Dearest friends, family, and faithful followers,
Greetings again from the tallest white woman in Bunju A, Tanzania! Your weekly installment is coming to you again from yours truly, Eileen Moeller. We have an exciting week behind us, and lots of great things to tell you about, so settle in, and ruminate whilst I illuminate what we have been doing...
Since we last were together in the magical, abstract world of the internet, we three volunteers for the Tanzanian Education Project have successfully completed the ELA Painting Project! The nursery school is now completely painted, and it looks wonderful thanks to the generous donors who have assisted us and made painting the nursery school a possibility. We worked at the nursery all last week, going there every day after finishing at Fanaka, the simple manual labor and messiness of the paint a welcome relief after the mental stress of being at the secondary school. On Friday afternoon, we were nearly finished, with only some detailing left to do and some pictures to finish.
Saturday morning, we rose early and trekked back to ELA and tried to finish all of the painting. There were just a few things left to do, but we were going to try to visit Bibi in the hospital that day, so we packed our things back up around lunch time and headed home. When we returned home, we were famished, so we quickly ate before cleaning our painting supplies. Cassie and I were sitting in the backyard, up to our elbows in sticky oil paint and paint thinner when Babu came home. He picked his way across the muddy yard and approached us.
“Girls,” he said solemnly, folding his arms across his belly, “I have some bad news.”
Cassie and I froze, holding our breath, preparing for the worst. After an extremely drawn-out pause, Babu finally continued, “The sea container is on its way here.”
After a stunned moment, we yelled in excitement and quickly scrambled to finish cleaning and put away the painting supplies. Babu cackled in delight, gingerly lifted his trouser legs, and picked his way back through the mud into the house. We found Teresa, and the three of us grabbed cameras, papers, and other supplies so we could go to Fanaka and wait for the sea container.
Of course, we had to wait. And wait.
Finally, however, after sitting on the stoops of Fanaka’s classroom and busying ourselves with other work, the container arrived. We were all deep in our work and this time, and jumped in surprise as Teresa started hollering, “SEA CONTAINER!” There was a mad dash to throw all of our work into bags, find our cameras, and assemble some sort of work crew. At the arrival of the container, students, family, friends and Fanaka staff had begun to gather on the compound.
After what seemed like an eternity, the truck backed up to the chemistry building and was opened. Cassie and the man from the shipping office made out a receipt, signed and stamped it to many cheers. Then the unloading process began.
Indeed, we had no forklift, so the unloading process was done African-style: there was lots of shouting, it took a long time, and none of it was done in a very logical or strategic manner. I waiting anxiously, holding a camera, as the men threw the dummy walls out of the back of the container, and then just started pushing and shoving the seven-hundred pound crates; preparing, I think, to simply throw them the six feet from the truck bed to the ground. Everyone was yelling; Cassie and Teresa were yelling in English, trying to devise a safe strategy, and the men were all yelling in Swahili, telling one another to move the crate this way and that. I suggested to Cassie that we just accept the fact that this unloading process would have some collateral damage, and that damage would be Jamesi’s life. She did not find this humorous.
However, after a little over two hours of heavy lifting, shoving, unloading, stacking and attempts to organize in the dark (the school compound does not have electricity right now), we finally got the container unloaded. I am SO thankful that all of those wonderful people back in the United States packed it so well and organized everything. The unloading process was chaos, with students trying to help, Masai having too much fun with our headlamps, and Jamesi trying to just throw the boxes out instead of handing them to people, but it would have been much, much worse if the folks at home had not organized things ahead of time. So again, thank you!
We returned home Saturday night exhausted, and soon went to bed, elated after all that excitement. We rose early again on Sunday morning, and I went back to ELA to finish some detailing and complete the painting while Teresa and Cassie went to Fanaka to begin working on the library process. ELA was completed and looks wonderful... If I do say so myself.
I went to Fanaka to help organize once I had finished at ELA, and after working there for a few hours, we returned home for lunch, hoping we would get to see Bibi that day. After lunch, we traveled by dala-dala to the hospital, and had to wait in the canteen for a bit before they would let us in to see her. We did eventually get let in, and got to talk with Bibi for a while and showed her the pictures of our progress. She was looking much better and was very excited about the progress we had made at ELA and the arrival of the sea container.
Monday was another exciting day: Bibi was finally discharged from the hospital and arrived home! Since then, she has been looking much better and is getting back to her old self. She still must rest a lot, but I think being at home makes her happier, and so it is easier for her to recuperate. Thanks to everyone who has been keeping her and our family in your thoughts and prayers, Bibi really appreciates it and so do we. After being elated that Bibi had returned home, we were also delighted to be informed by Babu that our port charges on the sea container were only Tsh 220,000/= (about $170 USD)! We had anticipated they would amount to almost $500 USD, but now we have extra budget to use for bolstering the efforts of other projects. Woo!
This week has also been busy on the teaching front. We are still trying to arrange the timetable for Fanaka and juggle our teaching loads while still managing to do work for the Tanzanian Education Project. Every night, we do typing or other administrative work for the headmistress at the school, while still trying to tackle our TEP projects like preparing to set up the shop. Also this week, I was assigned the responsibility of being Teacher On Duty (TOD) for the school. TOD is responsible for disciplinary problems, for getting all of the kids to class, chasing them down after break, ensuring they do their morning cleaning, and getting them to assemble properly before and after school. This would be a difficult task even with the assistance of the other teachers. However, we still have some major problems as far as getting all of the teachers to work together as a team and assist one another. Cassie and Teresa are of course very helpful, chasing down students and even making sure teachers get to their assigned periods on time (which is more difficult than you may think), but at the end of the day, I am exhausted from being TOD. We have an open compound, with many places to run and hide behind, and chasing giggling teenage boys is exhausting.
All in all, it has been an incredibly successful and wonderful week and we have accomplished much. Thanks again to everyone at home who has helped TEP in the last year and who is continuing to help with fundraising and other efforts. Although Bibi is home, having her ill is still a major blow to Fanaka and it being able to run properly, so we need a lot of help.
I hope everyone is doing well in their respective lands, here, there and everywhere. I love and miss all of my friends and family dearly. Please don’t be mad I have been gone so long; I’ll bring you back a present, I promise (Andrew).
May the Force be with you.
xoxox
Eileen
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