure he would live but he did. Probably the second cause of orphaned elephants is that they fall into abandon wells and can’t get out. The mother stays by the well for a while but eventually gives up and leaves the baby abandoned. Often times they can find the mother and reunite the mother and baby, but if not the baby comes to the orphanage. There is teaching going on to encourage the nomads to cover wells when they leave an area to prevent this from happening. The average stay is about 5 years then they are reintroduced back into the wild. They also had two white rhinos one because he had poor eye site and wouldn’t be able to survive on it’s own. The other rhino was out in the fenced in area learning how to live in the jungle again. I believe his mother died of natural causes. White rhinos are endangered as well.

The giraffe Center was next on the list and it started because one species of giraffe, Rothschild, was near extinction. We were able to feed and touch the giraffes. It was pretty cool! Did you know the giraffe saliva is antiseptic? Did you know that a giraffe can have a stroke if bending it’s head down. The giraffe has very high blood pressure and putting it’s head down causes a lot of pressure in the brain and the can have stokes. The other thing I learned is that the sleep standing up 5-30 minutes is all they sleep. And I think I’m tired after 8 hours of sleep

There were warthogs there too:-)

Lastly we visited the crocodiles. I would not want to come face to face with one of those. Even the little ones scare me! The crocks were split into age groups. When they loose a tooth another grows in its place. So don’t expect an old crock to gum you to death.

Masai (Nomad people) greeted us as we went into see the crock

Along with the crocs were turtles

On another day we visited the Nairobi National Museum. The best part for me was an art exhibit with the artist there to talk with and buy the art their work (if you had a lot of money). The artist we liked best was deaf but we gave him thumbs up on his paintings, they were very whimsical pictures of the African animals.

We got back from Nairobi Saturday, Nov. 6 in the evening around 6:00. Our bus was late because of an accident. There is a cement barrier between the lanes of traffic about 3-4 ft. high and a semi jack knifed and was on top of the cement barrier blocking both lanes of traffic on both sides of the highway. Our bus had to drive off the road and around the semi. It was more like a parking lot than a highway. While we were in Nairobi there was an election of the president and other officials in Tanzania. I guess some people got a little rowdy during the announcements of winners and losers. It’s announced by speaker near the town center. At one point tear gas had to be shot into the crowd. Glad we missed that. This did not happen in our part of town. Think VISHA on one side of Ames and living near the mall.

Also while we were gone, in preparation for the circumcisions the witch doctor at Gamasara said no one could work on Saturday or they would die. So none of our workers came to work on the school Saturday. No one died, even the people who worked in the garden or those who fetched water.

Sunday afternoon, the choir from Angel House did a performance for the people of Gamasara and Tarime. They had made a CD about a month ago and were releasing it Sunday. It is custom here to hand deliver invitations to the concert. We invited around 200 people. They also invite a person called “The Honorable” who is usually an important person that sits at a table with other important people. During one part of the program The Honorable and others sitting at the front table make speeches and they gave money to the orphanage. So that was pretty great. I hear we collected over $1000 American. We charged to get in and also sold the CDs. One song was so moving that some people were crying and so were the kids doing the performance. The song was about why does there have to be orphans and stress and disrespect in the world. I Wish everyone could have seen the kids, they were great! I was a proud Bibi. This was all made possible because at some time in the past someone that visited Angle House went back to the states and raised money to help the choir. What a great gift that turned into! I sent a copy of the CD to our church and one to my family.

Below is a picture of the Honorable District Commissioner.

Our House in Tarime

The court yard is where we would park a car if we had one. It has 2 big metal doors that swing open to allow the car inside. Within those big doors is a small door way for walking in or we use it to bring the motorcycle in at the end of the day. Notice the clothes line and the buckets. The buckets are used to hold rain water which is much cleaner that the dirty rusty water that comes from the pipes in the house. There is a water tank that does not work but is supposed to save water for when there is not water available. We live on the right side where the door is open and Liz, Eric, and Holly live on the left side.

The kitchen is on the left side of the house and you can’t see a stove, microwave or nice double sink with a disposal, because there isn’t one. Just a tiny refrigerator and a few shelves. The large silver pot on the left is a water purifier.

Because the kitchen is so small we store the food in the pantry area. Note the eggs. Did you know eggs don’t need to be refrigerated?

