Charles is back!! and running full tilt..it's great...hugely busy, where to begin? Wednesday, early, helped get ready five little kids for testing for hiv aids...the huge suitcase shoved into the corner of the girl's dorm, pulled open and stuffed with clothes of all sizes, new, old, clean dirty, it will be great when those cupboards arrive, one for each kid - easily my white faced need to organize, sort out, and label; and on to clean shoes, faces, ears, eyes and we are on our way, Norbert from Austia, a volunteer and i, each with someone's little fingers woven into our own, with the last pulling along at the end, walking that long mile slowly, poly poly, back into town....and what an adventure!!

These kids never get out, ever. They aren't old enough for school, which means they can't yet touch their ear - the official test for school enrolement: where they reach one hand up high to the sky, then with bent elbow, reach over their big heads, and with their straining little fingers because everyone wants to go to school, they try to touch the top of the opposite ear...!! When they can touch, they can go to school!

Hugely Enchanted by the highway street scene, cars, trucks, buses, the man lying underneath his big old truck fixing a tire in the middle of the road, women selling bananas all lined up in a row sitting on upturned plastic buckets wrapped in gay coloured calico prints pulled tight around their bodies, on their heads, laughing, talking, nursing their babies...music pouring out loudly from shops, everyone saying JAMBO!! to them, to us, everyone, great excitement, they didn't stop talking chattering like early morning birds, to us, to each other, to everyone on the street...and on to the restaurant for a treat of breakfast before the testing - a little rice muffin bun called KITUMBUA, and a hot cup of chai for them to dip ....these little mites sitting up on big people's red plastic chairs at a proper adult's restaurant table..ten little eyes locked and entranced with the tv perched high high over their heads - another first for many, without electricity at the orphanage.

We make our way slowly down the long muddy lane off the main drag to the ICA office, Elizabeth the nurse, and Sabina our social worker, ready.. Norbert took the job of entertaining with art supplies all over the floor in the front room, while i took each kid back in to the back blood room, one at a time - pulling them up carefully on my knee with Elizabeth explaining what she was going to do with that needle...me, with one arm around the child to hold her, him, up tight close to me, the other with a chocolate cookie in my hand stuffing it into its scared little mouth,fending off tears, an elastic band gets tied around the tiny little arm, the vein found and the deed done....we did wonderfully, ten kids that day, only two cried and kicked and squirmed so hard, one shouting out that we were trying to cut off her arms! we couldn't take their blood...but all 8 came out this first time negatively, which is incredible considering that most had parents who passed from aids...

Balloons, more chocolate cookies, and the long walk home...

Today five came down with malaria....had to take them to the hospital for testing, varying degrees of it to be sure, medication, and on the mend...Tomorrow we take the last five in for aids testing, the older kids, the ones who go to school during the day...Elia, my little guy one of them...15 out of 35 who live at the orpanage full time with not one living person in the world to look after them..the day-kids come in around 7am, and leave each night some twelve hours later, this group needing parents permission for testing....so until this is done, we are finished with this project with our live-in kids...

Charles never stops - yesterday, packed up my video camera in an old gym bag wrapped in a towel, jumped into the truck and headed out for Engaruka....the furthest Masai village away from Mto wa mbu...an hour of flying across dusty dirt bumpy roads, with big stones, cows, goats, young Masai with sticks leading them off in lines toward a far away watering hole, the only one for miles and miles where you see hundreds of livestock all with their heads in a bit of water, drinking together....

Morning under a grove of trees with this village's Education committe... 7 girls ready for school but without funds....much talk about how the selection is done - the girl applies, and her name is put up on a public board for everyone to argue as to whether she comes from a family able to pay the fees or not....much discussion, then the list is widdled down...in many cases the girls run away from home to the safety of school once their family reads the board...parents begging the elected officials to bring them back and once done, they are whipped, beaten and forced into marriage with older men - perspective husbands who have been promised from birth....we visited a school this week and interviewed six girls who had all run away from home and were allowed to start school, without money, funds, uniforms, books, bed, anything...desperate to learn, and desperate to avoid the perils of matrimonial harmony waiting for them at home..

How in earth to make choices, between this girl, or that girl..? Impossible for me..but i rely on Charles to make sure the girls are indeed needy, from families without cows, goats, donkeys, and surely not the daughters of govt officials or ward counselors...

The Chief treated us to a goat leg for lunch....the best part of the goat, he said, somewhere up on its shoulder, for the chief, but way too fatty for my liking, roasted inside the Masai Hotel, a wood and cow dung hut with a high ceiling and a few windows, spacious enough for three medicine men inside brewing a highly potent medicinal soup in huge metal pots over a charing fire, roasting goat legs with ten or so Masai men hanging around waiting for lunch....the shelf under the window heavily laden down with slippery raw pieces of goat meat covered in flies. In this house. Men only. Masai women are never ever allowed to even SEE the meat being roasted let alone eaten by Masai moran warriors...but visitors with chief are allowed....and took pictures too, hope they come through.

Rambled and shook half an hour over hill and dale and tundra to visit two masai families who claim they want their girls to go to school, but who can't afford the costs...the father collects firewood for a living to sell at the market; the mother makes bead necklaces....their daughter did six months in form one, very bright, but had to be pulled out because of funds....i met her, took pictures of she and her family, in bright pink outside their hut, you can see....and on to the next family, eaking out their lives in a muddly grove of dung huts deep into the jungle, raining now, goats and cows belonging to others and being looked after by this family as income running around, little kids, half naked in rags, flies everywhere - took some great film covering, i think, but hand held, warned by everyone not to do this, so we shall see the outcome when i get home, shaking, jerking and hopefully useable...couldn't have better subjects, so no excuses!
In town....
The little boy crying on his face in the dirt hanging on to his brother's leg, the older brother a rope in his hand attached to a cardboard carton at the end - a toy for the wee one and now in the possession of the brother...i reach down to help the litle one up, he takes one look at the MZUNGU (me, white lady!), and screams even more!
Three dolled up women I see sitting everyday, all day on plastic chairs outside the shop selling Masai blankets, of every colour, stripe, weight, pattern....they shout and say jambo as i pass, fully made up, hair done, beautifully dressed, selling rice on the street...I met one in the hairdresser, oh yes i make it there every once in awhile for my hit of jet black, only colour in Africa..while one was sitting on the floor having fashionable red and brown fake hair sewed carefully and deeply into the skinny braids of her own hair, plastered and tied tightly into her scalp, piece by piece, one at a time...a style which stays in for months at a time....hair, fake hair, extensions, are very much in desire here...a showing of money i am told,big wealth....

A man on a bike carrying an entire bush, or full branches of a tree making his way from the banana grove to someones new house, the leaves to be woven carefully into wood sticks, rods, stones, mud dung...for walls, roofing...
and on it goes...
I so do love it here ...nothing is perfect but life is different and exhilerating, alive, full of colour, people, music, life! kids on the street, babies, wonderful fabric, and smells, you can actually SMELL things here...the food, not so wonderful, the freshly shat cow dung on the road after a hot sudden rain, steam pouring up from the pavement, that wet sultry balmy smell of summer.... love mostly what we are doing here, the people, meetings, projects, kids, the need, the actual real need, where you feel maybe just maybe that a little bit of something is actually making a difference, not a lot, and always never enough, but a little...

