Thursday, January 25, 2007

Greetings from Karatu! about an hour up the Rift Valley into the Ngorangora Mountains, through red earth and brilliant green, fields of wheat, cut into squares like a puzzle on each side of this good road of asphalt.....just came off the Crater, two days of Safari with Lindsey, so much fun being with her, sharing with her, amazing....
Emails out for two weeks up there somewhere floating around the Universe...but some came through today, welcoming....am thinking a lot of coming home, what that means...met a great couple from BC last night at the campsite, they are travelling for 8 months through East Africa, by local bus, staying in local hotels, amazing journey...he said to me: back home "we have everything and yet we have so little, and here, they have so little, but yet they have everything"...I know what he is saying. Here, people are joyful to say hello each time in greeting, and with the little Swahili i have learned i can keep the good mornings going for a good minute or so,...the local people stopping for ages, five or ten minutes just to say hello and catch up....People care about what each other are doing here, really care....the interest and joy is in each exchange. Despite despair, there is always a sense of happiness just to be with each other here, just to be alive..death is around every corner.....the little four year old i wrote about positive, staying with her grandmother in Handeni last month died a few weeks ago, I just learned.
This in not unusual, and is received with a sense of honest sadness, the information reported, and then an almost 'oh well' and moving on.....I was disheartened, but as they say, what can you do?
Age...those of a certain age are respected, enjoyed, consulted and totally integrated into this society..it is unthinkable to them when we relate how our aging feel invisible in our youth oriented society, how we put elderly into homes where sometimes no one visits except on Christmas, birthday, holidays...they simply can't imagine....the society is at ease with everyone, from babies and children up through elders and ancients.....not just Masai, but as far as I can see the African people everywhere i have travelled..It is not unusual to see a child raised by a sister and her family, its mother unable to keep it herself.....it just moves on...I have been asked to take home several chidren, and one masai woman handed me her baby as I admired it, saying here, if you want her, please, take her with you...
So my Elia at the orphanage....it would be a matter of a week or so for formal adoption that's it..but I am told the situation is very different upon arriving at the Toronto airport...Canadian visas are difficult to obtain, and not done hastily, which is probably a good thing in the long run. Adopting a seven year old would be wonderous in many ways, and also challenging in others, needless to say, but being here the problems and issues of this seem small in comparison with the greatness of it. That is what i am thinking now..today!
Lindsey leaves Saturday...then i head out to a new district Kerogue, s of Moshi snuggled deep into the mountains...we have a project with four villages there, dealing with the Allanblackia plant which produces oil for margerine which is colestrol free..ICA is hoping to encourage a lot of growing of these plants for sustainable incomes down the road...
After that, up to Kenya for the last week or so where four Canadian/US ICA people have been working all winter, Il Ngwesi, near Nairobi....doing HIV Aids education and voluntary testing..the first such project from start to finish in Africa so far....
And then....leaving on the 12th for Amsterdam, a few days, there is a big new Van Gogh Expressionist exhibition there, and then...home....the babies and Johnny and Shauna are still in my house, of which i am thankful...can't wait to see everyone...
and figure out what in earth this journey has meant to me in perspective.....
Hugs to you all..thanks for keeping this thing going with me!
I intend to sprinkle it with photographs when i get home..
xL

