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