+Dawn+at+the+Ranch+IV.jpg)
Just a quick email to let you know that we arrived safely in Dar es Salaam on the 11th.
Having an absolutly amazing experience! Reminds me a lot of the South Pacific, although the people and animals are a little different. I think some of the Canadians are rightfully getting sick of hearing me say "in the South Pacific...." The food, people and environment in UVIKIUTA - where we are right now - is beautiful. We're leaving for a three-week work-camp in Lindi early tomorrow morning (until Jan. 2). We'll be working on building a school in the mornings and teaching children sports and English in the afternoons when it's hotter. Apparently there's a 99% Muslim population there, and I'[m looking forward to wearing one of those long white robes. The heat is often quite nice, although it's sometimes too much. Some of the Canadians are really suffering from it. Went to the beach and museum a couple of days ago. Showers are with buckets, we fetch our water, laundry is by hand, and toilets are squatts, but we're pretty well used to that by now. Usually wake up around 5 am to the sound of cocks crowing, dogs howling, secatas chirping, and Muslims being called to prayer from a local minaret, and we go to bed in the dormatories under our mosquito nets around 9:30 pm. I'm at an internet cafe now with Sean, Edith, Andrea, Suzan and Rahel. We transfered on a pair of cramed (by deffinition) daladalas. As Sarah says, "a glass of water can become full, but a daladala can't." Getting used to being called "mzungu" (white person), but Sally (who's Asian) is having a harder time with that. Internet is cheap here (1000 tsh an hour), when I can get to it. The place where we are is owned by a friend of Rahel's, so she re-impursed my time when my email wouldn't come up. Don't know how much I'll be able to email in Lindi. Anyways, lots happening, and when there isn't we stay entertained by watching the monkeys or playing with the little boys (Alpha and Ima). I'll try to get you an official Missive on schedule, but that depends on whether or not there's easy computer access in Lindi. My Kiswahili is really improoving. Love to hear from you!
Rafiki yako,
Bradley
December 15, 2009
December 7, 2009
Missive #6: Tutaonana Canada!
December 7th, 2009
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
At the beginning of November, Norbert and I attended the official opening of our work placement, the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre, one of the most sustainable buildings in Canada. There was harp and cello entertainment by one of the host mothers, and many recognizable faces from the camp and various community organizations. Bob, Ann, and Colleen Gainey, of the Gainey Foundation, were there as some of the biggest donors of the project. After hearing many of her aristocratic seniors stumbling over a fresh vocabulary of environmental lingo in an attempt to sound natural and accustomed to it, the younger of the Gaineys commented that it was good to see so many “old fogies” finally talking so passionately about the environment.
I was sick with a cough for the first part of the month, and lay listening to an audio book of “Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, a very interesting, entertaining, and enlightening book. I had caught the audio book bug and continued by listening to Cornelius Tacticus’ “Histories” of the decline of the Roman Empire, and Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well”.
A few members of our group went swimming on the weekend, and kept the lifegaurds very busy. Tegemeo was treading water in the deep end of the pool, but he was doing so below the surface, and a lifegaurd dove in and hauled him out. Following that we had a swimming race, and Sally ran into the pool wall, breaking her nose and spraining a finger. Sean and Julie took her to the hospital, and the survivors slid on the slide some more and gave the Tanzanians swimming lessons.
On November 10th our Educational Activity Day group delivered its second EAD. This one was on Media and Communications, and I presented a giant interactive timeline of communications technologies from 4000 BC to the present. Jackson told us about recent global news issues, Deborah talked about the Environment Media Agency, Sally showed a variety of ads encouraging environmental stewardship and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, and Colin took us to a Chex TV news station. The same evening Wendy took Jackson and I to Trent for a lecture by the author of “The Prisoner of Tehran”, a woman who, as a teenager in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, had been imprisoned, tortured, and forced to marry one of her torturer before he was assassinated, she was bribed out of prison, and further bribed for a passport to Canada. She stressed that her life before the Revolution was the same as any young person in any Western country, and that she could not explain what her experience was really like to someone who had not themselves experienced it. Romeo Delaire, the Canadian general of the UN forces in Rwanda, was giving a lecture at the same time just downstairs.
