Tanzania 1 - Living In Africa
I always wanted to do volunteer work abroad in Africa. I had to go there because I felt like I was going home, even though I'd never been there before. Sounds silly. But its the truth. I found a group called Cross Cultural Solutions that has locations in several countries throughout the world. I chose them because their program seemed to have the best fit for what I was looking for.
I left on my 38th bday, in the end of January, 2013. I went by myself and stayed in a large house with about 12 other volunteers from the US and Canada for 2 weeks. I was in Moshi, a small town near the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The mountain was a backdrop to my daily sights. I got great views from the bottom of it!
My weekdays were spent volunteering at a local preschool. I was there to teach the kids English. We worked on counting, the alphabet, and printing letters and numbers, and mostly playing outside. The kids were amazing. They were so grateful for everything. The kids had one cup of porridge, which was more like a corn paste and maybe had a hardboiled egg twice a week for lunch at school. The teacher said that was most likely the kids largest meal of the day. They might have some beans in the evening. I taught them how to play duck duck goose. I tried to get them to trace letters but some of them had never held a pencil before so we spent a lot of time just learning the mechanics of proper pencil grasp. They all ran out to meet me in the morning and would fight over who got to hold my hand. They came from very poor families. Families that lived in mud homes. The school uniforms all came from sponsors. Same with the funding of the education. They ranged in age from 4-6. The boy with the crayons in his nose was my favorite. I would've taken him home in a heartbeat. Myself and one other volunteer, Kristi, worked at the school. All other volunteers were at other locations around town.
My free weekend in between work weeks was for our little safari. We hired a company that took us in Jeeps (took about 5 hours to get there) to visit the Masai People then we stayed the night in tents (I didn't like the tents, at all) and went to Ngorongoro Crate (which was AMAZING, left me breathless) one day then Lake Manyara the next. The Masai People were so beautiful. I was able to go into a little village. They allowed us to photograph them, for a small fee, of course. Otherwise they did not want to be photographed. You can see one pic where 2 boys, all in black, are throwing rocks at me. That's because I took a pic while we were driving and I didn't give them any money. They were in black because they had just been circumsized. They wear black for a month after.
I could go on here for a long time describing this trip. It's impacted me greatly. It was humbling and rewarding and it touched my soul. I'm itching to get back.
Music by Kevin MacLeod, http://incompetech.com