Norbert wrote his friends in Austia to please if they could, send a little money for us to buy beds for the orphanage, new shoes for the kids....an amazing story, his friends sent emails to their friends and on and on, like Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love - in under a day he raised over two thousand dollars!

so i go now, and try to post those picures on this blog...
wish me luck!
anyone wanting to write, please do, to lynnconnell@sympatico.ca
and a few have asked for the ICA Canada address to send donations, greatly appreciated!
please send to:655 Queen Street East, Toronto. M4M 1G4...cheques made out to ICA Canada, with my name on them...Liz Donnery, the new exac. director of ICA Canada, congrats Liz!! will get them over to me right away....big thanks!! hugs, till the next time....
xLynn

HABARE! Walking the long stretch of hot dusty road across the rice field yesterday with Job, the chef magnifico who teaches me Swahili with great patience everyday, and his brother Michael an artist who just finished 2 hours of simba! tempo, elephant, and twiga! giraffe drawings at the orphanage, amazing to scan at the new cafe and create a calender..we're heading along the three of u amidst kids playing on the sidewalk just in front of us, when a bike wizzes by at top speed almost hitting me, but knocking straight over a little guy just ahead, flop onto the ground, screaming he is now, holding on to his right ear with blood spurting out everywhere; we race up and put a handkerchief on the wound only after seeing it like a Van gogh as if someone took a sharp pair of sizzors, and sliced his little ear at the top, almost clean off, i almost fainted, the speedy bicyclist retreads his tracks, while everyone gathers around, women with huge buckets of bananas on their heads, another on a bike with an entire bush of some sort of tree, and branches attached to the back, brothers, sisters - we get the little screaming one up off the ground and set him on the back of the bike with his bigger sister in a pink flouncy dress on behind and off they went poly poly to the hospital...i almost got hit last night in the dark with another bike, looking one way carefully when he came blasting along - forget purse theft! something else to worry about.

In the midst of all that drawing yesterday, and Charles has still not resurfaced, maybe i will be here forever like Delta Dawn waiting without the red rose, a carload of safari travellers unloaded spilling out with lots of exciting news of \obama, will he really win? They were from Washington, the wife having worked in the White \house with Bush, obviously not Democrats! Worried, bewildered, they ask, what does he stand for besides HOPE!! wELL I guess i can see their point, but what's a bit wrong with hope after what we've been through for the last eight years! Someone knew him from Harvard, said he was brilliant, so with all that light, why not! I say!!

In the midst of this, accompanying those from Washington was one from Harare, Zimbabe, a big man with bright blue eyes, sunburnt skin, with blonde hair and a safari hat who insisted i come to visit again, that it was indeed still continues to be a big huge beautiful country with yes 10 % corruption, the rest filled with beautiful and good people who are suffering, yes, and what of that 9000% inflation, which we both agreed was not a good thing; plus two from L., taking pictures playing with the kids...when two more showed up, one from Austria, the other from Israel....she'd been working at the orphanage in January before i came, been travelling when she met him....we agreed to meet this morning for breakfast -

Complex, perplexing. i took notes; testing, medicine, precocious sex playing, fierce punishments, where to begin. Firstly the testing of the kids for aids. \how to organize that, they can't at the orphanage, not enough staff...so we'll take five kids at a time over to my ICA for testing with Elizabeth a nurse, and Sabina a social worker, but first a treat, breakfast at the local Double m, and then during the prick, we give cookies, and afterwards balloons that they can parade back to the orphanage hopefully forgetting to mention the slice of wretched scary time they endured with the needle....We start Wednesday am...five kids, and five in the afternoon and move right on through to the weekend to finish all 35. We'll take records, histories - medical and family of each kid...and keep them at ICA.

Then there is the issue of medicatio - seems that whenever they get a headache,a little scratch, a hot flash from the heat, two aspirin are shoved into their little bodies, drowsy, drugged, they calm down from whatever the ailment and doze...talked to the nurse and social worker who agreed to talk with staff at the orpanage, of medicine, of hiv aids prevention, of the testing, of talking to the kids about sexual practices all around the hiv aids subject, as some of the bigger kids from 7 on are mightily happily involving themselves, despite nasty punishment practices endured as a necessary evil for their fun.

Seems all over Africa, and for a long time all over everywhere and in lots of places still all over everywhere, the beating, cane ing, whacking, hitting, slapping, spanking of kids....they just put their little hands out with their heads down, expecting the worst when they get caught. The staff is doing this; it is done in the primary schools - remember public school back when, i was shut up many times in a locker at the back of the class standing in that metal cage for mornings, had a book thrashed on my head, and spent hours sitting under my fat grade five teacher#s desk, Miss Turner...But we don't do that anymore, the slapping hitting, violence towards kids, and in turn as they get older, they hit, slap, swat, spank - the only practice they know, and on it goes..So we three at breakfast agreed the most important criteria for our helping out, especially financially, will be for them to change this one big punishment practice - strive to turn the orphanage into a safe place for the kids, shift their punishment from beating to sitting in a chair in a corner of a room, thinking about the offense, whatever it may be.

We walk back to the orphanage under the canope of great flying birds, after a meeting with Elizabeth and Sabina finalizing the Wednesday testing and the meeting they would have next week to discuss it all with Juliette and the staff, the kids. Juliette, the interim director of the Orphanage is thrilled...about the table and benches coming in today, about the new furniture coming in next week - the shelving storage units, and shelves for the kids..and now we have ordered two new bunkbeds for the kids..But finally, in a round about way, the punishment discussion: the ONLY criteria for all of these goodies, was the very important subject of the shift in punishment..on the ending the violence. Period. It is a huge thing to ask of her. She has a staff of 3-4, who have been thrashing since they opened a year and a half ago and she is being asked to regulate with new methods..with the promise of new furniture, uniforms, shoes, and money, looming like a big grand prize in the sky as a reward for this changing....She is going to try...she promises.

Lunch of a gruel, consisting of maize chunks and beans, called makande....holding hands and singing jINGLE BELLS in this immense heat and i am out of there, a mile walk past all the bars, shops, shoe shine boys, Masai women selling beads, snuff, and on to the internet cafe...
A note on Swahili....i can only learn by writing everything down, and then memorizing each word, each and every syllable, with reference to something i know..like TUTA ONANI BEDAI....this means 'see you later!', but the only way i can remember it is thinking first of Biship TUTU...but switching the u to and A..then i think of OH NANNY!! like a granny but my own grandmother was called gran so that goes through my head as well...and its not nanna, it is nanni....and then on to the dreaded Bedai..which when pronounced sounds like BAD EYE....so you see, before i can execute a simple see you later phrase, i have been all over South Africa, remembering huge rallies in Toronto with Biship Tutu and Nelson Mandela...then on to my dear grandmother racing right back into my mind vividly after all these 40 years and then on to eye problems i have had over the years, stys....red eye, the usual..so you see how difficult it all is.
GINA LAKO NANNY....you can imagine this one too, beginning with Gina Lollabrigida....on and on.....meaning merely 'what is your name?' so you see my Swahili is coming along very poly poly, which means slowly slowly, or said only once, poly, meaning sorry....

This handsome little guy in the picture showing his brand new school uniform with a big smile, is my little Elia who i tried to adopt last year but to no avail, having, unless you are Madonna, to live here in Tanzania for two years or more. My heart turns over when i see him and he knows it. He hangs around me, singing Imagine me and you...i do!' He is, i learned this morning one of the prime movers and grovers in doctor playing at the orphanage of course....

