Dance Party... Chagga style

Culture Night...by Leo L

Hello friends and family, this is Leo. I’m blogging about Wednesday the 30^th! In the morning we all woke up at the same time as usual, 7. We had a nice breakfast and then the whole group went off to the orphanage because of the religious holiday that caused the school to be closed. While we were at the orphanage, another group of about 25 students from Ireland joined us and helped us take care of the children. At first they stole all of our thunder with their fancy balloons and bubbles, but eventually the children made their way back to us! After leaving Upendo we ate lunch and headed off to do our daily labor. It was a bright sunny day and we all worked our tails off trying to keep up with all of these ladies. We helped them to pick all of the weeds out of the farmland and help them hoe it. These ladies are at least forty or even fifty years older than us, and can kick our butts in just about any sort of labor possible! After we were finished we had our culture night. The food that was prepared for us was traditional meals that the Chagga people eat daily. It had some odd dishes, and also some wonderful ones. One of the talks of the night was the minnow salad that was set out for us to enjoy; I’m not sure many people enjoyed it as much as they were dreading trying it. We also had some ugali, which is basically a mix of corn meal and water. We got some vegetable curry to add a little taste to it but it still is very thick going down. We got to try some traditional cooked banana stew, which was very tasty. Of course we had some rice in this meal, which we have had in just about every meal since we got here except for breakfast. They also prepared some coleslaw and different types of fruit for us to have. After we were finished enjoying our traditional food, we waited for our “dance instructors” to arrive along with the wonderful drummers. After they came in and got set up it started. We had three types of dances that we learned but they all seemed to be similar in some way. For the first dance we were to sit off to the side and join the women and one man after they took our hand and brought us into the circle. Once everyone was brought in, we continued to walk in a circle around the drummers while dancing. You could tell some of the people in our group were a little more comfortable with it then others but everyone who participated loved it. After the first session of dancing for about 15 minutes ended, we got a well-deserved rest period. I don’t think I’ve seen some of us so tired and sweaty but still enjoying ourselves. Then the second session started, the boys and girls were on separate sides of the room facing each other. It started with one lady grabbing a boy to come and dance with her and then the boy would grab another girl to join in and then the girl grabbed a boy and so on till we all were dancing. This was more of a classic Prom or Homecoming type of dancing where everyone was just doing his or her thing. It was very impressive to see these ladies dance. I swear that twerking originated here in Tanzania, and the twerking here is more family friendly then what most of you are thinking right now. After the second dance was over we had another well-needed break. During this break we were told to go get any tips that we wish to give the drummers. We set all of our tips on a blanket that they laid out for us. They would then take one bill at a time and place it on the floor and do something I will most likely never be able to do. They would put their hands behind their backs and slowly do the splits until they reached the point where they could pick up the money with their mouth. One of the men even did it in jeans. It was very impressing. After that we had another break and got to dance again! This one was very similar to the first one. We were all off to the side and started dancing in a circle once they pulled us in. After the dancing was supposed to be over, it wasn’t for some of us! We were having such a good time that we decided to go onto a small section of the roof that had some chairs and a table on it. We moved those items aside and had a dance party of our own, with American music this time. We spent sometime up there before Baba Dick came up and reminded us that it was going to be another early morning with a lot of work ahead of us! We listened to a few more songs and danced harder then some of us have before and went to sleep. All around it was a wonderful night and I was ecstatic to be a part of it!

I’m having a wonderful time so far and I’m happy that I decided to come on this trip. I am loving everyone that is here and have had little to no problems with anyone because everyone is so easy-going. I met a little girl named Irene at the orphanage and she won’t let me leave her side. She likes to wear my hat so I make sure that I fit it to her head and make sure none of the other kids steal it from her! She doesn’t like it when I try to play with other children or try to hold them so I mainly just stick to her! She is very easy to have fun with and is very relaxed. She is going to be missed tremendously once I am back home. I have to say though I am missing some things back home. Mostly just hockey and my dog Rocky… But I guess I miss my family and friends too! If all of you can just come here and bring a sheet of ice with my life would be perfect! Thanks for reading.

                                                                                                            With Lots of Love!

Brief Update

Sorry, no blog... Two will be coming soon.  I hope to post two this evening (our time).  You can look for Dominic and Madeline T to write about their special trip they took with me to St. Marie Eugenie Secondary School.  Leo Lommell will also be blogging about last nights Cultural Night.  After eating a traditional meal we were... wait, I'll let Leo tell the story later.  Just know that we danced late into the night which made blogging impossible!

