Well hello there.
I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself today- bear with me! If feel like so much goes on that I can’t remember what I’ve already said.

I’ll begin with school in the past few days. I’ve been getting more one-on-one time with certain kids during their break. I think the children are starting to understand, though being left alone with one child for more than 5 minutes is still kind of a miracle. I work the weaker kids on math, and I bring in some colourful foam cut-outs of animals and shapes that they can use to count (they are from the resource centre here at CCS). They really like that but it’s hard because I don’t have enough to bring for everyone- just enough to bring for 1 or two kids and the others get very jealous. Some of the kids just really can’t associate counting with the actual number yet. I need to be more creative so I get through to one child specifically because my teacher, Betty, says that other volunteers have tried very hard with him in the past to no avail. A lot of them don’t have their own pencils so Betty has to give them out for each lesson, but often kids take them and lose them so I brought nice new ones today from the resource centre. The kids were so excited to see these nice pencils and of course they started fighting over them. They fight physically with each other a lot and I can only attribute that to part of the culture here that hitting is ok. Our English lesson is going well, we’ve started working on names of animals. My other class, the standard 1’s, are really benefiting from the English number sounds I made and put in their class. I don’t teach them as often but each time more seem to get it which is a good sign. Something really funny about Tanzanians: They put the sound “ee” after almost every word in English. When I say “Snake”, the kids repeat, “Snakeeee”, no matter how many times I say it! It’s actually so funny. Another example, people say “beachy” instead of just “beach”. And not one person can pronounce my name. I’m “Gel” here, or even just “dada”, which means sister.

On Thursday I am running a discussion at a secondary school with just the girls there. The ratio of girls to guys is so low and I know that many girls don’t end up finishing school or end up having children young. I want to tell them how much potential they have and I want to express how much is out there for them to aspire to. I’m bringing 3 other volunteers with me to help facilitate the discussion- I really hope it goes well, and if it does, hopefully I can do it again.

I’m also really pumped becaused Mama Thea (the Tanzania Program Director- most inspiring woman I’ve ever met, I will write about her later if I have time) arranged a meeting for me with the District Education Minister. I think I’m going next week. There are so many things that bother me about the primary education system and I just really want to meet with this woman and ask her questions. The challenge will be not to criticize but to just ask questions to find out the reasoning behind everything.

Tomorrow all the volunteers are going to help build a chicken coup for a lady who is very sick with AIDS. She has children and cannot support herself so she has the kids sleep in one room of the house and she sleeps in the other with the chickens. I’m looking forward to helping because I think this will make things a lot easier for her.

Some other fun highlights last week:
I taught our program director (Mama C) how to swim. We only had 1 lesson but I’m hoping we can get back to the pool for more. We went to a hotel pool for the afternoon and had a great time. I taught her how to float on her back and she was absolutely adorable.

Last week was had a Swahili cooking lesson. And, well, I’m in love. You are all invited to the Rodaks post-trip for some chipati. It is this amazing bready thing and I cannot explain until you try. WOW. That same night we had a performance at our home base. A while ago I wrote about a home we went to whose family is a very popular music and dance group. They came with their instruments and costumes and did a while performance. I loved it. They really are talented.



