Some Extras-Time for Swahili Lessons!

Along with doing our placements in the morning, some of us go to an orphanage in the afternoons. The orphanage that we go to is called Matumaini, which I recently learned is Swahili for hope. Some of my kids from my school live there. It is a lot of fun to play games with the kids. They love hand games. Their favorite one is called Amina. It reminds me a little bit of our hand game called lemonade. They also have Down by the Banks, which is a lot of fun to play with them. There are about 10 and 15 kids. I always look forward to going to the orphanage and seeing all of the kids.

One of the things that we did for them is we bought them mattresses, because the ones that they had were old and ratty, and most of the beds don’t have mattresses at all. A bunch of people chipped in and they are all really happy. The kids ages range from 3 to 15 both boys and girls. The orphanage is also somewhat new, so they need help putting it all together. Whenever we get there the kids always run into our arms and are so excited when we get there to visit them.

This week was another great week. We had a fun and hard time volunteering with one day off. That day, we went to Arusha (which is the biggest town closest to us) for a very crazy and unlucky day. We took the early van that left at 9:00am because we had to take care of some things. The first thing on our list was to set our next set of plane tickets strait. We wanted to be able to get from Zanzibar to Nairobi instead of some other crazy plan. That worked out HORRIBLY because we had a power outage for twenty minutes while we were trying to get the tickets and we couldn’t get our refundable tickets refunded and we had to use ALL of our cash. All that we had left was about 5,000 Tanzanian Shillings, which is equivalent to a little under 5 dollars. After that ordeal, we finally went to our lunch spot at a museum and ate our not-so-good lunch boxes. After that we went to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR). We went up and down the to the different floors before we found the right one. While we were there, we were told that we had to wait for another court hearing to finish. After waiting for a really long time, we got in a got our translators and then, we were told that we had to leave because of some problem that I couldn’t understand. Overall, that was a pretty unsuccessful trip.

We finished up the week with an overnight near the Maasai Tribes. That was fun, but a little bit disappointing. We enjoyed the experience of seeing the village (which is called a Boma) and the cattle coming back, and them milking the cows. We saw some of the warriors do a dance and the Maasai children were ADORABLE. We all had fun and then, after a while of being there, we headed back to the campsite. We sang songs around the campfire, they weren’t all Tanzanian songs either! Our guide had his guitar, it was a lot of fun. It got late really fast, so when we were all ready to go to bed, we all headed to our separate tents. I shared my tent with Sarah. We talked for a little while and then we attempted to go to sleep. None of us slept very well because of the hard bottoms. The next morning we woke up and went on a long hike to visit the place where the men went when they were sick. They made this disgusting beef stew that I would never ever eat. After that, we went back down to another Boma, and we saw a traditional Maasai healer. It was disappointing because I felt like we didn’t get immersed in the Maasai culture as much as we could have, but despite that, the weekend was a lot of fun.

This week we volunteered again on Monday and Tuesday as usual, but on Wednesday (Valentines Day) I went to another nursery school called Step-Up Nursery School with another volunteer named Mattie Liebgott. It is much different than the volunteering that I have been doing at Kigangoni. It is in a pretty nice building with floors. There are real teachers and supplies. There also are 33 kids instead of 50. That was fun. We made Valentines for all of them and it seemed like they were having fun. We gave them cookies and then headed home.

Today we tried again in Arusha, and we made it to the Tribunal, but it was so boring (people over the age of 17 seemed to find it interesting). We watched one section, got a snack, read our books and then we had another no-so-good lunch box. We all slept practically the whole way home.


Today (February 16, 2007) was our last day of placements. My mom and I went to Kigangoni Nursery School as usual, but this time we prepared something special for them. We took individual pictures of all of the kids. We printed them and put one of each child in an envelope with a new exercise book, stickers, and a pencil. We also gave them a little treat of cookies, which they seemed to love.

I know that you are not supposed to pick favorites, but you just can’t help it, right? There are two little girls and two little boys that I really love. The girls are Dyaki and Sharifa, and the boys are Clement and Alexi. Both Sharifa and Alexi live at Matumaini, but Clement likes to play there. We call Clement, Clemente kitcha, which in Kiswahili means Crazy Clement. Dyaki was one of the first little girls I met at school, she is so adorable and kind. It is so sad that I will most likely never see these kids again, which just kills me. The worst part is, that because of the language barrier, it is hard to communicate, so they don’t know that I am leaving. I really hope the kids are as sweet in Thailand as they are here. I will miss being called mzugu (white person) as I walk down the streets here, but I know that my next stop will be just as, or more, fun.

SOME KISWAHILI VOCABULARY THAT YOU WOULD KNOW:

Hakuna Matata: No Worries

Simba: Lion

Rafiki: Friend

Shenzi: Stupid (Lion King Hyena)

OTHER IMPORTANT WORDS

Jambo: Hello Ndiyo: Yes

Mambo: What’s Up? Hapana: No

Poa/Safi/Dole: Cool/Nothing Nzuri: Good

Habari: How are you? Sana: Very

Asubuhi: Morning Baadye: I’ll see you later today.

Chana: Afternoon Mbaya: Bad

Gioni: Evening Jina laco ni nani?: What is your name?

Mama: Mother Mimi ni: I am

Baba: Father Mimi: I

Dada: Sister Wewe: You

Kaka: Brother Kwaheri: Goodbye

Karibu: Welcome

Numbers 1-10: moja, mbili, tatu, nne, tano, sita, saba, nane, tisa, kumi