This is the living room on the left side of the house. Notice how nice the curtains look. (I did the sewing). Look up at the ceiling and notice the fan. That’s all we need here because the weather is always between 60-85. The fan rotates in a circle. You can not see it but there is another chair that matches the 2 love seats. The love seats and the chair are not real comfortable but it beats sitting on a tree stump.

The main dinning area seats about 6 but most of us eat in the living room, just like home. In the front left you can see a small sink. Yes there is a sink in the dinning room used to wash hands before you eat.

There are 2 bedrooms, a small room for storage (we don’t have a basement) on the left side of the house and one bathroom. Note the new hot water heater. The water is heated on a coil on the inside of the shower head. There is no shower stall you just get everything wet that’s in the bathroom when you shower. Notice the spigot on the left side down low. When there is not enough water pressure to get water out of the shower you can get it out of the spigot. It is not very clean as you can see. I could not show you the bedrooms because they were locked.

Now for our side of the house. Just inside the front door is our storage room. Yes we are messy. The sun oven is on the floor on the left, it is wood and black. Let me also point out the toilet tissue on the left. You can only get big bundles of it and it is not very nice. It practically disintegrates before it reaches the water. TMI? There is also a big box of sweaters that were a home knitting project. We give them to the hospitals to give to the new borns. They actually will fit the kids until they are about 2 years old because of how they are made. One of the three year old boys at the orphanage was wearing one the other day. I have also seen them used for a hat. Although they look funny with the sleeves hanging out on each side of the head. Think of Norsemen. If they had horns the sweater would fit just fine.

This bathroom has what is called a choo (a hole in the floor) rhymes with “low”. Not exactly my style but the guys seem to like it a lot. No one uses the shower in this bathroom so it only has cold water the heater that is on the shower head does not work.

The dinning room on our side does not get used either. We just had guests from the US bring us 2 trunks full of stuff. One is in the process of being emptied the other is in the process of being sorted and sized. This room also doubles as a bedroom when we have volunteers from the states that only stay a week or two.

We have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms on our side. This is the spare bedroom. Note the shelf on the right is one that Mark made it is now at the kids house in their storage room.

Our side, the right side, has a living room with 2 love seats and a chair. Mark has made his love seat into a “recliner”. The door you see goes out to a patio and there is a place to cook and a water spigot on the patio but we do all the cooking on the left side. I’m thinking I might like to have some lawn chairs so sit out on the patio. It’s covered so you could even sit out in the rain and not get wet. Note the nice curtains with the lace trim. I made those, can you believe it? Near the ceiling on the left there is a bare bulb, that’s how they do it here. No light fixtures just a bare bulb.

This is our bedroom with the sewing machine on the table on the right. The fabric you see on the bed is called a konga and can be used for just about anything. I see it used as rain gear, to hold a baby on your back, to wrap around like a shall to keep you warm, to wrap around your waist and use the ends for pot holders and a towel while cooking, and to wrap around when walking threw the house to the shower. There is a book title I saw called 101 ways to use a konga. Yes I had my hand in those curtains too.

The smallest bedroom Mark made into a shop area. He brought over a lot of tools

and needed a place to organize them. He’s been using a lot of what he brought. They are very impressed with his power tools. They saw by hand and then plane the wood. A lot of work.

We are pretty proud of our bathroom it is the only bathroom with a mirror. Mark made the mirror frame by hand because his power tools did not work (he blew up the chargers and had to send for new ones). We have a heater on our shower head but it was just put in. Until last week we took cold showers. On the bottom left we have an almost normal toilet. It’s bliss :-)

Next are several pictures of things that are crooked. Now if you know me very well you probably know I can’t stand crooked things! I’m sorta obsessive compulsive that way. If you look at the bedroom window you can notice the angle of the bars on the bottom of the two outside sections do not match

Next are the floor tiles, the wall is not straight.

The doorway to the outside kitchen is, as you can see, crooked. I’m not sure they know what a level is or how to use it. Seems everything is done by eyeballing it. (I’m not sure they were sober when they eyeballed it)

I’m throwing in a few other pictures as well. I caught this yellow moth sleeping one morning on the window.

Then there are the two dogs at the house one is the size of a terrier the other is the size of a min pin or a chiuaua. The bigger one is Clifford and the little one is Blackie. I had nothing to do with the names.