Monday, January 22, 2007

Two days later..
Exhausted after those workshops, treking across the length of Mto Wa Mbu out of town as much as we can to the Blessed Comfort Orphanage, with huge bunches of freshly cut bananas (mangos, pineapples, oranges, everything sold on the side of the road out of big buckets and plastic bowlsa thriving business for local women sitting on crates, boxes,enjoying each other, breast feeding babies, admidst the thrive of everyday life, tourist safari land rovers and cruisers filled with white people from around the world some dressed in full safari garb moving swiftly through town en route to Ngorangora Crater a few hours up the road..)- art supplies, exercise books with lines, boxes of coloured pencils, crayons, Lindsey and I took the Masai chief along with us today to meet the children. They have no toys, their clothes are torn, dirty andthread barren, there is no table for them to eat, no soap to clean their clothes. As we come into range of the Orphanage the little souls are outside sitting on the curb in front of the crumbling building, catching sight of us, they stand up ,waving and cheering. Of course most except one speak Swahili, so we spend a few hours drawing elephants, giraffes, simbas and monkeys , singing Do a Deer, alphabets and numbers, these childrens soaking up any attention, learning, inspiration. The older ones don't go to school.
LIke I said the other day, I am enchanted by Elia..he is seven, and has captured my heart. Adoption. Of course it crosses the mind.
I will leave you with this, with seconds to go before this email crashes..
we go on safari tomorrow..
more later, have a great day! xxL
Ok hi! well, i have had the pleasure of receiving nary an email from not even a single soul but for two junk messages from persons of whom I know not for over two weeks now.. is Sympatico down? Ah..well I shall still soldier on with this blog, writing stories and ideas to whomever again of whom I know not.
Life gallops along...we are hugely busy everyday, last week two full two day workshops for me, two half day ones for Lindsey....my second was the actualization of a dream for me, to work in a Masai village with Masai warriors, women and youth, Friday and Saturday...we were combining with ICA running Hiv aids education sessions, headed out over intrepid terrain, scruffy dirt tundra, high grasses, stunning mountains, rivers, huge vistas... to the right front tire giving out, causing our arrival to be three hours late - participants waiting, anxious for lunch, no, lunch money, unbeknownced to me, so we set up our materials in a classroom in the public school and rounded up two chipatis each per student plus a coke, eaten on the dusty ground under a ring of trees..and started the workshop over three hours late, hurling into exercise after exercise, spirit cards, graduated skies and big land little sky. By three thirty they were exhausted and becoming relatively hostile having been told only that morning about the workshop, having shut down whatever means they had to make dinner money that day, and now realizing that they were not being paid to attend this workshop....we let them go early and dragged ourselves back across dusty holey tundra to Mto Waa Mbu...Barrie who is the financial man for ICA here filling in as my interpreter declaring all the way home that "they are hopeless", that he wanted to kill himself!!It was a challenge, and not one I cared to repeat day two, but Saturday morning bright and early we set out only to realize we had forgotten some things, turned back and again arrived three hours late....
We paid them lunch money this time.
Funny how sometimes you expect something to be fabulous, you imagine the ultimate, when in fact events leading up to it far surpass the ultimate expectation. How life is.
But on our way back we paid a visit to the local Masai chief's doma....perched high into glorious rolling hills with vista of mountains, valleys, open meadows, clusters of cows with young Masai in red and purple here and there, goats running in little herds, we drove off the main road across tundra....He with his brothers, their Masai sheets blowing in a soft wind, their spears and staffs silouetted against the sunsetting sky standing against a backdrop of mud huts and thorn stick corals, ...his father a ninety two year old ancient elder sitting on his special wooden stool a metal cylinder of tobacco snuff at his lap, we were told how to greet him. I have been learning Masai lately, this Chief becoming a friend, the practice of greeting done in accordance with age and gender, confusing at best - sometimes not being able to guess age, whether a young boy has been circumcized and therefore has graduated into the MORAN or warrior bracket, or whether the elder I am meeting and greeting as a woman is in fact a gentleman...
Hello to the father, the matriarch of this huge family, having had twelve wives and over 60 children, our chief with only two wives, five kids, but brothers, sisters, wives and husbands, many children, goats, chickens and flies all living together in some kind of peaceful arrangement atop this mountain of God's indescrible paradise.
I attempted to milk a goat with his first wife with a child holding its head still while we crouched down at its behind and tried to hang onto a long teet, yanking and pulling it, with it leaping out of the clutch of my fingers each time.
.....to be continued...

