Sunday July 10, 2011 – Until We Meet Again

There is no passion to be found playing small, settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
- Nelson Mandela

I can’t believe I’m leaving today and my journey is winding to an end. I’ve had an amazing experience in Tanzania that I will hold with me forever. I’ve learned so much, grown as a person, and made friendships here that will last forever. Coming to Africa has changed my perspective on countless things.  I am so much more aware of the inequalities of this world and just how lucky I am to live in a country that provides me with so many opportunities. I am also aware of how I want to help those that don’t have the things that our country does. Although my impact here was small, the time I spent with the kids at Kidzcare and Boona Baana have not only given me the drive to continue helping Africa but in a way it also gave me an obligation to. Africa is a place of inequality, poverty, violence, and deprivation, yet I was able to fall in love with it. It was an experience I wouldn’t have changed for the world and one that no one can understand fully unless they have been there! Asante sana Africa! Until next time….

Saturday July 9, 2011 – Slumber Party at Boona Baana

We continued making the scrapbooks for the boona baana kids this morning and they are just about done. The other girls will give them to the kids after I leave and they will each have one for themselves to keep. Tonight we slept over at boona baana! The power was out until 11pm and since it gets dark at around 7pm every night without fail, we ended up having to use flashlights and then we played capture the flag outside with glow sticks! Once the power went on we went inside and watched a movie, the kids picked “Never Say Never” the movie about Justin Bieber! K, J, and I were falling asleep near the end of the movie and had to go to bed haha, but the rest of the kids stayed up for a bit! In the morning Mama B made us Chai and bread for breakfast. Saying good-bye sucked, for lack of a better word! I left my email with them, but it’s gonna be hard not seeing them anymore especially because we were with them three days a week every week!

The way to happiness -- keep your heart free from hate, your mind free from worry, live simply, expect little, give much.
-- Carol Borges

That night we went out for dinner for my last night. We walked to this hotel/restaurant called Mediterrano right on the beach! It was really nice there and their seats looked like canoes! It was nice to have one last dinner with my Tanzanian family and also to play peaches and pits for the last time with them (a tradition I’m going to carry on!).

The whole gang!

Friday July 8, 2011 - Daima katika moyo wangu (Always in my heart)

Went to Kidzcare again today, and it was so much fun. I’ve really bonded with them. Having to tell them that I was leaving to go back to Canada was hard and both little E and E gave me the longest hugs in the world. They didn’t want to let go and I didn’t either. I had no idea how hard it was going to be to say bye to these kids until I was driving away and the tears started falling. Still thinking about it now makes my heart hurt, but I’m so thankful that I got to be a part of their lives for these last few months of my life because it opened my eyes in so many ways. These kids have had so much heartache and obstacles in their short lives but you would never guess it by meeting them. Their perseverance, love for life, and glowing personalities will remain in my memory forever.

“In the harshest place on Earth, ... love finds a way.”
-- Morgan Freeman

Thursday July 7, 2011 – Saba Saba…A Tanzanian work holiday

Got the ingredients to make pizza’s with the boona baana kids tonight. Luckily Shoppers and the local duka were open because it is the Saba Saba holiday today so many of the shops and businesses are closed. The holiday celebrates the 1954 founding of the TANU or Tanganyika African National Union, a Tanzanian political party. Saba Saba means “seven seven” in Kswahili and in Dar es Salaam there is an International Trade Fair held every year on this date. Mary told us that they never go it and that we shouldn’t either because we would get mugged! One year she was walking down the street with her daughter near there and she got pushed down on the ground and they wanted money and she was so worried about her daughter, but when she got up her daughter was hitting the man, which made her even more fearful but nothing bad came of it. Also got pictures printed off for the scrapbooks were planning on making for each one of the kids so they have something special with pictures of themselves and some of us in them when we leave. We made pizzas with the kids and they had so much fun. We played peaches and pits with them and just hung out outside for a bit, talked, laughed, told stories, and took pictures.

Wednesday July 6, 2011

The fact is that there is enough food in the world for everyone. But tragically, much of the world's food and land resources are tied up in producing beef and other livestock--food for the well off--while millions of children and adults suffer from malnutrition and starvation.
-- Dr.Walden Bello

Went to KidzCare again today. Got to see the primary school that was just recently painted inside and new desks were put in. It looks really nice now and the teacher is able to use the paintings on the walls to teach because there are animals, body parts, the alphabet, numbers, and different things like that on the walls so less books are needed. We played with the kids and read with them and then A taught Jocelyn and I how to dance! Jenny brought pipe cleaners and the kids loved making flowers, bracelets, eye glasses, rings, necklaces, spiders, snakes and people out of them! Kara, E, E, D, F, and I had some girl time lying on the trampoline, singing and laughing. When we were about to leave E asked me if I could sleep over at their house with them, and I really wish we could have!

