A Bus trip of a Lifetime

Saturday wake up 4 am. I wake up Br Adelard he is ready to go by 4;30am. We walk to the bus stop. No bus. No Taxis. We walk to the next bus stop. We wait. We eventually get a taxi. 5:15am the bus is suppose to come at 5:45 amd and leave at 6am. for Masasi. They said it is about 12 hours. So i'm menatlly prepared. Sitting on steps waiting with a crowd of people. Bus shows up at 6:30am.We are start rushing towards this coach bus. It looks nice. I'm thinking hey this won't be that bad. We all find out it is not are bus and we run to another bus. Everyone is pushing to get on the bus. I'm thinking why. We have assigned seats. I finally force my way on. People are still pushing past me going down the aisle of the bus. I find out why. Over head baggage space. There is nothing. I find one small spot where I try to cram my back pack in. I get only half of it in and leave it. I sit down in my seat which is an aisle and next to Br Adelard which is a wider than average man. Infact he is taking up a third of my seat. In each row there is 5 seats. InAmerica we have 4 seats across. SO the seats are a littl smaller than normal. I have my one back pack between my legs and my other one falls on me asoon as we take off. So I put it on my lap. 12 hours this is going to be a long ride.
30 min into I'm think oh my God please help me this is going to be the most uncomfortable day of my life. Luckily br Adelard moves to the front of the bus to and open seat which we find out is available. Thank you God. Now I can spread out and breath a little. This is going to be a good ride now.
After a while the asphault ends. Rough road. That is being generous. We have only gone 1 hour an we are now going less than 10 mph we have about 700km to go. dirt road with pot holes. I mean craters. So deep that the bottom back of the bus is scraping the ground.  Probably at least 18 inches deep. It was quit a ride for an hour. Then it becomes asphault again. Smooth sailing . The bus stops everyone runs out to go pee. The men are peeing ont he right side of the rode the women are on the left side of the road sqwautting . I want ed to take a picture but didn't think it would be a good idea. We then rush on the bus and take off. We take maybe 5 minutes. Asphualt to mud this time deep mud. SO deep I'm affraid we are going to get stuck. Infact the bus infront of us does get stuck. The have to take a backo or a big Catepilalar plow truck to pull the bus out of the mud. The mud had to be two feet deep. The bus driver go the momentum going and we miraculously make it through. Then it goes to rough road again then asphault. There is no rhyme or reason where there is ashpault and where there isn;t . Some towns have it some doesn't , some roads in the minddle of no where has it some doesn't it doesnt make sense. We then are flying once again passing trucks and buses at incredible speed. We get in thick mud again. there is a line of buses. We are allfollowing in a line. sure enough they all  stop. We get stuck. We have to wait for a catepillar plow truck to pull us out. The bus driver tries rocking the bus back an forth but now luck. Well we eventually get pulled out.
We make another quick stop. I run out with everyone else. When I get back on the bus there is a child now in the middle seat sitting nect to his dad. I thought ok. I start showing him pictures to him. Next thing I know he looks away and then pukes. He looks down and pukes some more. SOme got on my pants. This was a rough dirt road. It was like being on a boat in the middle of an ocean swaying back and forth. We then get mud again and another line of buses. we are following in a row. We the bus infront of us starts fish tailing. Then we are fish tailing and traffic is going the other way we almost hit two different buses on this narrow road. Miss them by inches. We amazingly get on asphault and we cruise. We stop for lunch 15 minutes. we run to the bathrrom pee. rush order rice beef and beans. shovel it down our throats and get back on bus. I 'm thinking it must be smooth from here on out. 2 hours in the bus stops. The bus breaks down. They have to change a bearing in the middle of no where. One hour later. We are going again. 

Need less to say it was a long journey and it took 12 hours. It was a good experience but once I hope i don't ahve to experience again. I am traveling to Namiungo tomorrow. I'm in Masasi which is about 30,000 people. yesterday we didn't have electricity. Today I am fortunate. I probably won't have internet in Namiungo it is asmall town.

