Two big things happened this weekend; I’ll start with the Tamasha on Saturday.

Bega Kwa Bega Art Group sponsored a community Tamasha, Swahili for festival.

The events started maybe by 10 AM and continued til late afternoon. A ton of people came out for it. There were a lot of activities, and a whoooole lot of soccer. Some of the notable events were a dough nut eating race, where the dough nut was hanging from a string and kids had to jump to bite it.. i don’t know how to explain other than that really, there was a chicken chase, and a race where women carried a bottle of water on their head:

These women were absolutely running! No idea how they could do it… Also, everyone from Monduli working with Maasai Women’s Development came back for the weekend, it was real nice to catch back up. A lot happens in a week when everything is new!

So the second big deal: I finally got to enjoy a little night life here. I met Amanda, a miss Arusha, and her friend Diney at the center Friday evening, and they gave me a ride to a friends place in the village on their way back to town. They ended up inviting me out with them… I was still real tired from the late night before at Via Via and wasn’t really feeling it at first but I took them up on it, wow I’m glad I did!

It was Prince (a PSU student), Diney, Amanda, and me. We started at a local bar serving Japanese fast food. The place was really cozy, and they were good people. After we went to a bigger bar / club kinda deal called Maasai Camp… that was fantastic! The atmosphere was excellent. They kinda had a rambling pavilion thing going on, with lots of different kinds of chilling areas, some pool tables, and a dance floor. You could even order a hookah… nice! I met a whoooole lot of people there, it was real nice. There was maybe an equal mix of european / african there, and i met a lot of the whiter people, and they were all from Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, or South Africa. After Maasai Camp we went out for chips maiai, a sort of french fries with egg fried over it omigosh they are so tastey. At the chip stand, more just an open coal fire in a bin on the side of a road in town, we met a real unique guy. His name was Arther but he called himself the king of England. He was 50-something, born in Sussex England, lived in Canada, around Europe, speaks a mother tongue, Kiswahili, English, French, German, maybe Spanish, and some other east african languages… sooo many languages. We chatted for maybe an hour while I ate a plate and a half of chips, and the whole time he would randomly say “Lets bomb a church”, don’t know what the deal there was. Real funny guy tho, he was quite a joker. I asked him what he does now… He said he just messes with tourists and lives real simply.

Saturday night we all went out again, plus Andrew, a friend from Kenya. The destination was a BBQ. They drove us into town after the Tamasha and Prince, Andrew, and I chilled at random bar while the girls were getting ready. Had some real good conversation, and I was able to ask a lot of questions I can’t really ask my older friends around the center. After a while they came back and we headed for the BBQ. The house was amazing. These guys had a bunch of patios, a variety of sitting areas, some decks, a barside pool, and good views! It reminded me of beverly hills or something. I never figured out who owned it… the three siblings living there, or their parents. But regardless, it was incredible.

So, top to bottom… Diney, Prince, Amanda, and Andrew

Here’s one of Amanda, Prince, and I:

So the BBQ ended when the petrol ran out and the generator died. It didn’t strike me at all at the time, I just wasn’t surprised. But writing this entry it does! Heh. So we finished up there, went back to Maasai Camp, then to a dance club. Prince and I got driven back to Imbaseni by the owner of a giant chicken farm near the UAACC, a pretty wealthy man. He’s a Muslim, his workers come from as far away as India and Sudan, and I understand you’ve got to be Muslim to work there — interesting!

So that was my wild weekend out on the town.

Here’s this posts gem of a photo… Dickson, from Good Hope Orphanage:

So the past three days, I totaled 5 hours of sleep. I hope that isn’t affecting my coherency! Anyway I’m gonna go fix that right now. Good night.

Marla finally cut us loose on Monday, and the students each went to their respective project sites! There are four main project sites. The first is in Monduli, with The Maasai Women’s Development Organization, where the students are helping to start a library. The next is Bega Kwa Bega, an organization new since last year, centered on art, indigenous culture, and cultural exchange. The third is Meru Peak Primary School, where students are helping to teach classes from Geography to Mathematics. Last of course, is the UAACC where students are helping in various classes and some are just kind of doing their own thing.

Monday morning I walked with the Bega Kwa Bega and Meru Peak volunteers to Good Hope Orphanage, where they will be sleeping. Lunch I spent meeting a few random people around the center; there is always a unique mix of people at this place. I jumped into a computer class during the afternoon and met one student, Peter, who I’ll probably be spending a bit of time with next week. In the evening I went to visit Jane and Monica’s (from last year) father, but missed him. I ran into one random older gentleman, Peter Sulle, who wanted to talk for a while.

