The Cicely Foundation

A tribute to Dad. x

2011-10-30T10:16:00.001Z

For Dad, who enjoyed reading these as much as I enjoyed writing them.

So, here it is folks. My final Peace Matunda blog, unfortunately premature. I have had to return home early, due to my Dad being diagnosed with cancer. Sadly Dad lost his fight on the morning of the 20th of October.

However, this huge shock has been overwhelmed by the colossal support I have received from family, friends, (old and new) and, amazingly, the children. The phrase, “old head on young shoulders” has never been so apt.

Before I start, I would like to thank everyone who has been with me through my time at Peace Matunda. From the volunteers to the staff, who helped make the whole experience one I will remember for the rest of my life.

On that note, I would like to talk about Baba. For those of you who don’t know, or even what, Baba is, it’s Kaaya. Baba is Kiswahili for father. Now, from my first visit to Peace Matunda, I held Kaaya In high regard. To open your home to so many children and tirelessly work to provide for 160+ children and untold amounts that he doesn’t talk about, is a huge, huge undertaking. In a previous blog, I mentioned the work of all the staff and how they go non-stop working for Peace Matunda, and they do. It is incredibly humbling. Now, try and imagine working nonstop, running a school, an orphanage, and a tourism business, while being the ‘Baba’ to 160 children. Not so easy hey, and I think Kaaya goes unrecognised in this feat. Maybe It is his cool demeanour, his chilled out `no worries` attitude. So I think that a thank you is owed for Kaaya. If it wasn’t for him, the children wouldn’t have a place to stay, an education, a home. We also wouldn’t have a slice of paradise I like to call my second home.

Thank you, Kaaya, for giving us Peace Matunda. Thank you Steve, Maureen, Caroline, and all of Cicely Foundation, for helping me discover and love Peace Matunda. Thank you all who has made It a lasting place In my heart.

Finally, thank you to my Dad, without whom none of my visits to Peace Matunda would have been possible. Thank you for your unfaltering love, support and belief.

To my African family, I will see you soon.

Peace and love. x

Ziggy says.....

2011-09-27T12:35:00.000+01:00

Hello all, my apologies for lack of blogging of late, due to unforeseen technological difficulties, my laptop has been rendered gefunked (yes, that’s a word). Never fear though, Kristina very graciously left hers while she went on safari for me to catch up with some work! However, it’s a Mac. And as beautifully shiny and white as it is, my stunted computer brain is struggling to adjust to the layout.

Anyway. Here goes the news from Peace Matunda. Lots has been happening since my last blog, (obviously, it was a lifetime ago!) On the Ziggy front, they have contacted us directly and are sending a shipment of clothes to the children; I did ask for some to, as I was also starring in the video, but we will see what arrives! ;)

Other news finds Brittony gone, and Kristina taking her place. Brittony will be sadly missed; her huge personality and constant smile are attributes that have added to the Peace Matunda community massively.

We have two other Canadians at the moment, the aforementioned Kristina, and Megan, who have thrown themselves in at the deep end already, organizing a library “book in a bag” system where the children in the elder years are given a book, (in a bag, naturally), each week, and as long as they return it in tact the following week they can take another one. Topped with this, they also run after school classes that change subject each week. Last week, “Maths Bingo”. I did sit in on this class, and I think I would have won if my maths hadn’t been hindered by the young Einstein sitting next to me, telling me the answers and for me to stop cheating! This week, geography.Taking the reins for this lesson are Adam and Annabelle, both from Sydney and doing a little tour of Africa after their 3 week stay at Peace Matunda. These two are both fantastic with the children, and have introduced games such as “Bull Rush” and such alike to try and tire the children out. I sit and watch this amateur mistake. If I have learnt anything from my three months here, the children are tireless. They are like the fabled Duracell bunnies, and just keep going, and going, and going……. Apart from Steven, his Kryptonite is drumming. Give him a set of spoons, suffer the noise for ten minutes, and then watch as the little drummer boy drums himself out.

As I write this, I realize that I am now well into my fourth month here, and am amazed at how quick it has gone. There have been trials and tribulations, laughter and tears, all before breakfast. I have lost 5 kilos, put it back on in Zanzibar eating and drinking cocktails, (I work in hospitality, ill put it down to research.) All this, and other than missing friends, family and my girlfriend, I know I have only been homesick twice. Once when Adam had run a hose onto the road, it was starting to get dark, and as a DalaDala went past, its headlights on, the sound of a car driving through deep puddles and a torrent of water at the side of the road, I missed home. It was very reminiscent of typical English weather. Who would of thought it, I missed rain. (As a Karmic twist of fate there has been HUGE down pours the last few days, so home sickness has gone.) The second? That insignificant I cannot even remember what caused it anymore!

We also have a volunteer who is helping us at Peace Matunda, but actually living in Arusha at the moment, due to work commitments. Brian, a computer genius who can work from anywhere in the world, is also a pilot. He has managed to set up a Pay Pal account, or in the process of doing so, to make donations from abroad easier to do. Currently, donations have to come into the PM account, which, to date, can take up to six months for money to come through! As crazy as that seems to hear, it’s true. We have had people transfer money into the account, and because it can only come through Citibank in New York, to Exim in Tanzania. Maybe it’s the “Hakuna Matata” attitude, the luck of the draw with whom, or where you transfer from I don’t know, but it is infuriating to say the least! This Peace Matunda Pay Pal system, if it all comes off will be a huge benefit to Peace Matunda, and also the generous donors who get charged a ridiculous amount to send money here, will no longer have to stump up each time some fundraising has been done!

I would like to apologize for the visitors of Peace Matunda who have missed out on mentions due to my lack of blogs, please know that you will always be remembered, at Peace Matunda, and by myself.

Hopefully, my next blog will be a lot quicker, and less rambling! Till next time……

Thank you............

2011-09-12T10:17:00.000+01:00

So, last blog has been a while now, and for that I apologise! Things have been getting busier at Peace Matunda, but not too busy for me to have a little vacation to Zanzibar! Oddly enough though, as soon as we left things came to a head and all the things I had been waiting for happened the day I arrive in Stone Town. Firstly, a package arrived all the way from Delhi. I say a package, 16 to be exact, all donated from my uncle and his company, which included lots of exercise books, pens, pencils, rubbers and all manner of school paraphernalia! If that wasn’t enough there were journals and lesson logs for the teachers and also a globe. I had an idea what was being sent, but I was genuinely shocked at the amount there was, so even though thank you doesn’t really cut it, thank you for all the generosity you have shown Peter and Bill, and everyone at Hill and Co. (this includes Parveen, who somehow managed to get the 16 parcels organised, packed and sent from Dehli to Arusha, in one piece, and all organised so we did not even have to pay any import tax or vat, I have no idea how she did this, it must have been a logistical nightmare so thank you from across the oceans).
All the parcels from Hill & Co.
Other than that there has been some developments regarding the solar power Kaaya was interested in having installed. We had a volunteer here, Antonio from Italy, who lived in Brazil and owned a eucalyptus farm there, he also had a fashion company and a solar company in Italy, so not only did he have a lifestyle of perpetual summer (which I am very jealous of), he also had some very handy contacts and knowledge regarding the solar systems and could guide us honestly and truthfully in the right direction. For example, we had one quote from a company that offered us to fit and do everything for $50,000. As you can imagine, we initially thought this was in Shillings, but on further inspection it was dollars, and didn’t include the fitting of the system. We managed to find a gentleman called Patrick who decided he needed to see the project, so he came up in his own time and did a little recon. He checked out bills, surveyed the whole area and put together a plan. He and Antonio discovered that it is predominantly the boilers that use the most power at Peace Matunda, and if we had the solar water heaters we could potentially cut our electric bills in half, if not more. If that wasn’t enough, he very honestly told us that solar here is far too expensive, if we could get it donated, or knew if we could get it from somewhere else and have it shipped in, then we do not have to pay VAT or import tax, which totals 48% of anything sent in. (Another cost that Hill and Co incurred for us for all of the school equipment that they sent for us.)
Anyway, I deviate. Patrick generously donated a single solar panel for us, which gives us constant light in the volunteer house, as well as a battery pack and a surge protector so we could plug in laptops or phones to charge. This, as you can imagine is a huge benefit to us, and it also helps out Maggie and Neemah, who no longer have to cook for us in the dark!
On the donation front, we also have received packages from Susan Humphlett who was a previous volunteer here. She sent craft materials, school stuffs and cards photos and sweets all individually packaged for the orphanage children, and these were handed out at the same time as clothes that have been donated from Marissa who is a current volunteer. As you can imagine the children were going mad and loved looking at the photos and trying on the clothes! All this generosity and all this giving has really hit home for me how important we are in providing for these children. It is a bizarre concept to me that families cannot provide for their young ones, but I was fortunate enough to be blessed with a loving family so it would be odd for me to understand. Yet, on home visits that we have conducted it’s not always the families that have the issue, the family want to, but they cannot, they have been failed by the Government, or they have had to fend for themselves from a very early age. One home visit was to a pair of brothers that are in baby class, and I kid you not, the size of this house was smaller than my Dads shed. It must have been 3 metres my 3 metres if that. A mother, father and 2 children, live, cook and sleep in that space. They sleep in one corner, cook in the other and the space left is for living. They have a latrine, which is covered from prying eyes by old sacking, and they have no land what so ever. The father has been hired by Bella as labour, and when asked if he was a good worker Bella was very complimentary, and that coming from a man who has climbed Kili 16 times you know he is no stranger to hard work. He feeds his family by going out and working and doing manual labour for food. When we asked how he ended up living here, (he seemed very polite, kind and full of smiles as well as a hard worker) he informed us that his mother and father had died when he was 8, so as the eldest he had to work to feed the rest of the family.
On the volunteer front we have the pleasure of a new university placement, to replace Brittony who leaves us on the 11th. Kristina Smith is here for 3 months and is due to leave the day after me, and the children have welcomed her with open arms. I have been very lax with updates regarding the volunteers so I apologise, there has been quite a few coming and going and they have all brought something new to Peace Matunda, including the repeat visitors, so thank you one and all for your time, your love and your willingness to chip in and help!!

Untitle-able....

2011-08-12T19:16:00.000+01:00

First off, I would like to apologise for my rant in the last blog, I hope it put into perspective some of the aspects of school life here for you all, and didn’t come across as too political, as that’s not what I am here for!
Since my last blog lots of things have been happening however. Work has been started on the update of the database which was started by Kayleigh and is going to take constant updating, but is a vital tool for the running of Peace Matunda. We started off, (Brittony, Jackie and myself) by finding the new pupils that are furthest away, and decided to visit them first. We visited 3 houses on one trip.
Leaving Peace Matunda at approximately 1pm, we returned hot, sweaty and tired at nearly 6pm, with 2 5ft lengths of sugar cane, a bag of sweet potatoes and a chicken, but more about those later.
We left with Matthew, Pray God, (yes that’s his name, but I had been calling him Gregor because I have somehow inherited my dad’s hearing issues recently) and Elisha. We started walking and they took us a route I have often used when I go for a little wander on my own to clear my head. It started off fine, but soon got steeper, and steeper and dustier and dustier. The views, well they were incredible, and I somehow managed to remember my camera this time, for sadly I am one of those folks who tell you of amazing/funny views or scenes, but always whisper the immortal phrase, “I wish I had my camera....” anyway. Back to the tale. As we wandered, which in all honesty was more of a trail blaze set by the furious little pace makers, even when you hint for them to stop with a question such as “Are you not tired?” They cheerily reply “Apana!” Which obviously means? No. Oh how I hate that word. We got to the first house I let Jackie and Brittony ask the questions while me, on the premise of doing research on their living conditions, was slowly but surely dying a slow painful death from exhaustion. How I did Kili I will never know. They were very helpful and delighted that we had walked all the way to see their humble abode. It is quite an embarrassing situation doing the questionnaire because one of the questions when students start at Peace Matunda is can you make a donation to the school, with a suggested rate of 8500Tsh.
Now, allot of parents tend to say yes, maybe because they think it will help with the child getting in, or maybe they intend to, but never can, as most of the guardians are either elderly grandparents or sustainable farmers so this is also highly likely, but either way it doesn’t matter. How do you ask someone with no shoes on do you pay to come to Peace Matunda? Money is an emotive subject at the best of times, when they have none at all you just feel downright rude asking anything of the sort.
We continue, through fields and fields of carrots, potatoes and other vegetables, amazed at the sheer scale and beauty of this place. We pass old folk farming, no strangers to hard work, and the tradition of saying “Pole” (sorry) just doesn’t really seem to cut it, but I know if I was to offer help they would out work me, with skill and stamina. Folks here never fail to impress me with their work ethic.
The second child lived in a smaller hut with a separate kitchen area in a different hut. This family were farmers but again just to feed themselves and any excess was sold in the market, (at this point approximately 12km away and even with my limited business brain, trying to sell vegetables in a market full of folk selling vegetables is not the greatest of money making ideas). They graciously donate to us a huge staff of sugar cane, I think in an attempt to replenish our flagging energy stores, but as I am yet to start carrying a machete I just had to carry the bloody thing with me with me to the next house!
We get to the next house and I am shocked. Pray God, a wonderfully smiley 7 year old, who is short in stature but almost comically stocky. (He wanted to hold my hand, but alas he was simply too fast for me). He is always immaculately turned out, uniform clean, and shirt buttoned up to the top, reminding me of when mum and dad sent me off to school, with polished shoes, clean shirt and trousers and tie, and the distinctively green blazer of Salvo days. Only difference is, I was dropped off in a car, my shirts fresh every day cleaned in a washing machine and living in a nice warm house. Not after a 6km walk on a dusty track and over a river, up and down little valleys and generally any kind of terrain that would be considered for a tough guy event. I also didn’t live in a mud hut, my parents are not farmers and we never had cows or chickens. In fact this boy is smarter than I`d ever possibly be after that walk. Any walk in fact. He went in to get changed and we talked to the parents. I was automatically drawn in by his mother’s warm smile and his father’s firm hand shake from workers hands. The humble house somehow managed to feel like home. His father spoke to me in broken English, and we collected the needed information. They pay the donation fee. They look after their children equally and fairly. The uniform is worn with a sense of pride and respect, and I begin to wish that all the children at Peace Matunda, and the world for that fact, could experience this wonderful home life, regardless of their current surroundings. My inner reflection and my vivid imagination are broken by a chicken’s bottom being thrust in my face. What do I do?! Pray Gods mother is giving me a chicken!? Steve and Maureen didn’t debrief me on this, nor did Jenni or Lucy. Damn. What’s the protocol!? Jackie’s somehow managed to perfect the art of shouting under her breath and tells me to take it, it would be rude not to! So, I am ashamed to say, I grin like an idiot, and mumble something about carrying the sugar cane. What a prize idiot. Brittony defiantly steps into the breach and takes the chicken, and also a bag of sweet potatoes. We start to head out, and then realise, we have no clue where we are. Jackie asks for directions, and, to our utter embarrassment the father, mother and Pray God decide to walk us back. As I hang my head in shame, I quietly ask Pray God if he is tired. He looks to his father and his father mouths “Apana” which is echoed, more loudly by this little trooper. The word that I had started to loath took on a new meaning at that point. It was a way of never giving in, to say yes, even once showed that life had you nailed. And here, that never happens. As I smile to myself I get tapped on the shoulder. Its Pray Gods brother. He has another stick of sugar cane, longer than the first. I’m beginning to think this is a competition. Thank god we are only visiting 3 houses, I don’t think I could handle any more houses or gifts, we would probably be returning with cows and goats.
As I sit on the porch of the volunteer house, drinking my tea, (how quintessentially British I hear you cry) I sit back and dwell on the day’s events. It is horrible to say you have a favourite child here, and I defy anyone who has visited to try and deny it, but its human nature; you feel affinity to one child or another. I think Pray God is mine. As I sit, a shooting star streaks across our atmosphere, fizzling out into darkness and I laugh. Who am I kidding, will have a new favourite every day till I leave, and then after. I’m fickle like that. But they all hold a place with me. Definitely more so than the other way around, they are all achingly cool and brilliant. But I`m ok with that. Life is good, and I like it that way.
Hakuna Matata everyone..........................
P.S. I`d like to add that Pray God covered 18km with us that day, maybe a little more. He lives on the side of the mountain that the mini bus cannot reach and walks that every day to school. He is never late, never dirty and always smiling. He leaves at 6:30am at the latest, maybe 6am if the river is too high and he needs to go “the long way”. He gets home at maybe 2pm, to start on chores and helping in the house. I did that walk once and needed a lay in the day after. Pray Gods not my new favourite, he is my new hero.