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Back up the mountains, through stunning hills,valleys, a sunset of pink, peach, purples to never forget...after aday with Lindsey facillitating two half day acting improv workshops, this mornings at the office under hot African sunny skies with 8 local drama people,3 Rasta artists, the second at the secondary school just outside of Mto Wa Mbu with kids from 13 to 20, twenty maybe....both great! Monday and Tuesday my turn with art workshop..takes a fewdays to get supplies together,paper, paint, mixing colours, 28 of them in plastic containers with airtight tops - I'm reducing supplies to a minimum, the paper very rudimentary, the colours: red, yellow and blue, with black and white..everything costs so much more here,maybe twice..sponge brushes, Sharpies, felt markers andcrayons...trucked around in a red suitcase like a travelling fuller brush salesman.25 participants, three women with Hiv aids who are home care workers, the above Rastas who are good artists selling their paintings out of a wooden shed with corregated roof along the road coming into town to tourists from around the world en route to Safari up Ngora Ngora crater or around Manyara National Park. The tourists stick to campsites or pass through to expensive Safari lodges seldom seen venturing into town,so Lindsey and I are basically the only whites around...I'm called Mama Canada, affectionately careened by venders selling Masai blankets and necklaces made from bone and beads along the road - each one determined to lure us into their huts to buy and buy and buy..we insist we are NOT tourists, we are working here...and move along..I had maybe 12students at the workshop, secondary school kids,dressed in white shirts and grey pants or skirts, so keen to learn. Primary school is free here in Tanzania, tho books and uniforms are not...tough for parents desperately trying to put food on the table,pay rent...if kids complete primary with a very high average, they MAY get accepted into government SEcondary..likely not as the numbers are terribly low despite great grades, and still have to pay school fees of about $75.US a year,plus uniform, books..maybe room and board as well, it is prohibitive to most families... a woman positive with hiv aids collapsed andwas hospitalized upon learning her son was accepted,with no possible way of affording his future; luckier kids head off to private secondary schools costing over five hundred a year....
Well where was I? with the flick of my finger I lost a good half hour of writing, but retrieved this bit so far...
I'll get to the point. I am smitten by one sweet seven year old boy called Eliah... the oldest of ten kids at the Blessed Comfort orphanage just outside of town..I want to bring him home...we rented a big van, with Charles our director, the driver and conductor, two teachers and headed Sundayinto Manyara National park...for a day of animal watching...great....except a massive elephant broke from his herd of over one hundred beasts and headed down the road straight for us, his huge wide ears stretched out like a big bird, a nasty look in his eye, steadfast, he trod closer and closer. Charles in the front was unperturbed....the bus driver terrified, slammed the gears into reverse and headed backwards into a muddy trough. We made it through, racing as fast as he could backwards, Lindsey in the back remarking: "then tradgedy struck"..on and on...
I have three minutes time left, having lost so much..
Quickly, Eliah...oh my heart...
What can i say...?
More after the Masai workshop tomorrow and next in the village...
xL

Saturday, January 13, 2007

I give up on pictures...800 or more stocked safely in my digital, wrenching them out like pulling a hunk of chicken away from a starving goat.. Am covered in mosquito welts..a ten hour wait at the airport for Lindsey..

Thursday night: arrived early, two hours to wait..to be told the plane was delayed, coming in at 2am...not 8:45 pm ...we head upstairs to the big bar for a Safari..then down and out to another to watch CNN for the first time since Zimbabwe..Whaaaaa??? What the heck is the US doing in Somalia?? Way too close for comfort, the Somalians fleeing into Kenya and Tanzania, the papers alude to possible strikes here...yikes!

I'm with Ben (the son of an ICA project worker - aged 20, my interpreter, my body guard...) we settle in and wait,around 10:30 or so, we're told, her flight further delayed, TILL 6 AM...maybe...maybe 4:30, maybe 5:30. We head back to the big bar, closed and darkened now, pull some cusions off the chairs, line them up and lie down, Ben on watch...then the bugs...hundreds of them, windows wide open, interior courtyard doors - it's a hive of swarming bugs. I pull Masai table clothes out from under spoons, forks...wrap my feet and head in them, lie back down, more mosquitos, more searing whining....give up..around midnight, Ben is gone, back to the bar to get cognac.. I am alone, dancing around the huge bars, in and out around the tables, a universe to myself...running away from the bugs..
An hour later he comes back, locked out of the airport he has searched for the guard all this time...who doesn't believe i am up there...we are relegated to the downstairs waiting area, just the two of us, a big bottle of cogniac, water, my sketch book with six hours to go....

