I currently have cornrows....

Sorry for not writing with more regularity!  Things have been a little crazy.

For the past two weeks we have been hosting our arts workshop at the Umoja Youth Empowerment Center.  This center is the first facility that AAI worked with.  It started off as a one-week project, but now we have an entire two weeks with the students.  They are all very eager and willing to take huge risks.  It is exciting to work with students that are so comfortable with each other that they hold nothing back.

Last Wednesday night Elsie, one of the teachers from ISM, has us over to her house for dinner.  Her two sons were our students at ISM.  They had their driver pick us up from the center of town and drive us to their home.  We bumped around in the back seat of a truck up to the tippytop of a hill where her house lies.  On our way up we made a sharp right turn and encountered an entire heard of goats and cows that a local Masaai boy was moving around.  The driver must have been used to this because he just drove straight on through, knowing that the animals would part for the car.  Once at Elsie's she had a beautiful meal for us.  She is Scottish, as is one of our team mates, so she had some traditional Scottish foods.  We ended the night with watching a video of the ISM Student Dance from their performance the previous Friday.  It was great to get to see her again.  Her home was beautiful!  It was a once story house with really high ceilings and tons of windows.  She pays 200,000tsh per month for renting her house and the acre of land that it sits on.  That is about $175.

Thursday night several of us from the hostel went to ViaVia to hang out.  People here only go out on Thursday and Saturdays, so Thursday it was!  After a couple drinks I fear that we ended up being the entertainment, rather than the live band playing, but it was fun anyway!  It was a terrible reggae band, so we spiced things up.  We were snuggled into our beds by 11:30 since we had to teach the next day.

Friday wasn’t very eventful, so let’s move on to Saturday!

Four AAI teammates, including me, woke up at 5am on Saturday morning to head to ISM.  Eanna, the principal of ISM, met us there with a thermos of hot coffee and his big jeep.  We piled in and tumbled around the back of his truck for the two hours it took us to drive to the Tarengire National Park.  We had mentioned to Eanna that we wanted to do a cheap one-day safari to a nearby national park.  Eanna offered that since his family is out of town and he has a jeep, he would love to take us around the Tarengire Park.  We spent all morning driving around the park stopping to watch animals that would walk right up the road.  Throughout the day we saw zebras, two warthogs, two dikdiks, vervat monkeys, elephants, waterbucks, impala, giraffes, wildebeest, a grey headed king fisher, a barbat bird, a long crested eagle, a yellow neck spur fowl, a southern ground-hornbill, a von der ficken’s hornbill,  a lilac crested roller,  secretary birds, a monitor lizard, a pie king fisher, love birds, mongoose(mongeese?), and gazelles.  Eanna is a bird watcher, so he could spot birds far in the distance and identify them using this huge, foot-long camera lens.  I have two favorite moments from our safari (which is the Kiwsahili word for journey).  As we were driving we passed a small body of water.  No animals were there, so we kept on driving.  We then encountered a slow moving jeep, and decided to turn around and take a different route.  Thank goodness we did!  Just as we were approaching the waterhole agin, a group of about 25 zebras were walking up to it.  Some just drank, but others indulged in a full-blown bath.  We switched off our engine and listened to them lap up the water and splash all around.  When they were finished they all headed off as a group in the direction that they came from.  We turned on our car and kept heading down the road.  Just up the road the spotted a lone elephant bull. He was walking in our general direction and we shortly realized he was headed for the waterhole as well.  We did a quick 27-point turn on the tiny dirt road and settled in a quiet spot behind a tree to watch the elephant.  The approached the water delicately and took his time drinking through his trunk.  I swear he must have only gotten a drop each time he brought his trunk to his mouth because the moment he took his trunk out of his mouth tons of water would splash back to the ground.  Didn’t seem like this method of drinking was efficient to me, but then again he seemed to be in hurry.  After his drink he walked around the waterhole and made way to us.  Eanna was very careful to quickly turn on the engine and start off in the other directly.  Mr. Elephant took our hint and decided to use the tree we had been hiding behind as his scratching post.  We listened as he shook the tree with each itch.  Then, to top it off, we sat and watched as he pood, peed, and went on his way.  It was really an experience!

