Lushuto and Work
That last entry was part of my homework for my lessons. I am starting to be able to have conversations, slowly. I now understand and have memorized most of the structure of the language and how verbs fit in to the rest of the words.
My students are now on break until the beginning of May. So I have been spending Monday Tuesdays and Wednesdays networking trying to find a project to work with that will let me do HIV work more consistently here. I went to a board meeting with a new friend of mine for Megeni Women’s Group. The group was started with two long term volunteers and an African woman several months ago. The woman is from a village about 30 min ride away from my house. The group is focusing on the health, women, businesses and children of two small villages near where she was raised. It is a new group that is already doing great work that I may work more with if I can find my nitch. I have been able to find NGO’s that need either someone to do everything from the ground up with no guidance or resources or someone to just be a white face for the organization.
It is a bit overwhelming the amount of work that needs to be done here. At the same time the amount of work it takes to accomplish a very small goal here is also overwhelming. I have been thinking about creating a basic health curriculum that I can teach offer to teach to the different groups that I am involved. I am hoping to be able to teach it in Swahili at some point.
Last weekend Claire, her friend Abby and a mutual friend John went to Lushuto. We took a bus for about 4 hours to Mambo. We then took a Daladala (crowded van) an hour up to Lushuto. The entire ride was gorgeous to Lushuto. We spent three days hiking in mountains. On Saturday we did a day hike to Irente viewpoint, which looks just like pride rock from the lion king and through rainforests where we saw coloubus monkeys. On Sunday morning we left for a 2 day overnight hike from Lushuto back down to Mambo. The views on the hike were amazing. The mountains are a sharp contrast to the plains. When we arrived Sunday night where we were sleeping for the night, we played with the children on the area. They are absolutely intrigued by everything we say or do. At one point I told them that I liked passion fruit and many of them left to go pick some fresh for me. Then they all wanted my attention so there were 20 kids climbing barefoot in a bush picking 100’s of passion fruit searching for the perfectly ripe one for me.
Sunday night we stayed in a small hut with bunk beds that had huge windows facing out over the plains. We slept there after a night of dancing in an African drum circle with the women of the area. All four of us danced for a while with the women, however after a couple of hours the others went to bed while I continued to dance. I really got the hang of it and had a great time dancing on the top a huge mountain under the stars looking out over the African plains. It was a great weekend of hiking and playing. My entire weekends sleeping accommodations cost only about 8 US dollars.
The tour company that we went with also offers a six day bicycle treck from Lushuto to Moshi which I am interested in doing if I have the time, money and energy later in my journey.