THE SAFARI!!
Wow. Amazing. I don’t think I’ll ever go to a zoo again.
Our guide picked us up in the jeep Friday morning (we could open the roof and stand up and outside the top during the safari drives- it was awesome) and we drove to the Mikumi Wildlife Camp, about 5ish hours from Bagamoyo. We stop in Dar Es Salaam on the way to change some money, and he took us to this beautiful mall. I was so happy to see it because my perception of Dar thus far has been pretty negative. Anyhoo, the mall had a grocery store!!!! And what do you think I bought? Cereal of course. And wine ( I know I make you proud ma). As we approached the camp we saw baboons just chilling in the middle of the road. It was hysterical. We got to the cam around 3:30 in the afternoon and went for our first drive around the park which ended at sunset. It was so beautiful. The land are for the most part made up of very tall grass but somehow our guide managed to see a lion!!! There aren’t many lions in that camp so we were all very excited. He was lying down but we saw his face at one point and with our guide’s binoculars we could see everything in detail. I never realized how scary lions faces are! I should break for a moment to tell you about our guide. His name is Ali Billali. HAHAHAHA. We just called him Bill. He was so knowledgeable and his claim to fame is that he was one of the guides on Geore Bush’s safari when he came here. We really lucked out with Bill. On Saturday we did an early morning drive and another sunset drive and in between had a few hours to just sit at the pool and read and listen to music. It was so nice. The had all meals prepared for us which were pretty impressive for being in the middle of nowheresville, Tanzania. Our lodge-house thing was pretty creepy but I’m glad we stayed there because I really felt like I was roughing it. There were some really strange looking bugs in our rooms ( I happened to shower with one so we became close quite fast). They turn off the electricity at 10pm so there was absolutely no light. To top it all off, our lodge was right in the camp. AKA animals could very easily walk around and pay us a visit. Actually, on the Saturday night, I stayed up reading a bit after the others went to sleep. When I got in to bed, about 5 minutes later I heard some banging on the door. And it was nothing light- this was intense banging and I heard some fiddling with the locks and stuff. My mouth went completely dry and I was shaking all over. It was pitch black, I didn’t want to wake anyone up to scare them, so I just lay there shaking for about 15 minutes until it finally stop. My mind was racing a mile a minute. I started praying to god a lot, all I wanted to was to wake up in the morning in one piece! After an hour, I calmed myself down and fell asleep, though I kept waking up. When our alarm went off in the morning, I felt this wave of relief flow through me. At breakfast, the manager told me it was probably a baboon!!!! Those angry beasts!!! (I thought baboons were supposed to be nice- Rafiki from the Lion King was a baboon). Definitely one of the scariest things that’s ever happened to me.

The animals were beautiful We turned a corner at oen point and came face to face with an elephant standing in the middle of the road. That was insane- it was so so close to our car. There were elephants all around us and they were protecting their children so they got kinda angry and made some loud toots so we drove off quite soon after. We also saw impala (beautiful deer-like animals), giraffe, wildabeasts, buffalo, some beautiful birds (which I now have an appreciation for), Jackels (kind of like foxes), HIPPOS (which are huge and just laze around in the water all day. They are apparently very vicious animals and when I saw one yawn I got pretty nervous looking at its gigantic mouth!)). We saw crocodiles too. I know we saw more but I can’t think of them right now!. All in all, giraffes are my new favourite animal. They are stunning and graceful and have the nicest eyelashes (I guess when you see them up close you notice strange things like that). I got some amazing pictures that I’m excited to show. Overall, it was a wonderful trip and I would definitely do another one in other part of the country if I can get back here at some point.


My birthday!!!
I had a fantastic day. Last week I spotted a painting that I really loved and planned to buy it. I went to another store for about ten minutes and when I got back it wasn’t there anymore. The head guy, Mrisho, said that he had just moved it and that it wasn’t gone. I came back the next day and it was gone!!! I was so sad about it all week because I actually really loved it! Long story short, on my birthday (yesterday) I woke up, went to wash up, and when I got back to my room the painting was sitting on my bed. Kara was sneaky and bought it for me. What a fabulous start to the day. School was really nice and calm which was good- I realized that the best way to calm them down is to sing a song. The kids get into that really easily. In the afternoon we went to the art centre to have a ‘batik’ lesson. Batik is a type of art that is very similar to tie-dye. We each got a piece of fabric, drew a design, and then traced the design with wax. They then dip it in coloured dye and you end up with your design being the only white part, while the rest is the colour of the dye. It looks pretty nifty- I made a sign for my door which says “karibu”- welcome (chibbs that does NOT means you can barge in and jump on my bed whenever you please). We had a fantastic dinner (with chipati and guacamole among other stuff) and then the coking staff made me such a pretty pink cake and they sang this birthday song (I had no idea what it meant). I was sitting there enjoying the song, but they just kept repeating it over and over again until I realized that it meant “we’re waiting for you to cut the cake!” hahaha. It was pretty funny. The cake was really yummy and obviously I ate too much of it. Then all of the volunteers had planned a little surprise for me. The got a daladala (a big white van that people use for transportation all over Tanzania- they are always packed with people) and had the guys from the art centre pile in with their drums and guitar and all of us and we went down to the beach and had a dance party! It was really amazing, definitely a birthday I won’t forget any time soon. Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes, I checked them today felt very loved.
So, I’m past the halfway point which is so crazy. On one hand it feels like I’ve been here forever but it’s only been two weeks! Crazy.

I hope everyone is well.
Love love love,
Jillian

p.s., the favourite saying around here is "Hakuna Matata”- THIS IS NO JOKE. I love it!! I keep forgetting to write that but I’m glad I finally remembered.