Holidays at RVCV

For my birthday we went to the nearest safari lodge, which has a fire pit with chairs around it, and a beautiful view. We sat and had drinks around the fire for a few hours, which was wonderful, until we went to pay the bill and the bartender insisted we had 3x the amount to drink which we actually had. We argued for TWO HOURS about the bill, which mostly consisted of me sitting and playing games on my phone while I was cold and hungry. Wah wah. The good news is when we got home there was a birthday cake waiting as a surprise! 

The rest of December was an absolute blur. It was a whirlwind of wrapping presents, planning and putting on parties, saying goodbyes to favorite volunteers, welcoming new volunteers, hosting BEN who volunteered for 3 weeks with us teaching math, all leading up to Christmas.

This was the best Christmas Eve I’ve ever had. Some of the volunteers and staff piled into the back of our Landys wearing Santa hats and holding on to dear life LITERALLY as a storm rolled in, with the wind and rain and Landy forging through the muddy roads. Laden with boxes of toys, hats, and T-shirts, we went off to the different neighboring villages to hand out our gifts to the impoverished Villagers. I wanted to cry when I saw all the kids and adults lined up waiting for their one gift, which was either a beanie or T-shirt or small toy. It made me think back to my days packing Operation Christmas Child boxes. I wish the villages up here could get boxes full of lovingly-packed gifts. It was also strange to give out these meager presents, then the next day watch our kids act like spoiled brats in comparison after opening stockings and 3 nice gifts.

After that, we all pitched in and helped with the assembly line of Christmas dinner preparation. All the mamas and most of the kids over age 5 were spread out in and around the Rec Hall washing, chopping, peeling, shelling, and grating vegetables to prepare for Christmas. It was beautiful to see the whole Village working together in harmony, and as I learned to peel potatoes with a big scary knife, the mamas laughed as I VERY slowly counted off “moja, mbili, tatu” each time I finished one.

After dinner we all met up on Peter and Grace’s veranda to have snacks and drinks. We stayed to talk and laugh for five hours, just enjoying each other and giving ourselves a much-needed rest.

After our Christmas Eve cocktail party Ben and I played Santa in his house of 12 boys. We stuffed stockings, placed presents carefully under the tree, and ate the cookies and poured out the powdered milk made by the kids. Christmas morning we were up at 6am to watch the boys open their stockings and gifts. It was all over in about 12 minutes, and the kids were whining and trading presents before we knew it.

Later in the morning “Santa” came and gave all the kids candy, then each house performed a Christmas song and dance in the Rec Hall, which ended in the entire Village dancing and singing to “We Are Family” up on the stage. Absolutely heart-warming. Lunch was an incredible GIANT feast of different kinds of Pilau (traditional rice and bean dish), meat, veggies, fresh fruit, and a soda for everyone. It was fun to watch the kids get a soda and learn how to cheers them.

After a very brief nap, India hosted us for cocktails and Christmas dinner at her lovely home. We were all in a daze after the craziness of the last 24 hours, so after eating and drinking we went straight home to call our families and relax.

On New Year’s we were free to relax most of the day and play with kids. In the evening the whole staff plus volunteers went up to the same Tented Lodge we went to for my birthday, and had a lovely evening together having drinks and eating a buffet dinner. Once we returned home, we all sat with India and her daughter Riziki who had just turned 18, and toasted the New Year with wine.

What a holiday season! No one does it quite like RVCV. :) 

Pole Sana Rafiki!!

(I'm very sorry friends!)

Okay, maybe keeping to a blog is not something I have the motivation to do this year.  Surprise, surprise.   The problem is, I have so many other things I’d like to be doing besides using the internet in my free time.  

Some of which are: 

• Going on gorgeous walks every day, with fellow volunteers and staff

• Reading!  There’s a giant library of books here, and I’m often on a new one every week 

• Picking up my Swahili book and looking at it and putting it back down

• Journaling about my experiences in Tanzania

• Sleeping 9 hours every night

• Watching Harry Potter or Downton Abby with the volunteers

• Hanging out with the kids, or visiting our NEWBORN TWINS (See below)

• Seeing Ben for 24 hours every weekend 

Anyways, phew.  That’s off my chest.  Stay tuned for when I (hopefully soon) summarize the last 2.5 months…

Home Sweet Tanzanian Home

Out in the middle of nowhere on the Kiran Coffee Estate, near the tiny Oldeani Village and roughly in between Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro Crater has been where I live for over 6 weeks now.   Yesterday when I was returning from 5 days away in Arusha, which was perfectly wonderful in a very different way to life here, I got in the RVCV Landrover in Karatu and couldn’t feel more at home as I chatted with Pascali the driver and bumped along up the road over mountains and fields, waving to village children, holding on for dear life as always, and finally turning the corner to the gates of RVCV to be greeted by children yelling at me for clothes and shoes as if I’d never left.   Suddenly I realized this actually feels like home.