The next day Jackson and I got up at 5 am and met with our group at The Bridge by 6 to catch our bus to Ottawa for Remembrance Day. We drove for three and a half hours as the sun rose through the tangled screen of naked trees. It broadened the horizon, silhouetting farmhouses in the orange glow. It reflected on the silver-grey crispness of the frost that coated the landscape, and coaxed a soft mist to blanket the icy stillness of the lakes. As we neared Ottawa we struck a traffic jam of cars which could have held five people each but only held one, and after breaking through that we got lost and found ourselves en route to Montreal, but we were soon reoriented with the help of Edith’s boyfriend on my cell phone. We were dropped off on a busy downtown corner and walked through the crowds, past the cars of ambassadors from many countries (including Tanzania) to the ceremony by the War Memorial. We craned our necks over the crowd as Charles, Prince of Wales, placed a wreath on the Memorial, poems and prayers were read, O Canada was sung, The Last Post was played, canons were fired, and a formation of F-16s roared overhead. Following the parade, we made our way over to the Fountain of the Eternal Flame in front of Parliament Hill where we were due to meet Mom and Dad and the Ottawa – Kenya CWY team. As I approached the fountain Mom ambushed me with a hug from behind. I introduced her and Dad to the team, and we met the Ottawa – Kenya team. The other team had a very different vibe from ours and had some very different experiences. They were going to Kimende in Kenya, the same place that my friend Dylan had gone, and their two supervisors, Rahab of KENVO and Ann-Marie of CWY both remembered Dylan from their days as participants. Mom, Dad, Jackson and I ate lunch on the steps of Parliament Hill, and we went on a tour of the buildings with our team. After going up the Peace Tower, Jackson and the others went to the War Museum and the Museum of Civilization, and Mom, Dad and I took the bus to their house. I hugged Clouseau, Mom gave me a tour of the house’s renovations, I ambushed Harry as he arrived home from school, and showed them pictures that I’d taken since seeing them at Thanksgiving. Dad drove me back to the Terry Fox statue in front of Parliament Hill where we met with the team in the evening. We all said good-bye to him, and walked off to our bus. On the bus ride back to Peterborough I asked Saomu to tell me about Islam, which led to a civil and very interesting three-way conversation, although it held under lying controversy for Jackson, who was sitting with us, and the other Catholic Tanzanians.
The next day we painted signs, planned, tried on traditional Tanzanian clothes, and solicited for silent auction donations for our Farewell Party and fundraiser that we will have in December. That weekend ten of us volunteered at the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre’s Walk-o-thon fundraiser. JP’s parents came to town, and part of the group went out to dinner and bowling with them. Norbert, who had never bowled before, was the triumphant and elegant star of the night. On Sunday, after going to Church with Jackson, I went to a local SCA archery practice. It was a lot of fun to socialize with the local SCA branch and to shoot again, although my finger callouses complained for days about my making them pull a heavier bow than my own after months without practice. Pain and lack of practice aside, I was not unhappy with my shooting and it was enjoyable to do again. Unfortunately the Canton’s fencers were reportedly very busy and were unable to come out.
The next EAD was on local government, and were given a tour of City Hall by the city clerk, then had a question and answer period with the mayor of Peterborough. The following evening some of our group attended a lecture by a native of Peterborough who had travelled to many developing countries to study the plight of women and slum-dwellers. The lecture was about the situation of women in Afghanistan, and was interesting to compare with the one that Jackson, Wendy and I had gone to earlier by the Iranian lady. After the lecture Colin, Andrea and I went to the “Dancing Blueberries” to share a giant waffle covered in ice cream, bananas and fudge sauce and a conversation about our experiences and impressions about the program past and to come. Stopping and thinking in retrospect, we truly have had some experiences and learned a lot of valuable lessons, many the hard way, and we’re not even halfway through...
On the weekend I enjoyed a visit with my Peruvian friends Pepe and Renee, having a wonderful conversation despite my minimal Spanish. I also went to a very interesting lecture by a professor from Trent, the head of archaeological excavations at the site of Minanha, an ancient Mayan city-state. The lecture described the Mayan Empire’s collapse and explained the reasons for it, drawing blatant parallels with our own civilization. That evening Wendy took Hoyse, Jackson and I to a Bah’ai feast of speech at a community member’s house in the country. It was very interesting and there were many kind sociable people there.
