Another year at Irente Children's Home

Mama  Ndemu was thrilled to have picture books published from the "little stories" she told us last year. The children were so curious and couldn't get enough of the storybooks. We are excited to share some of our pictures from this afternoons visit. What a full day! Aren't you lucky you get two posts in one day :)

 AJ and the boys

 Jennifer and the girls

 Efraem and his buddy

 Smile for the ABC book :)

 Mama Mirisha

 Miniature Bronwyn/Professor Fees

 Baby Violet just has surgery for spinal-bifita

 Anna and baby Violet

Soooo happy!

 Anna had a great first experience at Irente Children's Home

 The Rabbit & the Water... couldn't get enough of it! They all crowded around to listen to Mama Ndemu read the stories!

 Swahili ABC's

 My favorite boys! Not that I have favorites or anything....

 The Elephant & the Mosquitos

 Efraem's buddy

 Martha enjoying two books at once :)

 Buddy's hanging out with their gadgets!

 Hello there Martha

 Checa... smile!

 Loving his books. He didn't want to give it up to anyone

 Well hello there!

 Shout out to Courtney Smith. The children loved your water color illustrations.

 Workin' on the ABC's

 Mama Ndemu

 Mama Ndemu reading "Hawks Sewing Needle"

 Neema reading to the mtoto

 Mama Ndemu & Bronwyn walking to have chai and bites

Lushoto Teaching & Mabughai Screening Visit

 Welcoming the team to Lushoto with a pic with the waterfalls

 Thank the lord for Efraem. We would be lost without him!

 The bibi's and mama's with their son!

 Teaching at Sekomu

 Literacy Group Rotations

 Robert and Peter working through a "school readiness screen"

 Checking out Sungura na Maji

 Nuru and Angelicar taking a peek at Swahili ABC's!

 Loving "The Elephant and the Mosquito"

 Version 2 of "Elephant and the Mosquito"

 Team 2 smiling for a photo with their child they screened

 A little drum playing after working hard

 Leonard loved looking at the pictures of "Kagura Kamwe"

 Leonard, so happy to have his very own set of "Books in a Bag"

 Jennifer checking out the ABC book with Robert

 Our SEKOMU Students & Mabughai Students

 Happy to have some books :)

 Our team with the students of Mabughai

Sad to see us leave!

A few kicks and giggles!

The team has safely made it to Lushoto Town where we will be for the next 10 days working and training SEKOMU students/teachers, parents, and volunteers to further our literacy efforts focused on students with disabilities in Tanzania. What a mouth full!!! We sometimes feel like we have gotten in over our heads, but things are really starting to fall into place.

Yesterday we met with the Irente Rainbow School Outreach Team (consisting of 3 teachers, which we thoughts seemed awfully small). We discussed our “Books in a Book” ideas as far as combing them with their outreach visits and they received our suggestions well and seemed interested in implementing the use of the 7 books over the course of a year. The plan is for the outreach team to visit our initial implementation site once every 8 weeks to get an idea of how much the parents and volunteers have utilized the books and to hand out the next book to go in their “bags”.

Today, we are doing a dual training with both the SEKOMU students and the Rainbow Outreach Team to simulate each of the literacy activities we have created for each of the 7 storybooks. We will have stations that each of us will move around to and help model how to use the materials with parents and volunteers.

Now about our giggles….. Marilyn and I, upon our arrival to Lushoto, made sure that our key was secure and easily accessed for entrance into our house on campus after dinner. We had left the key over the weekend to have things cleaned and tidied up. We pulled up to the gate we were told it would be out and the guard immediately looked at us quizzically and stated that there was no such key left out the gate :/ We got on the phone with Eberhardt, who for one reason or another seems to be the SEKOMU staff member “in charge” of us during out time at SEKOMU. He assured us he would get on the phone with the warden, who is also one of our students, to try and figure the matter out. This is where things start to get funny. People are making phone calls right and left trying to figure out where the key is located. In the mean time, Efraem drives us to our house where we are to wait for the warden to come. Eventually he shows up and informs us that the Provost’s secretary had forgotten to hand the key off to him and it is now locked up in the administrative building of the college. We were out of luck for the evening, so we took up the warden’s offer to stay in one of the dorm rooms on campus and wait for the arrival of the key in the morning. Marilyn and I both took up residence on the bottom bunk of two sets of “double-decker” beds. Marilyn and I were exhausted so hit the hay after all the confusion. Waking up early for the arrival of the key, Marilyn and I decided to take a shower, but soon realized that there were no towels to use. I was in desperate need of a shower after our traveling day back from Zanzibar so decided I would dry off with a bed sheet J What an experience! I’m working on making sheet showers the new fad! We had warm water so that was all that really mattered. The key showed up at our doorstep a little after 7 and we had a driver take us to our home to pack up a few things are change into our “teaching apparel”.

The rest of the day was busy busy busy. Filled with a morning of teaching at SEKOMU, an afternoon meeting with both the Rainbow Outreach Team, and Mama Munga to secure her permission to continue with our research project on literacy.

We look forward to sharing the rest of our teaching adventures with our readers! Now we are headed into a meeting with our KSU Team to firm up our plans for teaching this afternoon.

Tomorrow it is teaching teaching teaching and then a visit to play with babies at the children’s home! We can’t wait!

Stay tuned for more excitement!

Kwaheri (bye)

Shilling Gapi? Priceless!

Pictures from our adventures on the Zanzibar Catamaran:

 Getting fitted with our snorkeling gear!

 The group, minus Jennifer who was taking our pic!

 Lovely ladies on the Indian Ocean

 The "mamas" relaxing before snorkeling

 Chico's model

 Relaxing under the Southern Sun!

 Look what we saw!!!! Dolphin pods

 Anna ready to jump in!

 Wahoo for Zanzibar Snorkeling! Us Yah'hoos sure know how to have fun!

 "Yah-hoo" as Efraem would say!

 Marilyn made it!!!!

 It's hard to see, but there were little fish that would come up and swim all around us. Kind of a weird feeling!!!

 Preparing our "Sugar Fish" for lunch! Grilling right off the side of the Catamaran

 Beautiful!!!!!!! Pandeza sana!

 Lounging in the saltiness!

We ended our trip with a grave injury.... Valerie's knee went out of place. We are hoping it is just the muscles surrounding our joint, but she wasn't able to straighten it and therefore had to be carried in off the boat to the room. We are looking into some "natural remedies" including "clove oil" that the spice farmer recommended. The team is hoping that she is better after some ice and "bio freeze" for traveling back to Arusha tomorrow!

The group had a great time on the boat. We enjoyed a wonderful day of snorkeling in the reefs of Zanzibar and a delicious fish lunch prepared on board by our guide. It was a wonderful relaxing day that was much needed before our busy next two weeks of teaching in Lushoto.

Tomorrow the team has a flight at 7 am, which means we have to catch a taxi at 5 am. After our short one hour flight, Efraem will pick us up and we will head towards Lushoto, stopping for an early lunch somewhere along the way :) Hopefully, our students have completed there two projects by the time we return to campus on Tuesday!

Marilyn and I are hoping that this weekend of warm weather doesn't stun the team too much when we get to the colder atmosphere of the Lushoto Mountains. We look forward to sharing the rest of our teaching journey with you and hope that you enjoy our pictures from today.

Kwaheri!