The Ants Go Marching......

This week was probably one of the most successful weeks we have had yet!  We actually quite a few projects to do that kept us busy!

On Tuesday we had our first day at Kitulezu Orphanage. It was started by Mama Anna and Ernesto, two HIV positive people in the community. They started it to change the stigma that HIV positive people can’t do anything. All the orphans are older and go to primary or secondary school, but they started a pre-school in Mama Anna’s home for the community kids to be able to come to for a very small price. So that is where we help out! We will be going every morning from 8 until 11:30 to help the other teacher teach. On Tuesday though, it was the last day for some of the other volunteers that were working there from a different organization so we just kind of had a free day. It was a lot of fun!! We played with play dough, painted nails, sang songs, and blew bubbles!! The kids also go candy, or pepe, in Swahili, so they were pretty hyper!! HahaWhen it was time to go some of the kids walked us almost all the way home!! It was cute, every time a car(garri), or a piki-piki(motorcycle) would come they would yell and pull us to the side! They are stinkin cute and I am really excited to work there every day!! 

Here is a dala-dala for all of those who were curious

So there is another volunteer from a different organization that teaches at Kitulezu and she got us the contact information for some girls that she lives who work at Cradle of Love. It is an orphanage for infants and toddlers!! On Wednesday we got to go visit and see what we could do to help! So this orphanage is pretty car from our house, maybe 45 minutes on a dala-dala and we had no idea where it was or how to get there! So we left a bit earlier than usual and after taking 2 dala-dalas we made it there all by ourselves! We were super excited about that! When we got there it was just like being in Ecuador!! The orphanage didn’t really look the same but it was set up the same and had the same feel and it even kinda smelled the same!! It was lovely and I felt right at home!! The kids were so sweet and so cute!! The orphanage is run by a husband and wife from America and right now they have about 30 kids under the age of 3! It was pretty hectic! Haha but she said that we could come any day we wanted to help out, so I think we are going to go 2 times a week in the afternoon!! I am super excited!!! We also had a fun birthday dinner at Loth’s(our driver/rescuer) house for his birthday and it was soo fun and the good was delicious!! 

 Also this week we had our first Inside Out Learning training session! We went to a school that HELP built last year in Namanga, which is about 2 hours from Arusha. So we left on Thursday morning and once again made it successfully there all by ourselves!! Emmanuel runs the school, Green Eden. It is a preschool for community kids who have little to no income and for orphans. We met Emmanuel at the bus stop and then he walked us to this cute little hostel type place where we would be staying the night! We dropped off our luggage and walked to the school where the kids met us and welcomed us with a song!! I love it when they do that!! Little did we know they were expecting us to teach that day haha so we through together an impromptu lesson that turned out pretty good!! After school was over the teacher from the preschool and the teachers from the community came for IOL training. Boy was it exhausting to teach for that long!! The first day went pretty well but was a little bit confusing and frustrating because they didn’t really respond to some things so it was hard to know if they understood what was being taught. They seemed to enjoy our activities and ideas so that was good. We had a very eventful night that night in our little hostel, which included porcelain squat toilets, VERY loud and strange snoring from our neighbor, banging on the gate all night long, people shuffling past our room to use the bathroom, and loud talking/singing/pumpin music from the club down the road! Haha We woke up bright and early the next morning and started all over again! We helped “teach” again at the pre-school, which really meant us doing everything and if we didn’t the kids sat and copied letters and numbers in a notebook. Finally after watching the kids be bored to death we decided to teach them a song before they went home! It was pretty difficult but I think they at least enjoyed watching us acting like idiots! Haha We had our next and final session IOL and it went a lot better this time! I think it was because we had more activities and moving and working in groups! It was a lot of fun and teachers were all really great! We set up two times for them to meet by themselves and discuss goals, and  how things were going and then we are going back next Monday to see how it went and how well they were able to implement the ideas we taught them and then we will have a little party and give them their certificates!

Our very stinky bus to Namanga.....kate couldn't handle it!

Britt and Jess teachin the chillins

this little guys was teaching us karate and it was sooo funny!

Emmanuel loved getting his picture takin!

Green Eden...the school HELP built last summer

our IOL teachings in progress

Our new puppy NaeNae! she is soo sweet!!

Yesterday Britt and I went on an adventure in the city and found some really great shops and met some funny people!! Our new nicknames are Shakira and Byonce! haha  We also think we may have found blonde hair for our braids!! We were excited!!

I can’t believe we have been here a month!! The second wavers come this week which will be weird but I am excited for them to come to add some change to the house!! I am also excited that we have actually projects to work on this week and that things are finally progressing!!