Sympatico is down, so i can't return emails today, but wanted to wish my good friend heading into the hospital tomorrow the very best; thinking of you! Be well...

Can't imagine all that snow, but this kind of heat stretches hot on the other side of the sun...talk soon!

and here we go with the pics!!

JAMBO!! Excitement reigns in Mto Wa Mbu, if you can imagine this little town has finally an INTERNET CAFE!! which seems impossible for me to imagine, but a Dutch bank is sponsoring a brand new, ten computer rig, with tables nicely apart, clean, airy with a fan, computers which don't skip, stop, leap, erase! even with access to cameras..spent half the morning selecting,editing, cutting, cropping,resizing, incredible, so now this blog may show pics i hope! No more busing up to Kiratu, just a quick walk through town..they're beginning computer courses here with local people, how to apply techniques to their work; we are sponsoring TIKO a local artist dying to learn English, now he will learn both, English and computer, and how to use paint, photoshop, etc...on the computer for his work, great...

Charles still away, over a week now..i need him to work with the Masai, all the villages are over an hour away, across rough tundra with no transportaion, language, coordination. \he is incredible the work he does - and \i couldn't possibly begin to do this work without him, again i am reminded of how lucky i am, to have this opportunity, to work with, meet, know these people, how they live, eat in their homes, again, thanks to ICA... and besides can't buy latex house paint here, or in bigger town Arusha, no paint, no art courses! so while I wait....settled into the orphanage big time this week - the table and benches are built, gorgeous, the rest of the furniture ready next week..see pic, talking to safari tourists every afternoon: Dutch, Australian, American, Swiss, Japanese...money for the orphanage and every morning taking the hot and blistery mile long walk out of town, under massive yellow and black fig trees covered in huge white stork like birds with black tips on their wings, sitting, flying, landing, breeding and shitting, once in a while upon beleagured walker below! \yesterday a long talk with Juliette, beautiful Swahili woman coordinator, her brother director of the orphanage, she is working as a volunteer for a year before university - why? her father married five wives - with over 25 children, she is the third of four with her mother the fourth wife. The first and second wives have 8 kids each, and have both died of Aids, the kids now being looked after by the father, grandmothers, and Juliette's mother; her aunt also has passed away with Aids. I took Elizabeth and Sabina in for a few hours from ICA, both nurses and social workers...who talked about danger of positive kids mixing with non positive- toothbrushes, cuts and sores on fingers, legs, knees, razor blades used to cut fingernails...sores on faces....it is a big problem, dangerous...Juliette works with two women only, a teacher, and a woman who cooks for kids in a make shift kitchen, with open fire hidden under a doghouse of logs, big metal bucket of creme of wheat porriage brewing, plus bent over in half working laundry and soap in a big bucket all of this done in the dusty courtyard behind the classroom. Both women make $45. a month.
Geofrey, 26, a farmer, who voluntarily came into the ICA office asking for counselling and hiv aids test...two kids, he and his wife divorced two years ago, he was worried. Wearing an old pajama top, dirty, with work pants and red flip flops, he held out his arm for Sabina to take his blood; today, his third and last time for testing, each time three months apart, and each time he registered negative. Today was a celebration! Still negative, wearing condoms, and bringing 30 friends to ICA information on hiv aids in December during aids day....his friends running away from the testing, running back, scared, hiding behind trees, and finally signing up...
\yesterday the big masai market five miles out of town in a huge scruffy field surrounded in the distance by blue purple mountains, the rich reds and blues of their sheets brilliant - swords, sticks, acres of stuff, mostly second hand, shoes, clothing, bedding, kitchenware from Europe, America, strewn out on the ground in piles, hundreds of Masai, local people weaving their way in between, herbs and medicine in blue plastic bags rolled up or in cloth rag bags, the medicine man with a chart showing what each is for\; tb, pneumonia, diahhrea, aching bones, arthritis, malaria, sore throat, bronchitis, cholera, wounds,you name it. They have a treatment for everything, everything but Aids. it has taken years for them to be convinced, what happens is that a sick person, showing signs of pneumonia goes to the traditional healer, he gets healed from the pneumonia, but then gets tb, gets healed and on it goes, the virus meanwhile weakens his immune system, so he gets sicker and sicker, with all forms of disease, weaker, and then finally dies of something..all the while not convinced of what he has is actually full out full blown aids. So now they are considering ARVs, the Anti retro viral medicine long used in the west, which can not cure a person of this virus, but which can stave it off. for years.

Cows, thousands of them, goats bleeting, all out there on the hot dry field with Masai warriers milling about, checking, observing, looking at the animals, to buy, to sell, to auction...a thriving and thrilling event which happens on the 22nd of every month here. We bought a goat leg for $3. propped up on a skewer and roasing in a circle with other goat legs inside a grass hut where women were slicing the hides off the animals preparing them for cooking. they cut the mean into small pieces with two big bones and we carried it out under a huge canape of cacti trees, wedged ourselves onto a bench in a big square sharing with \masai men .....the goat, and the benches, with big bucket in the middle filled with foaming brothing banana and corn beer, home made, which looked gross. \i didn't try it this year, but did last year...not! Bought 5 backpacks for the kids for school...met a great couple from Colorado, dinner last night, plenty of talking about Clinton, Obama, everyone is routing for him...Bush...Masai, Africa, war, peace, love of course, great books...just finished HALF OF A YELLOW SUN, by Chimanmanda Ngozi Adichie...one of my very favourite best! She is incredible....
\news from home, of people being accepted into university, babies being born, people being sick and sisters passing.....i think of you all, and wish you well.....till then next one!! xxme

Hi!! JAMBO!!a typical ride up this mountainside this morning...the car is waiting almost full amidst a line of women selling bananas, hundreds of them, freshly chopped this morning in huge bunches, branches, leaves, chunks of bananas everywhere, and in the midst an old Peugot stationwagon, circa early 90s,pale yellow, white, beige, with a used part of blue metal nailed in along the side. I climb into the very back squeezing in with two other people - a very large woman and a wide man. Up front of are two seats - the drivers row, carrying now 4 adults with two children on their laps,and the second row, another four adults and one child...this making a total of 14 people squished into this car which normally seats 8 tops - but we don't take off right away...cause someone is trying to tie with a rope, a bicycle onto the front fender,which i can see through the broken front glass window, the huge star of splintered glass stretching from one side to the other. After ten mintes and at least ten people helping the bike is secured. We take off and groan up the hill out of Mto Wa Mbu towards Kiratu, an hour away, the closest town with an internet 'cafe'. At the top of the hill overlooking beautiful Lake Manyara, we stop..the door on the left side in the middle row does not open, and the woman who is sitting next to it needs to get out. So everyone in that row including the child who is sitting on the lap of a very large minister, missing his mother who is wedged into the front seat, begins to cry....they all get out, one by one, the four adults and the crying boy, and the woman is able to leave. They all get back in, one by one, the reverend passing the little boy to a stranger as he hauls himself in...a little more comfortable now as we move along at great speeds down the gullies and hills, through red dirt hills, with lots of green foliage, rectangular fields growing maise, sorgum, carrots, dry rice plotted out like a patched quilt, really quite wonderful after last week's heavy downpour day after day....racing down, grunting up, this old thing panting, huffing, groaning...suddenly, we pull over and pick up another person at the side of the road..the people in front of me again, squeezing over to the left once again, this time a woman with a baby wrapped onto her chest...making a total now of 15 as we make our way up the road, this happening again, and again, and again all the way into Kiratu...we disembark, one by one, the reverend deposits the small child into arms of his mother, the bike is unleashed...and everyone disburses....me, to the internet cafe....
Thank you to everyone from news from home..no surprise, Obama is a favourite here! Last night dinner's in a small, very warm, room, an artist friend cooking: a sloppy joe, with ground meet mixed with tomatoes, onions, carrots, mixed up with rice, tomatoes, bananas, pineapple and cucumber on the side, delicious..sitting on a matress - the artist and four of his friends talking about US politics so far away from home, everyone astounded with Obama success, could it really be? a black president. Who knows? GWB has been here in Tanzania all week, such pomp and ceremony as he and Laura disembarked from Airforce One stretching all the way across the back of the TV screen, African music, marching soldiers, and George. As I said, pomp!