The following EAD was postponed due to some shocking, sobering news: Saomu had left the program. She had run away and left a note. This shocked us all deeply, and had serious ramifications for our group, CWY and UVIKIUTA, and many of us were in tears.
The following day, after we’d started to rally our surprised thoughts, we celebrated Scott’s birthday with cake and a movie at Rahel and Andrea’s place. On the way over,
The next day we took the Tanzanians skating for their first time. Frank, who’d roller-skated before, took to the ice like a master, and by the end of the hour most of them where skating impressively. I myself, previously a cripple on ice, surprised myself with how well I managed to fake it, and was even able to offer Jackson some pointers. Some of the Canadians, especially Scott, Sean and MJ, were amazing skaters who showered the rest of us with ice. We had races between the experienced, the intermediate, and the beginners who raced in teams pushing the two hockey nets for balance.
Being Scott’s birthday, we went to Rahel and Andrea’s that evening for a party. On the way over, a big truck with a dark man in it went by us and honked as Jackson waved. “Do you know him?” I asked Jackson, and Jackson explained to me that he didn’t, but he knew that the man was from Africa, and the man obviously knew the same of Jackson. Such was not the case, he explained, of Canadians of African decent, but only of people who were born and raised on the continent: they just know in a simple way that cannot be explained. I was intrigued. At the party we had cake and watched a Quebecois comedy. The next day was our last day of work, which we celebrated with a movie and game night at Sean and Suzan’s.
On Monday, and the next Tuesday, we had our last EADs. The second was headed by Jackson and I, and was concerning “Being Human”, spirituality and religion. It was December 1st, and the first snow had fallen during the night. It was only a little, but it blew Jackson’s mind! We arrived at the EAD venue early and stockpiled an arsenal of snowballs with which we ambushed the others as they arrived in an epic but decisive battle. For the EAD had presentations, an activity around the First Nations Medicine Wheel, a guided meditation, and a talk by Wendy on the Bah’ai faith.
The next day was the first of our debriefing period, and we engaged in a large discussion on everyone’s thoughts and concerns, using Sean’s water-bottle as our talking stick. We also took part in filming at Trent for a CWY promotional video, which involved – among other crazy things – running across a bridge screaming. Amazing how many passers by one recognizes immediately before one is asked to do such a thing. In any case, it was fun and we apparently did well despite our initial lack of enthusiasm.
After our next day of debriefing, Sarah, MJ, Edith and I gathered at Hoyse’s place to prepare the Tanzanian feast for our Farewell Party the following day. Although strength is apparently not considered to be a trait to be complemented on for Tanzanian women, I gained a great respect for them. MJ and I allied against the giant and solid head of cabbage that we had to chop, and a bowl of stubborn chipati dough which took a lot of time and muscle to chew a wad of, let alone knead a bowl of. The cooking was only a small part of the preparations which we had been engaging in since our Welcoming Party – gathering food and silent auction donations, rehearsing performances, booking the venue, planning, promoting, designing and printing invitations, thank you cards, sponsor names, programs, and more. Besides thanking our work placements and host families and saying good-bye, we were also holding the party to raise funds for the Yatima Group Trust Fund, a grass-roots orphanage near Chamazi, and the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre, a hospital for highly endangered turtle species in Peterborough. On the day of the event, December 4th, we arrived at 10 a.m. at our venue, a nice hall behind a United Church called Third Space. We spent the entire day arranging and decorating tables, cooking and heating food, rehearsing our performances, setting out the silent auction, and hanging the Tanzanian flag, CWY and Thank You Peterborough banners, 50/50 draw and silent auction signs, and sponsor names. Things went the Tanzanian way: there was a notable lack of urgency, but everything was prepared. The work that we’d been doing all day was all resolved just as the first guests began arriving. Many people, probably around a hundred arrived between 6 and 7 when Sally and Frank, our MCs, got things under way. After welcoming and speeches about the organizations we were fundraising for, it was dinner time and everyone enjoyed a massive delicious feast of Tanzanian and donated food. After that Julie and Hoyse spoke about CWY and UVIKIUTA, and I routed Sean from dish washing duty to come back stage in time for our performance. We played Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”, I singing and playing rythm on guitar and Sean taking away the searing guitar solos. It went, surprisingly, even better than the rehearsals and was very well received. It was then Sally’s turn to do an amazing Chinese plate dance, followed by a good-bye song by all of the Tanzanians together. After that we all made our way to the changing rooms while Julie read out the auction and draw winners, and we changed into traditional Tanzanian clothes for a cultural fashion show. While changing into our traditional masaai toga-like clothing in the boy’s changing room, Jackson and Norbert started singing and dancing a masaai song. It was simple, requiring only gutteral throat sounds and stomping to accompany the words sung by Jackson, so we decided to make space for it in the program. After the fashion show, amusingly MCed by Sean and Rahel, we all sang a song in Kiswahili (“Wewe, ni nani jama?”), then gave thank you cards, framed pictures, and hugs to our host families and work placements. The event was then concluded, having gone surprizingly well. After adding it all up, we’d raised almost $1100 for the two organizations. The guests left, but the rest of us washed dishes and cleaned up ‘til about 11:30 pm.