Well. see

Mungu Bariki

IRONY

Well i'm in Dar es Salaam. Yesterday it was the provincials name day so it was a big celebration with food and drink. The child gets named after they are born up to ten days or more infact. This is the day they celebrate. not there birthday. I'm off to masasi tomorrow then Namiungo which is out in the bush. 18 years ago 32 people got eaten by lions. they say it is different now. i'm really looking forward to it. i was trying to find african gits in dar es salaam because they say you can buy everything there. You can buy everything there from china. Seriously EVERYTHING is from china. i looked all day. even if you think is from africa it is not. it is from china. the one thing i found was in the cathedral bookstore and it was a crucifix made by a masi person. i guess it is like being in chicago and trying to buy something that is native american.  I have to run. I''ll update you in masasi.

kwa heri

Safari

 This is Moses He coaches the soccer team here. He is wearing a Cities 97 shirt which is a radio company in Minnesota. I also saw someone with a shirt that said Astros World Champs in 2005. I'm pretty sure they lost to the whitesox in that series

This is playin basketball at precious blood next door. I'm sending a quick update. They are sending me to Msasi then Namyungo. I probably won't have internet in Namyungo because it is not even on the map. Very rural area. Infact about twenty years ago they were scared to go outside where the bathrooms were because of the lions. They say it is not like that anymore. But I'm sure I'm in for a big surprise.

Friends of Children in Tanzania

Here is the website I forgot to post www.foct.org.uk

Heri ya Pasaca - Happy Easter

Well it was Holy Week. So no school from Wednesday to Tuesday. They Seminarians had lots to do for all the preparations for all the different masses. Good Friday is a very serious time here. Everyone keeps to themselves and really just focus on solitude. Saturday was very similar so I rode a bike around for most of the day just adventuring out a bit with my friend Leonard until the Easter Vigil at night. It was fantastic. The music with all the different shakers and gombas -drums. It was very long though as you can imagine. It was an Easter I will never forget. then on Easter day I ate so much food. Fish, Cow, Chicken, rice, ugali. It was a whole day of eating then dancing at the end. During the day I also got a chance to go to the Morogoro tennis and golf club that the British started back in the day. The golf course looks like just a normal park in america with tall grass and the greens are just dirt. I played tennis with this guy who works for the United Nations whose name is Matthew. He is from England. Very interesting guy. he actually was here for a year with the Salvatorian and then the Rwanda crisis happened and the UN needed people who could speak Kiswahili and English which he could and he has been working them ever since. It was nice grilling with questions.
I asked him about the different water projects and all the volunteer organizations. He said Unfortunately there is a lot of problems in many organizations. He said with a lot of organizations the people in need don't get 100% of it . That often there is people in charge who are helping but take a cut of it. He said what has seem to work the best is to force the people to come up with 50% of the money. I don't know who they can do that or where they make the money from but it makes sense. That way the people if they really want something they will work for it and take ownership of it. It is not just given. Some of the wells here are mistreated. I saw one the other day where it was broken and so they ripped the thing off its foundation was water is pouring out of the ground. I'm guessing at least 10 gallons of water every minute. It is sad to see all the water being wasted but I feel the poeple here don't know any different. It the well is broken and they don't know how to fix it and they want water they will find a way to get it. Even though majority of that water is now being wasted.
The man I met works with the food industry. Right now they are working with the Tanzanian government and Uganda. There was a  bad flood then drought hit in Uganda and lots of there land was destroy especially groups. So the UN made a deal with both countries where Tanzania let the Uganda people in the country and the UN then bought millions of crops from Tanzania and ship it to the people in Uganda that are there.  Matthew has spent most of his time in Tanzania but also other African Countries.
Matthew also just start an organization for Orphan children here. They built a school and is a boarding school for children who don't have parents or are disabled. It is a nonprofit and it is a 503b so it is tax deductible in the US. I will get more information from him for who ever would want to donate or help out. he said they are very welcoming for volunteers to fly out and help out at the school. Right now there are making artificial appendages for the children that are missing legs and arms.
Lastly I want to talk about Albino people. There is one here at the college. So she looks black but has no pigmentation in her skin so she is whiter than me. Albinos have there own school here in Tanzania. It is for there safety. There is witch craft her and they believe if you have bones from an Albino it will bring you very good luck for finding diamonds and gold. Hence many Albinos have been killed just for there bones. It became a huge market and I guess some people were paying thousands in US dollars for them. Lots of the Albinos would be found dead from bleeding to death. These crazy people would chop off there arms or legs just to get there bones because they think it will lead them to wealth. Of course the Albinos that have survived are disabled many are children as well. To set an example that this is not the Tanzanian way and it is not acceptable the prime minister here adopted an albino child. It is to bad these people who are already different life have to live in closed doors for there safety. Many if they go out in public they totally cover themselves so they look like a Muslim.
Sorry for the sad news here. Easter is a wonderful Holiday here.
There going to teach me how to play the Kayamba. I'll take a picture of it for next time.