Charles has been away all week. At first he told me a couple of days, but it has grown that idea, into almost a week now..our plans to head out to the Masai villages, with meetings with the Education Committees to organize the Masai girls Secondary school fund, to interview, to meet the girls, families, all of this put on African time- as always, could be a week, maybe more, who knows, and I am wondering, what am I going to do with all this time? Geeze!!

On my own here, with my legs as transportation, with safari trucks rumbling through town day and night, Mto Wa Mbu teaming with life...Last week one of the bead hawkers who shouts out 'Hey Canada!" stopped me: "why do you always run by, without stopping, without saying hello?" It was rude, i know, but so many people asking to buy jewelery and I am not interested, but remembering that the process is much more interesting than the goal of getting there, I made a point of slowing down...a good time to focus on the Orphanage, daunting, a swarm of 35 little kids...running around, without direction seemingly - most of them have lost both mother and father to Aids,without relatives or grandmothers - a few do have a parent at home..little Martha, aged three, whose father hacked both her mother's hands off during a fight, the mom now unable to take care of her herself(!!!), another little boy's mom, epileptic, he was conceived by rape during an episode, and on it goes...this place is an oasis for these kids - 9 older, aged 7 to 12 in school during the day, leaving me with 24 to work with during the mornings...so this week, i tackled it, am learning Swahili, slowly slowly, poli poli! The animals first, so i can sing Old macdonald with English and then Swahili - cat: paka...dog, mbwa...on and on, elephant, giraffe, duck, goat: mbuzzi...the head, shoulders, knees, toes..all of it..not too hard when you concentrate..then on to The Wheels on the Bus..using Swahili words for wheels, wipers, children, mama, baba....fun! In my new mode of slowing down and being friendly, met another artist who now comes every morning with me to teach drawing to the kids...giraffe,the first day, today elephants...there are a couple of incredible little artists, would like to make cards, a calendar down the road for them to sell...

WE are also having furniture made....a big table - 4' by 7', two more benches stretching along each side for eating, school work, drawing, and a big shelving unit for storage...right now there is an area locked in by padlock taking up one third of the office area behind a big wall covered in Masai paintings for sale. On the other side of the wall is a dark, musty mess of boxes filled with kids shoes, clothing, books, paint, crayons, big bags of rice, drygoods, all donated to them - boxes everywhere, jammed, crammed in, on top of and underneath a falling apart roof sort of thing, mixed up, you can't know what is there, what isn't....so we measured for a storage shelving unit.5' wide, 6' tall. Next week when its built we can pull everything out, open up the boxes, sort and put it all back on the brand new shelves. Bliss, my North American need for order. Also, in each of the two dorm rooms, each one with two bunks to sleep 8 kids and a helper, clothes hung over and strung along string for storage, toothbrushes mixed up on window sills, shoes all over piled high with huge plastic bags filled with second hand clothes from America, little pouches, suitcases - it is impossible, hopeless. So we're having shelving units of wooden boxes built, ten for each room, stacked - one for each kid who sleep there, to store their own personal things....a room of one's own.

All of this possible because of the donations you have sent through ICA to me...thank you so very much! It is great to know that when I come across a situation like this, I have the funds behind me to help things out, a little at a time...I thank you again!

Afternoons, with no Charles around, I walk down the road, past rice fields stretching as far as the eye can see, past lines and lines of artist stalls selling African art,paintings, wood carvings, shops, brick buildings half built, empty without roofs, a bar, a sort of car wash, Jambo! Habare!! to the vry far end of town, two miles to the campsite that has a swimming pool!!...oh my gawd the day I discovered this...a complete luxury as usually i am running around working with Charles all day but now, when the cat is away... yes! I settle in...order a sandwich and learn Swahili from the guys who are working in the campsite, and read. oh bliss! As the afternoon draws long, people begin to arrive from all over the world to camp here en route to safari..only too eager to learn about the little orphanage down the road which they will surely pass as they head out of town...

Oh yes, we are raising money here, lots of it...by the pool!

Just finished a great book about Africa....called Shadow of the Sun..by a Polish journalist, his name resting back at my room...one of the best...love to you all...I know there is snow there, lots of it...time to bury, hibernate, read, snuggle...have a good one! and to those skiers out there, my brother! write to me!! xxLynn

Hi hi hi!! Greetings from Arusha...i grabbed a bus this morning eastbound for this bustling town,2hours away...bright yellow, green, red, with stripes all over it, like a circus bus! You get on, and wait. and wait. and wait....If you ask when this bus is to be leaving, you are looked apon as a nitwit..WHEN IT IS FULL!! of course, you lean back in your seat, pull out a book and read abit. But why read when teaming life is happening all around you, mothers with babies strapped onto their back tied up with calico fabric, tonights dinner, or maybe food for the week, corn, flour, sugar, in a plastic bowl on their head, a case in one hand another child in another, all of this gracefully balanced as she climbs up into the bus and finds her seat. Masai women, men, bedecked in beads, laughing amongst themselves. One sits next to me, pulls out his red leather sword case from somewhere resting it on his legs, tosses his Masai sheet purple and blue over face and falls asleep, his head resting on my shoulder....Charles has been away for the last few days, so it is a bit of a life of leisure when he is not around..much prefer working with him out on the field, but not a bad thing to have a bit of a rest, lots of reading, wandering up and down Mto Wa Mbu avoiding young boys draped with necklaces for sale..CANADA! they shout at me from blocks away as i scurry by....ONe stopped me this morning: "why do you always go by so quickly? where are you going that is so important?" He is right, but i am moving quickly to avoid these guys who want to sell...NOW..not when Seanna comes next month, but easy good prices, for me, of course, NOW!! No! But he is right. We Europeans, as we are called, just race from one thing to the next..why people here move slowly along, saying Jambo! Hello! Habare!! How are you? to which you shout NZURI!! which means fine!! and Habare again, how are You?? this goes on and on, and if I understood any more Swahili we would talk about mothers fathers sisters brothers cousins and all of them, over and over...and then be on our way, once more..It is a community, of people together, unlike ours, which heralds the individual. Here it is about extended family...lots of them, friends helping each other, everyone outside, together, not inside as their homes are tiny with mud floors, dark, airless and hot, these are the people you read about who exist on less than $1. a day. so everything is done outside....