The next afternoon I volunteered with tagging for the YWCA’s Crossroads shelter, then went to the Santa Claus parade on George St. The parade was impressive, but my outer appendages were not so impressed by the cold, so I headed over to Sean’s place for our group Christmas party for the warmth of the fire and Andrea’s hot chocolate and apple cider. We had a party as stereotypical as possible for the experience of the Tanzanians, including cutting and baking shortbread, building a gingerbread house (which was condemned soon after construction), watching National Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation”, listening to Sean reciting “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, and eating a feast of leftovers from the previous day’s party which was much less stereotypical (mostly Italian and Tanzanian food). The Tanzanians did get to experience a turkey dinner, though, when we went to Hoyse's Lutheran Church on Sunday. We attended the service, and the Tanzanians sang a few songs for the congregation, then had a huge dinner as the reception. The minister called us all forward to be blessed for our trip.
Today, Monday the 7th, was our last group gathering, and it has snowed heavily. We talked about health, travel and flight issues, then made our own seperate tracks through the snow to fulfill our pre-departure needs. The cashier at the drug store raised her eye-brows at the two bottles of sunscreen that I was purchasing.
So tomorrow we have the day off to resolve our packing and other priorities, then at 3 pm on Wednesday we are off to catch our evening flight from Toronto. Hopefully the snow-storm coming in from the Maritimes won’t amount to anything flight-delaying. We’ll then be off to Hethro Airport in London, then to Dar es Salaam. I’ll try to send out a quick email when we arrive on Thursday or Friday, but don’t count on my ability to do so – no news will probably be good news. This is it!!!
Remember to check out mambopress.blogspot.com for pictures and articles by other members of the group! Let me know if there’s any suggestions that you might have to make these letters more interesting or accessible, and I’ll see what I can do. According to the Tanzanians, internet access is not an issue in Tanzania so the Missives will continue. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, On.
Mambo, Bonjour, and Hello!
At the beginning of November, Norbert and I attended the official opening of our work placement, the Camp Kawartha Environment Centre, one of the most sustainable buildings in Canada. There was harp and cello entertainment by one of the host mothers, and many recognizable faces from the camp and various community organizations. Bob, Ann, and Colleen Gainey, of the Gainey Foundation, were there as some of the biggest donors of the project. After hearing many of her aristocratic seniors stumbling over a fresh vocabulary of environmental lingo in an attempt to sound natural and accustomed to it, the younger of the Gaineys commented that it was good to see so many “old fogies” finally talking so passionately about the environment.
I was sick with a cough for the first part of the month, and lay listening to an audio book of “Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, a very interesting, entertaining, and enlightening book. I had caught the audio book bug and continued by listening to Cornelius Tacticus’ “Histories” of the decline of the Roman Empire, and Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well”.
A few members of our group went swimming on the weekend, and kept the lifegaurds very busy. Tegemeo was treading water in the deep end of the pool, but he was doing so below the surface, and a lifegaurd dove in and hauled him out. Following that we had a swimming race, and Sally ran into the pool wall, breaking her nose and spraining a finger. Sean and Julie took her to the hospital, and the survivors slid on the slide some more and gave the Tanzanians swimming lessons.