We got home around 6:30pm, had dinner and then Brooke and Marco, the owners of Boona Baana came over after dinner for coffee and pie to talk about our future plans with the kids and also about children’s rights in Tanzania because Brooke is a lawyer here and deals with a lot of cases involving children’s rights. It was nice to hear their ideas and know that we are going to be working on projects that they need and will be beneficial to the kids and to their organization. I learned that not until 2010 were there any laws specifically in place for kids and even when there were some in place they weren’t implemented much. Also, the government and social welfare systems don’t care about the children, they are greedy and in it for themselves. As for boona baana, we talked a bit about sponsoring and they stated they would like if the kids were involved with the money they are receiving in the sense that they would learn budgeting and learn some money skills. I thought it was a good idea. Brooke and Marco have had numerous amounts of volunteers throughtout their fourteen years of owning Boona Baana and they said they have had some good volunteers but they have had many bad volunteers also. We asked them what made a bad volunteer and Brooke basically said “there are two kinds of volunteers, those who want to fill a gap, and those who are fulfilled already”. The one’s that are there looking to fill a gap and there to try and get something out of it tend to complain a lot and don’t get as involved with the kids. They have a lot of volunteers that had completely different ideas of what Africa and even boona baana would be like before they got there and when they are there they can’t deal with the reality. Brooke also mentioned this website: http://foreverangels.org/ and it’s honestly worth a look! It’s a home in Tanzania for orphaned children. After they left we all went to a place called Joevic that has karaoke and was about a four minute drive down the road from us.

Monday July 4, 2011 - kuishi, upendo, cheka

Went on a jog this morning. Then went to slipway at 10am to get rest of the things I need for presents and stuff. Jocelyn and I shopped around and found this one store that had a sign for sale that read “Love many, trust few, learn to paddle your own canoe”, I thought it was cute! We went to novel idea again and I got another book because I’m a sucker for books! It’s called “Dead Aid” and it’s all about foreign aid in Africa and why it doesn’t work as well as we are lead to believe it does. We found this book in the book store that had a bunch of African proverbs in it and were flipping through and found this one:

Wise Kiswahili proverb: “If you play in mud you will get splashed” (HAHA…so wise ;))

Jocelyn and I made our own wise proverb of today: “If you eat peanut butter for breakfast you will get full” (We can be wise too ;))

Behind slipway there’s a market where you can buy lots of souvenirs. Jocelyn, Kara, and I found this lady that did henna so we got some done on our hands! It looked really good! It was the black henna kind so it kinda looks like were being taking over by some black creature like in Spider Man 2, but it’s pretty at the same time!

We went to boona baana in the afternoon and painted some pictures outside with the kids. Man am I going to miss them!

Sunday July 3, 2011

http://wamamakahawa.wordpress.com/

Went to this coffee shop today with everyone to do some work. The women who own it, hand roast the coffee themselves and it’s all from Tanzania.

One week left today L Hung out at the house in the morning with K, J, and J. We made lists of what Kara and I have to do in our next week before I leave and K’s parents come (and they all go to Arusha and then Zanzibar). Then we went to boona baana and had a good day there. All the boona baana kids (E, S, I, L, A, M, I) plus Brooke and Marco's kids (E, T, M, A, J) were there and some of the community kids (A, A, E, A), so it was good! We told the kids that K and I would be leaving in a week and I was really sad and E wouldn’t let go of me for the rest of the time after she found out.

Tonight after dinner we had a meeting with Cherie to discuss the article she gave us to read about NGO’s and whether they have positive or negative effects on the developing countries. What I got from the article is that NGO’s can be both positive and negative depending on who is running them and what they choose to put their money towards. Some of the larger NGO’s out there end up allocating their money in ways that benefit the company and employees more than the cause they set out to help. This was so evident in my time in Dar because you’d see the houses of people who work for NGO’s and their fancy rides and just wonder where that money came from. On the other hand though there are NGO’s like Boona Baana who are run by passionate people who’s hearts believe in what they are doing. The owners of boona baana do not live luxurious lives, in fact they own a house just down the street from boona baana and most of their money goes towards boona baana and also their own adopted and biological children. This is how NGO’s should be run, therefore it completely depends on who’s in charge and I realize that larger NGO’s need to keep their business going and support their workers but when an employee is taking in a one million dollar a year salary I think there’s been some wrong turns along the way. I’ve learned it’s important to research an NGO’s background before donating money to them to guarantee your money is going where you believe it’s going. I think that a few larger NGO’s have given NGO’s in general a bad rep, but all in all I think that most NGO’s do their part and have positive impacts on the people and communities they help and without them Tanzania and other countries wouldn’t be where they are now.