ALL of your children are doing very well!! Without exception, they are working hard and immersing themselves into the Tanzanian culture.  There are only two issues.  One, Mount Kilimanjaro has been very shy and we have not had a good look at it this week.  Secondly, we have had a 24 hour bug go through a few kids.  It knocks them out with an upset stomach and achy feeling - and all three of them have rebounded after only one day of rest.

Enjoy the blogs - it had 700 hits from seven different countries two days ago.  Who is reading from the Ukraine, I wonder?

Finally, I expect to post two blogs tonight (Thursday), one blog on Friday, and one on Saturday.  Then we are off on safari for two days so the next blog after that will not be until Monday or Tuesday.

Once again, thank you for sharing your child with me for this experience of culture and service.  They will return to you soon!

Baba Dick

Pictures from Manual Labor project at Jiendeleze Womens group

Pictures from Uru Secondary School

Uru Secondary School visit... by Sarah W

Hey everyone! Sarah here. So, today we got the luxury of an 8 am breakfast, however, Rylee and I still found it impossible to get there. They had to come wake us up! Oops! Anywho, after breakfast we had about an hour and a half to do whatever we needed. After that, we headed to Uru Catholic Secondary School. This school is an English speaking (except for Swahili class) boarding school, which forces the students to learn English fast. All of the students I talked to were fluent, and some of them you could barely even hear their accent, which made conversation A LOT easier and much more fun :D.  At first, we did this thing called speed dating where we stood across from one of the 16 Tanzanian students. We would introduce ourselves and talk about a question that was given to us for about two minutes. One of the questions was, “What would you like to be in the future?” It was weird to see that none of them answered with “teacher,” they all said things like “doctor” or “accountant.” When it was later asked why, they said that most teachers are poor and don’t get enough money. Another question was, “If you could go anywhere in the world where would it be?” The girl I was talking to right away said New York. I then went on to tell her about how I had taken a school trip to New York earlier this year. It was just cool to see how when I was explaining to her what New York was like, her eyes would just light up! She was so intrigued to hear what I had to say. Most of the time, two minutes wasn’t long enough. The conversations would just end in the middle because you had to move on to the next person. It surprised me to see that they were just as interested to talk to us as we were to talk to them. They were also very friendly and always had huge smiles on their faces while talking to us! All of the conversations seemed easy and not forced; as if you were talking to one of your friends. After sixteen rounds of speed dating, we sat across from the other students and asked questions out loud as a large group. It was really interesting to hear some of their answers. For instance, a question came up that asked about going on after secondary school to a “University” (college) and what motivates them to do so. While most of our answers were kind of like, “It’s expected” or “I want more opportunities,” their answers were more on the lines of, “So I can provide for my widowed mother/family” or “For a better future in my life.” This really stuck with me because I feel like I always hear about this on commercials or other places at home. I always knew it was true, but it never really seemed real until today when I actually heard it come from one of them.  Another interesting question was “how do you celebrate birthdays?” It was weird to hear them say that they also have cake and blow out candles, just like we do. A question also arose that had to do with dating. We told them that dating in our culture is fairly common, and we tend to hangout with them alone. Their answer was very different. They said that dating was looked down upon and happened in secret. They thought it was a distraction from their studies. After that, we met up with the student we started the speed dating with and gave them a gift that we brought from America. Then we said goodbye and left. We then went on our way to Jesca’s house where we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. After that we did our manual labor with the women’s group. Then when that was done we took a dala dala back to our place. While in the crammed dala dala we came upon backed up traffic. We sat in the traffic for about 15 minutes then we decided to take a different route. We found out later that there was a pretty big accident. Once we got back to our place we hung out for a bit then ate dinner and hung out more and then went to bed. It was a pretty swiggity day I’d say.

           

            Ps. I’m sorry I know I should miss you family, but I don’t. I mean I still love ya and all. <3 <3 But it’s so awesome here!! Also HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY ERIN!! (: (from me and dad) Don’t miss us too much ;D and shout out to Buck Buck Loberg! Lawlz.  

Special Birthday Wishes from Jamie B

I want to wish my mom, Tracy, a very happy "32nd" birthday!! I hope you have an amazing day today and know I'm thinking of you.  I miss you and I love you.

