It's Friday!

TGIF! We have finshed 3 weeks of placement at Tumaini English Medium School and we still love it. Despite the language barrier (although the children speak quite a bit of English) and the fact that we are in Africa it is true that "kids will be kids". The children here are not much different than home at the core...they love hugs, laughing, playing games (duck,duck,goose and the limbo), singing (head, and shoulders, knees and toes,)they tattle on their friends, they pick their noses, and they fight over who gets to hold teacha's hand. The lack of school supplies, electricity, a real toliet (it is truly a hole in the ground), a snack (besides poridge, which looks discusting) does not get these children down. Neither does the fact that some of the kids walk alone for miles to get to and from school everyday or that they wear the same clothes....these children are happy and thankful for what they have. They are curious just like children at home...they scratch our skin because it looks different and love to touch our hair. It seems that they are learning by seeing different types of people. These children have really taught us a lot about life and finding happiness in simplicity. This experience is amazing and I'm so excited we still have more time here to learn about the culture.

The lead teacher at the school, David, is such a kind man, but has absolutly no clue about what goes on in the U.S. He asked Catherine if we could all understand each other or if we had tribal languages like they do here....we attempted to explain that we all speak English, but have different accents. Today he asked if we knew any black people in America...again we attempted to explain that there are many black people, as well as other ethnic groups. He asked if we all get along and can understand each other's language and culture. David seemed a bit confused when Catherine told him that all students go to school together and people of different ethnicities interact all the time and are friends. I am pretty sure his view on America came from some really dated books. We are trying update him.

On another note we traveled to Arusha (which is about an hour away and much bigger than Moshi) the other day with our program and went to see the Rwanda trials. The U.N. created a tribunal to put away the people that commited the hannis acts of genocide back in 1994. They decided on Tanzania as a more nuetral and less corrupt place to hold the trials so this is why we got to see them. They have convicted many people, but the trials will continue for years to come. We want to give more details, but I will have to wait until the internet is working at our homebase so I can have the trial information in front of me.

Now we are off to go eat dinner at IndoItaliano (Indian/Italian) restaurant in Moshi. It should be interesting. We will continue about Rwanda tomorrow....