WOOOWWWWHHH!!!!....WAIT!!DON'T send pens, yellow lead or coloured pencils, crayons, paper, cahier books, books even!! well we can always use enough of those...medical supplies...my gawd, today we trepidly yanked open the warped wood door into the vast darkness of the Orphanage storage area and began our task...having traversed the entire of Mto Wa mbu, in and out of each little stall of a store searching for empty cartons of all sizes, for free, for the orphanage for heaven's sake, don't think of charging us for this! and most didn't...laden upside down with boxes stuffed into boxes into boxes we three, Marva from Israel, Norbert from Austria and I, with Tiko my friend the Rasta artist who we are supporting to take English and computer classes starting tomorrow, off we went covered in boxes...intent to journey into the bowels of this cavern tucked away without breath, without electricity, beseached benevolently with donations from near and far, boxes unlabelled dusty, dirty, wedged and overflowing with things we people from far away imagine necessary to small children without parents in this disease infested, poor, scavenged place, last year named the Blessed Comfort Orphanage, and this year simply the HOME COMFORT ORPHANGE of Mto Wa Mbu...I am getting carried away, but i have just spent six hours of my life today with us three digging and groping up to our filthy fingernails and cargo pants and clever brand named U.S. t shirts through this mountain of stuff we thought we didn't have..
I told Seanna, when she comes next week, we have NOTHING! NOTHING! |Please bring, and the list begins....paper, pens, paint, felt pens, you name it, we dont have it, books, they only had one catalogue that i have ever seen, a newspaper thing, like something produced out of the 50s by Sears without pictures, maybe a zebra or two on the first pages, but after that, a tawdry nothing.....BUT LO, and behold what we found today, and we are only half finished...half finished..we dragged box after box out of that room into the light, uncovered it, and exclaimed, we have 50 unopened tooth brushes here, boxes and boxes of art supplies - which we divided, stored, selected into each their own cardboard box, one after the next, and we are only half done....Curious George, Richard Scary, books on snakes, animals of all kinds, space travel, gardening, frogs and whatnot.

Tomorrow the huge shelving unit arrives to be manoevered and wedged into that space, floor swept, washed up, massive bags of rice, flour, maise to be shoved under the counter...boxes of shoes, clothes and everything else to be labelled and stored and then finally we will know where we are and what we need...

On top of all this, just yesterday the carpender who i have been driving crazy with my demands for lower prices for the children with no parents, for this size, this type of shelving, he arrives with Charles' truck and his manual screw driver laden down with four upright shelves with cleverly divided pockets, two for each room, girls and boys, bolted together, the unit now with ten big pockets, one for each kid and a few left over for staff, kitchen things, whatever.....
These very special units..
Bolted tight to the crusted cement walls, all day today, Juliette who is beautiful and in the picture, the director of this special little place on the planet, and another woman spend the whole long hot day sorting, folding, discarding little pieces of clothing,deciding which goes into whose slot, each kid having their own, the height of which depending on the age and measure of the kid. Outside three women who have emerged from the banana plantations bent over in half with huge plastic buckets filled with soapy water washing and cleaning clothes which haven't seen light for many a moon i am sure...the clothing lines stringing merrily across the muddy courtyard weighed down with one and a half years of donated little skirts, dresses, pants, shirts and all of every colour..it is exciting, like a wind is blowing through this place..someone has taken the long antiquated factory like broom and swept under beds, into corners, we are ecstatic.
Times, they are achanging...

Tomorrow the big storage shelving unit arrives...we will spend half the day arranging the new old empty but now full carton boxes onto freshly varnished shelving... we will know what we have, and what we dont 't have...i begin to feel badly for the hundreds of little kids that pass me everyday having learned 'give me my pen!' from birth, to which i say without a glance, no pen... but, i now know where they do have pens, not hundreds maybe thousands - pens labelled HILTON, or SAFARI LODGE or whatever place far travelled, hundreds of little cahiers, little empty books waiting for their A B Cs...drawings of simba, twiga, tambo....zebra, buses and wipers and the wheels that go round and round - why at the orphanage! and why not!