Mto wa Mbu....a town growing of about 20,000 people, basically one long street, a couple of miles in stretch, not paved, three cars wide with huge deep cement troughs on both sides to collect torrential downpouring of rain, and beyong that hundreds of shops of all kinds: hardware, fabric, stationary, cosmetics, bars, restaurants - all jammed together in a colourful array of music, noise, cows, goats, chickens, children arms linked in school uniforms, white shirts, grey or blue skirts, pants...skipping, dancing, loitering down the road...clumps of masai with spears in full dress, women sitting on upturned plastic pails in groups selling bunches of bananas all lined up along the road, sambosas, chipcarts selling french fries, or Freedom fries a la GWBush who is coming into Tanzania for four whole days tonight, why in earth is he coming to bother these wonderful people? i dont' know...back to chipcarts, they make a dish of french fries mixed and cooked with scrambled egg - a sort of fast food thing people eat on the run, along with the usual plates of rice, tomato sauce, greens of sorts, beans....chicken or kuku on the side if you prefer...all of this is about $4. US...
breakfast for me is a boiled egg, a tiny rice muffin and chai...$1.10.

Venturing off the main street are mud roads, lined with hundreds more shops, a MaSAI Market - a labyrinth of stalls, side by side, filled with beads, fabric, old and new masks, a big outdoor food market with spices, vegetables, goat, beef, herbs, paintings of Masai, shoe shining, and shoe fixing, liquor shop, local woodworking...next door to my guest house is a factory making furniture, beds, tables, chairs..we just ordered another big table for the orphanage, this time one that will sit about twenty kids, with benches on all sides...Oh the Orphanage, I haven't gotten my head around it yet this year, but i will..with 35 kids it is a wonder where to begin - I wish i knew how to teach English to little kids, have been doing A b cs, and numbers, singing Do a Dear, and the Wheels on the bus...Old macdonald....but what else? any ideas? it is just that there are so many kids, of so many ages, and one room only to work in, a CROWD develops, and all they really want to do is touch you, feel you, connect, get a little love....Seanna and Sierra are coming in March with the idea of working with these little kids everyday, it will be an incredible experience for sierra especially, aged 7...

when you are on your own you think alot, read alot, but think alot, about what you have been learning, seeing, experiencing....the Masai girls Education fund, I am feeling it is more and more important if this tribal community is to continue to exist...Education is completely what is needed here, for all kids, not just Masai. So many bright students who can't go to Secondary school because of finances, needed at home too to till the fields, to eak out a small living for their families..to walk long distances to get water each day, back and forth maybe four times..all of this instead of school.
Had dinner the other night with Abraham who is the head of the Cultural Centre in Mto wa Mbu. He is 25, avery poor family, and through scholarships was able to complete secondary school....and taught there for two years before this job in the Culture Centre. He spoke of the spirits of the ancesters of his family, and other spirits which guide him every day, the beliefs of his clan, his tribe. How people are buried standing up,, vertically, in the ground, so that they can continue walking to their God, always...how these spirits past and present show him the way, come into his head in dreams, guiding him to open up a hospital, and a school....and he is doing just that! Next month he will open up a school for adults to learn computer skills, plus an internet cafe, he promises, in Mto Wa Mbu, which will surely be exciting and new for these parts. Also, an English language section where people can come in every day for 3-4 hours to learn English..i suggested Swahili too!
got to run...just bought a cell phone this morning, being juiced up..everyone in
africa has a phone! even the Masai under their sheets...i am sure...hoping the buses run late to Mto Wa Mbu...otherwise, what? The spirits! they are with me here, I can feel it....I've learned one thing, to just let things happen, to try not to push things, because they will happen, and they do. over and over, in their own time, always...so patience...to live this way, to let the mystery of life unfold, rather than to always be directing it - it is rewarding.

Hi.second post of today...if you scroll down you can read the first one before this..only 22 minutes to go, and having written for the last couple of hours got a big scare that the post was momentarily suspended and unleashed from the main blog site and that i might have lost it! Yikes! so totally depressing to get it all down and then to lose it in one fell swoop..Appreciate everyone out there reading this, you never know when you are writing if it is just heading somewhere out there into whatever cyberspace is along with all the other thousands, millions, billions of blogs and facebooks and anything else spinning around and vying for attention; i love to write. I love to record what i am experiencing, seeing, thinking about, it makes me feel closer to a connection with home, and forces me to really look, think about, remember..everything is so very different here..layers and layers, and i know, i am just brushing the face of it softly...please send questions or ideas, or something you want me to include in this email at my lynnconnell@sympatico.ca address...
and A bit of trivia...
I celebrated Valentines Day this morning by moving out of the room Ive been enduring since i arrived, it was big enough, with a bathroom but my pillow was about 20 ft from the outside courtyard where they have installed, since last year, a television set,with one volume it seems, at loud, very loud. I hate it. when i do convince them to turn it down, it stays on as background prattle - plus the big safari trucks storm into same courtyard, sometimes at 2 in the morning, wheezing and spewing exhaust, and spilling out drivers, half drunk, loudly banging on the garage doors to awaken security, to get attention. Last night was the worst. So today i am back into the same room i tool a year ago, at the front of the building..we shall see....
the Orphanage.....visited today, visit every couple of days, but it is uncontrollable, to me, unmanageable this year, with 35 little kids, aged 3 up to about 12...16 sleep and live there permanently, the others sleep out, with relatives...two bedrooms, one for the boys, one for the girls, bunk beds, with four lined up wideth wide across the matress...no toys, one swing out front, a tree to climb in, the dust to play, mud during the rains, a swarm of little kids, dirty, thread bare, running, racing here, there, and when i come, and sit down on the ground they move in, cling, grab, hold, touch, want, need....so dearly, so sweetly, it breaks my heart.....
3 minutes to go!
have a beautiful day..hugs....Lynn

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!
hI! wishing you all a great loving day!!...just hitched a ride up the mountain to Kiratu this morning with a guy from Norway and his driver who is taking him into the Safari routes with a camera to bring home pictures for his travel agency - we ran into a huge tribe of baboons loping along all over the road, big huge ones, babies, families making their way from one side to the other...Cows, goat, people on bikes, foot, wagons, everything along these roads, beautiful red sand, green lush trees interspersed here and there, on each side as we wide our way up.. it's been raining hard everyday now, the Big Rains have come,which is great to ward off pending drought, rains which beat down hard for about an hour and then run away, leaving once again blue skies and lots of sun. gorgeous..
Been incredibly busy, couldn't get through the blog network to write last week, so I sent Ted a big long email to copy into my blog, but i don't think he was able to, such is the frustration! will try to remember it all..
Where to begin???
Maybe starting from now and moving backwards..just finished a three day workshop in Mto Wa Mbu, with Charles facilitating 20 Masai leaders,chiefs, plus government people from tribal villages, Muslim govt reps, plus Afrikan, it was an incredible group of people - all leaders in their communities coming together to understand in detail the Hiv Aids crisis, for the very first time. Up until now, Charles has been training youth leaders, students, but never has he worked with elected official before in an official group such as this. About 20 people, some dressed in Masai traditional clothing, mostly men, maybe 5 women, sitting in a large U learning about every aspect of the Hiv Aids crisis: what causes Hiv Aids? protection, all about condoms, volunteer testing, and finally councelling....traditional tribal taboos, beliefs, sexual conduct which abounds rampantly in the Masai communities starting from a very young age, so much to talk about, where to begin. Masai people don't think they can contact Hiv aids, although many of their community have died from it...they believe simply that they have been bewitched. They try to cure the disease with Masai traditional remedies, which work for most other diseases, and which can cure some of the repercussions of Hiv Aids: pneumonia, bronchitis, tb, bleeding etc. - but never the virus. They do cure these outside diseases, but only for awhile, then they come back, and often with a horrible vengence, much worse than before. The discussions were lively, filled with laughter, lots of questions, answers. It is a huge challenge,working with this kind of a community who for thousands of years have been practicing a sexual form of expression reaching all aspects of their customs: interlaced into every celebration, from warrior play, from infertility solutions, from multiple wives and partners, from the practice of widows being passed along to her husband's brothers....The mark of a successful Masai man is the number of cows and goats he has. The more livestock, the more wives he needs to look after them, the more children she needs to help with the chores, and on it goes. Masai warriors, men called Morans ranging in age from 12 up to about 25 spend their days buying selling, auctioning the livestock, protecting the bomas, the villages and playing with the girls. When they do get married, wives are shared..as long as the men are of the same agement as the husband, or, in other words, that the men have had their circumcism ceremony at the same time. After the wedding night another from the agement group can feel free to come by the wife's hut, stab his spear into the ground outside to show that he is inside, and go about his business. If the husband comes along he must cough discretely to let them know he is in the vicinity and move along.

