Day 4 and 5 (Taylor See)

Supai!

Yesterday morning, we ate our last meal at the Afrikan Sunstar Resort and headed into Arusha.  After many hours of driving, we finally arrived at the boma where we were greated by all of the members of the tribe that had been born at the boma. It was very moving as we all shook hands with all of the men and women and were blessed by the elders. They danced for us and many of us joined in. We met Thomas, our community coordinator, who will be with us for our time near the boma. We then went to the primary school and to the work site. Finally, we reached our tent camp. It was not at all what we expected. The toilets and the showers were much better J. We all share tents and we have a mess hall and outdoor kitchen with our own cook. The meals he has cooked for us have been amazing. We settled in and had a late dinner, and spent our first night here. We all survived. Many of us woke up with the sun, which was incredible. The cook made us eggs and bacon with fresh juice and fruit.  We planned to work on the school after breakfast, but luckily, the foreman’s car “broke down” in the city, so we got to play with the primary and nursery school kids. We first taught some English and numbers, and the children sang for us. It was break time, so we got out some of the toys that we brought and played. The beach ball that I brought was soon popped as it was tossed into a thorn tree. This, however, did not hinder the kids from playing with it. When the kids went back to class, we met and discussed what problems the community faces and what the community is proud of. The tribes are facing problems with water, especially during the dry season right now. But they are glad that they have so many children in the schools, even if not all of them stay. The problem is that the parents and elders do not know the value of education because many of them have not been educated themselves. After our meeting, we had a lunch of fruit, tuna tacos, vegetables, and guacamole. After lunch, we went to the work site and started digging out the ground to level it before we added cement. Since we had too many people to do this in the small space, some of us went into the nearby classrooms and taught some more English. Then we sang songs. The kids are so wonderful and all of them want to hold our hands. I can’t wait to work more with them for the rest of our stay.

Taylor

P.S.  This is Luther Mercer. We are having problems connecting to the internet from our community and we are almost 45 mins. away from a strong signal. Please excuse delays on updating our blog. We may have a few days gap between each blog posting.