While i am here, i will describe this place while we are looking like mad for a new location..they are paying in rent $100 a month for one sort of building with the main first room all cement, used for reception, classroom with the two tables we had made, benches and blackboard, and to the right an office with aforementioned storage tomb aside..and to the back, a relatively big courtyard holding the makeshift kitchen which looks like an oversized dog shed, wooden, plus an area for showers everynight, girls first then boys, and finally two toilet areas which today they were fixing and renovating, whatever that means. Clotheslines zig zagging abover and swinging from all sides of the courtyard, a small area with bamboo roofing with benches hauled out of the classroom for lunches and dinners, and two little rooms off - dorms for girls and boys, nt each with one window, cement floors and walls, corregated metal roofs and two bunk bed unit - four beds to sleep 9 kids and one adult for nighttime security. Plus the newly added just yesterday double shelving unit of which we are so proud. Next Friday two new bunk beds which are being made as i write arrive, giving two more beds in each room for the kids, allowing them to sleep two to a bed, not three...

All of this is situated about a mile west of Mto Wa Mbu as i said walking under a stinky canope of a million breeding pelican like birds, white and black with yellow trim, perched on massive fig trees along the way...the main building about 50 feet in from the road, that area rock hard and dusty, muddy in rain, parched and the only place to play, but play wildly they do....soccer balls, volleyball, frizbie, we spend hours of the day tossing, shooting, kicking and racing over this mound of mud back and forth, little ones sharing with bigger ones...it is not much but it is everything ...a great location, a ten minute walk to the hospital, and a bit further down the road, the primary school...

They want to move. The rent is high, the place is small, the location is great. The National Parks has given them land an hour away, up near the airport in Kiratu....enough room to build classrooms and dorms for the kids. Off the main road, lousy location, cheap land, no schools, no hospitals...no tourists en route to safari interested in supporting this venture, I say, not great...

So we start looking around for land in Mto Wa Mbu, something on the main road, something not too far from where they are now, a place where people who remember the little orphange who grew, they will come back, next year, the year later...
Nothing...we wait..
And yesterday, maybe a miracle. I dont know, but it is a start.

The farmer who owns the land two plots away wants to sell, and will sell it all, he says for $23 million, which is $23,000. our money...it is great, close by, flat, and big..i am meeting with him tomorrow...

On top of this, an Australian woman came through yesterday taking a special trip from Arusha, to investigate helping with this very orphanage, likely one of many she has heard of....who claimed she may have resources for the relocation, partially anyway, of the buying of the land and perhaps the building of the new facility...
I am going into Arusha this week to visit to see how serious she may be....

So we're up to our neck with the big plan..land, costs, cost to level and build, building design, costs, electrical, plumbing, indoor toilets....staffing, teaching the little ones, security, food, clothing, uniforms, schooling, medical, everything....It is a dream maybe, but feels like the pieces just may be coming together.

Lydia, please re-email me the address of the website in Toronto that supports schools and orphanages in Africa..i deleted it by mistake!

Tomorrow, i am taking Elia to the swimming pool. Job who is the chef at the campsite and who tries to teach me Safari is going to buy him a little pair of swimming pants in the morning...he has never seen water like this i am sure and can't swim...but when Seanna and Sierra come next week, maybe he can join us! He's only one of 35 kids, but he is MY LITTLE KID...he is a great artist, he plays ball like a crazy man, a real street wize little guy of 8..no mama, no papa and no grandmother to watch over him, tough with a soft edge, big black eyes, and a special nod to me everytime i come..wearing dirty skinny capri pants in flowered pattern or hot pink or whatever else around to throw on...and who cares? I am besotted.

Charles just arrived...got to run...please! someone tell me what happens on Tuesday with Texas and Ohio!! |I'm told that there is a wave of Obamamania..that Clinton doesn't stand a chance against MCCain....that he is racing ahead...eeez\e this right?
hugs. Lynn