Food for thought.............

2011-08-10T16:58:00.000+01:00

Here I find myself, in the volunteer house, typing this, cold and damp contemplating the whole of my experience so far. With so many volunteers from when I arrived to now I haven’t really had time to stop and think about my whole experience so far. I have found the job quite rewarding, stressful, different and repetitive all in one. There were so many volunteers after Jenni left I had no real time to settle in slowly, it was straight in at the deep end. We had 12 volunteers at one point, and that the most Peace Matunda has ever had at once. Now that the numbers have dwindled, and continue to do so I`m left feeling a little empty as to what to do. I feel that the smaller numbers are easier to manage, and are better with the children generally. When the extra classrooms are finished the extra volunteers are going to be in much more demand. This though is nothing but a good thing, extra people means the word about Peace Matunda is spreading further and further!
There are many questions you ask yourself while here, regarding the children, and yourself. For example, is the constant change over of volunteers a good thing? The children obviously get attached, and each time someone leaves does it affect them deeper than we realise? The changes YOU want to make, the things YOU want to achieve, are they right? Are they necessarily going to be for the better? You also have to realise that things that you want to do are not a case of changing the way things are done in the confines of Peace Matunda, it’s going to be an area, a nation. It’s a case of realising that allot of things are filtered down through generations, and if it’s not that then it’s the Government that define how things are done, and you can pretty much guarantee that those choices are definitely not going to be for the best.
There are many things that have made me come to this conclusion, the visa being one, the cost of education being one of the many others. Today I have started to research a bit more what happens to the children when they leave here. Like an apprehensive parent I delve into the options for the main reason of me being here. The future is not bright. With the child sponsorship only having two of the children at Level 4 sponsorship, and even at Level 4 this only covers the first year of secondary education at $2000US. (And that is after a full year of being sponsored). This only covers their boarding and education. It does not cover the following;
· Uniform. (a new one needed each year)
· A mattress.
· Bedding.
· Books.
· School bag.
· A chest to contain all of your personal belongings.
· Other clothing.
I stopped at this point. There was a point to me researching all this and I have forgotten what it was. Since being here I have been recommended books, blogs and general opinions as to what to read regarding aid and “hug-an-orphan” vacations. I have read, digested and understood nearly all recommendations, and I’m still working through some of them (they are not the happiest of reading). All points raised are valid, and in some cases scarily accurate. I have no doubt that the folks who write these are more qualified than a bar tender from sleepy Christchurch (that’s me by the way, for the ones who don’t know me), but I realised today as I sat with Maggie and Jesca, Shelia and Mery that reading these things, as interesting as they are isn’t going to help the children develop into the pilots, doctors, and other professions they aspire to be. The problems maybe higher up, but down here there is something the bar tender from sleepy Christchurch can do. Spread the word of Peace Matunda, please, the hardships the children face to get something that is such a basic right back home. Help us to develop the children of today into the politicians, doctors and pilots of tomorrow, the ones who definitely can make a difference.

The unsung heroes...........

2011-07-31T19:24:00.000+01:00

Peace Matunda, a place that some may say is defined by the children. The children at the orphanage, the pupils who come each day and study and play they all develop into young, confident adults. They shape and mould this school into something quite magical, and it makes this whole experience, and the trials and tribulations, no matter how trivial, fade away into nothingness.
However, I think that it is far too easy to overlook the work horses, the ones keeping this place going. Sure, we all know Kaaya, it’s hard not to appreciate all he has done and sacrificed for this place. Bella, with his charisma and energy, the local celebrity who has climbed Kilimanjaro a whopping 16 times, with another trip planned in 2 weeks. Jackie, with her wicked, wicked sense of humour and `look` that could slay the devil himself at 20 paces. All these folks are huge influences and personalities that have a massive overall bearing on the running of Peace Matunda, but they are not the ones I am talking about. I mean Aunt Maggie, Nemah (who is 14 by the way, and comes to help BEFORE and AFTER school), Mama Godson, Mama Maggie, and another, that I am ashamed to say, at the time of writing this I don’t actually know her name (but I will find out as soon as I am done), Adam, Makita, Kanael, all of these folk have humbled and impressed me with their sheer stamina. Aunt Maggie for example, is up at the crack of dawn with Steven and Amanda, cooking and getting ready for the rowdy volunteers to come for breakfast. And it’s not just us she caters for. She cooks for nearly all the staff here, without a grumble or complaint.
Only last night she managed to cook for all of us, 14 hungry mouths to feed, on her own, on a single open fire outside in the cold and drizzle. She normally has gas to cook with, but it ran out and because I managed to have a blow out on the tyre on the mini bus we couldn’t go to get a refill. Aunt Maggie then proceeded to clean; tidy up, feed Steven and Amanda, finish her chores, and then take them and Corfield to bed. This ritual is continued, relentlessly, day in and day out, without fail and with a continuous, infectious smile.
Adam, the grounds man, and general handyman is here clomping around in his willies, cleaning the toilets and showers daily, sweeping and picking up leaves, (I have no idea how he does this, the thought of doing this daily drives me crazy. Let alone actually doing it!) yet his smile, and the constant music he has playing while he works creates a little bubble of Adam-ness that as soon as you step into it you find yourself smiling and you are not 100% sure why.......
Kanael, who drives the mini bus, leaves at 6:30 from Peace Matunda, somehow manages to turn a Hi-Ace mini-van into a bona-fide clown car. You see if you can get 63 pupils and 5 adults into an 8 seater and let me know how you get on! He will then have a day of driving around getting supplies and doing cultural tours, mountain biking around Mt Meru and grounding coffee. He will then drive to Arusha for us so we can all go and have beers at Empire bar. It has been known that he then goes onto Maasai Camp with the volunteers, party until 5am and then start the whole routine again with only an hours sleep.
There are so many people who make this place tick over like a well (-ish) oiled machine (this is Africa after all!) that are so easily over looked because of the children are so much of a focus that you forget that there is more than meets the eye. If the children are the face of Peace Matunda, the workers are the beating heart and tireless limbs that make all this work seem so easy, this is dedicated to them, and may they continue to baffle and amaze me with their love and dedication.
Asante Sana to each and every one of you.x

They think its all over.............

2011-07-19T19:01:00.001+01:00

Date: 17/07/2011
Time: 06:00
Location: My room, Peace Matunda School and Orphanage.
I can’t sleep. The air is heavy with anticipation. My breath is short; I’m struggling with my emotions. Am I nervous? Scared? Today is the day. Today is the day that could shape the rest of my life. Why? Football. The match has been organised spur of the moment, my training has not been enough (non-existent some may say.) The boys and girls are excited, yet I can’t clear my mind and focus on winning the game.
Kick-off is at 10:30. We line up, and I do my ritual of blessing myself and jumping on the spot a few times (I say mine; I think I saw Messi do it once.)
The tension is intense. Corfield, our star player is man marked by Michael, a promising footballer from Sweden who arrived a few days ago, and when I say promising I mean he has played against the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea junior teams. I myself was marked by Pamela. Don’t let the gentle smile and cheeky laugh fool you, this barefooted demon is a machine for marking, every turn I make she is there, laughing at me, mockingly, me slipping and sliding on the gravel, she glides gracefully and silently making me wonder how her feet are not cut to shreds. Lovin, our chosen goal-keeper fiend is standing bored, twiddling his thumbs. Why I hear you ask? One name. Dora. What a defender. She is tiny, and I mean tiny, she just about reaches my waist, but boy can she defend! She is like a wall in our defence; tackling anyone or anything with the ball, I’m pretty sure she could reduce John Terry to tears, not that that would be too hard I imagine. Maybe it’s her willies, the blue gum boots flying in an apocalyptic footwear frenzy she stopped anything and everything that came our way. Including me. Twice. Unfortunately she was substituted at half time (she got distracted with a headless doll.) This gaping crevice in our defence left us wanting. Farajael took full advantage and scored a whopping 7 goals, to our measly 2. I can blame all I want on the poor substitutions, the distractions of “baby” Steven blowing into a plastic pipe he found, and Amanda banging on the tables with a wooden spoon, which I hasten to add reminded me very much of the South Africa World Cup and those blasted Vuvu-watsity-ma-jigs.
I could find numerous excuses, but as I’m left panting in the midday African sun, tired and sweaty, and it dawns on me. These children, with all they lack materialistically, the more than make up for with spirit, drive, and sheer sense of fun. Playing with a small deflated ball, many of the children back home would refuse to play, demanding the newest, kangaroo leather, Nike branded, easy kick, easy fly, the balls too round, I cost the same as a small car football to play with. Then there is the boots, the shin pads and all the gear. (I include myself in this by the way).
So there it is. My lesson for the week. Man up and be a child. You don’t need all the gear. You need friends, and an imagination. Simple hey?! Get out there and play folks, life is too short to spend your time wanting things you can’t have. The things you own end up owning you. Let go. (Yes, I just quoted Fight Club). Now get out there and enjoy!
N.B. I would like to confirm that Livingstone is fully recovered after being nailed in the face by a shot from Corfield, which would have easily been a goal if Livy hadn’t sacrificed his face to save it. A few tears and a swig of water later have back and running with the best of them. Take not Premiership, that the dedication you need.......

Snakes and other reptiles......

2011-07-14T14:07:00.000+01:00

Hello all, my apologies for the delay in blogging, it`s been a little mad here, with day trips with the children to a snake park and trouble with Immigration (the other reptiles in my title, in case you were wondering...) and constantly fluctuating power plays havoc with any form of communication!
First things first, we had a visit from Sofia and Elin, both from Sweden. They were only here for a week, after travelling around Uganda and then heading to Zanzibar for a little break before returning home. In the short time they were here they taught me Swedish, well. I can say toothpick, which will be helpful if I ever visit Sweden.....
They planned, and paid for a trip for all of the orphanage children and volunteers to visit a snake park, just on the outskirts of Arusha, which was fun from the off! We all got there in a tiny cramped minibus and piled out in a clown-esque style, with the onlookers baffled as to how we got so many people into such a small vehicle!
The children loved every minute and still talk now about their favourite snake and how much fun they had, we had a guide who only spoke Swahili so I had the children translating for me, and I am pretty sure that the fabricated a lot of the information just to tease me! Mary, one of the elder children (she is ten) has a wicked sense of humour and I really struggle to stifle my laughs and be the sensible adult figure sometimes! She told me all manner of lies and un-truths about the snakes, or there is actually a snake that when it bites you it turns you into a woman/man.
Linked to the snake park was a Massai Cultural Museum that showed us how the Massai live and the rituals and rules they live by. It was fascinating and insightful, seeing how the people I have developed a huge amount of respect for live. For an example, the boys and girls are circumcised at the age of 12, and if they cry they lose their status in the tribe. I cried at the thought of it so heaven knows where I would be as a Massai, probably living in the animal enclosure. After this they all rode on camels that were just by the car park. (I am not sure the relevance of the camels but the children were petrified and excited all in one go, so I was happy to help them on!)
On that note, I also visited a traditional Massai village, in fact the same village that our watchmen come from. It took 3 hours or so to get there and it’s nearly 225km away. It`s a small village called Gadai Bomba and really in the back end of beyond. On the way we saw giraffes and gazelles, dikdiks and millions of exotic birds. Our reason for our mammoth road trip was to drop off a new volunteer. At the tender age of 16, a promising footballer from Sweden, his family decided that he had had life too easy he needed to see the other side of the coin. Whatever your view on this tough love technique is, it works. I could see it work as soon as we arrived, he was visibly shocked, and humbled by the sheer lack of facilities of the village he was staying in. And that was just where he was living. We met Afande, our watchman who was there on one of his well earned breaks, he took us to see the school that Kaaya and a few others from Peace Matunda had started to build, and where the volunteer would be working.
5km later we arrived at the school. Well, I say school, I initially thought there was sweat in my eyes, or maybe exhaustion, but all I could see was a tin roof and struts holding it up. There was dry shrub surrounding the school to protect it from the animals. There were benches made from planks of wood, and no desks. Nothing. I look at Afande. A picture of Massai elegance, draped in his brightly coloured cloths, his Massai knife strapped faithfully to his side, and his sandals, made from recycled car tyres. He looks at me. A picture western materialism, my dust covered “Gore-Tex” boots, my filthy “quick-drying” trousers, and my “sweat wicking” t-shirt wicking nothing away apart from my dignity and he laughs. I can see his point.
The moment quickly passes though and as a collective group we realise the enormity of what we are witnessing. Peace Matunda, as many of you will agree is an amazing place. When you look at the children here you feel a mix of pity and jealousy, you feel like they have nothing but also so much. When we see this school as it is generously called you realise how lucky the PM children are. For a crazy minute I thought it would be wonderful to take the children there, and then I realised what a stupid idea that was, 225 km in a jeep with 30 odd children needing toilet breaks and resounding are we nearly there yet I scrapped that idea pretty quickly!
Anyway. Now off to deal with Marcele, our ever incompetent visa man! Fun times......

A land of opposites.....

