Busy Busy

6/24/09
Whoh-this week has flown by and the internet at the house has been broke so I haven’t done a very good job with the journaling. Let’s start with placement this week….the teacher of my class is back! Woohoo! What a difference have two sets of eyes in the class makes…not to mention a teacher who actually speaks Swahili. The kids have been great and it’s been really nice to have another adult in the room to chat with. The teacher I’m with is Madame Ester and she was gone because her son had to have surgery. She has two kids (8 and 9) and they both go to school in Kenya and live with their grandmother…I can’t imagine how hard it must be to not see your little kids during the year! So in short this week at school has been great so far…and no crying…we even got to take pictures at recess today….O-H-I-O with the little ones haha :-)
We have had a busy schedule after school this week…Monday was a Batik art class where they showed us how they do the famous East African art of Batik…we learned something interesting about the artistic talents of the Niemiec kids :-) Also on Monday, we went out after dinner to get ice cream sundaes at a place called Deli Chez….yum! 3 scoops ice cream sundaes for 2,500 tsh…about 2 bucks.
On Tuesday, after placement we went to an HIV support group to make up the placement time we miss Friday on the safari. Wow-talk about emotionally draining. We visited three homes of members who were too sick to come to the support group. It was incredibly sad to see the way they live and how often they are shunned by the community. Lauren, Catherine and I are going to try and go back there and help next week after placement if we can. They won’t let us go officially as a placement because they meet in the yard of someone who sells soda in the evening and says they can stay there til 6…they don’t even have their own place to meet. But we are going to try and go on our own…I felt such a connection to Mama Sarah, she is the women in charge who is also HIV positive, I really want to do more to help.
After the HIV group, we came back and got ready to go to a cultural dinner and dance….hahahaha is really all I have to say about the night! Matt and Stephen completely stole the show…they were hilarious! Not only was Matt’s dancing crazy/awesome/hysterical but then after when the acrobats were showing people how to climb up the pole and do tricks…Matt and Stephen went after them twice….and actually DID close to what they showed!! It was insane haha. Everyone was laughing so hard at them and I got some pretty sweet videos of Matt’s dance moves (unfortunately I didn’t have my camera on me for the acrobatics so you’ll just have to take my word for it!
Ok, We are about to head to Arusha to the location of the Rwanda Criminal Court trials….so cross your fingers that the trial today is public and not private.
Amani,
Valerie