Just Around The River Bend....

I'm in a Disney mood now, especially after finding 102 Disney movies on one dvd for 4,000 shillings, or about $2.50. The Lion King is surprisingly accurate and lots of the characters names, mostly from Lion King 2, are actual Swahili words.. Kovu means scar in Swahili and he's Scars descendant in the movie! And tomorrow we're leaving for the longest river in the world, the Nile, so the river bend song from Pocahontas is going through my head.

This week has flown by. Monday I got to the orphanage and found that the computer had broke, so a lot of the work I was supposed to do I wasn't able to. TIA. I came home to get some work done here and e mailed an article to the Arusha Times. I'll put a picture of it up when it gets printed! Ronnie and I went to Camp Joshua and hung out there for a little while. During the kids lunch I played soccer with them.. At first they were not too keen on a female playing, but after they saw that I sort of knew what I was doing they were more than happy to have a mzungu join! After they went in, two of the other volunteers there asked if I wanted to join them in a class. They explained that much of the time the teachers just don't feel like going so they don't. We went into a grade 1 or 2 equivalent class and drew some pictures with them. We tried to get our bus tickets reserved from Kimpala to Kigali but weren't able to. After dinner we played some scrabble and drank Konyagi. That stuff will never get good.

Tuesday I didn't even attempt to go to the orphanage.. I worked from home and have arranged to take three of my kiddies to different hospitals to get worked on... Bryson to an optometrist, Esther to an orthopedic surgeon and Joseph to a hospital in Moshi. I'm pretty excited! Later in the afternoon I went into town and met with Jennifer, an old volunteer, and we talked in depth about what I needed to do to make this place work. I left our meeting feeling more positive than I had in a long time. I think it's do able to clean up a lot of the mess here, especially since I've been working so closely with Teacher Juliet! After that, I went to the Arusha Times office and met with the editor there. A very nice man who is super stoked to have someone writing articles weekly for the paper! The stuff I'll be writing on is really up to me, this past week was just an update on LOHADA and what they've been up to! The next group of volunteers are also starting to arrive, but we'll (we being the 5 girls that remain from the May arrivals) miss most of it as we're on our big trip!

Today I went to go meet with Mama Wambura and Juliet at the orphanage. They were more than ecstatic that I had gotten an article to the paper and had finished the newsletter for LOHADA for the month of May. I hung out with my little boys for much of the morning, and learned how to say "you are wet", "mama, Joseph is wet" and "don't throw". Juliet and I went through more of the sponsorship records, trying to decipher who has and has not paid over the last few years.. Record keeping isn't one of the strong points of African culture. In the afternoon I went into town with a new volunteer to get some pictures to send to my kiddies sponsors. We grabbed some snacks for the trip tomorrow and I'm just waiting now for my amazing dinner of chapati. Mmmmmm. Deep fried goodness.

About our trip! Me and four other girls, along with Nelson (our Swahili teacher and favorite Chaaga) are whipping up through Kenya into Uganda tomorrow. On Friday we'll arrive (after a really long bus trip) and then do a bungee jump. Saturday we do a white water raft down the Nile and then get on a bus to Rwanda. We're going to stay one night at Hotel Rwanda or Des Milles Collines, and visit the genocide memorials. We'll stay for another day or so to explore Kigali and then head home! Should take about a week to do, long long bus rides... I'm more than excited for this trip!