On November 10th our Educational Activity Day group delivered its second EAD. This one was on Media and Communications, and I presented a giant interactive timeline of communications technologies from 4000 BC to the present. Jackson told us about recent global news issues, Deborah talked about the Environment Media Agency, Sally showed a variety of ads encouraging environmental stewardship and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, and Colin took us to a Chex TV news station. The same evening Wendy took Jackson and I to Trent for a lecture by the author of “The Prisoner of Tehran”, a woman who, as a teenager in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, had been imprisoned, tortured, and forced to marry one of her torturer before he was assassinated, she was bribed out of prison, and further bribed for a passport to Canada. She stressed that her life before the Revolution was the same as any young person in any Western country, and that she could not explain what her experience was really like to someone who had not themselves experienced it. Romeo Delaire, the Canadian general of the UN forces in Rwanda, was giving a lecture at the same time just downstairs.
The next day Jackson and I got up at 5 am and met with our group at The Bridge by 6 to catch our bus to Ottawa for Remembrance Day. We drove for three and a half hours as the sun rose through the tangled screen of naked trees. It broadened the horizon, silhouetting farmhouses in the orange glow. It reflected on the silver-grey crispness of the frost that coated the landscape, and coaxed a soft mist to blanket the icy stillness of the lakes. As we neared Ottawa we struck a traffic jam of cars which could have held five people each but only held one, and after breaking through that we got lost and found ourselves en route to Montreal, but we were soon reoriented with the help of Edith’s boyfriend on my cell phone. We were dropped off on a busy downtown corner and walked through the crowds, past the cars of ambassadors from many countries (including Tanzania) to the ceremony by the War Memorial. We craned our necks over the crowd as Charles, Prince of Wales, placed a wreath on the Memorial, poems and prayers were read, O Canada was sung, The Last Post was played, canons were fired, and a formation of F-16s roared overhead. Following the parade, we made our way over to the Fountain of the Eternal Flame in front of Parliament Hill where we were due to meet Mom and Dad and the Ottawa – Kenya CWY team. As I approached the fountain Mom ambushed me with a hug from behind. I introduced her and Dad to the team, and we met the Ottawa – Kenya team. The other team had a very different vibe from ours and had some very different experiences. They were going to Kimende in Kenya, the same place that my friend Dylan had gone, and their two supervisors, Rahab of KENVO and Ann-Marie of CWY both remembered Dylan from their days as participants. Mom, Dad, Jackson and I ate lunch on the steps of Parliament Hill, and we went on a tour of the buildings with our team. After going up the Peace Tower, Jackson and the others went to the War Museum and the Museum of Civilization, and Mom, Dad and I took the bus to their house. I hugged Clouseau, Mom gave me a tour of the house’s renovations, I ambushed Harry as he arrived home from school, and showed them pictures that I’d taken since seeing them at Thanksgiving. Dad drove me back to the Terry Fox statue in front of Parliament Hill where we met with the team in the evening. We all said good-bye to him, and walked off to our bus. On the bus ride back to Peterborough I asked Saomu to tell me about Islam, which led to a civil and very interesting three-way conversation, although it held under lying controversy for Jackson, who was sitting with us, and the other Catholic Tanzanians.
The next day we painted signs, planned, tried on traditional Tanzanian clothes, and solicited for silent auction donations for our Farewell Party and fundraiser that we will have in December. That weekend ten of us volunteered at the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre’s Walk-o-thon fundraiser. JP’s parents came to town, and part of the group went out to dinner and bowling with them. Norbert, who had never bowled before, was the triumphant and elegant star of the night. On Sunday, after going to Church with Jackson, I went to a local SCA archery practice. It was a lot of fun to socialize with the local SCA branch and to shoot again, although my finger callouses complained for days about my making them pull a heavier bow than my own after months without practice. Pain and lack of practice aside, I was not unhappy with my shooting and it was enjoyable to do again. Unfortunately the Canton’s fencers were reportedly very busy and were unable to come out.
