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.