I met up with Peter Sulle Tuesday morning at his son’s house for tea, and then a walk. We walked for maybe three or four hours, just talking. He is a 77 year old retired teacher from the Babati region. He has one daughter and five sons. After retiring, he gave everything he owned to his children, who now support him. We talked about everything from different crops and the local economy, to AIDS/HIV and the war in Iraq. He gave me a pretty good idea of how the school system works here, that was very interesting. During the course of the walk we visited many of his friends and family members. It all gave me a real good view of a cross-section of rural Tanzanian life. Most people are farmers, some have shops or workshops, others just rent rooms. I saw squatters. I saw single room mud farm houses, single room brick farm houses, single story one room apartments. I saw some homestead kinda living, with extended families farming one piece of land. I saw people with shops where they sold brew I watched them making. I saw a handful of multiple-story houses owned by locals, usually these people had a few shops, and maybe a woodworker, tailor, or teacher in the family. There was one man with a good bit of land, 12 acres, who will never be able to farm more than an acre or two of it because he cannot get the capital to get started. He needs about 100$. In four hours I saw one Tanzanian family with their own car.

Here is one spot Peter took me:

The rest of the afternoon I had free. Last year mostly my free time was spent chillin out. I haven’t had a dull moment this year, I keep busy all the time right through any free time I think I might have. I’ve found myself in computer class, helping the Imbaseni Free Library catalog new donations, fixing random broken stuff around the center, or bouncing between BKB and the orphanage checking up on people.

I took three students, Jannelle, Brittany, and Nolan, to volunteer with Chawakua again on Wednesday. We got started a little earlier than usual and after the hour and a half transit to Arusha, had a good breakfast. The other volunteers at Chawakua left about 9ish so we missed them by half an hour, but they picked us up on their way back to the market. They’d picked up some furniture for Peter’s new place, and food for house visits. Brittany, another volunteer Peter (not the one we moved to a new house, or the one that took me for a walk, or the one I’m helping in computer class… there so many Peters here), and I visited Neema and she shared her story with us. Her daughter (not infected!!) was a three year old named Rahima and she was terrified of Brittany and I. We asked why… shortly after Rahima was born, Neema got very sick and had to leave her with an orphanage. It took about two years before she was healthy again, and she was able to take her daughter back. Well the orphanage had mostly white / western volunteers… and Rahima thought we were going to take her away again

One of the volunteers, Judy, at Chawakua was from the states. I pitched to her an idea I’ve been tossing around about an online NGO networking utility, kinda modeled after a social network. There are plenty of utilities and organizations that help pair western volunteers with NGOs around the world. This site would instead be geared toward connecting NGOs with each other, allowing them first to find each other, and then giving them the tools to effectively collaborate. Soooo anyway, she lives in a house full of volunteers and one of them is doing pretty much exactly that. He’s a computer science grad from France named Pierre. She hooked us up together, and we spent the afternoon with him. The brainstorming was real useful!

Thursday and today I spent in Imbaseni helping out wherever I was needed. In some of that time I just about finished a website for Bega Kwa Bega! I’ll put up a link soon as it’s wrapped up… Thursday night I went to Via Via, a bar in Arusha town, for some live music. Real good time!

I’ll end with another shot of Meru.

We split up into groups and visited families near the UAACC on Thursday morning, and in the afternoon we went through a traditional lunch preperation.

Friday morning we left with Chaka to visit the Maasai for two nights. The boma we went to was new since last year, but it was a lot of the same people. Someone in the old boma died so Ngongoi, our contact from last year, left to start his own. Chaka and Ngongoi gave us a traditional herb tour, then we joined the women of the boma for a root chai. In the evening we ran into a bunch of Maasai children coming back from school. Here’s a shot with Meru in the background.

In the evening we had some extra time so we threw together a campfire to swap stories with the Maasai. That ended up being a pretty amazing exchange; it turned into one giant discussion. After the dialog got rolling the questions got pretty heavy. They asked us about AIDS and HIV, why people from America are so many different colors, and a bit about the slave trade. We talked about religion for a while. They talked to us about missionaries that come and tell them they are going to ‘a fire’, asked us what we thought and what kinds of religions we adhered to. We asked them about how the schooling works and which kids get chosen to go. It turns out the eldest children are put on the more traditional path, for example, the boys go to look after the herds. Younger children or ‘extra children’ go to school, almost in the hope that after their schooling they will go find a job or some such in the city. We also asked them about the polygamy and wife-sharing amoung the Maasai. Older warriors frequently have more than one wife, but if they do have multiple wives they are expected to ’share them’ with other warriors. When there are children, it’s often understood that one warrior is the biological father. However the child is still considered the son or daughter of the warrior married to the mother. Circumcision and abuse also came up, among other things. I’ll try and dig more of that out later.

Saturday was our big activity with the Maasai. We were helping women from some nearby bomas work on a roadside cultural boma where they could sell their art. The boma consists of an exterior acacia wall, interior huts for the bomas inhabitants, and interior acacia walls for livestock. We were to help construct the hut they could sell out of. The process starts with vertical sticks, one end shallowly burried into the sand. Those are woven together to add strenth, then a roof frame is put on top which, again, is woven together and then woven to the structure itself. Finally a plaster of cow dung, a clay-like dirt, and water is put on the walls and grasses are fixed to the roof. I helped to gather dung and the clay, and helped in the plastering process

Here are a few shots from saturday afternoon:

Sunday I woke up for sunrise and caught an amazing view of Kilimanjaro.

After breakfast we went to the boma for a beading workshop which everyone enjoyed and finished with a market for the women of surrounding bomas; a lot of people got something or other.