2011-06-30T12:22:00.000+01:00

Hello all. I’m writing this on Wednesday the 30th (although, with internet the way it is I could post this next week!). The children are back and school is in full flow, almost! Standard 4 sat their exams on Tuesday and from their reactions they seem not so quietly confident....
School started on Monday, but the school bus couldn’t get some of the students as it got stuck in the mud from the torrential rain the night before, yes, rain. Lots of it! It is seriously hindering my plan for returning with a tan! Anyway, we hope to replace the tyres soon as Kanael, our resident Damon Hill has informed me that if mud doesn’t stop him, then dust can also cause him issues.
I watched the school parade/inspection and suddenly realised what a life of opposites the children have here. For example, they have an inspection every morning, it starts with a school prayer, all standing up straight, hand on their chests, and solemnly reciting the words, being led by the standard 4 students who are at the front of them all. Like a miniature army they then all stand at ease, then attention, to sing the national anthem. I stand there, quietly moved by the pride, and sense of responsibility the elders have for the younger children. They inspect fingernails, make sure basic hygiene is adhered to and I try to remember what it was like for me when I was 8. I got as far as trying to figure out if I preferred He-Man or Thundercats, and even now that decision gives me sleepless nights. They then break into song, and the strong, furrowed brows of the children melt into smiles and laughs as they sing their favourite songs to get them in a good mood for learning.
I sit in standard 3 to start. Bearing in mind that there is no real set age for these classes but the average is approximately 6-7, the agenda for learning today? HIV and AIDS. At 27, my knowledge of this subject, I`m glad, and ashamed to say, is horrifically stunted. I sit at the back and avoid eye contact and if anyone asks me a question I put my finger to my lips, sssshh and point to the front. The teacher asks the main ways of contracting HIV and AIDS. I sit and attempt to look knowledgeable but also distracted, so he doesn’t ask me. The forest of little arms shooting up shows me I shouldn’t have worried. Turns out this are of high importance to learn here, along with spotting the signs of various diseases and effects of malnourishment, from the age of 4. 4. To say I was dumbfounded is an understatement. Anyway. Back to the blackboard. The list is growing of how to contract it, and sharp objects is brought up, and without any sense of irony or sarcasm, the little boy next to me removes a RAZOR BLADE from his pocket, to sharpen his pencil. I sit there, wondering if imp imagining it, am I dreaming? Surely this is some sort of surreal nightmare-esque joke?!
The following day standard 4 sit their exams, they like up, outside the exam hall, that’s not finished yet, and they go in, lacking pencils, pens, rubbers, rulers, sharpeners, bog standard basics that every man woman and child has an abundance of at home. Hell, even have a pencil case full at home and I curse myself for not thinking to pick them up. They run off and return after begging and borrowing said items from students or the donation box that has to be rationed as there is not enough to cover all of the students. They sit their exams, in immaculate silence, I watch, willing them and urging them to do well, to blow the test out of the water. After the longest hour of my life the exam finishes and they leave. I ask, a jibbering nervous wreck how was it, like a worried parent, to be greeted with “easy” in a nonchalant, “what do you think I am, stupid?!” tone. Memories rush back of my school days, so, mum and dad, sorry for that! Now I get the stress I caused!
I have to sign off now, there is a cultural tour arriving and I have to go do the tour.
Bye for now!x

Bruce Parry eat your heart out.......

2011-06-26T12:00:00.000+01:00

In an attempt to become more of a native, I now don’t use insect repellent (also, it smells like a horrendously cheap aftershave...) and brush my teeth with the “toothbrush tree”, basically a stick with which the Maasai use to clean their teeth. When you look at their shiny white pegs you wonder if the £70 electric tooth brush was actually worth it......
Currently the children are still on holiday, but are back this coming Monday. A few arrived this morning, in drips and drabs, and its now beginning to sound more like a school with the children playing and shouting to each other. We had to say goodbye to Danielle, and it was a teary one, although only on her part! Not meant in a bad way, she was amazing with the children here and also with the other volunteers, and she will be sorely missed. I am sure that she will be back with a vengance though, ripping up Maasai Camp with her crazy dance moves and having the children giggle away like, erm, children (?!) In the very near future. I felt bad about my crack of not saying goodbye at the airport as Chapatis were for lunch, even though it was half true! So here is an apology and a goodbye all in one for Danielle!
We now have three more volunteers though, Paul, Kelley, and Scott, all incredibly different characters in their own way and i am very interested as to see how they are with the children. Paul wants to teach them French, as he is fluent, and Scott has brought a violin to teach them a few notes, so its going to be an interesting few weeks, of which im incredibly excited to be a part of!
We have had some excellent news on the exam front, a local school has offered to let the children sit their exams, here at Peace Matunda! All we have to do is have some teachers go to their school to invigilate their exams and vice versa! This is brilliant news and as you can imagine we are all really happy about this. Also, Mr. Christopher has taken on two new teachers this term and they seem very eager to start, Mr Hassan and Mrs Margret were at the staff meeting of which i was present and they were very excited to teach in such a young, developing school.
Brittony, the student on placement here has had some incredible ideas for child sponsorship and feeding the children lunches and i have no doubt that she will have some format that will be in place in the very near future, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for big things!
We have also had the pleasure of Steve, Kaayas` son for a few days, and, at the age of 3 he is a small hurricane! All you hear is the resounding shout of “Steve! Steve!” a minor celebrity it turns out in these parts, but with such a smile and charisma its hardly surprising! I sat with him and Corfield last night for a bit and it was (soppy and sentimental warning) so heart warming to see such a relationship between the two i could feel the inevitable lump begin to well in my throat, smiling at the pair giggling away.....Steve must have seen my predicament and dislodged said lump with a hefty blow from his toy cheetah. Again, resounding laughs from everyone and i felt like a fool! But, if thats the cost of being a fool, then id gladly pay every day for the rest of my life. The children here are all brothers and sisters, if not by blood, then from love. I think everyone could learn alot from here, and previous volunteers would agree, and future volunteers will witness, of that i am sure.
Anyway. Enough of this emotional drivel, im off to do some manly work, like put the kettle on.....
Kwaheri!

Bush babies and avocadoes

2011-06-19T03:53:00.000+01:00

Well, a lot has happened since my last blog! The students are still not back, so I have taken the opportunity to familiarise myself with the town Arusha, (for the benefit of the next volunteers, obviously...). Now so far I have made friends with a reggae band, purchased a goat, (actually Jenni did that but I was there so that counts), slaughtered said got, (again, BellaSix did that, but I was present). I have moved into my new digs, which are lovely, although away from the main house, I feel more exposed, I can hear everything going on, bush babies crying in the trees, avocadoes falling onto the huge Cicely shipping container, which makes such a noise I feel I may have shell shock by the end of my stay!
We have also received a new volunteer! Brittony from Canada, she will be here for 3 months and is a force to be reckoned with, at 6ft tall, and the national ice hockey goal keeper, I would normally be intimidated, but with a disarming smile and a charming manner, she won us all over in no time, and with a Mountie for a brother and a fire fighting philosopher for a boyfriend she is definitely someone with some stories for camp fire! Hailing from the same University as Kayleigh who was here previously everyone has high hopes for her....no pressure!
Sadly we are losing Mariska and Danielle this weekend, Mariska heading home to Switzerland, some of you already may know her from previous visits, she has been an amazing addition to the “team”. Dogged with some sad news before her arrival, I was bracing myself for an emotional time. I need not have worried. She personifies the phrase Hakuna Matata and has been invaluable with her ready smile and open wallet! (I mean that in the best possible sense, her generosity has saved Itchy the dog, as well as all of the children from the infection Itchy was carrying, some medical treatment for other children etc) being a PM vet as I now affectionately call them, I have no doubt she will be back, and I hope to meet her again, and I’m sure I will.
Danielle, who heads off on safari with Kate tomorrow has also been fantastic with the children, a qualified teacher by trade, a whirlwind of random quotes by nature, she has been brilliant at making everyone feel at home, getting the children running around and generally being there with a ready smile, again she will be missed and I’m sure at some point will be back to create mayhem and happiness!
I feel I have segregated the group, but as these two are leaving I thought they needed a mention, everyone here brings something different to the table. I had the idea that everyone here would be of the same ilk, and I have been proved wrong with each and every one of the volunteers so far, and I hope to continue to be!
On a more important, and professional note, (sorry Steve and Maureen, I do work, promise), Geosense FINALLY arrived to plan the school grounds! It looks like PM will be an official school in no time! As you can imagine, the expense of this will be big, but if we continue on the same path then the expense will be continuous and huge! With so many promising young adults in our presence it is the only way PM can go.
Also, I have been researching the previous work done by the other coordinators on generators and solar power, for the project when the power is down. Now, time for me to beg and plead here, if anyone has any ideas, plans, anything, EMAIL ME! I already have the help of Billy Cliffen who let slip on Facebook that he is reading my blog, and as the saying goes, many hands make light work, so if you know something, or someone, please tell them about the project. (Hell, do that anyway, it’s an amazing place!)
That is enough grovelling for one day, time to crack on with football with the boys. I mean work. Work. Definitely work.......

Quad-lingal?!

2011-06-10T06:10:00.000+01:00

Karibu!
Hello all, as you can see, I am picking up the lingo! Karibu means “welcome”, and Hibari, means “what`s the news?” (My constant answer to that was “I’m Sean. Nobody saw fit to correct me, although if I don’t notice there is an abundance of people called Hibari, maybe they are resigned to the fact there is no helping me whatsoever and they just smile and pity me!)
My week as been pretty full on, learning the ropes, learning Kiswahili, Meru AND Masaai, injecting dogs, treating ear aches and burns, picking up bikes from the market (generously bought for the children as a leaving gift from Jenni), trying to navigate my way round Arusha and reply to the constant emails (apologies to those awaiting reply, power is still an issue here).
At the moment we have five volunteers, Danielle, Kate, Alison, Mariska (a PM veteran) and the newbie, Michael. He arrived a few days ago and is a carpenter, very keen to work and get his head down, the black boards are painted, wood bought for shelves and ideas to build a new table to accommodate all the volunteers we are getting over the summer, to say the least he is a whirlwind of sawdust and paint, leaving me with the worry is there anything going to be left for the rest of the Motley Crew we have arriving in the next few months! I have every faith that there will be plenty to do, but his skills are proving invaluable at the moment.
Good news on the registering of the school, the new company arrived yesterday (8th) to draw up the new computerised plans of the area, so fingers crossed this will be the final step in getting the school registered and able to take examinations!
I think a final mention should be saved for the Masaai watchmen. I only noticed today that they are here all the time. After asking i was informed that yes, they are here for weeks on end. They literally eat and sleep at their post, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sometimes they will go home for a bit, but will always leave one, and maybe have a replacement, but if one does not show then they do it alone until the other one returns, generally a few days later. Now, that puts my 12 hour shifts into perspective if nothing else!
Asante Sana for reading,
Love,
Sean.x

Day 3? or 4? i cant remember..............

2011-06-04T18:16:00.000+01:00

Jambo! My apologies to everyone for my lack of updating the blog the power here is tempremental to say the least. I have resorted to writing everything as a word document and in the space of 5-10 minutes where we have power trying to send everything at once, which results in the computer slowing up as im doing too much at once!!
Anyway, enough of my whining! My first realisation and tip to anyone coming out to Peace Matunda, is you have to remember to forget everything you know. Everything here is incredibly different! My first day found me with a few from the PM staff and Jenni at a Culture and Tourism show in Arusha. We sat down to an amazing buffet lunch, and who should join us? The Director of Tanzanian Tourism. While chatting to him about the Welsh, Scottish and the “Mind the Gap” phrase made famous by the London Underground. With all this going on and Jenni skilfully dropping in Peace Matunda into the conversation i sit there, baffled, wondering if this is all a surreal dream....
My second day finds me knuckling down to work and trying to absorb all the information i need to get to be remotely in the know when Jenni leaves! Alot of the children left today for the holidays, which is a bonus for me as it gives me a little time to focus on the job in hand, but finds the other volunteers a little sad and glum as they are now left to entertain themselves. (they could learn a lesson from the children, i saw Eric one of the young ones threading a sequin onto a piece of string, it took him a good ten minutes, and then promptly took it off and started to thread it onto the other end!)
Saturday is market day in Tingeru so we took the remaining children. Wow. What an attack on the senses! The noise (Del-Boy wouldn’t stand a chance in this market) the smells, the colours, the shouts of “Jambo Mzungu” meaning hello white person! Its all a little too much with the children, im worried about loosing myself let alone the children!! Imagine coming back to Kaaya and telling him i lost them!?
Peace Matunda on the whole has changed quite a bit, there is a huge new school building which is waiting to be finished, work has halted at the moment but Specific Media has been funding this build and when its done it will be a media room with 15 computers (hopefully) and a partition wall which will slide open, allowing the room to be used for exams and open days.
Christopher who is the new headmaster is trying to register the school so they can sit their exams here seems to be hitting a bit of a wall made of paperwork, but i have no doubt that he will get it all sorted, it wont be for this term but definitely next. What the man lacks in stature he more than makes up for with passion, drive, and potentually the biggest smile i have ever seen.
I walked one of the girls who come to the school home this afternoon. The other volunteers told me it was a beautiful walk and very picturesque. I would love to say i agree but after the trek up hill, the raging torrent of a river i had to cross, another steep hill, all i could see through the sweat dripping off my head was red spots. Of course, the 10 year old Pamela in her pink dress and red jacket skipped across the river and ran the hill. Just to add salt into the wound she kept saying “pole” (sorry) because i fell in the river. Talk about kicking a man when he is down! It was like she was saying im sorry you are incapable, never mind, maybe a bit more practise! Though her little face giggling soon made up for any hard feelings, though i wont be walking her home again, it will be new volunteers, an initiation test if you like!
Alamsiki!
xxx

The final countdown........

2011-05-25T17:56:00.003+01:00

Hello there and my apologies to all those who read that and begin to hum the Final Countdown the song! My name is Sean Dodd and Iwill be going out to Peace Matunda a week today.

Ive been reading Lucys` blog all day and I can clearly see I have giant boots to fill..... (no offence Lucy ;) ) So hopefully i can fullfill all your needs and questions to the standard Lucy has, and continue both hers and Jennis` excellent work out there, as well as put my own little input in.

Hopefully I will generate new readers in my 6 months out there, and spark interests again in "the veterans" of Peace Matunda, and get you all out there again with me and the rest of the team to see the amazing changes that have been going on, the progress they have made and continue to make.

If you have any requests or questions, please email me at seandodd@cicelyfoundation.com or coordinator@peacematunda.org.

Hakuna Matata! xx

Out of Africa...

2011-02-14T14:48:00.001Z

So my final blog post has arrived! For those of you who don’t yet know, I’m now back in rainy and comfortable England after finishing my contract at Peace Matunda. It's strange to think that nearly a year ago i was writing my first post 'Into Africa'... so much has happened since then!

There are a million words I could use to describe the last 12 months of my life and my experiences along the way but I’m not going to attempt it. There is simply no eloquent way of describing what it’s like to live at an orphanage, getting to know children who despite some very sad histories, are forming into happy and polite individuals and not mouthy, school hating disaster teens. Seeing one hundred Maasai waiting for me at the ceremony of my namesake ‘baby Lucy’… living in a rainforest paradise that would make me the envy of most photographers, climbing the giant Kilimanjaro whilst suffering from a horrendous modesty destroying virus, helping to build a home for 25 children with the money raised from that climb, swerving my way through political riots, negotiating with Policeman who just want some “lunch money”, getting exhaustion in the middle of the night whilst climbing a desolate volcano in the desert surrounded by lions only metres away, being sailed along the coast of Zanzibar in my own private dhow, sitting on a terrace at sunset listening to old revolutionists recount their part in the 1964 bloody battle of Zanzibar whilst the call to prayer echoed in the distance, driving in Africa full stop… But most of all, experiencing the very real and very big difference between the world I have been brought up in and the one we all know as the ‘third’.

So what have I learned? Well, I can change the tyre of a Landrover (if pushed), drive through deep sand, speak a bit of Swahili, pinpoint on a map some of those obscure African countries that you think are just made up names, know how to make a chapatti, know quite a bit about the Tanzania education system… but most of all, I think I’ve learnt how to live within my means. Living out in a place like Meru has meant that coming back and being near frightened to death by the price of a cup of coffee in England (£3 for your information) has not sent me in to a flying panic about the state of the world and my future in it, instead it’s simply a reminder that if I am not earning enough to buy that cup of coffee or those lovely new pair of boots I saw, then I simply won’t. I don’t think it’s that far off the mark to say that my generation and the ones below me are used to getting what we want and quickly. A bit of a shock to the system to come home and realise that life ironically, has gotten a little closer to what I was used to in Africa… due to a burgeoning economic climate, those frivolous luxury items are unaffordable to me now but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. No bank loans, no credit cards.... a bit of Africa has rubbed off on me, so let's hope it continues!!

