New shule and gospel music

This week I am teaching a mini-day camp to a combination of Form 1 students and street “children”. The term children is used very loosely…this organization that GSC is partnering with works with people from age 1 – 25 years old, and most of our students are definitely in the 18 – 25 age range. The form 1s are circa 12 years old, so today was interesting because we had them all mixed together. We might separate them kesho (tomorrow), because it did not exactly work stellarly.

Last Saturday was graduation for my Enyoito students. I was so sad to leave them, and many of them were upset too…some girls in my class were literally in tears. The ceremony was AMAZING. It ended up running an hour and a half over its appointed time, but it was completely worth it. There were dramas (with prego women, haha), tribute songs to mwalimu (teachers :)), dances, and my personal favorite was the hip-hop act. The secondmaster brought his stereo, but the room we had to do graduation in (because it was raining) did not have an outlet. However, it did have lights, so some of the older boys decided to rewire the room so that they could use the stereo…very inventive, and also probably dangerous. Everything worked out very well though! We had a photo shoot afterward, so I literally have hundreds of pictures of myself and the students. Luckily I do not mind having my picture taken, otherwise that would have been an awful experience, lol. My dada Rachel and the cousin, Erick, came with me to the graduation because I invited my whole familia here. It was really special because no one else’s family (of the GSC volunteers) came, so I felt loved…my family is great! They both enjoyed themselves, and it was nice to walk down the mountain for the last time with my dada…it made leaving my students less depressing. I got some of their email addresses though, so we can stay in touch/I can send them photos that we took.

Later that evening, all of the GSC volunteers went to a traditional Tanzanian wedding reception. The groom was the brother of a girl who is interning with GSC, Bridget, so she invited all of us. It was sooo poa (cool)! I was probably most shocked when they wheeled out two roasted goats that had vegetables sticking out of them…they were huge, and so obviously dead animals. We paraded to the front of the room to toast the entire wedding party at Bridget’s family’s request, and then again to present our gift as a part of the gift dance. The room looked like a senior prom…there were a ton of flowers, Christmas lights flashing, and white and maroon bows and balloons everywhere. There were also a bunch of ceremonial things to do. The reception began at 7, but we did not even start eating dinner until 9:45 (everyone had not gotten food until 10:30). Such a fun experience though!

My dada finally got the guts to ask if I had a laptop with me, and I admitted that I did and got it out for them. Unfortunately, I do not really have anything on it to interest them…I let them watch one innocuous episode of Gossip Girl that I had pre-screened and knew was okay. Other than that though, I do not have any movies or other T.V. shows that I think are appropriate for 10 and 12 year old girls. They do not seem very interested in my music either. Erick got out his CD of gospel music though, so we threw it onto my computer and they LOVED that. It was a family sing-along, they all knew all of the words. It was not too awful, much better than American gospel music, but I would never choose to listen to it myself. Erick left yesterday to go back to boarding schule, so I probably will not see him again :(

I tossed around a frisbee with some of the students after day camp today, and I was very happy to have an excuse to run around, even if it was to chase after their spastic throws. I do not think I can bring myself to run here…I miss it a lot, but it would just be extremely stressful. Just walking down the street is hard enough. To run around in sweatpants would be intense. The only people that I have seen running at all are these hard core marathon-training 20-something men. I am walking a lot every day, so hopefully that is keeping me in some sort of shape. And I think I might climb Mt. Meru in a couple of weekends with two other GSC girls, which would be amazing exercise, haha. Even though I am almost always hungry here, I think I might actually be gaining weight…eeek. Thus is the nature of empty fried carbs, I suppose.