Daily pleasures of my Tanzanian life:

• Walking out of the volunteer house after dinner I’m constantly surprised by the beauty of the stars. 
• Stopping by a kids house on an errand in a rush ending up staying for a half hour chatting and joking with the kids.   
• Stepping a million times a day into the Tanzanian staff’s office to ask questions, usually ending up laughing about something, often me I guess.
• Going on a walk every day in the most breath-taking surroundings I’ve ever seen. 
• Eating three delicious meals a day with a lovely group of staff and volunteers, we end up talking about the most interesting and bizarre subjects.
• Having actual time for just myself is a brand new experience…I read a lot, mildly try to learn Swahili, walk, listen to music, get enough sleep, and email with the people I love.

It’s true, I was overwhelmed a few weeks ago.  But now I feel mostly comfortable in myself, my job duties, and my relationships with volunteers, staff, and kids.  Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m doing meaningful work so I don’t go crazy, but I usually feel happy even when I’m doing the most monotonous or aggravating part of my job.  All is right with the world.  Did I mention I have a boyfriend who just moved to Tanzania and will be working a couple hours away?  Oh, and that we’re going on a free safari on Sunday?  Yeah, life is good.  

Jambos and Jacarandas

I’m three weeks in to my stay at RVCV.  It’s unbelievable how quickly time flies, maybe when settling in to a new home, a new culture, a new job, and meeting 100 children/staff/volunteers who will be my companions through the next year.  Figuring out how to love, care for, provide clothing and support, yet constantly disciplining around 70 little ones is exhausting and a giant challenge to me personally (mostly the discipline part).  Simultaneously finding the time to befriend and support 5-10 volunteers, answering a million questions everyday, many of which I simply don’t know the answers to, means that by dinnertime I have no energy or patience left for anything else.  I consistently go to bed by 10pm, up at 6:30 or 7am.  There are few moments of the day I don’t feel like I should be doing something, I’m forever trying to remember which child or volunteer needed something from me, and just keeping up the strength to have a sense of humor and to take care of myself is difficult.

This all sounds negative.  To be honest, I’m overwhelmed.  But I know it will get better.  The reason I know is that just when I feel like I can’t be around another child, Boni who is 5 and wears leg braces for his bow legs, crawls into my lap and kisses my cheek.  Neema who is 16 and just went off to secondary school gives me a sea-shell necklace she made during her trip to the beach.  Ericki and Gericki, wildly energetic, boisterous, deceivingly flamboyant 9-year old twins tell me I’m cute, that they love and miss me every day.  I walk to the nearest safari lodge in the middle of the week with a group of staff and volunteers and have a drink before dinner, sitting around a fire and laughing, feeling at peace and comfortable, then being forced to accept a ride home by the askari (guards) of the lodge who were worried about us walking home in the dark where there are buffalos—appreciating this different culture where people still take care of strangers. 

Not to mention getting the news that my dear Ben will join me in Tanzania later this month!  He will work at a secondary school for a Masai village, and will be only 2-3 hours away from me…I CANNOT believe my good fortune.  I now see myself being able to stay here for a long time, to make it through a year before seeing my best friends and family, to have him attainable to see on my off days and to travel together if we can afford it. 

In short, I am happy and life is good here in TZ.  I hope to write more soon, consistently, and to show pictures of life here, it’s impossible to depict the beauty and reality of the people and landscapes in words alone. 

My New Tanzanian Life: First Days

I’m lying in my new bed of my new home, my home for maybe 2 years. It’s incredible. It’s surreal. It feels like I’m living someone elses’ life. There’s a lovely breeze blowing through my new curtains, birds chirping out my window, and I can hear the kids yelling and playing outside. I’ve already received a picture of a pumpkin drawn by my new friend Dickson, who held my hand through my whole tour of the Village. My cleaning mama has made my home look spic and span, and during my two long breaks today I unpacked everything and found a place for it. This already feels like my home.