a night to remember, this guy tells me of his brother's murder three years before, how he was arrested wrongly and spent two years in jail before they acquitted him...never found the murderer...I am drawing all night, his face, sketching, writing the words i am hearing, the story, sipping cognac, writing, drawing.....
the plane comes in finally, people flooding back into the airport to meet it, I am delerious with the tales i am hearing, the description of a boy whose father left when he was one, growing up, tough hard, on the streets, a mom single handedly raising five kids alone...witnessing of the murder, helping his brother home, the blood on his shirt, the arrest, jail, fights, drugs, attempted suicide, poison...I start to cry and can't stop...
Lindsey arrives....after a 27 hour journey...laughing, crying...taxi back into
Arusha, drag ourselves into a local bus and back to Mto Wa Mbu, surreal....
Sleep, oh heavenly sleep....
4pm: head out with Charles in the pickup, along with a huge wonderful smiling health care worker Esther, through miles and potholes of banana trees, up up up, into her family home... the father in his late 80s, gregarious, strong, proud, I love him, his wife, a daughter, her two kids and a small grandson...this huge loving family, we squeeze into their darkened living area, Christ and crosses hang with family photos, pages of calendar, newspaper clippings on the walls.
We talk; They've had 12 kids, 30 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren...the family expands, one daughter so sick with HIV bedridden, all down on their knees waiting for God to take her away, the magic of ARVs, the love of the Lord "she crawls up from the grave" and gets stronger, healthier, no stigma, no shame here, this huge loving family pulling together, pooling resources, everyone helping, caring for her and she's going to make it...
Thistime it's not the grandparents doing it, it is the GREAT GRANDPARENTS.. lodging and caring for the tribe icredible story of love and strength...we are treated to a plate of jackfruit cut straight off the tree, the chickens clucking amongst the children, the little boy asleep in the arms of his great granddad....

a great day one for Lindsey, and for me, another unforgettable experience in this land i so love.

tomorrow, to the Manyara Park with ten little kids, from the Blessed Comfort Orphanage here in Mto Wa Mbu..one on his knees running his fingers across my dark red toenails, another in my arms stroking white skin maybe for the first time, Lindsey today swinging another around and around, she wouldn't let go...thank you Uncle David for your hugely generous donation, this is where it will go....!

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Hi !! from ArushaTown...about 3 hours north of Mto Wa Mbu..en route to Kilamanjaro airport to meet Lindsey! I must remember to curtail my excitement pointing out this and that and this again..allowing her a chance to embrace and drink in the marvels of this country in her own way... of course I can't believe she is finally almost here....!! We're taking the orphaned kids Sunday to Manyara National park, have rented a big van, along with two teachers, Charles, Lindsey and I....lunch....a great beginning....
Arusha is huge compared to anywhere i have travelled, bursting and booming with safari vans vying road space with buses spewing black diezel, cars, trucks, vans, people sitting on wooden crates, boxes of fruits along the sidewalk selling vegetables, barrels of bananas, avocados, mangos - anything and everything, a blend of white tourists from all over the world wandering around waiting for the start of their safari adventure. I found an excellent bookstore, and this internet shop in a Patisserie...unimaginable here in this often technically challenged land of electrical shortages and ancient communication apparatus.
INterviewed three home care workers, from the Hiv aids community group in their homes this week...tiny rooms, wall to wall beds hanging with mosquito netting, with a few chairs, maybe a couch in the corner, cement floor, walls, corregated wavy tin ceilings, with two little kids rolling around on the floor as we talked - a lone window, the light coming in from the open doorway...
Distressed: the local govt has bequeathed each of the 30 members of their group a goat to milk which they each keep tied up neartheir own homes...along with the goats arrived three cows,a bull and two lady cows...young, not yet milking..a generous gift except that there was no shed for the cows, nor anyone to look after them properly...they spent two weeks roaming around outside until the groupn was able to borrow materials to erect a makeshift shed for them in the garden of the Chairwoman who lives in the middle of abanana plantation, with chickens, goats and now three cows, her children and grandchildren....on ARVs now, almost at death's door a short while ago...weak still and unable to look after these cows herself she hired someone for $40 Can a month to bring fresh grass to them, and to mop the shed everyday.....
Three months later and they haven't been able to pay this man yet....one of the lady cows had a miscarriage and now lies motionless most of the time. The other female is pregnant, due in March...when they hope she will begin to produce milk, until now these cows are heavy burdens on the chairwoman with no support from the group, causing great despair.
Trying here to create sustainable opportunities for people to earn their own money, allowing them soon to be self sufficient, with esteem for themselves. Giving sick people three cows without further resources for maintenance until they produce themselves seems a futile venture.....but maybe i don't get it!
Okay more later...am determined to get pics on this one ....
Have a good day!!