For lunch Eanna arranged for us to go to a safari lodge that is within the National Park.  A friend of a friend owns the lodge, and made us feel very welcome.  The dining area sat at the top of a cliff, so we ate our sandwiches and looked out into a real life version of scene you would see in The Lion King.  We took turns with Eanna’s binoculars spotting elephants, giraffes, and zebras splash around in the almost-dry river that ran through the park.

My second favorite moment came towards the end of the day.  Rainy season just ended, so the park was full of fresh, green life.  With this life comes migration!  As we were driving on one of the winding roads we came face to face with some zebras that were crossing the road.  As we stopped to let them pass, we realized that these guys were not alone.  There was a line in front of them and line behind them that stretched far beyond what we would see.  These zebras were migrating and we happened to catch them enroute.  As we continued on the road we followed the line of zebras.  Sometimes they traveled in large clumps with spaces in between, and sometimes they formed a clean single-file line.  The moment they heard our engine fire up again they would scurry away and stare back at us waiting for us to drive off.   I would say that we saw a total of 400-600 zebras on our little adventure.

Needless to say, we all passed out on Saturday around 9pm with tired eyes from searching the horizon all day.

Sunday was uneventful, and Monday we went back to Umoja.  We spent all week teaching classes and prepping for our performance that we are having tonight. 

Thursday night the four dancers of the group arranged to have a “teaser” performance at ViaVia, our venue for our performance with Umoja,  Like I said, Thursday night is a hot night at ViaVia and the place is filled with mzungus.  We scheduled to have a three minutes performance at about 12:05 on the big stage at ViaVia.  We prepped a short piece an hour before and headed to ViaVia around 11:30.  There is a little something they have here that they call TT, or Tanzania Time.  We didn’t end up going on stage until 1:45!  They managed to entice a huge crowd of people to watch our mini-performance and we ended up staying until 3 trying to spread news about our show and sell tickets.  We will see if our “teaser” was interesting enough to get people to come tonight.

Yesterday we took all 42 kids to ViaVia for a rehearsal in the space.  A lot of the old Umoja students came to watch our rehearsal because they can’t come to the show tonight.  We also had several translators and Umoja administrators there with us to help communicate with the kids.  At the end of our rehearsal they performed two thank-you/goodbye songs they had prepared for us.  There were, of course, tears involved and it will be really hard to say goodbye to these greats kids, some of which are older than us, after the show tonight.

One day this week, I honestly can’t remember when, Molly and I stayed after school because the girls wanted to play with our hair.  We somhow managed to leave Umoja with four cornrows.  Molly’s are on the left side of her head, and mine are on the right.  I have to admit, we both look gangsta.  We have taken copious pictures showing them off.

I just got a little preview of a video that will be posted on AAI’s website later today.  If you have time, take a look!  You will get to see my lovely cornrows, and I almost bite the dust right at the beginning.

Thanks for reading!

Today I rode a camel....

But more on that later!

This past week we spent all of our time at ISM.  We had a wonderful time with the students because they are all so enthusiastic and willing to take risks.  The teachers were just the same, and participated in classes as much at students did.

Wednesday after school AAI took a dunk in ISM’s ice tank, I mean pool.  It was frigid, but a good break from the sun we had been working in all day.  After that, Eanna, the principal of ISM’s Arusha Campus, had AAI over for pizza and beer.  He pulled out of the ISM parking lot and suddenly drove down a steep dirt path.  Turns out he lives just on the opposite side of the bushes from ISM, along with several other teachers.  Eanna’s neighbors and the nine of us spent the evening chatting and watching the sunset with Mount Maru in the background.  Eanna was so welcoming and made us feel very at home.

Thursday was mostly spent preparing for our collaborative show on Friday.  All day we reviewed the student pieces with them, and then spent the afternoon teching our own pieces for the performance.  All of this hard work paid off, however, because the show went very well.  After an introduction from Eanna, the students performed the prologue of Romeo & Juliet, and sang two songs.  The AAI performed a total of eight pieces, several from each division, followed by a dance finale performed by ISM Students to Mary J. Blige’s ‘Fine.’  They did a fine job indeed, and made us very proud.  Our experience at ISM ended with a beautiful thank you from all of the students, including flowers, ISM shirts, and traditional African bags for all of the AAI members.

