Meaghan and I began our morning with some project work at home despite the beautiful weather outside. We then stopped by the bank to withdrawal some Shillings, to the market to pick up a few fresh vegetables, and then to the internet café to upload my blog and send out some emails. On the way to the internet café we dropped off some pictures to be developed off our USB key and picked them up on our way home. We got home and made a quick lunch before heading out to Mabutini to teach the Mamas their English lesson. The streets were more empty than usual and we suspected because many Muslims celebrate Ramadan and stay home during certain hours to pray. In the evening, we went to Tunza for yoga on the beach and then went home right after to make dinner. I had brought with me some seaweed and with all the fresh produce that we bought earlier in the day Meaghan, Claire and I experimented with sushi! We put cucumber, avocado, hot dogs, tuna, and a spicy sauce into the roll and it was surprisingly good. We stayed in for the night and watched Ratatouille and went to bed.
Meaghan and I have begun preparing for the WHE faculty, coming to Mwanza in mid October, but their main objective is to begin a similar yogurt project in Kenya. They will be sending a few of the Mamas to Kenya to teach the women there how to make probiotic yogurt properly. We were able to get to the internet café again today to finish up our emails and to upload a few more pictures onto our blogs. We then headed to our Swahili class to write our test and have a 2 hour lesson. Right after class Meaghan and I rushed off to catch the daladala to the airport to pick-up our new roommate, Ruben. When we got there Ruben had just arrived and we brought him to his new home so he could settle in and have a shower before we took him out to dinner. Ruben has been to Mwanza for a month a couple years ago and stayed with former interns (Jamie and Ellena), and so many of the locals within Mlango Mmoja recognized him and greeted him warmly. Meaghan and I took Ruben to Tilapia for dinner (the place where we went on our first night here) and we had a great time getting to know each other. We had all met briefly before coming to Mwanza at Meg’s and my commencement ceremony at Western Ontario.
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
I woke up early today and had a great workout on the roof. The weather has been looking much better than last week’s rain. Meg and I let Ruben sleep in as much as possible, although his time change is only 2 hours from the Netherlands where as Canada is a 7 hour difference and a much longer flight. We began the day with project work at home and then took Ruben to the city to pick up a few supplies for his clinical trial work. He was fairly familiar with the area because he has been here before, but it was still good for us to help him get a few things done a bit more efficiently. We came home after picking up a few groceries and I made fried rice for lunch. Beatrice joined us for lunch and then was kind enough to accompany Meg and me to the Yogurt Kitchen to speak to the Mamas about pricing, deposits for containers, and the application for TASAF. We had generated a few possibilities for price changes and left it up to the Mamas to decide which one would be plausible for the local communities to afford while still making some profit. The Mamas were also interested in starting a deposit charge for people who do not supply their own container to carry the yogurt in. They are finding that many people take them and do not return them and the containers are becoming scarce. The TASAF project is a program, that if accepted, would allow all the HIV/AIDS patients in Mabutini to receive the probiotic yogurt for free and the expenses to pay for these individuals would be covered by the project for 1 year. There are many steps before our application can be approved and informing the street leader to gather and have at least 70% of the community giving support to these HIV/AIDS patients to receive the yogurt is only one of the steps.
We came home after a long meeting in Mabutini (without even giving them their English lessons) and had a short rest before we went with Jody (a Canadian Kivulini employee) to climb to Bugando and visit some of the boys that are supported by Kivulini. Meg and I refer to them as the ‘popcorn boys’ because we thought that they were in charge of the popcorn stand across from our apartment, but we were told that they had a popcorn stand but the police stopped them from selling because of their location. The boys were street teens but have raised money to put each other and other street children through school and their English is very good. Bugando is at the top of the hill just across the main road from our apartment and it is a beautiful view. The boys walked Meg and I home and we stayed in for the rest of the night.