Monday, January 08, 2007

MTO WA MBU!! greetings...it took me weeks to pronounce this properly..each vowel in SWalhili is spoken...so in this case, there are four syllibles to remember..M Two Wa
MmmmmB U...try it! Lindsey arrives Thursday night after a 16 hour flight, leaping eight hours ahead. Can't wait..! Visited an orphanage today,with Charles my Project Coordinator,driving up, ten little kids sitting on the front stoop of the place...age 3 to 6..preschool, each one having lost both mom and dad to hiv aids..it is so so sad...as i got out of the truck one raced up with arms outstretched, i picked him up as the others flooded around me, all wanting to be held, loved.
ON Sunday with LIndsey....we are renting a van and collecting all of them to visit the Manyara National Park just three miles from town....for the first time all ten of them will see all the animals: giraffe,elephant, imapal, gizelle, monkeys, baboons, lions...what else! I can't wait...then in the next weeks when we arenot doing workshops Lindsey andI can volunteer to do art and play with them...I know they are barely surviving on 2,200 aday (around $2.50 US) per child....when comfortably they need 4,000 per child...adding vegetables and fruit to their meagre diet of porriage (ugali: corn meal), morning and night..more later after this remarkable day Sunday....
WE don't have internet access in Mto Wa Mbu...an hour local bus ride with goats and bunches of bananas away up onto the rim through stunning mountains and ridges gets us here, just hoping the electricity hasn't been shut off....!
Arrived last WEd, Thursday to Saturday night late...headed out with Charles, two water experts on irrigation, watersheds, etc from India, and the local Agricultural director for the region, non stop driving across awesome country, huge expanses of mountain, hills, valleys..visiting four Masai villages usually under such drought at this time with precious cows dying, devestated without water, food..but this year lots of rain, lush, green, gorgeous....looking for appropriate watershed projects for ICA to begin working with...At eachstop...after meeting the Masai and local government leaders, signing guest books, a custom observed religiously in every African village i have visited, sitting, talking a bit, discussing what we are doing, why we are there..how long we will be....bringing the community into the project, it is never imposed upon them..working together, all parties taking ownership of the project right from the start....
then allof us..the Masai warriors draped in purple and red sheets with spears and long hardwood poles nimblyleading running easily along like goats up hills and down rocky rough dales...the government guys, the INdians, Charles and me..
picking ourway through stones and deep sucking blackmud dimpled here and there with big deep elephant tracks, dung, on up through raging riverbeds, follow the leader like ants one by one.. leaping across a wide chasmof rushing fiord,scary,but i had
no choice.in my new green gum boots...up up up we all climbed to the top, thick forest, exotic trees winding vines, massive root systems pulled out of the narrow trail through fallen rotting branches, hot,moist,green, wet....finally to the
water source...fascinating so new to me...
This is deep into Masai country...ICA here works predominantly in Masai villages: hiv aids education, testing....micro economics, womens and children's rights...now Water Irrigation Watershed projects....
My fascination for Masai is endless...I have read BOOKS and books on these exotic, ever interesting people, their customs...marriage, their love of cattle..goats...women in charge of children, building mud huts, food, early morning milking...small children with hundreds of animals and a long stick proding them onto new pastures..often alone out there across miles and miles of green meadow, it is all about the cows.... the more you have the richer you are...and because of this, you need more wives..each one bought for 15 or more cows...to raise more children to look after more cows...these people, tall, thin, lanky, high cheekboned, stunning...wearing beads, small round metal disks linked together, white necklaces,long drooping earings hanging heavily off huge holes in their ear lobes the size of an old silver dollar...red, purple, checked, striped, shiny, plain sheets knotted at the shoulder...each one, wrapped with grace around the next...the warriors, glamorous, arrogant, haughty in their prime,red ochre smeared across face, through hair, adorned...old wrinkled ancient elders, most esteemed, most revered....