Obviously, this sharing of women is a huge problem with the spreading of Hiv Aids. and one that will be very difficult for the Masai culture to shift, or convince their members to change. In addition, babies are born without hygiene, water, anescetic or gloves; circumcism ceremonies are performed with hundreds of young men, with the same blade, without hygiene. For three days, every detail was discussed in Swahili, with lots of questions, answers, laughing, disbelief, intensity. The most shocking part of the agenda was when a wooden phallic penis was brought out and set on the table in front of the head chief of the meeting, a huge man, draped in blue and red checked sheets perched on two white plastic chairs set together to hold his great girth. He couldn't believe his eyes! Then the tribal woman next to him stood up and pulled a condom onto it, showing them how to use it probably for the first time! Oh my gawd! I can't describe the look on their faces - the laughter, the embarassment, the hoots and then the hiding their heads in their hands, it was incredible to witness...I had filmed the whole meeting, and have this on tape as well. It was a moment i won't forget!

Charles brought in a man living with Hiv Aids positive on the medicine Arvs. This brought a solemn seriousness to the group, wide eyed, listening, actually to have someone standing strongly in front of them talking so openly about this disease, about how he contacted it, about how the ARVs are helping him, listening intently to him about his experience, his advice on how to prevent..the importance of going into their communities as leaders, to being tested and to teaching their people of this disease - to use the dreaded condoms.
It was a very successful hugely informative meeting...
And now it is up to the leaders to take this information back into their lives...will they do this?
Masai are known for agreeing, smiling, learning, understanding and then going back to their communities and deciding amongst themselves to disregard everything, to not go along with anything they have heard.. But this time Charles has posted a few close friends within the community to stand up and agree with this new information the chiefs will bring in...to push it along, to help bring it into fruition, so we shall see....
Last week three women from the states arrived, representatives from Rotary, to witness for themselves some of the Hiv Aids and water projects bring done in these parts. We took them out to two Masai villages and met with the Hiv aids community groups..sitting in a grove of trees in the middle of a forest on four benches facing each other, men and women, young and old, talking about hiv aids...Charles had trained them a few months ago. These people are pioneers in this work, brave to be out there talking and teaching about this disease, bypassing the stigma of it, and pushing forth, traveling by foot from one mud hut to the next, talking with families together about the disease, spreading the word...speaking about their difficulties not being able to reach bomas so far away, where it would take sometimes a day and a half to walk there, to talk, and then to come back....the women left $700. which we agreed would be used to buy bicycles for these people, and a camera to record their work. We were celebrated later with the leg of a goat, roasted and slung onto a spear stuck into the ground into the centre of a lovely wreath of green leaves. A Masai pulled out his long sharp sword hidden beneath the folds of his dress, and sliced the goat meat into small pieces offering each one to us, round and round until it was finished. Delicious. On the way out, we saw a herd of giraffe in the distance, over fifty of them together, moving slowly along the horizon, one after the next in a line, their long graceful necks, heads facing the same direction, unusual, converging for a meeting of sorts?...zebra, Thompson gizelles in groups along the road across tundra, a wide gorgeous sunset....the end of yet another great day....oh yes I love it here....
I mentioned the camera a while back, well Jim and Lindsey and the wonderful Mark from Henry's downtown used camera outlet...i need to tell you that all is working well and wonderfully, amazingly. I am definately technophobic, and with all this new equipment it has had me in a state of suspended agitation, putting it out of my mind as much as possible, all the while keeping the thing in its big black too falshy bag, the tell tale tripod at its side...hidden behind a curtain in my room with the black suitcase wedged in front of it...But with that workshop, i had to bring it out. there are sixteen pieces of equipment i have to worry about, and have to remember what goes where, and what for. It is not easy for me. But i have to say that it worked. And once up and in operation, the camera securely attached to the tripod, i am able to slowly move it about, up and down, back and forth, and although Lindsey said that to zoom in was passe and a bit amateurish, face it, i am an amateur, no getting around it, so zoom i did, and do. It is exciting to learn something so new to me...and one of the exciting thing about being in Africa. The need to force yourself to stretch, and learn, and try to be open, to understand, to figure out dialects, to ask questions sometimes over and over until the answers come clear. It is a stretch, believe me. Physically I am okay, I was sick with flu the whole first week, during a lot of those field visits, meetings, but was told by a doctor to keep going, to drink lots of water and let it pass through, not easy but necessary...doctor's orders...
am feeling much better now, lots of yoga, in fact i did a couple of sessions during the workshop described above. got them to stand up push their chairs away, and did a lot of work around the shoulders, arms, legs. They loved it...I am also called upon to give my ideas about some of the things being discussed: condoms was a big topic, they were not in any way interested in using these things...I told them that neither were we! Neither is anyone, but when it is necessary it must be done...I am going to move onto another post, there is a scary signal here which says the blog cannot be conected to the post, pray!!

Hi..second post today! so if you want to make sense of this, read the one underneath this one..i was typing merrily along when a notice appeared that i had 37 seconds to go before that whole thing erased!! Yikes! and welcome to blogland Tanzania.....electrical blackouts, machines turning off for no reason at all, keys sticking..so here goes, where was I?
Masai girls education fund...that is where i was, trying to describe the complexities of the selection committe of Masai, Charles and me toward which kids will continue school...all the secondary schools are boarding.i wondered why, especially with this culture walking 10-20 kilometres a day easily..was told that unless they board, they won't continue school. They go home on a visit, are needed to collect water, look after cows, goats, fetch firewood, look after the little ones, and help their mothers create homes of cow dung. Once home, teachers, headmistresses have to come and fetch them back to school. So boarding is a necessity. The school i visited on Saturday was just built this year, made of concrete blocks with a grass and corregated tin roof, open windows. It had five classrooms- two being used for dormitories, boys, girls, the other three as classrooms/offices.
The kitchen which fed an astounding and astonishing 120 children was a small lean-to outside and next to the school complex, about 12 foot by 12 foot, a fire burning outside with a big pot broiling ugali atop. The toilet an enclosed outhouse behind the school, a hole in the ground. The govt of Tanz. is building hundreds of schools such as these in every ward, intent on furthering the education. The girls dorm was stacked to the ceiling with over thirty bunk beds, jammed in a foot away from each other - the girls curious, laughing, wanting their picture taken..outside a choir practicing their singing, with a large group of students hanging on to each note, singing along..it was lively, fun..and on a saturday when there is no school..