As far as leaving the children behind and all the lovely staff and people I’ve met along the way, well that was a little more difficult. I’m very happy in the knowledge though that they’re all in fantastic hands with Jackie and Kaaya and the rest of the team and especially now that they can call Amani House their home! I’d move in, in a flash if I could! I’m privileged to be working for the Cicely Foundation as a Director from now on so I know it’s not the end… just the beginning. This year we already have some exciting plans lined up for helping Peace Matunda, one of which is the launch of a fantastic new film, art and photography exhibition all in aid of the Rafiki Fund, plus many more exciting things.

If you want to keep in touch with me after life at Peace Matunda then my email address is: lucydevall@cicelyfoundation.com

And for those of you thinking of taking up the ‘volunteer experience’ for yourself? …. Well before I arrived in Tanzania I hadn’t really thought much about the volunteer experience. Volunteering opportunities yes, but not the experience that it would bring with it day-to-day. That complete independence felt from an autonomous job, immediate rewards for your efforts and feeling like you’ve made a difference in your short time on this planet.

How to regain a bit of control on a life that’s hurtling along at 100mph (that’s London for you) can seem more difficult than it actually is. The reason why I decided on volunteering abroad was because I love meeting new people, seeing new places and ‘getting my hands dirty’ in a project. For the volunteer, what the experience brings is an eye opening insight into a world outside of your own, whilst doing something to help those who struggle to help themselves. London for its day-to-day living is definitely not an altruistic place. Someone once stepped over me in the street after I’d fallen flat on my face in the snow… A low point for both of us I must admit.

So if you’re ever wondering what to do this year or the next then I would whole heartedly recommend a trip out to Peace Matunda. Keep a diary of your time as you will experience so many different things each day it will be near impossible to remember them all in the future. Tanzania in general and Peace Matunda have given me some of the best experiences of my life.

So ‘stick it to the man’ and get yourself out there!

Kweheri,

Lucy

Amani House

2011-01-27T08:18:00.002Z

mural of thanks on main wall

mural of thanks

me painting the murals!

playroom

bao board in playroom

front entrance

front entrance - 'tinga tinga' style painting

dining room

Little children's room

Little one's room

Mery in her new bed!

Dorice on her new bed!

Girl's Room

Kitchen

Poem on the playroom wall

Playroom: the first line of every Ashanti story (Africa folk tale)

Book rack and light in playroom

Older girl's room (Dorice, Magreth, Shila, Mery, Jesca)

The Beginning of the End...

2011-01-18T11:34:00.002Z

…. my last few weeks in East Africa! For the time being anyway…

So to celebrate an amazing 10 months on the continent I retraced the steps I had taken over the course of my travels here. First I headed back to the Longido district to spend some time with my Maasai ‘family’ (I am now Mama Motika’s daughter according to her, which makes me Motika’s sister…!??). I stayed once again with Michael and his family in the Merugoi village within the Gelai Bomba ward. I travelled out with Michael’s family and we stopped in Mto Mbwa (Mosquito River) for lunch at the ‘Double M’ bar. It was the hottest I’d experienced so far out there although the dust was not quite so bad as back in September. This is down to the short rains that fall in the region during November – January and they had transformed the scenery…. Green shrubs everywhere had overtaken the previous dusty yellow and orange colour that blanketed the savannah in September, including the mountain walls to Ngorongoro.

(Above: my bedroom window in the desert)

When we reached Gelai Bomba and settled in to the small oasis like paradise of the Pallangyo home, various Maasai began to turn up, including Mama Motika and Motika. I gave Mama the gift I had been compiling for her since my first arrival to their home, a photo album of her family taken over the course of my stay here. I think she liked it! It seems strange not to have any record of your family to show people and in a culture that’s vanishing as quickly as the Maasai’s it seemed all the more important to have a keepsake of their existence. I then gave Motika and his brothers some solar power torches I had found in town, a handy gift when there’s no electricity or battery shops around! In return I was very privileged to receive a beautiful, hand made and very old Maasai waist belt and some bracelets. I'm sure they'll make an appearance at home at some point!

After taking a walk around the area with Goodluck, Michael’s eldest son, we propped ourselves on the edge of a wall and looked out over Ol Doinyo Langai (the Mountain of God). Sitting at the only bar in town and drinking a (warm) beer with my Maasai friends, it really did seem a million miles away from home and just as different to Zanzibar where I would be going the following week. Once again I was the only white person there, 200km out into the savannah with no phone signal and certainly no electricity. No tourism touches the town which I am secretly thankful for but I know the locals long to have a means of income other than the weekly Saturday market where fruit, vegetables, clothing, jewellery and cattle are sold and bought.

(Sunset overlooking Ol Doinyo Langai from Merugoi village)

So as I was saying, my first night was sat under the crystal clear stars, staring out over an active volcanic mountain that the Maasai believe God lives within. The town is so remote that despite having a 360-degree view around me of about 170km of land, I couldn’t see any sign of another town. The next day I went to visit Negishome, Motika and baby Lucy out at the boma. Lucy’s hair has grown so much! She’s growing fast which is a blessing as Maasai babies from what I have seen so far out there, either thrive or remain painfully small during their early years. The boma’s daily food intake is porridge (a flour, water and sugar mix, not oats) and milk. Other than that, goat’s meat is saved for ceremonial purposes.

The previous day to my arrival there had been a Maasai burial ceremony in the village. An elderly lady recently passed away and Goodluck was telling me all about the traditions and beliefs of burying the dead in the Maasai culture (in fact Goodluck is himself half Maasai). The Maasai traditionally are not followers of organized religion, for example; Christianity or Islam, instead they believe in a ‘God’ but not the prophets or depictions that other cultures follow. The process for burial however, follows a fairly similar path to that of many other religions but with a few twists. A grave is dug into the ground and the body smothered in goat’s oil before being wrapped in a leather animal skin and placed into the ground. The right hand is placed under the face, just as if the person were sleeping on their side. The body is laid straight and placed into the ground with no coffin and pieces of green shrub are thrown in by mourners who recite the names of their family as they do so. A handful of dirt is then thrown in from the sides until loosely covered and the grave re-covered in full at the end. Stones mark the graveside instead of a head stone. The Maasai also believe that there is no life after death, “once you’re gone, you’re at peace. No need to come back as an insect” said Goodluck.

As we sat overlooking Ol Doinyo, I listened some more about the traditions of the Maasai pilgrimage to visit the mountain. Contrary to what I had thought before, it is in fact mainly just the women who travel out to the mountain to pray in times of desperation. For example, they pray for rainfall if the land is dry and water is in short supply, the healing of a sick relative or even just a ‘windfall’ of money (perhaps in the form of some more cattle). The time to visit is therefore, generally in the drought periods of the year, September – October when the area is at its driest. The men during this time will have left the boma with the cattle to herd them to greener pastures which are normally around 100km or so away closer to the Ngorongoro boundaries. The women, dressed in black, will then make the pilgrimage to the mountain to pray to the God resting inside and perhaps with a goat or two left as a gift to appease and speed things along.

I also noticed that as my face is growing more familiar in the small community during my visits over the past year, I am being greeted with the Maasai women’s salutation of ‘yeyo takwenya’… reserved for married ladies (generally 16 years and above). I’ve now gotten pretty good at conversing into a small and slightly wobbly Maasai conversation, and always with the opening words of; “yeyo”, (reply) “eya”, “takwenya”, (reply) “iko”! By Maasai timeframes I would now easily be a grandmother (I am thirty)… But although in comparison to a thirty year old Maasai lady I do look relatively young, once they find out my age (and the “ooooohh’s” get louder the more they count past twenty) then I start to feel like perhaps I should have five children and a husband by now…

The next day being a Saturday, the weekly market arrived so we headed to the cattle market that adjoins the food market and wandered around the many cows and goats that were penned in, all ready to be sold to bomas or for further trading in other regions. In case you’re wondering, a large cow will cost you around 300’000 Tshs (roughly $200) and a smallish goat, approximately 140’000 Tshs ($100). I think the prices depended of course on size, sex of the cow and age but against an average income in most city areas of around $80 per month, the trading is not cheap, hence the number of cattle and goats in your family denoting your wealth (the equivalent being land and farm ownership in Meru).

(The cattle market in Gelai Bomba)

I bought myself a few more ‘shuka’ at the market which are the traditional Maasai robes worn by men and women in purples, reds, oranges, blues etc. Not surprisingly I found most of the shuka to be ends of bulk fabrics from China with the words ‘Shanghai Textiles’ or similar printed along the side… not quite the Maasai image I had when thinking of their traditional clothing! I assume that years ago these patterns and prints did not exist, naturally as Chinese mill fabrics would not have found their way out into the desert of Tanzania… More likely, it was that the Maasai wore plainer robes of black or brown which would have then been woven from natural fibres of cattle, or maybe they wore very little clothing at all… but that’s just a guess. I’m not sure why, when, how or who chose to bring such distinct patterned fabrics to the Maasai but one thing I do know is that the Maasai are fashion mad so their expert eye for blending colour and their natural style of wearing the shuka against their amazing handmade jewellery does not surprise me one bit. I can only put their fashion down to their evolution of natural style!

Whilst visiting I was also fortunate to meet with the town councillor, the man in charge of the Gelai Bomba ward for the Government. Together with the ward leader (traditionally in charge of 10 homes within the village, very similar to Kaaya in Meru) we discussed the possibility of water projects in the region. As I have mentioned in previous posts, there is a severe shortage of water to feed into a town this size. One pipe, roughly 3 inches thick, if that, supplies the entire ward so we’re not just talking the town of Merugoi but several other villages in a 30km radius. And then there’s those who walk further but aren’t ‘technically’ within a ‘ward’ area. That means people have to walk for 30km or more each time they need water, which if you’re reading this from my home town in the UK, that’s the equivalent of walking from Christchurch to Southampton each time you need to fetch water!.... and carrying it back! This also assumes that there’s some there when they reach it as during the dry season months the natural mountain source dries up. Ideally there would be wells dug instead of pipes that can be and are, broken by cattle or vandals. However, this is an extremely expensive process and one that is high in risk should you not find what it is you’re drilling for.

Saturday night we all camped around the fire whilst the women cooked dinner (as a white female visitor I seem to be floating in a ‘limbo gender’, not allowed to help cook or clean as all other women are meant to but not quite treated in the same manner as the men either!). In fact, traditionally across Tanzania, women and children ‘should’ eat in the kitchen and the men sit at the table. Something I’ve noticed happen around Meru and something I was pleased to hear Michael is trying to change within his family – although I noticed he wasn’t cooking the meal! We ate goat, rice, beans and fruits bought in from Meru, quite a feast, and after we sat and chatted about the differences in our cultures and in particular Michael’s recent visit to Scotland!

(The Pallango Family)

On Sunday it was time to return back to Meru and begin the next part of my 'holiday' in Tanzania. I'll write up more about this when I return from it but I'm looking forward to some lounging around and plenty of sunshine!

Looking forward to coming home and seeing friends and family again, although it seems like a long time that I've been away, the weeks seem to fly by. Lots of things in the planning for home though so watch this space (or another similar one as i won't have this blog...) for more news.

Lucy

(local boys wanting a picture!)

(Goodluck at sunset in Merugoi)

(Me, Negishome and baby Lucy)

(Various from the Motika family!)

(A curious, dusty boy in the desert at the nursery project)

(Filling the water tower that was funded through Peace Matunda at the nursery project)

(Sunset at the water reservoir)

(A new blue door to the house for Negishome!)

The Enchanting Song of the Magical Bird

2011-01-14T06:23:00.000Z

This East African story about the innocence and power that children possess was recorded at the beginning of the twentieth century in Benaland, Tanganyika (now Tanzania) by Pastor Julius Oelke of the Berlin Mission Church. The beginning line 'we do not really mean' is the line used in Ashanti of every folk tale. Enjoy! - Lucy.

We do not really mean, we do not really mean, that what we are going to say is true….

One day, a strange bird arrived in a small village that nestled among low hills. From that moment on, nothing was safe. Anything the villagers planted in the fields disappeared overnight. Every morning there were fewer and fewer sheep and goats and chickens. Even during the day, while the people were working on the lands, the gigantic bird would come and break open their storehouses and granaries and steal from their winter food supplies.

The villagers were devastated. There was misery in the land – everywhere was the sound of wailing and the gnashing of teeth. No one, not even the bravest hero of the village could get his hands on the bird. It was just to quick for them. They hardly ever saw it: they just heard the rushing of its great wings as it came to perch in the crown of the old yellowwood tree, under its thick canopy of leaves.

The headman of the village tore out his hair in frustration. One day, after the bird had plundered his own livestock and winter supplies, he commanded the men to sharpen their axes and machetes and to move as one against the bird. “Cut down the tree; that is the answer”, he said.

With axes and machetes ground to gleaming razor edge, the men approached the great tree. The first blows landed heavily and bit deep into the flesh of the trunk. The tree shuddered, and from the thick tangled leaves of its crown the strange and mysterious bird emerged. A honey-sweet song came from its throat. It reached into the hearts of the men and spoke of fabulous, far-off things that never would return. So enchanting so the sound that the machetes and axes fell one by one from the hands of the men. They fell to their knees and stared upward in longing and yearning at the bird that sang for them in all its brilliantly coloured splendor.

The men’s hands became weak. Their hearts became soft. No they thought, so beautiful a bird could never have caused such damage and destruction! And when the sun sank red in the west they shuffled like sleepwalkers back to the headman and told him there was nothing, but nothing, that they could do to harm the bird.

The headman was very angry, “then the young men of the tribe will have to help me” he said. “Let the youngsters break the power of the bird”.

The next morning the young men took their gleaming axes and machetes and set off for the tree. The first blows again landed heavily, biting deep into the flesh of the trunk. And just as before, the green canopy of the tree opened and the strange bird appeared in all its multihued finery. Once again a most wonderful melody echoed across the hills. The young men listened enchanted, to the song that spoke to them of love and courage and of the heroic deeds that awaited them. This bird could not be bad, they thought. This bird could not be wicked. The young men’s arms became weak, the axes and machetes fell from their hands, and they knelt like the older men before them, listening in a trance to the song of the bird.

When night fell they stumbled, bewildered, back to the headman. In their ears still sounded the enchanting song of the mysterious bird. “It is impossible” said the leader of their group. “No one can withstand the magical power of this bird”.

The headman was furious. “Only the children remain,” he said. Children hear truly and their eyes are clear. I will lead the children against the bird”.

The next morning the headman and the children of the tribe went to the tree where the strange bird was resting. As soon as the children let the tree feel the bite of the ax, the leafy canopy opened and the bird appeared just as before blindingly beautiful. But the children did not look up. Their eyes stayed on the axes and machetes in their hands. And they chopped, chopped, chopped to the rhythm of their own music.

The bird began to sing. The headman could hear that its song was beautiful beyond compare, and he could feel the weakness in his hands. But the children’s ears could hear only the dull, regular sounds of their axes and machetes. And no matter how enchantingly the bird sang, the children continued to chop, chop, chop.

Eventually the trunk creaked and cracked apart. The tree crashed to the ground and with it fell the strange and mysterious bird. The headman found the bird where it lay, crushed to death by the weight of the branches.

From everywhere the people came charging. The hardened older men and the strong young men could not believe what the children with their thin arms had accomplished!

That night, the headman declared a great feast to reward the children for what they had done. “ You are the only ones who hear truly and whose eyes are clear”, he said. “You are the eyes and ears of our tribe”.

“Because a story is a story; and you may tell it as your imagination and your being and your environment dictate; and if your story grows wings and becomes the property of others, you may not hold it back. One day it will return to you, enriched by new details and with a new voice”. (Nelson Mandela).