Some of the 'Popcorn Boys' at their homes in Bugando
Thursday, September 20th, 2007
Meaghan and I woke up a bit tired from the long day we had yesterday but began project work right away. We had a meeting at the City Council building set up by Mr. Mlinzi (Mayor’s assistant) with a lady in charge of SACCOs and with the man who video taped the Minister’s visit. We spent a while waiting around and trying to find the right people to visit with, but when we actually met up with them the meetings were very brief and we did not get much information in the end. SACCOs is a program designed to help organizations set up loans with a bank to be distributed and paid back with interest within the group. The Yogurt Mamas already have an account where they do this, but it isn’t recognized and it would probably be beneficial to be part of SACCOs in the future if the group wanted to take out really big loans for project expansion and growth. Currently, the Mama’s group is not big enough (~10 Mamas) to be a part of SACCOs (20 member minimum).
Ruben has been busy meeting up with his supervisors at the Sekou Toure’s Hospital, but we managed to bump into him on our way to the internet café, which was not working at the time. So we decided to grab a bite to eat at a small restaurant before heading to our Swahili lesson. After our lesson, Ruben met up with us again to go to yoga at Tunza and he actually participated in the class and liked it. We stayed for a little while and introduced Ruben to most of the Tunza crowd.
Friday, September 21st, 2007
We headed off early in the day to Mabutini to teach the Mamas their English lesson from Wednesday and to hand out their tests for the week. We picked up 6L of yogurt for the orphanage and another 2L for us. Meaghan and I took turns carrying the bucket on our heads and we were making quite a scene walking down the main street.
Carrying the 6L bucket of yogurt the traditional way
Claire met us at home and we all set off for the Forever Angel’s orphanage. Ruben’s stomach was not feeling well so he decided to stay home and maybe go to the market later in the day. We spent a good portion of the afternoon at the orphanage with the children and it was a really hot day. When we got home I had a quick snack and then took a walk into the market by myself. I had a bit of an eventful trip because the market was closing just as I got in and the gates were being closed to stop people from getting in and allow the store keepers to put away their produce. I had a bit of trouble getting out, but managed to use the little Swahili I know to escape the market. On my way home, the daladala station was empty because they were on strike and there were pick-up trucks taking passengers home. Ruben and Pendo were making us a very nice dinner of cooked bananas in a tomato sauce with rice, I was very impressed. After dinner, we sat down and played a Dutch card game that Ruben brought for us called Koe Handel (Cow Trade). It was very fun and I was too tired to do anything else but watch a movie, and even then I fell asleep.
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007
Meaghan and I have been trying to plan a day to sit in the sun and do nothing, but the weather had not been agreeing with us, but today was the day! We spent the morning walking through the market and buying some fabric to make clothing and bags from. We then had a quick lunch and headed off to Tunza for a day at the beach. I was a very enjoyable day and in the afternoon we had a barbeque with chicken, vegetable kebabs, roast beef, coleslaw, fruit salad, and a chocolate cake. We made a bonfire, roasted marshmallows and lay at the beach all night. We had decided to sleepover on the beach by the fire and it was actually a very good sleep despite the early rising of the sun.
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007
Jan (the owner of Tunza) put us to work early in the morning and our task was to design a pattern to paint on the entrance booth into Tunza. He had a few ideas of what he wanted and I improvised with the colors that he wanted to include. One coat of paint took all morning, but we stopped for breakfast and lunch.
Painting Tunza's entrance wall
During the painting, there was a huge funnel cloud over Lake Victoria coming inland, but thankfully it died off before reaching any land. I have never seen a funnel so defined, close, or big in my life, it was amazing.
After lunch we took a short hike over large rocks to a peninsula on Lake Victoria, and it was a great view. We were planning on going out in the boat and possibly doing some wake boarding, but the water was too choppy so we enjoyed the beach instead. Meg and I came home for dinner and made chipati with a tomato sauce and vegetables and had a very early night’s rest.
1 comment:
Hi Alison. Joe here....I forwarded your blog to SherryMigliaccio@hotmail.com. Put her on your list as she is jealous I get your blogs and she doesn't...hahaha.
Good to see that your keeping busy over there. The 'popcorn boys' sound like an interesting bunch, do they really sell popcorn? Do you actually receive any mail packgages there? In case we wanted to send anything? Or is that out of the question? I went back to Cuba again over the summer....thats the 7th time since we met. Keep in touch. I am sure you miss your family but you seem to have made family there...ciao.
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