What else...so many things...it is all the same, familiar to me, the streets, the people, remembering Lindsey and I from last year, shouting CANADA!! across the road, these boys selling Masai beads, carvings, beseeching you to buy if you will, but i tell them over and over, I am not a tourist..I will buy things but not now, maybe later, but not if they won't leave me alone with this selling...and with a huge smile, they remember..oh yes, remember ME! they say, and how is your daughter, mtoto....Lindsey, everyone want to know...
SwaHili...what little i learned last year...i am remembering now...and adding new words as best i can..it is difficult as there is no connection between the words and phrases in Swahili, or for that matter, in Masai, another difficulty for me...to Canadian, French or Italian..it is like grabbing sounds put together out of the air and trying to remember them..a huge learning curve all of it, for me.
I remember the roosters in the morning, the Muslem call to prayer at four am mournfully beseeching their people to get up and leave the warmth of their beds, come to prayer, and to the wives over the loud speaker, to unleash their hold on their husbands and let them go....I remember the goats along the road playing with the children untethered, the children shouting JAMBO! to me, sometimes "where is my pen", or "where is my money!" out from cracked broken walls of homes made of mud, grass, sticks, whatever they can find.
I visited the Orphanage on Saturday, before the Masai villages...a quick visit while waiting for Charles to finish his work..i walked the mile down the road past the women selling bananas in a long row..i bought two bunches, heavy to give to the kids. Last year, there were 10 little ones there; this year 35..it is astonishing. on Saturday there were 22 there, running in age from 3 to one boy who is 12...some i recognized, alot were new....The orphanage is on the edge of town, with a big dusty yard out front, this year someone has put up a swing, but other than that, a few benches and little to do. There is a reception room with an office.The harvest table we had made last year was in that room, no benches, chairs. to the back there is a courtyard where a woman is washing clothes by hand, hundreds of pieces, hanging them up in a long line stretching from the reception area to the back fence of the 'complex'. Two other small rooms lead off from the courtyard. One for the boys, the other for the girls, with beds and matresses lined up inside, the kids sleeping side by side along the width of the beds, or on the floor on the matresses. It is impossible to describe. THere are no toys...the food is limited, big pots of vegetable stews, ugali, chunks of bread sometime. I will give more on that later...
They have purchased or have been given land to build a bigger orphanage...they have bought the materials they tell me, but have not financially been able to build. The site is a long way from Mto Wa Mbu, isolated, and not near the public schools...Charles does not think this is a good idea, and i tend to agree with him..but the director of the Orphanage was not there Saturday - more to learn in the days to come.

Seanna, my daughter and my wonderful grandaughter, Sierra are coming in March to work in the Orphange with the kids. It will be an incredible experience for both of them, especially dear Sierra who is 7. She has travelled to Mexico, visited schools in small villages with local kids...and has also played with kids from all over the world in Seanna's ArtHeart, the Art Centre in Regent Park she created 16 years ago. So this will not be entirely foreign to her, but i am sure it will be an incredible stretch!

Tonight three Rotarian women from the US will visit MtoWaMbu for a couple of days, to visit the Masai villages and the projects the ICA in Tanzania are doing, first hand: the hiv aids workshops, homecare, the respiration project where they have installed 150 chimneys into the Masai mud huts with proper firepaces for cooking, the micro financing especially for women in small business, the hiv aids positive groups in the community.

I've been down the last few days, headache, tired, aching all over, but Dr. John who hooked a ride with us from MtoWaMbu to Arusha, told me not to take to bed; to get up, walk, drink lots of water, exercise..it will go away soon enough. I've been holed up in my little room since Sunday under my mosquito netting, with a flashlight reading What is the What! an incredible book about the Lost Boys of Sudan... but had to drag myself up to go to Arusha today with Charles, he for a meeting and me to buy paint for my art workshop next week....They dropped me off at some internet cafe five hours ago...I had never been there, and quite wanted to spend the day in the Patisserie....I am losing my mind! Did i write this to you already, or maybe to someone on an email...sorry if i did..but after a mile or two of walking, trying to remember, i found this place....happily, and feel so much better...
Got to run...or stop this for awhile...

I hear there is a big snowstorm back home..but now it is warmer, melting, great...
Miss you all, it is a strange thing, being so far away, and yet feeling close with family, friends at home...and yet, here too, i am making a family as well far away from home...be well...take care! this blog doesn't accept emails..so if you'd like to write, please send to lynnconnell@sympatico.ca...I promise to write back!
have a great day..or night! whatever it is...and someone, please let me know about those elections! today, it s super Tuesday and here, it is just another day....
hugs..Lynn

GREETINGS FROM TANZANIA!
ARUSHA TOWN...about an hour from Kilimanjaro...and two hours east of MtoWaMbu...HOT...not too humid today, but very hot!! Hi everyone...my first post from Africa...drove into Arusha this morning early, Charles dropped me off at an internet cafe i didn't know, so i set out following my nose, this lone white woman with a black backpack and purse securely dangling off my shoulders, winding slowly through dusty noisy crowded, alive!streets, flanked by stalls selling everything on high sidewalks, cobblestoned streets, trucks weaving in and out, cars, black exhaust, music, a kaleidescope spinning...sewing machines lined up along the side of the road in a long row stretching a block, each a treddle with a man working, sewing suits, blouses, shirts...another on the sidewalk with leather, making shoes, shops for kitchen, furniture making, cosmetics, clothing, pharmacy - of course everything we have at home, but different here..JAMBO HABARI!! everyone saying hello as you pass, can I help you? but i sort of know where i am going...it is all coming back, the huge bustling bus station half as big as a football field right in the middle of Arusha...take a left, for a few blocks then a right, i know there is an English bookstore down here, i keep walking, remembering, the sky is grey with sun pouring through...the bookstore, nothing, i peer in the window and see shelves, metal, empty, what a shame, and keep on going....finally this Patisserie Internet Cafe, where they sell sweet little cakes and buns with a line of computers along one end, loaves of bread, eclairs, candies along one wall, little round tables with ice cream chairs, just like home...it is an oasis this place...
Remembering everything..
Charles my project coordinator was at the airport Saturday with his wife Grace...it was incredible to see him again, luckily, i thought i might have to make my way to Mto Wa Mbu myself on local busses, all those bags overstuffed and overweighted down with heavy art supplies, my digital video film camera with all the attachements in a big black bag i must cling at all times to my body, oh I curse and wonder why i brought it, but i will get used to it, the security around it, and how to use it! a cacophany of batteries, lens, cables, rechargers, lens caps, boom mics...and a few clothes...travelling light would be easy without all the work stuff...but this is what i am here for. It is easier than lastyear, where i knew not where i was going or what i am getting myself into...I am so very tired...8 hour to Amsterdam, a great day and night with Merit and Hans and on to Nairobi another 8 hours away...WE land two hours late, with only one hour left to catch my flight down to Kilimanjaro..my bags are not going through. I have to run through immigration, they insist on keeping my passport as i get through, wait seemingly forever for those hopeless bags, pile them onto a cart, and beg a porter to help me please...we find an elevator i would never have found myself, with 15 minutes to go before takeoff, rushing to the boarding pass table with a hundred other people, waiting, the computers are down, things are at a standstill, i am panting! On to the gate to board, without a pass, but with this incredible man Peter leading the way who is telling me that Nairobi is absolutely safe, peaceful, no problems here for sure, he insists, but i ask: how about Kibera, the huge slum i travelled through lastyear, where just a month ago, and days ago...thousands poured out of with flaming sticks, stones and guns, hundreds slaughtered, what about Kibera? It is safe, peaceful now, he says as we reach the gate..manually process me through, my bags are taken but for the big black one with the camera..and i am let onto the plane, minutes before departure.
I have been told that over 300,000 people have cancelled holiday, safari and business flights to Kenya this last month, reeking havoc with tourism..and bleeding down into Tanzania the country to the south, where people have refused to go as well..
On to Mto Wa Mbu...to the little guest house i stayed in last year, home away from home, but this time with a tv in each room encased in a heavy metal cage with a big padlock - I am not impressed, these televisions, until i learn i may be able to access CNN at 8 each morning for an hour in English of course...the station is controlled by the two people who manage this place..but without Swahili i have yet been unable to communicate my need to watch this one station for one hour, at least tomorrow morning, eight hours ahead of you, to check into the US primaries...I learned by accident of McCain winning in Florida..and of Edwards pulling out of the Democratic race...dying to know what's happening today, Super Tuesday...
Please write to me all the news! lynnconnell@sympatico.ca