I arrived at the Kilimanjaro International Airport around 1pm Monday. It took only about 10 minutes to walk off the plane into the welcoming fresh and hot air of Arusha, fill out an entry card, hand that with my passport and $100 to the immigration officers, and walk out with a handwritten visa in my passport. My bags were waiting for me on the conveyor belt, and after wheeling them 15 feet I found Moody, my driver holding a sign that said “Heather Sibet.” He greeted me with a big grin and questions about me and my home country and my trip arriving. He along with a friend loaded up my bags into our African mini-van, and we went barreling off down the road to the KIA lodge where we picked up the Sponsorship Coordinator staff Ashby.

Ashby and I spent the drive chatting, and we stopped in Arusha at Stiggbucks where we sat in a lovely outdoor garden patio and ate our lunch of GORGEOUS salads and iced coffees. We looked through Shop Rite, the Western-style grocery store, and it looks like I’ll be able to get all the necessities there.

Then we took off from Arusha to drive to RVCV! The drive took about 3 hours, I think. It’s hard to say because there was some unexpected traffic, a road detour, and 2 stops along the way because we saw GIRAFFES about 30 yards away, and I kept taking pictures out the window and our driver would stop so I could get out if I wanted. We also saw banana groves, coffee plantations, Lake Manyara, the little town of Karatu, and baboons! Not to mention a lot of cows, goats, and chickens—sometimes in the middle of the road. There were also Masai people selling things on the side of the road or going about their business of herding cattle or walking through the fields.

Finally, after a road so steep and bumpy that I had to close my eyes at some points, we arrived! I was greeted by Megan, whom I’ll be replacing as Volunteer Coordinator, and my bags were taken into my new wonderful home. I have a bedroom, sitting room, and bathroom all to myself in a little house. Unbelievable .

We went straight to the Volunteer House to join everyone for dinner. We had green beans, salad, shepherd’s pie, mashed potatoes, and fried chicken. Everything was great, and I met the 5 current volunteers. I went directly home to take a very much needed hot shower (the staff build a fire for each house every day in the afternoon to heat the water, it lasts a couple hours but yesterday they built my fire later because of my evening arrival), and went right to sleep, from 8ish pm to 6:30 am.

I got up and went to breakfast at 7:30, where I was treated to the Tanzanian pancakes I had heard about. Delicious thick but airy crepe-type pancakes, plus my first cup of coffee from the local plantation. I then got a 3 hour break to rest and unpack, and at 11 Megan took me on a tour of the whole facilities. There was a lot to see and people to meet! There are 5 houses of kids, 3 boy houses and 2 girl houses. Each house has 2 house mamas to take care of the kids, and 1-2 volunteers living in them to help. There is a staff house for the 20ish Tanzanian staff who live here, and houses for the foreign staff too. Some men were building new furniture when I walked through, washing cars, mamas were doing laundry and cleaning houses, prepping food for lunch, etc. The kids went to their morning classes, then had organized play time before lunch. Just walking through, the kids and mamas are so cheerful and friendly, asking my name, giving me hugs, and repeating “Karibu” – welcome.

At 12:30 we ate lunch—pizza, salad, watermelon, leek soup, and incredible brownies. Now I’m on a rest break until 2:30, when Megan will do more training with me.

I feel incredibly blessed to be here. I can’t believe my good fortune to have the chance to live in this heavenly beautiful place and to get to be loved and love each child and employee throughout my time with them.

Season in the Serengeti

So, I'm moving to Tanzania next month. I'll be the volunteer coordinator for an orphanage, working for the Tanzanian Children's Fund. For two years.

This may seem sudden, this may seem like a dream, like an escape, like a risk. The truth is, I feel like my adult life has been preparing me for this experience. Everything has lined up perfectly and given me the skills, experiences, or desires to do this job in this place. It's exactly what I'm supposed to do, and I know it.

Volunteering in orphanages in Russia, coordinating volunteers for organizations in Seattle, camp counseling, teaching English, mentoring children of all ages, are all just some of the reasons that make me perfect for this role and what makes it right for me.

So, as I couch hop in Seattle, work grave shifts, and put down hundreds of dollars for immunizations and a year's worth of medication, contacts, etc., I regularly smile to myself with the knowledge of an upcoming adventure which will change my life.