Politics, Schmolitics

2011-01-06T09:31:00.002Z

What a week. I am soon to be off for a few days rest in the desert seeing baby Lucy and the Maasai and then (fingers crossed!) 7 days on the coast in Tanga and Zanzibar and visiting a project in Dar es Salaam that I came across through a friend – but more on that later…

It’s been one hell of a week. It started off doing some painting in the children’s orphanage, picking out curtains for the bedrooms and ended up with me nearly getting into a ‘fight’ with a dala dala driver and subsequently making a quick getaway down the wrong road into a crazy gun toting riot.

Monday was calm. I’ve been putting the finishing touches to the new children’s home ‘Amani House’, meaning ‘peace’ in the Swahili language. Tinga Tinga is a traditional form of painting across Tanzania and is almost cartoon like in its appearance. Bright, bold colours depict animals, Tanzanian landscapes and more traditionally tell a story of death and other similarly morbid scenes. I’ve gone with the lighter touch to Tinga Tinga and I’ve painted animals across the walls of the home in Tinga Tinga style along with murals of songs and poems that the children sing all the time. It should hopefully go some way as well in helping to practise their spelling! Finding items to put in the home that most of us are so used to coming across at home is another challenge that I haven’t quite accepted defeat on yet. Even the smallest of things that we would not consider a problem are difficult to find here; a notice board ($80 for one), paint for a room (only oil paint in white and cream can be bought off the shelf), a sofa set below $2’000 or at the other end a very basic and soon to fall apart second hand one at $200…. nothing in between. Unless I was entering the children’s home for an episode of 'MTV Cribs’ it’s also been difficult for it to not look like a pimped out rappers paradise with gold, glass and leather embellishments on everything (including TV stands). Sorry Africa, but our tastes are worlds apart it seems.

So following on from this we are getting somewhere now with making the home look like a children’s home. In fact it’s looking pretty amazing if I do say so myself. The children moved in last night and I have videos and pictures that I’ll put up soon. I’m just trying to finalize a few touches before the big ‘unveiling’ and then you can all see it for yourself. Prior to the children moving in was my brush with the craziness of politics in Tanzania. I was out in town and driving out of Shoprite (the local and only supermarket in town) when a dala dala driver stopped to let me go out, the other dala dala coming in the other direction was not quite so generous which resulted in a TINY dink being put in the other dala dala’s light, my fault I admit but out comes the crazy driver demanding $40 for the repair to which I bargained him down to $10 whilst grappling through the window for my car keys whilst I was still driving… My muscles have obviously gotten bigger since being here as we had an arm wrestle of sorts, me trying to retain the keys to the car and him trying to run off with them whilst I screamed at him before making a quick getaway. If you want to win a fight with a dala dala driver, eat your ugali and drive a Land Rover with no power steering.

Following said quick getaway I inadvertently made a turn down a normally regular road into what I can only describe as a riotous mini war zone. There were huge chunks of rock from what I now know were remnants of buildings lying scattered in the road, which I drove over…. (this should have been my first warning really), ahead of me comes a missle of sorts thrown by a boy of about fourteen which explodes a few metres away from the car in a haze of smoke. I stop and realise that the noises around me are not in fact cars backfiring, which I’m used to hearing but lots of gunshots. Youths not much older than the children at school are throwing smoke grenades at the armed Police who I then see in helmets running around firing at roof tops. In amongst all of this I am stationary in the middle of the road with a group of locals shouting ‘pole mzungu!’ at me from their houses (‘sorry white lady!’). Realising that I am probably not in the best position to carry on driving seeing as how I am now surrounded on all four sides by rioters and the only white person there, an old man beckons me into the Mosque to watch the proceedings from there. On reflection it was a strange afternoon. More crazy than aggressive, little logic to anything that was going on and perhaps more bizarrely with some people carrying about their daily business tooing and froing from the market with fruit on their heads and emerging from the grenade smoke like a character from an action movie scene finale.

Today is back to ‘normal’. I’m in town carrying on working, as are most other people. The remains of yesterdays war is scattered on the roadside and on the news. It was apparently to do with political clashes following the recent campaigning trails in the region, further than that I don’t quite understand the rest of the picture and why it resulted in such violence and nor it seems, do most other locals. A typical recount of politics gone mad.

The only other thing to mention here would be the polite request of anyone with any connections to items which could be donated for our raffle prizes in the opening ceremony on the 29^th January..?! Pretty please. For the opening ceremony we will be hosting a small community fair where we will encourage locals to participate. Along with this will be a prize draw / raffle to raise a little money to help kick start the 2011 classroom fund. Please let me know via email if you could help.

OK readers, next time you hear from me it will hopefully be from a sun lounger on a white beach somewhere with a giant cocktail in my hand... but anything can happen in Africa.

Lucy

A Christmas Day on the Mountain

2010-12-27T16:29:00.002Z

Below are some of the photos from Christmas day here at Peace Matunda, for more please take a look at the Peace Matunda Facebook page by clicking here.

So.... the week before Christmas was as hectic as anywhere; last minute food shopping in town, enough food bought to feed an entire army, some more items for the new children's home and of course a few treats for the children themselves. It's traditional here to give the children a new outfit for Christmas so this is exactly what we did along with a great lunch out in town in the boiling heat. Armed with a mini bus and 8 children, we headed off into Arusha for a days fashion extravaganza around the markets. After lots of haggling we left with 8 very smart little outfits and 8 very happy children! All of the children are wearing their outfits in the photos below. Among the 8 were; Corfield, Dorice, Magreth, Shila, Lovine, Kelvin, Davey and Pamela who is staying with us over the holidays.

On the day itself we all woke up early and I took the children to church along with the lovely Cameron family from Canada who stayed with us for a few days over Christmas. When we got back it was present opening time... lots of fun and smiling faces. All the children received presents and stockings full of treats were given out to those in the nearby community. After this it was time for the preparation of the BBQ.... fruit kebabs, sausages, burgers and 'Billy the goat'.... who you can see below. Despite some curious bystanders it is tradition with Maasai for only the slaughters to be present during the slaughter, it is a private matter and no one else is allowed to look which was fine by me. I thought it best to picture him in happier times..

The BBQ itself was a great affair, lots of locals and even some local gin! I didn't even realise Meru had it. As normal around this time of year there was a power cut for most of the day and so the children entertained themselves outside with their new toys and watched movies in the evening when it came back on.

Gill from the Cameron family will be back with us on the 15th January which we are really looking forward to. She had a fundraiser before coming out and altogether her family; Bruce, Meredith and Emily managed to raise a staggering £5'000 / $8000 for the project!! Gill is an artist so we are all looking forward to seeing some of her pictures whilst she's here..

Altogether we had a full house of volunteers staying here over Xmas which is a very rare occasion. Last year there was no one!

In amongst all of this I have been adding a few finishing touches to the children's home which I'll be keeping a secret until closer to the completion date. The children all arrive back to the home on the 3rd Jan and then start school on the 10th.. by which time I'll be (hopefully) sunning myself on the coast and visiting little Lucy and the family out in the desert.

For those of your celebrating Christmas, i hope you had a lovely holiday and have a great New Year's Eve... not sure what the plans are here yet, but it could involve local home brew banana beer and gin.

Christmas njema

Lucy

Christmas 2010 Peace Matunda

2010-12-26T16:15:00.002Z

The Week Before Christmas...

2010-12-19T18:03:00.001Z

It’s the week before Christmas and all through the house not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse….

Well maybe not the mice, but the rest are all very quiet. And this is because the dormitories are now all empty! We took all the children home on Wednesday 15^th to their respective families which stretched from the other side of Mount Meru all the way out to the airport where the Tanzanite is refined. The contrast between the environments is quite remarkable. Faraja, Naomi, Livingstone, Editha and Unice for example, all live within the Arusha National Park region, which seems like when you’re there, you’re back 1’000 years in a scene reminiscent of ‘Braveheart’ (but without the kilts). Volcanic mountains surround green valleys and traditional mud huts with thatched roofs scatter the view. The only oddity about it being that pink flamingos fly over-head and huge cacti are growing in the garden. Their homes as you can see from the pictures are mostly made of sticks and a mixture of dung and mud. The families all live within one room and water is taken from the well, food is cooked on a wooden fire or if you’re more fortunate, a small gas stove. The main income to the region is the growth of crops such as tomatoes, wheat and corn, which is then packed and sent to the surrounding markets in the Moshi and Arusha regions.

In contrast the home environment of Gladness, Leah, Dickson, Happiness, Maria and Dorah who all live a short distance away from each other, is very different. Their homes are within the Tanzanite refining district where the ground is very dry and there is very little in the way of volume crop growth. The Tanzanite companies have provided community development but it seemed more in the form of a pool table and a few small shops opposite the refinery gates from what we could see. The children’s families again, all live within traditional wooden and mud houses and share living space with around five other family members or more.

Although the living environment of the children’s family homes was by comparison to Peace Matunda, very poor, their families were all extremely happy to see them back. There were lots of tears, hugs and karibu sanas to us all but on a tight schedule to deliver all twenty-one children back in a day, it meant we couldn’t stay for long in any one place. I’ve taken a family photograph of each child’s household and each family will be given a printed family picture in the New Year to keep. All children will be back to Peace Matunda on the 3^rd January ready for school to resume on the 10^th.

Remaining with us over Christmas are Dorice, Maggie, Shila and Lovine who will stay with Corfield up at the main house. Pamela Lazaro is also visiting regularly for breakfast and lunch. They are all very excited about Christmas and having some time off over the holidays. During their holidays they will be helping with the final renovations of their new home including some painting and decorating here and there. The bunk beds have been moved today and the furniture is now nearly all in place.

At the moment there have been a lot of ‘confirmations’ for young girls within the local area here, who when they reach standard 6 (around age 10 or 11 at home), they are confirmed into the church. Their family puts on a big party and lots of people are invited to attend and all are then fed throughout the day. So there’s been a lot of tooing and froing between parties, painting, moving, driving, ordering…. a very busy month. Not only do we need to make sure the new home is complete before the end of December but the school needs to be renovated ready for standard 4 to being at the beginning of January.

It’s boiling hot here for the record although I seem to be the same colour as when it was raining. January will be tanning time for me and I’ll be off to the coast and the desert seeing baby Lucy for a few weeks before returning to organize the grand opening ceremony on the 29^th January!

The opening ceremony will be a day that represents the official opening of the new children’s home ‘Amani House’. If you’re in the area and would like to attend please let us know as soon as possible. We are also hosting the first Kimundo Village community fair. This will be an all day event and local traders will be encouraged to come and work with the hope of diversifying some of their expertise… for example, we are surrounded by pineapples, mangoes, bananas and many other fruits so we will have juice stand as one of our fair attractions. We also have many local kitenge and kanga shops so we are inviting along the mamas group from Arusha who have made the toys for the children’s home to demonstrate what can be made for sale for the tourist crowds in Arusha. We hope that the day will be fun for everyone and encourage some creative entrepreneurship in the local area!

We were also fortunate to have had a visit by a lady called Izabela who works for the UN refugee committee and is helping us with HIV projects in the local area. We all hope that together we can come up with some successful implementations for the benefit of the area in the future.

Powers cuts are very frequent at the moment so updating the blog and sending emails is rather sporadic, apologies. This week we’ll be taking the children clothes shopping as part of their traditional present and planning on having a bbq on Christmas day itself. A group of volunteers here at the moment will also take the children swimming to cool off in the heat, which everyone is looking forward to (including me). I’ll update some more before next weekend.

Hope you’re all having a lovely time at home.

Lucy

Above: All the children on leaving day

Faraja's Home: mama and brothers and sisters.

Unice and her brother at home

Editha at home with mama and bibi

Naomi and her mother at home

Dorah with her mama and younger sister at home

Gladness, Leah and family at their home

Mama Afrika

2010-11-28T06:38:00.003Z

I thought i would add in a few snaps of the bright and the beautiful here at Peace Matunda... all the children (and some adults) love posing for photographs and then seeing what they look like in the view finder. One of the advantages of the digital revolution. Believe it or not, none of these photographs are posed, despite the pouts on some of them!

So.... it's been another busy few weeks. The children's home construction is nearly complete, the paint work is finished and i'm just updating this whilst i wait for the furniture people from Dickson Furniture of USA River (pronounced 'oosa') to come and install the beautiful hand made wooden kitchen and tables into the home. All from Tanzanian hard wood. OK, so this sounds rather extravagant but in actual fact it's easier and more durable to buy furniture hand made and locally than it is to locate a furniture store which sells the completed item. Ikea, M&S and John Lewis would go down a storm in nearby Nairobi. Unfortunately very little is exported or imported for that matter when it comes to furniture apart from the mass produced touristy market finds, and when it's imported it's often ridiculously expensive and lent towards African decor. The only sofas I can find for example, are light cream suede with gold embellishments. Not ideal for a children's home (or my own come to think of it).

The local mama's group of Arusha is making the soft furnishing; cushions, toys for the children's beds (they'll get one each), giant bean bag style seats all made out of vitenge fabric (the large African printed cloth). The money from the order goes towards the secondary education fees of young women who have fallen pregnant and as a consequence, out of school. I met the group last Tuesday where they work on traditional Singer sewing machines at their secondary school after lessons. The work is amazing and the colourful fabrics of the vitenge (plural of kitenge) are perfect for a children's home.

November 20th was Margreth's birthday who is now the double digit ripe old age of 10. We took all 24 children swimming at a nearby lodge and then to a play park. It was a fantastic day, lots of fun, over eating and drinking of sodas (a rare occasion!) and capped off with a birthday cake made with banana and chocolate. A special thanks to Kitty Oldfield of Bournemouth in the UK who donated her 6th birthday party money to Peace Matunda in October, you helped give Maggie a very special birthday treat. Maggie actually spent most of her birthday in the waiting room of the eye clinic with me in Arusha along with Emmanuel and Nickson who also suffer from chronic eye complaints. A visiting consultant from the big Moshi Hospital KCMC opens a free clinic once a week on Saturday's and sees local patients. In actual fact, it turns out that Emmanuel and Maggie's eye problems are down to aggressive conjunctivitis which if left untreated can lead to severe discolouration as in the case of Emmanuel. However, their vision is good which is the main thing and the new eye medicine which we purchased through the Tibu fund will help ongoing treatment for them both.

It was then 'Aunty Jackie's' birthday on the 24th November and she turned a whopping 23 years old!! Who knew hey. The fact that Jackie looks after 21 children under the age of 12 and for 24 hours a day, plus lives in their dormitory and has the patience of a saint, does not go unrecognized. So we had further cake, some nice presents and a lot of dancing. Unlike the children and Jackie my unfortunate English body still has trouble recognizing rhythms which is shown in the painful display of movement on the dance floor. Everyone else's hips have a life of their own, mine don't seem to want the same independence.

Finally, little 'baby' Steven turned 2 on the 27th November!! We all wish him a very happy birthday and may the 'terrible twos' be as mild as possible for Mama Joyce.

This weekend was the Christmas fair in town. It was the strangest feeling wandering around christmas stalls in 35 degree heat with Father Christmas tailing me and the sound of Jingle Bells blaring out over the speakers. Needless to say, a fun day was had by all and plenty of money was spent on various African bits and bobs.

The children will be getting a Christmas stocking filled with goodies this year curtsey of some very generous well wishers but i think the biggest treat of all will be moving in to their new home! Fingers crossed it all goes to plan before the big day.

Right. I'm off. I hope you're all braving your hot or cold weather towards the holidays. I include all of my 'reader base' in this as I actually have a global following stretching from Russia to China to Malaysia, India and even pan-African! It could just be a wrong google search but i prefer to think that the juicy tales I have to tell are the real reason.