As I said,my fascination is endless...
....and on..and on....
be wel....is it snowing yet??

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Moshi...last night's dinner, with Doris my Tanzanian ICA director and her husband Joseph...a full moon, a large plate of chicken, bananas, potatoes to share, lots of wine...we move into Africa, ICA and what can we do? What can we really do?...Plaguing me always, it is never enough, never ever enough...i know, each little bit counts, helps somewhere, but i am troubed these days, coming home soon, what next? what best can i do, what can anyone do? Joseph who is magnificent, said to pray tonight, ask those questions, what can i do he said, to be remembered here...Well it is not to be remembered for me, it is that it is never enough..leaving Handeni a few weeks ago, with just so much money in my purse, dividing it up and giving it away in little bundles...to the woman for her son's education, to the pole thin and frail woman with the Masai (I hope that picture goes through to you), to the wonderful and crippled Benson who hasn't seen his family in two years - no funds for his travel...to the babies i am trying to supply with milk, (from Zimbabwe, and how to get money there, the bank won't let them open a foreign account, and even if it did the govt would take most of US money as taxes, duty, whatever)..it goes on and on, and there are hundreds, thousands more...millions.. Dividing what little i have in bundles, the feeling of playing God and feeling horrible about it, cause whatever it is is never enough...ever...
I'm leaving for Mto Wa Mbo this afternoon..another town, another journey....i'm glad to be finishing these days of 'holiday'...I dont like being a tourist...I said to someone i want to be treated equally, and when you are not working you aren't..he was surprised....
So on to Arusha, and Mto Wa Mbo...(try saying that in four syllables!)....in a few hours...
The lights just flicked, a generator was turned on...time to head out...
hugs!
Finally....hoping these pics will come through...safari, markets, Digna's two boys-my yoga mates, lions, elephants, the aids positive woman we took to the Masai healer (still haven't heard back) art workshops, remembering walls......
Well...happy new year! 2007....blessings to you, my wonderful family, friends, the people i have been lucky to meet here in Africa - in meditation, imagining a white light around each and every one of us, at first, in the room, then surrounding the village, then Africa and then on into the whole world...a white light filled with love, joy, good health and peace....i wish you all....
Africa...New Years...a time for me of reading, writing, remembering...a bit of swimming, walking, thinking...white sands on the INdian Ocean, without electricity, no water, no light, no functioning toilet, and yet, what can you do? Reflecting on what this country has given me...maybe patience i am hoping, the need to never know where i am going, and if i do, certainly understanding that whatever i think might happen, never does...much like the process of painting a painting...you begin with an idea and through the journey of working on it, it never turns out the way you plan...like life!!
Patience, and not judging..determined to look upon everyone i meet with new life, new adventure...i am on the local bus from TingaTinga, Pengane out on the sea heading toward Tanga, three hours away. I think i have chosen the best seat, up around the door, with lots of space around it...settling in quite pleased with myself...
The doors open and people pour in...filling each seat from the back to the front, and then more, and more and more..each time we stop, the squeezing bodies pushing further and further toward the back of the bus, i have five hands belonging to five standing and careening people crossing my head and shoulders, each one desperately grasping onto the pole in front of me...the flapping flimsy fabric of a woman's brown and black shawl swinging down and sticking into my face, her elbow juts into my cheekbone..
I want to bite it!
Ah...patience, white light... a matter of altering consciousness...
here's to the new year....