The next EAD was on local government, and were given a tour of City Hall by the city clerk, then had a question and answer period with the mayor of Peterborough. The following evening some of our group attended a lecture by a native of Peterborough who had travelled to many developing countries to study the plight of women and slum-dwellers. The lecture was about the situation of women in Afghanistan, and was interesting to compare with the one that Jackson, Wendy and I had gone to earlier by the Iranian lady. After the lecture Colin, Andrea and I went to the “Dancing Blueberries” to share a giant waffle covered in ice cream, bananas and fudge sauce and a conversation about our experiences and impressions about the program past and to come. Stopping and thinking in retrospect, we truly have had some experiences and learned a lot of valuable lessons, many the hard way, and we’re not even halfway through...
On the weekend I enjoyed a visit with my Peruvian friends Pepe and Renee, having a wonderful conversation despite my minimal Spanish. I also went to a very interesting lecture by a professor from Trent, the head of archaeological excavations at the site of Minanha, an ancient Mayan city-state. The lecture described the Mayan Empire’s collapse and explained the reasons for it, drawing blatant parallels with our own civilization. That evening Wendy took Hoyse, Jackson and I to a Bah’ai feast of speech at a community member’s house in the country. It was very interesting and there were many kind sociable people there.
The following EAD was postponed due to some shocking, sobering news: Saomu had left the program. She had run away and left a note. This shocked us all deeply, and had serious ramifications for our group, CWY and UVIKIUTA, and many of us were in tears.
The following day, after we’d started to rally our surprised thoughts, we celebrated Scott’s birthday with cake and a movie at Rahel and Andrea’s place. On the way over,
The next day we took the Tanzanians skating for their first time. Frank, who’d roller-skated before, took to the ice like a master, and by the end of the hour most of them where skating impressively. I myself, previously a cripple on ice, surprised myself with how well I managed to fake it, and was even able to offer Jackson some pointers. Some of the Canadians, especially Scott, Sean and MJ, were amazing skaters who showered the rest of us with ice. We had races between the experienced, the intermediate, and the beginners who raced in teams pushing the two hockey nets for balance.
Being Scott’s birthday, we went to Rahel and Andrea’s that evening for a party. On the way over, a big truck with a dark man in it went by us and honked as Jackson waved. “Do you know him?” I asked Jackson, and Jackson explained to me that he didn’t, but he knew that the man was from Africa, and the man obviously knew the same of Jackson. Such was not the case, he explained, of Canadians of African decent, but only of people who were born and raised on the continent: they just know in a simple way that cannot be explained. I was intrigued. At the party we had cake and watched a Quebecois comedy. The next day was our last day of work, which we celebrated with a movie and game night at Sean and Suzan’s.
On Monday, and the next Tuesday, we had our last EADs. The second was headed by Jackson and I, and was concerning “Being Human”, spirituality and religion. It was December 1st, and the first snow had fallen during the night. It was only a little, but it blew Jackson’s mind! We arrived at the EAD venue early and stockpiled an arsenal of snowballs with which we ambushed the others as they arrived in an epic but decisive battle. For the EAD had presentations, an activity around the First Nations Medicine Wheel, a guided meditation, and a talk by Wendy on the Bah’ai faith.
The next day was the first of our debriefing period, and we engaged in a large discussion on everyone’s thoughts and concerns, using Sean’s water-bottle as our talking stick. We also took part in filming at Trent for a CWY promotional video, which involved – among other crazy things – running across a bridge screaming. Amazing how many passers by one recognizes immediately before one is asked to do such a thing. In any case, it was fun and we apparently did well despite our initial lack of enthusiasm.