Au reviour / 再见 / до свидания / kwaheri

OK enough....

Goodbye,

Lucy

Church and other Mixed Blessings

2010-11-14T09:16:00.001Z

A Sunday morning at the local village church.....

No News is Good News

2010-11-11T13:00:00.001Z

A 94 year old man takes a 20 year old wife. One day his young wife comes home to tell him she’s pregnant. Taken by surprise but altogether very pleased with himself, the old man prides himself on his vigour and virility. “What strength I have left in me!” said the old man “perhaps I’ll take another young wife for myself soon”. The next day, continuing to feel proud of his achievement and his miraculous Samsonite strength, the old man decides to go hunting with his equally old but quite blind friend. The old man spends the day boasting to his companion about his obvious prowess with the ladies when in the middle of the desert they come across a lion. The lion, seeing two frail old men thinks it’s found easy prey and begins to charge…. The old half blind companion gets out his rifle and takes aim ready to shoot; only without knowing it he’s mistaken his rifle for an umbrella… Ignorant of his fatal mistake the half blind companion pulls the trigger. ‘BANG!’. The lion drops dead at the old men’s feet. Astounded, everyone stops what they’re doing. “What a good shot I am!” boasts the companion. “Look how I finished the beast off with one clean shot of my gun”. Bemused by this ridiculous miracle the old man turns to the gamekeeper and says “how did he manage to shoot the lion dead with an umbrella and no bullets, it’s impossible!”

“Well ”, said the gamekeeper, “clearly, someone must have shot from the sidelines”.

This was the opening speech of the Rotary club Arusha meeting I attended a short while ago, led by its 75 year old founder on fast for Ramadan. It followed with me having to give three kisses to the winner of the raffle as a prize for pulling the winning ticket.

Fundraising is tiring work but every now and then it produces a few laughs. Giving a speech to the head of Rotary, a prominent UN ICTR lawyer from Nigeria and his colleagues in their suits can be a nerve-wracking business but it’s always worth noting not to judge a book by its cover (unless you’re to listen to the above story).

It’s been a while since I updated you on life in general here in Tanzania. This is mainly down to life being as far from mundane as possible. Since early October, I’ve climbed Kilimanjaro (my legs have just recovered), been around town promoting the project such as the above meeting (which was about as challenging as Kilimanjaro). I’ve been organizing the final phase of our building, making tea for ‘fundis’ (workmen) and berating them when they don’t turn up on time to finish a job. Finally, I’ve been trying to stay out the way of the general elections and figuring out my plans to explore a bit more of Africa.…

The other day Kaaya received a visit from an old friend, a rather unique character by the name of Ali. The two of them met a few years ago when Ali was passing through Tanzania promoting his 4x4 pan-African peace awareness campaign which is basically a slow version of the original Dakar rally and for ‘peace’ not a prize. In a modified ex French foreign legion truck (the only one of its kind in the world), Ali travels from his resident country of Djibouti across the African continent in a 4x4 rally which he organizes each year. The expertise of Ali handling such driving challenges are tied in with his 15 years spent in the French Foreign Legion, prior to which he came up from Morocco to live in Spain following his departure from his original home country of Pakistan. Hence my use of a description for him; ‘a unique character’.

Djibouti is an old French protectorate situated on the East coast of Africa, a staring distance away from the twinkling lights of South Yemen. French is still used as one of the main languages along with Arabic and there is still a heavy presence of French nationals living and working as attaches to the government or living an ex-pat life by the Red Sea.

Anyway, my point about all of this is that I’ll potentially be off in a week or so for a short trip to Djibouti and participate in the 2010 ‘Walk for Peace’ organized by Ali and the Africa Travel Association. This is an annual walk held in Djibouti where people from all over Africa come for the simple point of walking together for 15km without bother of politics, religion or anything else that normally comes in the way of cross-cultural understanding. This is big news, literally. It will be covered on the TV and in the papers. Kaaya is the Tanzanian representative and it often draws in several members of government along with other prominent figures in and around the supporting countries of Africa. The Sudanese are among some of the most positive and friendly supporters apparently. For more info visit www.africapeacecaravan.org

Back at Peace Matunda meanwhile, things have been moving on at their normal confusing pace i.e. most things in Africa are 'pole pole' (slow) but the building work for the new children's home seems to have been erected at a speed of knots. The whole community is involved with the build it feels like, local workmen working around the clock, digging holes and plastering walls. I want to keep some of the final touches a secret, so i can surprise you all with some lovely pictures when it's all complete - 'inshahallah' as we say here...

Sadly, we lost Memory and her daughter Faith from our team the other day. Memory had to go back to Zambia for personal reasons but we will all miss her very much. She was a wonderful help to the team and we be very much missed. We wish her all the best.

So, other than running around trying to coordinate a building project, school registration process, responding to emails and updating the websites (take a look! www.peacematunda.org) I've been trying to locate a camera for some future work projects (all non-profit African based).... not just any camera, but a DSLR one.... either a Canon or a Nikon - if anyone knows of anyone or anywhere I could get a good deal on one then please, please, please let me know! I would be so grateful. Unfortunately working with orphans in Africa does not provide the funds to purchase one at full price so I'm putting the feelers out there to all you good people in case you can help locate one for me! The orphans of Africa will be forever grateful.

(OK, that last bit was a bit far stretched but they'll look all the more photogenic through the lens!)

Speak soon,

Lucy

Alishinda Mlima

2010-10-22T14:32:00.002+01:00

Well I'm sure a lot of you will now be aware through copious amounts of gloating, story telling and war wound bravado that Kilimanjaro has now been conquered!

There were 19 in the group altogether, myself and Kaaya included. Fifteen Cicely Foundation supporters from the UK plus Steve and Maureen Cliffen the founders of the foundation. Altogether we managed to raise a whopping $60'000 for Peace Matunda's new children's home and school development!

(Above: the view of sunrise along the summit climb)

I'm not going to paint too pretty a picture... I was on antibiotics for the duration after falling ill a few days before we set off. Luckily for me (but unluckily for some), I had several 6ft something muscle bound Tanzanian men hauling me up the mountain to make sure I made it in one piece. The views were incredible, if you managed to stop and take a look. The total height is 5'895m but for the most part you're walking between 3'000 - 4'000m and transcending rainforest, bushland, heath, alpine and finally arctic.

Your breath starts to get shorter and shorter the further you go, the nose bleeds start at about 4'500m and the crazy dreams at the last camp. You carry your day pack all the time, drink 2-3 litres of water per day, start off sun burnt which soon turns to wind burn then finally your outer layer freezes in the arctic conditions until you can wipe the frost of your clothes and your face is masked in your own frozen sweat. Grim? Yes. Challenging? The most difficult thing I've ever done. Would I do it again? Only when I forget the pain. Was it worth it? Definitely.

We climbed up through the Mchome route which has the option, unbeknown to us beforehand, of having varying durations from 6 days to 9 (Cheryl Cole and Chris Moyle's choice was the 9 day option in lodges take note!). Us being hard core mountaineers chose the 6 day option and camped which consists of 5 nights; four nights up and one night down. It's also one of the most difficult...

Camp four, the final camp, really did feel just like that. It was like Armageddon had hit and we were the sole survivors picking our way through the frozen wasteland that was planet earth. We slept on jagged rocks, slept in all of our clothes and had to climb to the toilet (yes really). In amongst all of this gloom however, were the constantly cheerful faces of 57 porters and around a dozen guides and assistant guides.

(Left: Camp 2 with Maureen and Judith in their Kili gear).

To become a Kilimanjaro guide can take around 10 years. You first must start as a 'potty porter', a porter who, you've guessed it, has the delightful duty of carrying the toilet on their shoulders the entire journey. After this you progress to cooks assistant or personal porter whose job it is to haul your crying, whining, aching body out of the tent at 1am to climb a further 1000m metres. My personal porter sat there in my tent on the summit night and watched as he 'made me' eat all of my soup in front of him. He then put on my walking boots for me...They rarely let you go to bed without dinner, or lunch and constantly murma the Kilimanjaro mantra "pole pole" (pronounced 'po - lay') the entire way up which means 'slowly' in Swahili.

For them however, the journey is anything but 'pole pole'. As you're creaking along the next 100m the porters are literally jogging past you with 20kg of your valuable belongings on their heads. Each porter has 20kg weighed out and then instead of carrying the weight up in a professional backpack they place it on their heads and get going. This may not seem too much when looking at the size of some of them but when you reduce your oxygen levels by half, notice that they're wearing trainers, jeans and just a fleece and see some of the rocks faces that have to be maneuvered past, you soon realize that it is. The Barranco wall being one of them. This was actually my favourite part of the whole expedition. It goes under other aliases such as the 'breakfast wall' (because you have to attempt it after breakfast) and is 700ft of steep rock face, including a delightful part known as the 'kissing rock' because you have to hug it and literally almost kiss it to get to the next level. Otherwise it's several hundred feet down to where you started. Did I mention that the porters do this with your luggage still balanced on their heads too?

It was an amazing experience though but your mind only has time to register this once you get to the bottom. The whole purpose of it though was to raise money for Peace Matunda and the children's new home which we did, and we even exceeded our target!

(Above: Camp 2 day 3 - this wasn't as rocky as it got!)

A BIG thank you to everyone who sponsored me and everyone else. I'll be in touch with you all personally over the coming months. Sorry it can't always be that quick...

The home and the new classroom is due to be completed by December for the new school year to commence in January. Hopefully, all being well this target will be met.

If you're interested in being a part of this from afar there's still time for you to be involved. There's still a long way to go on the fundraising for our Square Roots project which is all in aid of this build. To get more information visit the Square Roots page of the Peace Matunda website.

They'll be more updates soon. I realise I've been quiet for a while...

Lucy

(Above: Party at the top of the Barranco wall)

(Above: My guide on the summit climb at sunrise)

A Small Act Documentary - Official Trailer

2010-10-02T13:22:00.002+01:00

Introducing Baby Lucy...

2010-09-11T15:11:00.004+01:00

We approached the boma of Motika by foot across the hills of the savannah, the searing hot sun melting together the colourful bodies of what I knew where around 100 Maasai waiting for us; chanting, dancing, their five foot long spears glistening in the sunlight.

All this was in welcome to the birthing ceremony of 'Lucy mdogo' (or baby Lucy) the latest edition to the Motika tribe born 300km out in the desert of Northern Tanzania to her mother Negishome. I am now the very proud 'big mama' to little Lucy...

This was the ultimate destination of an amazing journey into a culture that is as far removed as possible from what I knew before. Even Meru with its green slopes and its fertile soil seemed a million miles away from here. Out in the desert plains water is a luxury, children with no one to provide for them look like those we’re so used to seeing on ‘help Arfrica’ type TV programmes at home with sunken eyes and swollen bellies. The majority however, survive off a diet of milk, maize and tea and very little water.

After a few months of careful planning, we have started a supportive relationship between the Meru and the Maaai, once one of the most similar tribal cultures of Africa. The aim of the project is to build a supportive relationship between these two tribes who now live such vastly different lives; Meru providing through Peace Matunda, it's abundant sustenance of food and water and the Maasai, an education for those who seek it, into a mysterious past of nomadic warriors. We began by travelling out to the region of Lake Natron, a shallow soda lake bordering Kenya in Tanzania’s far north. As the guidebooks put it: “hellishly hot, dry, desolate and bizarrely beautiful with Ol Doinyo Langai rising at its southern end”. We arrived at the camp into what can only be described as a strangely forest like environment, an oasis in the middle of 100s of kilometres of arid plains. The natural waterfalls and springs that run down from the mountain bordering the Ngorongoro region provide the sustenance for this green environment. The walk took us roughly 1 hour to walk 5km until we reached the lake with hundreds of pink flamingos drinking its salty waters. Along the way two young Maasai girls joined us and someone who I thought was another sister until she was introduced to me as their mother, looking roughly about 20 years old, if that. ‘No money Sarah’ and ‘no money Maria’ as they eventually kept repeating were great companions for the journey, which they did without any shoes on in the searing heat. We were given bracelets by ‘no money Sarah’ quickly followed by ‘no money Maria’ as gifts for what I can only presume were due to us not ‘shooing’ them off like they’re used to. Tourism out here isn’t as popular as in the safari parks, for this reason you really do experience ‘true Africa’, how people live with each other and in an environment surrounded by other animals such as Cheetah, Lions, Zebra, Giraffe, all living together and attempting to sustain a life of self sufficiency.

Returning to the camp it was time to rest and have dinner before we started our midnight climb up Ol Doinyo Langai. Literally translated this means the Mountain of God in the Maasai language where on average twice a month in the dry season, the Maasai walk long distances to the bottom all dressed in black to pray to God for the rains. The Tanzanian Maasai believe that the lava inside is produced by God’s cooking which flows out every 20-40 years spewing its uncommonly found levels of sodium carbonate and potassium lava down onto the desert for miles around. I wasn’t sure what to expect climbing the mountain and I have to be the first to admit that I wasn’t that prepared for what I found in store either. The shear gradient of the mountain is enough to put some people off let alone the winds that beat down on you through the night, the pitch blackness due to the moon being behind the mountain, the thick, thick volcanic grey sand that you have to wade through, the crevasses that you have to avoid; not to mention the lions, cheetahs and other big animals that sleep metres away from you. In a period of drowsiness and probably lack of sugar in my system I stopped at one point and pointed to the lights facing us in the distance “look! There’s a car ahead” (oblivious to the fact that we were up a volcano, which would make such a sighting quite impossible). Our Maasai guide started speaking to Kanaeli who had gone up with us, poking at something in the sand and approaching the two bright white dots that turned out to be only metres away rather than miles. The guide began to explain that it was nothing to worry about “just some cheetahs”. At this point I was so tired despite only being a quarter of the way up that I would have gladly taken my chances with them rather than walking for the next 5 hours to get to the summit. It wasn’t until the next day however that Kanaeli kindly pointed out that in order “not to freak you” he didn’t tell us the whole truth. They were lions, not cheetah. We approached the summit as the sun rose in the distance creating a blanket of light the colour of lava across the plains below us. The summit holds the crater holes from which you can see the lava of the volcano bubbling away inside. The whole experience was best put into words by Lou when he said “it was the most amazing and most terrifying moment of my life”. Climbing Ol Doinyo Langai is not for the faint hearted and should be approached with caution with a guide or two, one to lead the way and one to pick up any stragglers (me) lagging behind. It’s an incredible experience though and when you finally reach the bottom after climbing through the night for around 10 hours, you feel like you’ve achieved something special.

From there we took to camp for brunch and travelled out to the waterfalls which my pictures just don’t do justice to (in fact none of them do any of these experiences this). Hot and cold pools of natural water from the mountain springs create ideal pools in which to sit and relax after a hard climb. Looking up you can see the palm trees that sway in the wind created by the power of the water crashing down below. It’s a haven for visitors as the falls are cut off from the main populated areas so it takes some careful footwork across rock faces to reach them.

After this welcomed cool down we began our journey out to the Maasai village were the birthing ceremony was taking place that day, a tradition that happens each time a baby is born into a Maasai family. To describe the sand that forms the tracks to the desert town of Gelai Bomba where we were due to stay (literally meaning ‘broken pipe’ in Maasai), one has to picture driving through up to half a metre deep of scorching earth and frequently getting stuck in even a 4WD car. Around 4km outside of Gelai Bomba we stopped to walk out to the village where the Motika and his family were waiting for us to arrive. As we approached the Maasai boma of Motika the sound of soft, high pitched flowing song swept across the desert to greet us....