In addition to all of the love we received, ISM really helped us out financially.  They gave us a set amount for our work over the week, gave us the proceeds from the performance tickets, as agreed, and surprised us by giving us all of the proceeds from the reception after the performance.  We really could not have finagled a better deal out of them. Our program was entitled “START,” and we can only hope that it really was the start of something great for both parties.

Saturday we started the morning off with a good ol’ AAI meeting, which we have almost everyday.  In the afternoon most of us went to the dress rehearsal for a show that the local Suzuki based music program is having next week.  It was at Shanga, the place we went last weekend.  We met some of the administrators and instructors from this Suzuki program at ISM and they invited us to their dress rehearsal since we are busy during their actual performance.  Once we arrived to Shanga, Molly, my classmate, and I spent almost a half an hour trying to take pictures of the monkeys that were bouncing from tree to tree.  Once the rehearsal really got goin’ we stayed until far past sunset.  It was a little hard to concentrate, however, because the monkeys sat above us eyeing our food the whole time.

Today, most of us spent an entire day at the Karibu Fair.  Quiz: Who can tell me what Karibu means?!?!?! The fair was filled with stands from airlines, international schools, safari companies, and lodge owners.  We split up the group and headed to as many stands as possible.  My group was in charge of making contact with international schools all over East Africa to try and find new places to host our workshops.  Some of the school were very interested, and would even be able to provide housing when/if we teach there.  It is really exciting to meet people who are excited about our project and want to bring a larger arts curriculum to their schools.  After all the work was done was when the camel rides happened.  There was an option to ride in a helicopter for 60,000 tsh (about $40), but there was no way I was going to spend that kind of money!  Instead I spent 2,000tsh ($1.50) to ride on a camel’s back around the fair grounds.  Twas quite an experience, and although I didn’t get a picture, I will remember it forever.

Tomorrow we start a two-week workshop at the Umoja Youth Empowerment Center.  This center is for people aged 15-30 that were knocked out of the government run school system.  At Umoja they learn vocational skills, English, and Math.  There will be a bigger language barrier at this facility, but we are getting Swahili lessons in the mornings, so that should help.

I feel like there are so many little things that happen everyday that are exciting and fun, but do not come to my mind when writing this blog.  Today we were on the side of the road trying to get on a DalaDala, when a van of Mzungus offered us a ride to the fair instead. Yea yea, Dad, I know what you are thinking.  We got in anyway, and held our door locks up the entire ride just in case.  They got us to the fair safe and sound, but it was still a bit of a risk.  We have learned here that if a car does not have a white license plate then it is not a real taxi.  We have ridden in four taxis now and we have gotten a phone number for each one.  We have a favorite taxi driver named Freddy who has a large car that can cart us all around.  No matter where we are, how late is it, or how many of us there are, we can usually call Freddy to get a ride.  He doesn't really speak English, but we have been able to communicate for the most part.

Other than our little transportation adventures things been been fairly calm.  Today I learned how to say, "I am a human."  I plan to say it next time a little kid points to me and says, "Mzungu!!" My response could either make someone think twice before saying "Mzungu" again, or get me a nice black eye.  We shall see!

Will write again at the end of this week!

Finishing the First Week

It is a chilly Monday night in Arusha, Tanzania and the AAI team members are all passed out.  Today was our first day of a five-day arts intensive at the International School of Moshi in Arusha.  The students in today’s workshop are children of UN workers and safari company owners.  They pay to attend ISM and get a wonderful education.  Our workshop is taking over for the week, so we have the students from 8:30am to 3:30pm everyday.  They are split into three groups and see each division (dance, music, and drama) for an hour in the morning, and then have a long rehearsal in the afternoon in preparation for a collaborative performance on Friday.  The students today were super focused and willing to take risks.  Even the teachers participated in our dance classes and allowed themselves to look foolish to get the kids to feel comfortable.  It is a great environment to teach in and we can already see kids starting to come out of their shells.  Teaching three classes and hosting a three-hour rehearsal, however, seems to be taking a toll on AAI’s bodies and our voices.  Sleep will be, or already has been, welcomed tonight.