After our next day of debriefing, Sarah, MJ, Edith and I gathered at Hoyse’s place to prepare the Tanzanian feast for our Farewell Party the following day. Although strength is apparently not considered to be a trait to be complemented on for Tanzanian women, I gained a great respect for them. MJ and I allied against the giant and solid head of cabbage that we had to chop, and a bowl of stubborn chipati dough which took a lot of time and muscle to chew a wad of, let alone knead a bowl of. The cooking was only a small part of the preparations which we had been engaging in since our Welcoming Party – gathering food and silent auction donations, rehearsing performances, booking the venue, planning, promoting, designing and printing invitations, thank you cards, sponsor names, programs, and more. Besides thanking our work placements and host families and saying good-bye, we were also holding the party to raise funds for the Yatima Group Trust Fund, a grass-roots orphanage near Chamazi, and the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre, a hospital for highly endangered turtle species in Peterborough. On the day of the event, December 4th, we arrived at 10 a.m. at our venue, a nice hall behind a United Church called Third Space. We spent the entire day arranging and decorating tables, cooking and heating food, rehearsing our performances, setting out the silent auction, and hanging the Tanzanian flag, CWY and Thank You Peterborough banners, 50/50 draw and silent auction signs, and sponsor names. Things went the Tanzanian way: there was a notable lack of urgency, but everything was prepared. The work that we’d been doing all day was all resolved just as the first guests began arriving. Many people, probably around a hundred arrived between 6 and 7 when Sally and Frank, our MCs, got things under way. After welcoming and speeches about the organizations we were fundraising for, it was dinner time and everyone enjoyed a massive delicious feast of Tanzanian and donated food. After that Julie and Hoyse spoke about CWY and UVIKIUTA, and I routed Sean from dish washing duty to come back stage in time for our performance. We played Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”, I singing and playing rythm on guitar and Sean taking away the searing guitar solos. It went, surprisingly, even better than the rehearsals and was very well received. It was then Sally’s turn to do an amazing Chinese plate dance, followed by a good-bye song by all of the Tanzanians together. After that we all made our way to the changing rooms while Julie read out the auction and draw winners, and we changed into traditional Tanzanian clothes for a cultural fashion show. While changing into our traditional masaai toga-like clothing in the boy’s changing room, Jackson and Norbert started singing and dancing a masaai song. It was simple, requiring only gutteral throat sounds and stomping to accompany the words sung by Jackson, so we decided to make space for it in the program. After the fashion show, amusingly MCed by Sean and Rahel, we all sang a song in Kiswahili (“Wewe, ni nani jama?”), then gave thank you cards, framed pictures, and hugs to our host families and work placements. The event was then concluded, having gone surprizingly well. After adding it all up, we’d raised almost $1100 for the two organizations. The guests left, but the rest of us washed dishes and cleaned up ‘til about 11:30 pm.
The next afternoon I volunteered with tagging for the YWCA’s Crossroads shelter, then went to the Santa Claus parade on George St. The parade was impressive, but my outer appendages were not so impressed by the cold, so I headed over to Sean’s place for our group Christmas party for the warmth of the fire and Andrea’s hot chocolate and apple cider. We had a party as stereotypical as possible for the experience of the Tanzanians, including cutting and baking shortbread, building a gingerbread house (which was condemned soon after construction), watching National Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation”, listening to Sean reciting “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, and eating a feast of leftovers from the previous day’s party which was much less stereotypical (mostly Italian and Tanzanian food). The Tanzanians did get to experience a turkey dinner, though, when we went to Hoyse's Lutheran Church on Sunday. We attended the service, and the Tanzanians sang a few songs for the congregation, then had a huge dinner as the reception. The minister called us all forward to be blessed for our trip.
Today, Monday the 7th, was our last group gathering, and it has snowed heavily. We talked about health, travel and flight issues, then made our own seperate tracks through the snow to fulfill our pre-departure needs. The cashier at the drug store raised her eye-brows at the two bottles of sunscreen that I was purchasing.
So tomorrow we have the day off to resolve our packing and other priorities, then at 3 pm on Wednesday we are off to catch our evening flight from Toronto. Hopefully the snow-storm coming in from the Maritimes won’t amount to anything flight-delaying. We’ll then be off to Hethro Airport in London, then to Dar es Salaam. I’ll try to send out a quick email when we arrive on Thursday or Friday, but don’t count on my ability to do so – no news will probably be good news. This is it!!!
Remember to check out mambopress.blogspot.com for pictures and articles by other members of the group! Let me know if there’s any suggestions that you might have to make these letters more interesting or accessible, and I’ll see what I can do. According to the Tanzanians, internet access is not an issue in Tanzania so the Missives will continue. Looking forward to hearing from you!
Wewe rafiki,
Bradley Clements
Peterborough, On.
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