Treading carefully to avoid any scorpions or snakes that lurk between the rocks of the savannah, two lines of 50 women and 50 men emerged before me all dressed in their colourful and elegant shuka robes with their white beaded jewellery contrasting against the yellow and brown landscape of the desert. The warriors with their spears and rasta, Mohawk twists would be out patrolling the perimeters of the bomas to as far away as Ol Doinyo Langai (around 80km). Motika was the first to come forward and we hugged followed by Ye Yo (Mama Motika) and the other elders of the tribe. I then proceeded to shake the hands of all the clan members one by one, gathered together from the surrounding bomas for the ceremony that day. “Sobi!” “Ye yo takwenya!” repeated over and over again with a few giggles in between when I got it wrong (different greetings are used for those with a higher status). It was after this that I was led into the family hut to sit and meet for the first time my gorgeous new ‘goddaughter’ Lucy Motika born on the 30^th August 280km out in the desert to her beaming mother, Negishome.

Following the greetings we sat as guests around the fire and the Maasai men served us roasted goat slaughter especially for the occasion. We drank chai (tea) served piping hot and the drink of choice out where water is a luxury rather than a staple part of daily life, we listened to the singing and story telling around the fire and played with the children who were running around half naked in the excitement of it all.

Suffice to say, it was all quite overwhelming to know that I had a Maasai baby girl named after me and would be her 'guardian' of sorts (people kept referring to baby Lucy as 'my baby'). After many hours of catching up and drinking copious amounts of milky tea, we set off walking at night to Gelai Bomba to stay with Michael Pallangyo, the brother-in-law of Kaaya and the head teacher of the primary school. Gelai Bomba Primary is the only school for at least a 100km around. Children walk for 15km each way to get there, so keen to learn that they arrive dehydrated and hungry many of them without taking breakfast. They are all immaculately dressed, girls in pretty blue dresses and the boys in khaki coloured shorts and blue shirts. The following day we took a trip to the school to look around and then travelled by foot for around 15km to a 'nursery' for orphaned Maasai children whose parents have died of various causes (illness, animal attacks, birth..). It was quite a culture shock to see these children who as I've described above, looked so malnourished that their eyes have sunk into their skulls and their limbs could be held between between your thumb and forefinger. The nursery was set-up by Motika who is in fact the community leader of the Maasai area and as a result of his obligation and commitment to his people. We are planning to support both this project and the school through the trips out there from the cultural safari tours and we're also looking for any keen sponsors to provide funding for porridge and meals for these children, all in desperate need of care. At the moment, each child is put under the 'protection' of a local boma where they spend the night, they have one meal per day which they have when arriving there, the rest of the day from morning until evening is spent with NO water and NO food. Bear in mind that temperatures out in the desert reach 40-50 degrees easily with the over head sun beating down on nothing by dry desert. Jamie recalled what Julius, one of the Maasai tribesman had said when we returned parched with thirst from walking a mere 5 km to Motika's bomba: "See, now you know what it's like to live without water".

When it was time to go back I knew I was so fortunate to have been welcomed into such an amazing and unique part of humankind, one that I would never have thought I would be witness to. If you're ever here in Tanzania and want to visit this amazing community, stay in the village and get to know a bit about a historic culture first hand then all you need to do is get in touch. Apologies for any photos with me in them by the way, I look like I've been dragged through the desert backwards.

PS. A big THANK YOU to everyone who has sponsored me so far for Kilimanjaro - the climb up Ol Doinyo Langai was the hardest training I've ever done!

Speak soon!

Mama Lucy

Peace Matunda Film!

2010-09-04T14:40:00.001+01:00

A Cliffen Family Production...

HELP! I'm Climbing a Mountain in 34 days...

2010-09-01T15:32:00.002+01:00

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to nudge those of you who might be thinking of helping sponsor me on my climb of Kilimanjaro in October but haven't gotten around to pressing the buttons yet. At the right hand side of this blog is an icon which totals how much I've raised so far. I've set my target at £1'000, an ambitious amount but all for a worthy cause! The more the better obviously...

I know I'm always asking for money it seems but that's what charities need most I'm afraid and the product they're selling is poverty.

For those of you who aren't backing anyone just yet (I've made it sound like a race to the top, which of course it isn't....but I'll promise those who sponsor me that I'll make it there first...) please, please, please don't delay and donate online, safely and immediately through the 'just giving' page which can be accessed by clicking on the right side icon where it says 'donate'.

Where and what will your money be helping?

Good question.

It will help Emmanuel aged 8, who sleeps in the same room as his Grandmother in a house built of wood that's falling down and who came to school the other day with bleeding feet because the soles of his shoes had worn through the skin; it will help Pamela who is 8 years old and suffers constantly from chronic and serious illnesses brought on by the effects of HIV and sleeps in the same bed as her Grandmother. She isn't allowed to leave her home to live at Peace Matunda as her Grandmother needs her to look after her younger brothers and sisters; it will help Shila who's future is in the hands of Peace Matunda as her guardian and who will have nowhere to live and no one to turn to once she leaves Peace Matunda for secondary school; it will help Lovine who lives on the other side of Arusha and comes to Peace Matunda during his school holidays to attend classes with the other children and stay at the orphanage. His house is in the middle of a refuse site for the local community; it will help Diana who at 12 years old, lives with her grandmother and younger siblings and has significant mental development problems and will probably never graduate primary school.

In summary, your money no matter whether it's £5, £50 or £500 will go directly to creating a community project the likes of which hasn't been seen yet. This isn't just about creating a new home for children 'fortunate' enough to live with us here. It's about creating an environment where all children are welcome to come and play in a safe environment where they will be fed, washed and given resources to educate them for a brighter future.

Please, take 5 minutes just to donate to this amazing project.We'll be climbing for about 12km a day during the expedition in high altitudes, some of those in our youngest classes do half of this each day to make it to school, and all with a happy face..

I promise to be as competitive a possible.

I promise that I'll look after everyone's money and make sure the new children's home is complete on schedule before December.

Thank you!

Lucy

Zanzibar in Pictures

2010-08-17T13:02:00.001+01:00

A Maasai in our Midst

2010-08-08T14:57:00.002+01:00

“There is no wealth but life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration”. John Ruskin, English Writer.

“Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent”. Marilyn vos Savant, American Columnist.

I’m rarely stuck for words as many of you will know, but now and then it’s better to listen to someone else’s. For example I had found it very difficult up until now to really get my head around just why life is the way it is here whilst most of us enjoy the comforts we have grown to know and love at home, all in relative ease. I realise like all NGOs I probably sound full of angst from time to time but that’s just because I’ve realised how lucky I’ve been growing up with such comforts such as a free education, plenty of food and water and all within a country whose infrastructure would support me should I decide to sit on my sorry backside and do nothing…

Ruskin’s quote for me seems to capture just why everyone is so happy here. Despite their apparent poverty and struggle for the future, happiness reigns. People even name their children after it (we have several ‘Happyinesses, Gladnesses, Nices and Joys’ in school). The latter therefore, sums up the tenacity that most people show in abundance when faced with the prospect of providing a future for their little pleasures, in a world seemingly built of brick walls. So it’s with much admiration for the people here that I find myself holding each time I piece together a bit more of the jigsaw and marvel at the way everyone is so upbeat so much of the time. Of course there are exceptions but the survival instinct here is much stronger than what we would normally find at home. There’s simply no infrastructure to fall back on if things don’t work out: no dole queue to join, no doctor to see if you haven’t the funds, no job centre to visit when you need work and no savings account to withdraw from when you need money – and that’s just here, go further inland where the land is less fertile and food shortages are common place. As a result, people become more resilient to life’s problems, drawing on their own self-preservation in order to survive: An instinct that has perhaps been buried in so many others.

This actually brings me to the second part of our Maasai story. The story of Mollel (in fact this is her second name, her first name is Negishome) you may remember ended when we had arrived in Arusha following a dash across the desert to take her to a hospital suitable to treat her poisonous snakebite. At eight months pregnant time was of the essence. Negishome was very nervous meeting everyone having never been outside the central desert plains of Ol Donyio Langai (the Mountain of God). At seventeen, she had never seen a city, never seen an aeroplane and never been in a car…

We first took her to the snake park, which in their expert knowledge, examined her hand and advised us that we needed to go to the hospital in town to get an x-ray. All this in order to ascertain the damage caused by the bite and subsequent infection meant several days toing and froing between there and Arusha. After paying a relatively high price for consultations, medicines and x-rays we were scheduled for an appointment to meet the orthopaedic surgeon in September. Unsure as to whether this would mean an amputation or not it was becoming more difficult to decide what would be best for Negishome and her baby (due in the next few weeks) and I hadn’t the skills or stomach, to deliver it myself up on the mountain. Then as luck would have it the other week I bumped into a visiting biologist from America who had days previously met with a visiting surgeon on secondment from Korea (an international bunch hey?). Dr Lee is an expert in his field of general surgery and is working at Mount Meru Hospital in Arusha for two years. I got in touch with him and within 24 hours he was up at the house and diagnosing what to do next. Negishome will be fine, as we hope will the baby, however, the bad news is that her hand will never be fully functional again due to the infection caused by the snake breaking her bones and leaving a nasty wound. This was of course difficult news for Negishome, as at seventeen and with a life of labour ahead it wasn’t what she or any of us would have liked to hear. However, without Dr Lee the infection would have undoubtedly gotten worse and likely caused severe health complications. Negishome now has the option of having surgery to straighten as much as possible, the bones into a more natural position, all through the help of Dr Lee and the Tibu fund! Impressive hey?

Meanwhile back at Peace Matunda, the intermediary weeks were also filled with as much variation as one could expect. I was living with a Maasai, an Israeli solider, two Swiss girls, three Texans and of course the lovely Marisa from the UK. Everyone was very accommodating to the fact that they now had a Maasai in the midst and the children loved making jewellery with the expert help of Negishome who turned out masterful pieces, an innate trait born from years of wearing fine beaded necklaces and bracelets.

It was then time to take Negishome and Motika back to the village and so we decided to stay the night instead of making the 600km round trip across the savannah desert in a day again (although fun before it was tiring!). So our motley crew (consisting of myself, Harry, Negishome and Motika) gathered various belongings and off we went. Along the way we stopped off at ‘Mosquito River’, a town on the border of the savannah and home to countless Maasai markets and tourist trinkets for those on their way to the safari parks of the Northern circuit. The afternoon consisted of much like what I had been used to at home except with an unusual twist: a girly lunch at the local ‘Mosquito café’ of somosas and doughnuts (a popular local delicacy), a shop around the market buying a rather well coordinated selection of thermos, mug and coffee (all for the family) and then chuckling at Negishome’s apparent fussiness choosing a new pair of sandals (the colours weren’t quite right so we left them…). The Maasai are fashion mad. From their beaded accessories dangling from their ears to the toe rings on their feet, every detail is assessed and the colours chosen with an admirable artistic eye. If the shoe doesn’t fit, or isn’t the right colour, it’s not going on.

(Left: Negishome and I)

I should at this point insert a correction regarding my previous post as apparently Ol Donyio Langai did in fact erupt two years ago. I saw the pictures and they’re pretty scary!

So it was that with a bit of a calmer attitude to my surroundings we finally arrived, by then the colour of sand, to the village that Negishome and Motika share with the rest of the family.

It was another emotional reunion for Negishome and her family and we were immediately whisked into the main hut for tea and a catch up. This could have proved a rather long-winded conversation (me in English to Harry (Swahili) to Motika (Maasai) to the family and back again) but there in the middle of the desert in amongst a family who hardly spoke outside their native language, I met James.

James at 6ft something, carrying a spear and wearing the bright shukas that resemble so much of the Maasai tradition greeted me with a warm ‘Hello! I’m James, I expect you’ve had a long journey so you must come in for some tea. Take a seat. Wot, wot”. Er, alright. So I sat myself down mindful of not falling flat on my face into the fire as the huts are almost pitch black inside. We huddled around the brewing tea, the whole family cramming into the hut and everyone caught up on the news from the past week. It was to be honest, no different from any other family situation except that we were sitting surrounded by mud walls as opposed to brick: grandmothers and aunties covering everyone in kisses, little children squabbling in the corner and the older girls giggling about something next to me (no doubt to do with my appearance as I was filthy from head to toe and wearing hiking boots and leggings).

(Left: James: the Maasai engineer in waiting)

Various babies were handed around and I must admit I was a bit at a loss as to whose was whose. Most women looked pregnant so ascertaining who ‘belonged’ with who was quite difficult as well. The tea was delicious and with no water supply, milk has become the main drink of choice. You have to walk for a few kilometres to the nearest watering hole to feed your cattle and yourself (everyone drinks from the same reserve) but more on that important point later. It was then that Negishome and the grandmother of the family, the eldest person there, gathered everyone around to present me with a gift. A beautiful beaded necklace as a ‘thank you’ of sorts. By now the hut was crammed and I was being told through James that the grandmother had made me this necklace whilst we were away (probably taking pity on what a wreck I looked when she’d seen me last). I was of course very humbled to be receiving a gift having witnessed the struggle that people face on a daily basis there for even the simplest of things. It was at this point that I leaned forward to have the necklace ‘ceremoniously’ placed around my neck…. But it never happened. My big fat head got in the way and everyone looked a bit astonished that it only seemed to cover a third of it. Full of nothing but dust no doubt. So with a little readjusting and embarrassment on my part we were back on track and I was thanking everyone for their kind help. My leg was up on the lap of a young girl who was twisting a copper bracelet around my ankle, the tradition being to wear it on both. My blood supply was starting to cut itself off after about ten minutes but it did gather a few laughs. Every time someone saw it they burst out laughing… it obviously has some Maasai meaning that I’m completely unaware of.

In amongst all of this I began to talk to James. I asked him where he had learned his English skills from and from what I could gather this was a combination of self-tuition and working very hard at school (take note young readers). James is in his early twenties and having just finished secondary school has been accepted onto a course in Nairobi, Kenya to study engineering and construction. This is quite incredible when you look at where James lives and the facilities he has around him: No electricity, no running water, no mobile phone network and certainly no feats of modern engineering. James has secured a sponsor for his college course, which is quite commonplace to find in Africa although difficult to obtain. Many young people either seek help from relatives to pay for their ongoing tuition fees or alternatively may be lucky enough to secure an international sponsor. You will find if you stay here long enough, that you’ll be approached at least half a dozen times by people of all ages with the statement “I’m looking for a sponsor”. One of the problems James has faced however, apart from the financial side, is the ‘permission’ from the elders to leave the realm of the tribe and start his course in Kenya. Everyone here has ambitions just like at home and they’ll keep on trying to reach them despite the obstacles, pulling themselves up over that first brick wall and taking a running leap up to the next.

I spoke to James about what would happen if he didn’t receive the funding he was asking for. In fact without it, he wouldn’t be allowed to start the course having no idea as to when he could get there. I then had two questions that I felt were important before offering the Cicely Foundation grant aid:

1. How will you get over to Kenya with no passport?

Answer: The Maasai live in Kenya and Tanzania and having ancient rights of sorts they’re are allowed to herd their cattle around and over the borders which have loose distinction being desert lands. Although the authorities can tell a Maasai from a non-Maasai, they can’t tell who’s Kenyan and who’s Tanzanian. Therefore, crossing the border is an easy job.

2. Why can’t you just get the sponsor to pay for your expenses as well?

Answer: No bank accounts and no mailing address means no money transfers. With a cash infrastructure, how else could you make the arrangements and receive the money unless someone hands it to you…?