Heri ya Pasaca

Worthwhile Cause

 I visited a deaf school for children. The boy on the left got so excited when I signed my name. He started screaming with excitement. Then I wrote down that I was from America and he started jumping up and down and showed me the sign for airplane. The man in the middle is the head master of the school. He is from India and I forgot the Brothers name but I wrote it down and got his information. The school isn't just for the deaf. They have regular students as well. There is 7 deaf students ages 7 to 14 yrs old. These two boys live with the brother because they are from Songea which is about 700 km away. The other 5 are from morogoro so they go home everyday. There are a lot of kids that want to come from all over but they don't have a dormitory for them. That is the biggest problem. Parents won't pay for the deaf children to go to school because they think they can't do anything. There is really no support here for the deaf community. If you are deaf you stay at home with home and try your best to help out around the house. These two boys were very excited to be there away from home and learning. This school does not charge any of the children for there education. Every school you have to pay no matter what grade you are in. This Brother has also taught the deaf children how to sew. Sewing is a skill you see in town. People tear there clothes and want them fixed. I asked him how much it would cost to build a dormitory for deaf students. He said a 50 room place would cost about 200,000,000 TShilling that is about $130,000 USD. I think this would be a worth while cause to donate to. I think this school instills confidence in the deaf children that there not stupid they just can't hear.  However nothing is simple in Tanzania. The way things work around here is you take 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. Lets say you build the school. Maybe you can't get electricity or water or maybe there is not enough funding to feed the children once the school is built. I don't mean to be negative but in my experience here nothing seems to run perfectly smooth. There is always a complication. For example the College here in 5 years want to raise funds to build a college. Well say everything works out but then they don't have an ambulance so how are the patients going to get to the hospital if they live off campus. They cram into a van with 30 people and there sick or they hope on the back of a motorcycle and hang on for what strength they have. There seems to always be something that complicates. I will get more information and see what I can do about getting a dormitory built,

 I ate here with some students we had kiti Moja which means hot seat. It is prok. They call it hot seat because the muslims will eat it but the can't be caught eating it so they are on the edge of there seat. Or hot seat.

 Sunflower field

 Ants. You had to keep moving in the banana fields or the ants got you.

 Harvesting bananas

 Tasty.

 This the new Dormitory at the college that is about to be finished that I am standing in. THe picture is of the whole campus. The dormitory is for girls.

This is one of the classrooms in the deaf school. I think the most unique thing I have eaten is Minnows. It is lent and that is what we had for dinner with rice and beans. They do cut the heads of the minnow and eat the entire thing. I had a couple. The taste wasn't too bad. Lots of the students love it.

Replacement

 This is one of the rooms where we put patients that need an IV

 This is are steralization room. We do stitches in here as well as dressing wounds.

 A child who came in today who is sick.

 Watoto or children They are twin sisters . Dada is sister in Kiswahili

 The electricity went out so we have to do centrifuge by hand to separate the blood cells. This is Veronica who works in Maabara or Labratory

 This is the Ndizie lady or Banana lady. She comes by everyday carrying bananas on her head with no hands and she is always carrying her child on her back . The child has an infection in his left eye lid.

This is a couple days after the stitches of the 6 year old girl just below the right eye. She seems to be healing pretty well. Well there has been a lot of changes in the clinic in the last month. They finished putting in a wall to separate one room into two. One of the rooms will be the laboratory. They also just bought a fridge and freezer which they now can buy more medicine and store them in the proper climate. They also just got a computer. I think they are planning on putting patient charts into the computer. For one of the rooms they also bought an AC unit. Which will be really nice. Br Philip gave me a lot of praise saying thank you for all the help . He said they are really going to miss me. The have found a replacement for me. Her name is Joyce and today was her second day of work. She will be spending most of her time in the pharmacy dealing out medicine.  So it sounds like after Easter there going to send me to Msasi. The water project I found out is for a masi community. It is about 700km away. Masi people are very traditional and wear the traditional robe. They have there tribal language and few speak Kiswahili. All the males carry a big knife on them. But in Msasi it sounds like I will be joining two German Volunteers who are teaching english at a school. They say it is first year school so i'm guessing it is 1st grade. I will be finding out in a couple days when exactly they are sending me.

Uku Gado - That is street language the students use here. It means I'm staying Fresh. Kinda like wassup. and replying just chillin.