Love, Jamie

Mass and Town... by David S

Hello everybody! My name is David and I will be walking you through our day. Today was our first Sunday in Moshi and the atmosphere in town was a bit more mild. We walked in small groups to the Cathedral for Mass. Our goal was to be the first group to make it through the entire Mass without anyone fainting or having to leave during the service. The conditions seemed ripe for success; a relatively brisk morning, the service was in English, and the priest was moving through it pretty fast. Everyone made it just fine and Mass was very nice. There was a lot of energy and Rylee speaks for everyone when she says that the children’s singing was beautiful. It was easy to appreciate Mass and all the work that was put into it and it was interesting to see how differently things were done compared to church back home. After church, we split up again into the small groups and started walking around town. It was fun to look at all of the different shops and restaurants. Like I said, town was a lot less busy than usual. This really gave us a chance to walk through Moshi and take it all in. At one point, my group, consisting of me, Josh, Noah, and Leo led by Jon, had about 8 guys following us, trying to get us to visit their shops. We saw plenty of awesome artwork and carvings. Today was the first chance that we really got to barter with the shop owners. At first, a couple of us were a bit uncomfortable, but that goes away after your first buy. By the end of the day we were all pretty happy with our purchases, mostly on account of that ever so fulfilling feeling of buying that perfect gift for another person rather than yourself. When we got back to the lodge, we had yet another chance to buy some merchandise provided by the Jiendeleze Women’s group. The rest of the afternoon was designated to resting. No time was wasted here and most of us were passed out in our rooms until dinner. After another great meal, we had our nightly meeting recapping our day and talking about tomorrow. We will be visiting a secondary school and talking with some kids closer to our age. Personally, I am looking forward to this because I haven’t gotten a good chance to talk to people besides the merchants and fly catchers. In the afternoon we will be working with the Jiendeleze women to help them with some projects. I will let you read all about that in tomorrow’s blog and try not to spoil it. Goodnight and God bless!

Pictures!

Coffee Tour by Savana P

Hey everyone, this is Savana! Since today was a Saturday, and the school was closed, we spent the day out and about in town. Today was a late breakfast… 7:30 A.M. After our “late” breakfast, two different groups headed into town. The main part of our morning was to get money with our cards and to have our first look at all the different things we could buy. Some went to small shops full of artwork and others went to a store in town named Reagans. After this we all had a long walk through the hectic town full of shops, people, and crazy drivers. We met up together at Shah’s Industries, which was another art shop, and we waited for our bus to arrive. Because of “Africa Time”, we ended up waiting for a while, then our bus finally arrived an hour later.

Baba Dick decided to go on a new adventure! He decided that we were going to go on a tour of a coffee farm. We learned the process of how to farm a coffee bean. First we took a long slippery trail to the small coffee farm. Once we arrived at the coffee farm, we were guided by a man who looked like Morgan Freemans Brother. He lead us around the small coffee farm, we started collecting coffee beans from a tiny tree. Once we choose the ripe coffee beans we came up to a machine that separated the coffee beans the outer shell. After the machine we smashed the beans with a mortar and pestle. Then we went over to clay pot over a fire and cooked the coffee beans to a dark brown. Once they were down a women who lived in the farm picked the burning bowl up with leaves, which seems like it would be awful, but worked like a charm and poured them back in the pestle. Then again we smashed the beans in the pestle. After the coffee was ground up we went to go and boil the coffee in the small clay pot. We all decided we like strong coffee, which was an awful decision, but we drank our coffee black.

After our coffee, we took our walk back to a little house to eat our meal. The meal the fed us was the most traditional meal we have had all week. Our first course was banana soup, which was delicious, but so filling. After the soup, we were served cooked banana stew, which was also amazing. After we were finished with our meal, we were served a traditional banana drink. The drink was very strong and had seeds in it which were questionable, but most of us enjoyed it.

After our meal we took another walk to a cave. We went down into the cave in groups of five, our travel groups. The cave was small and narrow, so we had to crawl part of the way. A few people experienced bats, including Elizabeth who freaked out because a bat landed on her arm, but to be fair I think anyone would. While waiting for groups to exit the cave enjoyed games, gave back rubs, enjoyed each others company, and Morgan and Sarah had a pretty cool experience. During this time Morgan and Sarah were talking to local kids in the neighborhood and they asked them their name and age, then asked if they knew English and they did not respond. The two of them decided to go and get large water bottles and give them to the children. The smiles on their faces were unbelievable. It was like all their dreams had come true in a huge water bottle. Then we started on our way back to the lodge.

            When we came home we had supper then just hung around the lodge. This whole week has been amazing and a huge eye opener. Our cultures and things that make us happy are so much different. We miss people but we never want to leave Africa. It’s nice not knowing what time it is and hardly what day it is.

             I miss my family but sorry guys I’m having a great time in Africa. Momma and Molly I think about you a lot and I love you but I love Africa. I’m staying here forever I decided. Also I met the most amazing little girl, her name is Clara. I can’t wait to show you pictures of her and everything else. P.S. Can I have some more money? Thank you. Love youJ