(Above: Inside the Maasai hut)

After saying goodbye to everyone until the next day we made our way by car to the next village where Michael Palangyo, the brother in law of Kaaya, works as the head teacher of the government primary school, the only one for a 100km around. The town was almost like a saloon strip that you see on cowboy films, except without a saloon bar and saloon doors… tumbleweed style balls gathered around and people sat outside their homes in the shade of the afternoon sun. The town was a mixture of Maasai and Swahili living together in a very self-sufficient lifestyle. At the other end of the village to Mr Palangyo’s house was the water reserve where the Maasai come to feed their cattle and also gather water for their villages back in the savannahs. River beds are bone dry at this time of the year and will remain that way probably until the rainy season starts again around March. The water reserve from what I could gather speaking to a local man was quite territorial ground. Other people were in theory allowed to use its supply but as water is such a scarce commodity in the desert plains (and even some cities) a ‘pecking order’ of sorts is bred. The further detached from the village you are, the less likely you are to use the water supply.

The children in the village were once again a source of much amusement and interest. Whilst everyone else sat looking warily at my presence (not surprisingly having a white person spring out of the desert) the children followed me around in a procession. Very few people spoke English (only a few of the more educated Swahili locals) so it became even more surprising that James spoke such good and quite old school, English.

Transport out in the desert is also a source of much strife. Getting anywhere requires careful planning. I guess a bit like taking the public transport system in England; build in time for delays and waiting around and be prepared not to get a seat. Every so often a large truck comes by to deliver food supplies (such as wheat and corn) and the returning vehicle will pick up locals (Maasai and Swahili) to take to the main road. From there you can either hitch a ride or take numerous dala dala (at your peril) to the main city of Arusha. Alternatively without money, your journey will turn to one by foot which is what James did when I found him sitting up at Peace Matunda a week later waiting for me.

After walking to the next Maasai village to ask permission to leave for university from the tribal leader (he lived in hope that the grant would be secured) and with only two days left before his course started, James walked for two days to reach the Arusha region. It’s difficult to turn a person down who has just walked 300km to see you. However, it’s also important to remember that ‘mzungu money’ (white money) can also create a culture of reliance and leave the recipient with no real understanding of its worth. The case was however, nicely linked to Peace Matunda which is Tanzanian run and so therefore, it was under the instruction of Kaaya as well as Steve Cliffen that we offered James the money for his travels and expenses. And off he went, in full Maasai gear to slip across the border and into his engineering dream and future life in Kenya.

The exciting news for all of you who are interested in learning more about the Maasai is that following these trips we are initiating a new arm of the project. This will hopefully not only see a new avenue of income for the Maasai communities we’ve visited, helping build educational facilities but also provide an education into this ancient culture to those visiting us through Peace Matunda.

(Above: The water reserve in the savannah used for the cattle and the community)

Since all this I’ve had some very interesting developments of my own. A visit to a water tower project in Zanzibar led by Dr Naufal Kassim Mohammed, an ENT surgeon from the island who works tirelessly on community health projects, and his inspiring project civil engineers Shufaa Mohammed and Fadhil Mohammed, have opened up new avenues of learning for me. I’ll update more on this in the next post as again there’s a lot to catch up on.

In closing news however, and keeping on with this blogs angst affected tone, you may have heard that I reached the big 3-0 on the 31^st July. It was great fun and the source of much amusement to the children who have up until now judged my age at anything from 18 – 40 …..

To celebrate this momentous occasion mama Devall and baba Devall as they have now become known locally, came out to visit for a few weeks. We had a great time taking all 25 children plus staff to Kigongoni Lodge for swimming and lunch, something that I think neither I nor anyone else could have ever envisaged – a 30^th birthday party where the average age is six. Thank you to everyone for your very kind wishes as well, it was much appreciated and I’ll get round to contacting you all individually in the next few weeks.

Not to be outdone by the other NGOs on the East African peninsula, I’m currently typing this from a white beach in Zanzibar (where it seems most of them come for a bit of relaxation), a laptop in one hand and a mojito in the other. By the time you read this however, the vows of charity will have pinged me back like an elastic band to the mainland ready for service to resume.

PS. If anyone is interested in being a part of the Square Roots project 2010 then please get in touch! Squares are selling out as we speak!

Oh, and more new pictures below...

Lucy

(Above: Mr Palangyo and his gorgeous daughter, Janet)

(Above: Harry and the Land Rover on the crater edge)

(Above: A mzungu in the midst)

Maasai: Mollel's Story

2010-07-18T10:39:00.001+01:00

The past 48 hours have been extraordinary. I arrived home late on Thursday to find out that our watchman Motika’s wife has been taken ill again after the anti-venom medicine he delivered the other week failed to work as well as hoped. You may remember me telling you that one of his wives was bitten on her hand a few weeks ago by a potentially lethal puff adder. This has been worrying news for Motika as he works around 300km away from his family who are back in the Maasai lands close to Ngorongoro, under the shadow of Ol Doinyo Langai (the Mountain of God). I find out his wife is also heavily pregnant and 17 years old… This is not unusual at all as she is the second wife with most Maasai leading a polygamous life and having at least two, and several if not a dozen, children per wife. Without knowing what to expect we made the decision to leave that night and drive out to the plains of the Maasai to bring her to the only hospital in the region that deals with these kinds of injuries. A snake park just outside of Arusha, years ago opened a hospital to provide rural communities with a means of receiving treatment for such cases that would otherwise be difficult to treat if delayed. The Maasai do not own cars so most safaris (journeys) are done on foot and can take many days. The Maasai, as you probably can imagine, are expert walkers, nomadic by nature and history migrating southward from the north over the past 1000 years. In more recent times however, with the arrival of Europeans they’ve been restricted to farming their cattle in the desert plains between Tanzania and Kenya, their once ceaseless land cut to less than a quarter of what it once was.

We set off at dusk selecting a 4WD appropriate for the journey we were to undertake. The road would lead us out through the dry lands between the city and the famous parks of the Northern safari circuit: Tarangire, Serengeti, Ngorongoro and Manyara, off road through the bush land scattered with Maasai herders and the iconic baobab trees and on towards the entrance to the world heritage site of Ol Doinyo Langai translated from Maasai to mean ‘the Mountain of God’. Further still through shrub land to where there are no car tracks until we reach the small, definitively remote village where they live. The outward journey would take around a day so we packed overnight equipment, extra fuel and food and as I was advised, a head scarf for the dust…

(Above: Ol Doinyo Langai 'The Mountain of God')

In the car were myself, Harry my Meru friend, driver and translator and Motika and his younger brother. It was quite a sight to behold, me the Maasai and Harry all crammed in to this car and speeding across the desert at 100mph outstripping any safari truck that got in our way. The dust was incredible, in bucket loads it would fly through the window as we hit a dusty dune, even though I had my scarf over my face like an Arab dish-dash the dust managed to penetrate every weave of my scarf and every pore of my skin until I felt like I’d been baked in clay. The journey had to be made at speed not least because of the urgent medical care needed but also because of the time it would take to drive back through the desert before it got dark and the nocturnal puff adders slithered out of their hiding places….

The journey itself was awe-inspiring, the land wasn’t the lush emerald green of Meru with its abundant flora and forna I was used to seeing, instead it was dry, ochre yellow and ever, ever so dusty. Zebras, giraffe, gazelle, ostrich and the emblematic Maasai cattle dotted the scene throughout the journey. Maasai herd their cattle in full traditional clothing so it’s quite a sight to behold: high necklace jewellery, the ‘shuka’ (red, purple and blue robes) tied over the shoulder and of course the famous rubber shoes (made from car tyres). As we approached the conical shape of Ol Doinyo Lengai rising up from the south end of Lake Natron, I recalled the recent snippet of information that had passed my ears in the time since I’ve been here: The mountain is in fact an explosive active volcano and one that erupts according to its history, every forty years – the last one being 1966. The next fresh piece of news to keep me rooted in my seat was to be on the look out for ‘bandits’ although quite how one would go about this is anyone’s guess. The bandits are allegedly Somali who dress up as Maasai in the shuka but only to hide the massive AK-47s that lurk beneath. The chances of anyone deciding to hold up such a motley looking crew I thought were unlikely but nevertheless I was prepared to hand over the loot just in case…

(Above: Zebra crossing...)

Guided by the mountains, Motika led us to his village that sits in the curve of a small hillside within the shade of a tree (look out for trees during safari as there will doubtless be a Maasai or two sitting underneath). The Maasai are emblematic of Africa for a reason: they are beautiful, breathtakingly so, in fact. I tried to delete the jewellery in my mind to see if all that extra distraction just hides a normal looking person underneath, but no. Their bone structure is almost ‘alien like’ if one were to attribute anything to the wide set slit eyes and cheek bones as high as the mountains themselves. They are also a very slim and very tall tribe, you won’t see a fat Maasai. The colours pop at you too, bright red, purple and blue robes set against ebony skin and hazel eyes. All Maasai both women and men have ‘tube tunnel’ ears for traditional beaded jewellery so it’s quite easy to spot for the unaccustomed tourist, who’s genuine and who’s not. The children were a delight, they loved the exercise books and pencils that I’d brought with me and I inwardly sighed with satisfaction that I had enough for all twelve. Some of the children go to school, which is several kilometres away over the mountain and taught under the instruction of ‘little Joyce’s’ parents (who goes to college and lives with us here at Peace Matunda). That’s one of the advantages of settling down and giving up the nomadic life I guess, a stable and consistent education for your children.

Young Maasai boys are ritually circumcised in their mid-teens, going through the anesthesia-free ritual without as much as a wince, and are then sent off for around seven years in the bush lands to mature and prove their fierceness. Rumor has it they used to have to kill a lion – perhaps that’s where the film ‘300’ got its story line from …. During their time away, as they prove their manhood, they let their hair grow long and upon return have it ceremoniously shaved and dyed amber. The women go through a similar circumcision ritual but without the bush land trials. Perhaps that’s why Mollel, Motika’s wife, sat without so much as a wince during the day’s journey back: heavily pregnant, suffering from a poisonous snake bite and leaving her family behind without knowing if she would see them again. They are as ‘hard as nails’ as we say in England.

As I was thanked over and over again by the elders of the tribe for helping their daughter and bringing their sons back to them I couldn’t help but feel an incredible wave of emotion sweep over me. The Maasai have long been regarded as the noble, independent and warrior bred men and women of Africa. Their origins differ depending on what you read and who you speak to: Kaaya, a Meru tribal leader, claims that they originate from Northern Africa towards Egypt and have made their way down through the East coast over hundreds of years, leaving a trail of Maasai clues in their wake: Khartoum in Sudan, reportedly a Maasai word and Cairo in Egypt to name but a few. Others believe that they are one of the lost tribes of Israel, all very romantic visions until you realize that these noble warriors now ‘fight’ for survival selling their culture to tourists at the gates of safari parks that encage their villages, and work as watchman away from their families in the cities (much like Motika). Safari companies, night clubs, restaurants, galleries, t-shirts, mugs, even hairdressers are named after them but few if any, would actually be linked to a Maasai community. Of course the world has changed and one could argue that we all must adapt to its demands now and then but the thought of a Maasai having to use a passport just to cross the land to fulfil a deep rooted instinct that goes beyond the history of what even we know does seems sad and not quite right somehow. Saying that, the land on which they sit now is almost like a protective bubble of sorts, embalming their culture for another few decades or so and keeping out too much foreign intervention. As a result however, their wanderings cease even if the nomadic instinct doesn’t.

So as I sat there with Harry, mama Motika and the many other family members who I had failed to gain the exact position of, I tried to adjust to the environment around me. In actual fact it didn’t seem the least bit strange that Motika’s wife was seventeen, or that his other wife was equally as pleased that she was getting help as everyone else was. The Maasai are tight knit. The husbands, wives, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, grandparents all live together remotely and depend on each other not just for company but for survival. There was nothing uncomfortable about seeing them all look after each other and with such young brides. Not a strange lust that you might think takes over someone at the thought of keeping several wives (or madness?) or because of the price in cattle which they would pay for the one they want, but more of a sense of responsibility to look after each other and provide a very, very protective community in which to live and survive. Every one of them you could tell would go to the ends of the earth for each other. It was just in a look, a touch, a gesture, having saved up for a bag of sweets to bring them back something and just being so proud to introduce their family members to me, all of whom were filled with emotion to see Motika and his brother again.

I was extremely fortunate to have visited Motika’s family and I realize it was an exceptional experience. Even Maasai villages, which you can pay to go to through tour companies will give you the ‘mazungu experience’ (i.e. a few carefully selected models will let you take pictures of them but the ‘real’ villages will be somewhere else). It’s a good thing though that the Maasai are so protective over their private lives, with not much left to own there’s not much left to call your own so what you do have, you hide.

Leaving such an incredible family was emotional, especially for the family who were not sure if they would see Mollel again. All they asked for was water, which luckily we had plenty of. As we drove off back through the desert with Mollel, Motika’s wife now nervously sat in the back seat it felt strange to have witnessed such a secretive part of human kind, it was almost like going back in time. I was the first white person most of the children had seen, they couldn’t keep their hands off my sunglasses and for Mollel I realised later, it was her first time outside of the village. As we passed Arusha airport back into town she gasped at the sight of a plane coming in to land, gasped at the cars passing her by and gasped at the sheer number of things you could buy in a shop (it’s important to remember that someone, somewhere will always have less than you). All of these things terrified her, let alone leaving her family which was a traumatic experience enough.

But getting back to the real reason for the journey of course: once out of the desert and back towards Arusha, we stopped off at the snake park hospital which examined her hand and told us to go for an x-ray in town to determine whether to amputate or not. Her hand from the bite has been drawn into a claw like position and for a young girl expecting a baby, losing a hand would be a tragedy. Luckily Mollel’s life and that of the baby seem to be fine at the moment. We are currently waiting for tests at the main Arusha hospital, which on top of the x-ray costs and travel to her home have come to over $400.00 not including the potential amputation costs. This is where the Tibu fund will also help. Of course the children will get priority when needed but it can be just as important to remember those in need who wouldn’t otherwise survive without assistance from somewhere. Mollel is a friendly, beautiful and very brave girl who has suddenly become the focus, unbeknown to her, of a few people across the world who are reading this right now. If you think you could help contribute towards Mollel’s x-ray and ongoing treatment or perhaps you would like to donate something to the Maasai children we can arrange this for you through Motika. The family have very little intervention with the ‘outside world’ and we hope to keep it this way until they say otherwise. However, they also need to support each other in a world rapidly becoming more alien to their customs by the day. Who knows, if you decide to visit you may be lucky enough to accompany Motika on a trip to see his family. Rarely would you get a chance to contribute directly towards the survival of an ancient tribe though. We can ensure that every penny goes directly towards helping medical funds and as discretely as possible. Please contact me if you feel you would like to help Mollel, the money used temporarily will come from the Tibu fund but as this is a new funding venture we need to grow the float first in case of emergencies again in the future.

For now I am living with beautiful Maasai girl who is constantly cold due to the drop in temperature we have up in the mountains, watching me eat with my knife and fork and copying each action. We're also eating food that is as far removed as possible from the traditional staple of curdled cow's milk and blood that makes up the Maasai diet as well as ugali. I hope for her sake that when we return to her village it will be in good health both for her and her baby but we need your help (again) to make this possible. I'm not sure I've done enough justice to just how incredible seeing the Maasai are and how unbelievably picturesque and ancient their culture is. We'll wait to hear how tomorrow goes to determine what happens next for Mollel and her baby and I'll speak to you soon to update on the return journey through the desert...

Lucy