Saturday, August 13, 2011

Miles of Smiles at Tumaini

Habari yako?  This is Swahili for “How are you?”  Then, you would reply, “Mzuri sana!”  This means very good!  It’s actually quite pitiful how much Swahili I have NOT picked up on.  The only words I know really well are the ones that are repeated to the toddlers over and over again.  And I am sad to say that I am not fluent in Dutch either.
After the Americans left Tumaini, my Canadian friend Dylan and I traveled to meet the Dutch girls in Mombasa, a beach city on the East Coast of Africa.  It was a wonderful break to have halfway through my trip.  Watching camels walk the beaches of the Indian Ocean made the 16 hour bus ride well worth it!  Evidently I am a magnet for Dutch people.  We were staying at a campsite called Stilts, where we met a lot of fun people, the majority of whom were from the Netherlands, and then we met a nice Belgium couple – who of course spoke Dutch.  Finally while sitting on the beach I saw a man with a Georgia Bulldogs cap on, so I asked him excitedly if he was from Georgia.  He laughed and said, “No, I collect caps.  I am from the Netherlands.”  Eline was dying laughing and all I could say was, “Oh, of course you are!”
I was also attacked by monkey on our trip.  We were staying in these cute little tree houses a little bit into the woods (kind of).  Femke and Eline left to go to the beach, but I stayed to sleep a little longer.  I woke up to the sound of plastic rustling around and thought, “Oh the monkeys must be on the porch…”  (They had been stealing everything we left outside the whole trip.)  As I was falling back asleep I heard the rustling sound again and realized how close it was.  I popped up in the bed screaming bloody murder!  Sitting on my bed was a monkey staring straight at me and three more looking through our trash and bags!  They looked at me with an annoyed expression as if to say, “Well thanks for ruining our fun.”  Then they sauntered out.  Although they weren’t causing me physical harm yet, I know they were plotting…
Femke got really sick at the end of the trip and the night before she was to fly back to the Netherlands we ended up having to take her to the hospital in Nairobi.  Luckily it was just a bacterial infection and she was feeling better by morning.  It’s weird not having her back at Tumaini, especially when it’s time to do the dishes!  Now Eline is forced to always speak English and that makes Rose and me very happy!
I was glad to get back to Western Kenya to see all the children and our Tumaini family.  While I was gone there was a nice American who left some Velveeta Shells and Cheese and brought me a bag of sunflower seeds.  These were very nice surprises to come home to!  Since we have been back I have been extremely busy.  I am still teaching English and Arts and Crafts in the morning and after lunch we have been helping Violet do a lot of cleaning and organizing at the orphanage.  The children go on break from school next week so we are going to paint all the classrooms.  We are also going to take advantage of the orphanage kids being out of school and do some fun crafts and games with them.
The feeding program has kept us very busy as well.  Originally the plan was to give maize to about 80 families once a week for as long as we can.  But we have realized that there are more who are in severe need of food so we have increased to 120 families a week.  We give the bags of maize every Wednesday, but people have been coming all this week and just wait outside the orphanage hoping if they sit there long enough we will be able to give them something.  This is really hard to see, but luckily Rose knows which of these people are in need the most and we give to them.  Our main goal is to be able to provide for all the elderly widows that are taking care of a lot of children because they physically cannot work and have mouths to feed.  While I hope that my English teaching skills are changing lives, I know now that if my only purpose being here was to make others aware and concerned about the food shortage then it has been completely worth it.  Thanks to all of you that have been donating so that my students aren’t going to bed hungry.  Everything that goes on at Tumaini makes me realize how much impact one person can have.  Three years ago Rose was sleeping on a floor with a few orphans, and now she is helping to feed an entire community.

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