The days since I wrote last have all blurred together in my memory.  I just spent ten minutes talking to my teammates about what we did Friday – Sunday because I couldn’t remember.  They set me straight.

Thursday a small group of us visited the ISM campus.  We got a feel for the school and were introduced to all of the teachers.  It was lucky to have been to the campus before we started teaching this week because we were able to see the ten keyboards, five drums, and several other musical instruments that these kids get to work with everyday.  Seeing this made the team, especially the music teachers, rework our lesson plans to accommodate for the wonderful arts curriculum at ISM.

After ISM the whole team went to ViaVia, a local restaurant, to meet with Caroline who runs the Umoja Youth Empowerment Center.  We will be running a two-week workshop there starting next Monday.

Friday I wasn’t planned to teach at all, but I was able to tag long with a group that went to MaruView Primary School.  A local man, named Papa Juma, owns a big plot of land that all of the neighborhood kids used to play on.  He decided that since they are around anyway, he might as well teach them.  He converted one of his old chicken coops into two classrooms and hired two teachers.  Once his school was a little more established he asked the Tanzanian government for financial support, but because his classrooms were too small they denied him any help.  He made room for two more classrooms, built a small playground, and got his funding!  He now has 50 students, all under the age of 5 that come to his school everyday to eat breakfast, take classes in Swahili, English, and Math, and eat lunch.  Everyday Friday they have a physical education type class in a field down the hill from the school.  This is where we come in!  For our entire stay in Arusha half of our team will spend Friday morning in a muddy field working on basic arts activities with these children.  We encourage them to use English, and try to get them to gain a greater awareness of their bodies.  These students are literally the cutest kids ever.  They all look up at your with big eyes wanting you to pick them up.  If you give in then you are a goner because everyone wants a turn.  When we lined them up to take them down to the field we had such order, but the second we got onto the street the kids took off for the field without listening to a word we were saying.  They all live nearby so letting them run free isn’t too scary, so says their regular teachers.  The field that we worked in was very spacious, but it also served as a popular walkway for locals.  At one point I looked over and a man was walking through the field, presumably to work, with a machete in hand.  Comforting!  The kids, however, took no notice to the passersbys and were very enthused about all of the games we played and song we sang.

Friday night most of the group went to a placed called The Mango Tree.  We went with two girls who are staying the hostel, one from England and the other from Israel.  Tamar, the Israeli, lives just twenty minutes away from my friend, Yossi, who lives in Haifa.  We will try to make plans to meet up while I am there.  After drinks and popcorn at The Mango Tree we went home and passed out.

Saturday we had planned to go to the waterfalls, but because of poor weather, we went to a place called Shenga instead.  Shenga is an establishment that hires deaf and blind residents to blow glass, make aluminum utensils, and sew dresses to sell at a store in town.  When we got there we were given a tour of the facility that landed us in the shop that sells their goods.  They make amazing glass beads and bowls, along with necklaces and leather bags.  Just outside of the shop is a restaurant with a big open space dotted with sofas and tables.  We snagged a set of benches in the sun and ordered coffee and samosas.  I think that we spent almost three hours there just reading and lounging around.  It was definitely a Mzungu hangout, but it was really beautiful.

I am getting more used to the pace of Arusha.  If you tell someone to meet you at 8:30, you won’t see him or her until 9.  I am also getting more comfortable with Swahili, or Kiswahili as they say.  A little lesson? Sure.

Hello – Mambo

How are you – Habari

Good – Nsuri

(Very) Sorry – Pole (sana)

See you tomorrow – Kasho

Friend – Rafiki (yes, like the monkey)

Thank you (very much) – Asante (sana)

Welcome – Karibu

No – Hapana

Bye – Kwaheri

My spelling is all off, I am sure, but you get the gist. There are other ideas that I am slowly catching onto.  No shorts, or women will hiss at you.  Don’t look anyone in the eye near clocktower or else they will follow you to where ever you are going, trying to sell you whatever they can.  The Masai market is a scary place, but if you know how to haggle you can get a “Rafiki price.” 

I promised myself I would be asleep by 10, but it is already 10:37.  Asante sana for reading!!