Dinner everynight at Charles and Grace's home..wonderful hospitality..with their two little boys, David who is almost 2 and Charles nephew Elvis who he has adopted, his sister unable to care for him on her own...banana plantain stew with small pieces of beef, rice, a spinich chard like vegetable, those little silver fish i can't eat which make my stomach rumble, from last year, ugali -the national dish, made of corn, maise cooked up like a flour in water paste which you ball up in your right hand and with your thumb make a sort of spoon to dip into veggies and stews and sauces, scoop up and eat the whole thing...deliecious...
My stomach is okay so far.
Day one..Charles took me out to two Masai villages where we worked last year. Salela and Engaruka...they are one and two hours away from MtoWaMbu village, across dry potted semi roads, down gullies of rock into riverbeds now dry from drought, through herds of cows, goats, Masai children with sticks guiding the animals to pasture, hundreds of them; we toss bottles of water out the window of the heavy red
toyota pickup as we speed by. Giraffes, zebra spotted here and there not too far away across dry red soil tundra. Masai bomas, mud huts built by their women from cow dung in clusters of six or more, surrounded by fences made of sharp sticks woven together to keep wild animals out....children almost naked playing in the dirt. Masai men, tall, lean, neck, ears, lobes with huge holes the size of loonies, decorated in beads of all colours, draped in red and blue sheets of plaid, striped, patterned each one tied and hanging at the shoulders, the women in bright blue, with beads, wide circular white necklaces, each adornment reflecting their position within their tribe: married, grandmother (yeyo), single....I think...

I learned so much about these incredible people last year..their customs, their lives. Since coming home last February i have been making speeches and presentations with vivid pictures describing the Africa i saw and experienced..to Rotary, Proxis groups, Steven Lewis Grandmother groups, school classrooms, senior citizen homes, churches...fundraising on a number of issues, cows/sheds for Hiv aids people in Handeni, the Blessed Comfort orphanage in MtoWaMbu, bikes for home care workers in Zimbabwe and as well, raising money to help send Masai girls to secondary school. Thank you so much to everyone who supported these projects...even though the needs are immense, every little bit counts so much...

I am here this year to help set up the complex system of education funding with the Masai:selection, criteria, interviewing, photographing and monitoring of the children. Each village has an Education Committee..I met them on Saturday and will meet again with them tomorrow and Thursday..of five people who set the criteria to choose which children will continue their schooling..Primary school is free in Tanzania but the families are responsible for paying for uniforms,shoes and books $65in our money, a sum which mAny families can not afford. Only the very wealthy get to continue into secondary school. But with this Education Funding Program, kids who want to continue their education and who have made the passing grades out of primary school,must apply, in writing, of why they want to continue. All names are put up on a bulletin board for the whole community to see, preventing the sons and daughters of wealthier families, in fact any family who owns a cow or goat, from applying. Students are chosen on the basis of their needs, their desire and ability to learn. ICA Tanzania has sponsored five kids at this point.
WE from Canada have raised enough funds for another 15 kids to go, at this point.
i am told it costs $320.Canadian, per child for the first year; the other three years will be a lot less expensive as beds, desks, uniforms are already purchased. We will be working this week to establish a budget which will include all four years.

On Saturday we visited two of the four Masai villages we will be working in; Selela a huge Masai market in full swing, women sitting on the red sand selling vegetables: carrots, lettuce, corn, potatoes, maise..wracks of beads, Masai sheets of all colours, patterns...shoes, sandals made from black rubber tires, bright blue plastic bags twisted in round circles creating rows of bowls with 3" rims each one holding a wide array of spices, herbs...little children running around, following me, touching my white skin...and on to Engaruka, another village about an hour away. In each town sprinkled here and there with mud huts, chickens and goats moving along beaten-down paths amongst children playing, adults hand in hand, hanging out in groups, everyone pretty curious, we visited the elected council members first to announce our presence. Everyone knows Charles. He has worked tirelessly in these villages over the past three years, but I am a newcomer, and thus needed to be properly and formally introduced to the chiefs, council members, governing body. You sit down in a little corregated tin hut with mud floors and a big desk, behind which sit the council members. Much talk in Swahili, introductions, the shaking of hands, the signing of their visitor book, more talk, all in Swahili...
My project is focused on sending Masai Girls to school. This was determined last year by the Masai people Charles has been working with, and endorsed by the director of ICA Tanzania, Doris, who lives in Moshi, a small city about 5 hours east of Mto Wa Mbu...But this year there is much discusion of whether only Masai girls should be selected.
In this culture, Masai girls are kept home by their families for engagement around the age of 8 or 9, sometimes earlier..by ensuring their engagement and forthcoming wedding, they are also ensured a dowry of cows or goats, the number depending on the wealth of the parents of the Masai warrior who seeks her hand. The families generally do not see the use of education for girls, and often not for boys as well, as they are needed to tend the cows and goats owned by the family. I asked Charles about whether this project is really needed, or wanted, or useful to the Masai people; it is a confusion for me. But in his opinion, these customs are increasingly dangerous to the life and future of the tribe, with the hiv aids pandemic running rampant, and yet secret in this community.
So, this is something we have to consider in this Masai Girls Education Fund project: we were told on Saturday that many children need to make use of this money, not just Masai girls..there are of course the Masai boys, and then there are other children not of the Masai tribes living and needing in this community..or in some instances a Masai woman gives birth to a child with a father who is Somali, who has left the family. She is alone now with her mixed blood child, without means or family to help. What about these children? What about children who are orphaned, without parents, who are living with grandparents, or maybe without even relatives to look after them...there are so many...so for us, so many things to determine..to focus on...to decide...
Charles says it is up to me; but i say, who am i to understand the complexities of this issue amongst so many others...my gawd! I do know that Masai women have the status less than the cattle; I understand then why the elders wish to include Masai boys in our project. I also understand the dowry needs. But these kids that i have met and worked with last year in my art workshops are so keen to learn themselves, are dying to go on to read and write, to learn and speak English...to become something much more than where they may be heading with traditional custom..so it is a huge dilema