Step by Step, and our first visitor

Lilac Breasted Roller

In Swahili last week, our vocabulary included the word for animal: "mnyama." Interestingly it is also basically the word for 'meat.' That is fine, I think, if I am carrying a piece of meat home from the market and you ask what it is and I say "nyama" --animal. But I am not so sure about surveying the savannah and calling all the cape buffalo, elephants, rhinos, lions, baboons, etc. "nyama." Are they really all edible? (In Burundi, where we lived before, literally every wild animal in the country was eaten.)

We learned that the Maasai, the pastoralists who traditionally live out on the savannah, do not eat anything but their cows, and do not consider any wild game to be edible. I learned that this week when I went to a Maasai cultural museum, but that was not until Friday... so let me back up.

The week began fairly ":normally:" driving to school with the children, then heading off to Swahili and work have become routine. We seem to be finding a rhythm and despite the many new adaptations, seem to be reducing stress each time we repeat it. I did schedule one field visit to a local partner on Thursday. The partner is called Step by Step, and is a school for special-needs children living in Arusha. It is run by a very dedicated woman named Margaret, who has a special needs daughter herself, and found that there were virtually no services available for her daughter. Margaret gave up a career in chemistry to get a masters in Special Ed in South Africa, and has committed herself to educate her daughter and other children who needed this opportunity.

Finding special-needs children proved to be very difficult when she started her school nearly 20 years ago. She was told by local authorities that such children did not exist here, as mental disability is highly stigmatized. Margaret had to virtually do espionage to find families who were hiding their special-needs kids in the home (they were often never allowed outdoors) and convince the families to send the kids to her school.

Now she has about 20 kids and has set up a very positive, caring, highly therapeutic environment where the kids can grow and thrive using very simple, low resource activities. Activities include beadwork and simple weaving, some farming (planting seeds and watering), feeding chickens and goats, and feeding fish in a breeding pond.

Margaret showing beadwork

The staff do some simple exercise and massage therapy for kids with cerebral palsy and even built a low-sensory stimulation tent in one of the rooms for severely autistic children. It was truly inspiring to see the set up. Margaret has been using it as a model for teaching teachers in the public education system how they can engage these children. Tanzania has few resources for special-needs kids and most still are kept at home, where they are kept from doing anything, or else they attend a very crowded school where they are usually kept together in a small room which functions more as a prison than a learning environment. I was happy to see the work that MCC was doing to support this need, but also was made sadly aware of how short we fall of reaching the many special needs kids in the country who cannot go to Step by Step which is now running at full capacity.

While I was at Step by Step, Rebecca had gone to the airport to welcome our first out-of-town guest! Yes, only 1 month in and we are already entertaining guests from abroad. My father came to visit on his way home from a leadership training conference he was running in Dar es Salaam.

He got here on Thursday afternoon and had a chance to see our after school activities that evening. The kids played on the trampoline and we had Mexican food at the house with tortillas made by our part-time cook/staff-worker Nai.

Friday we took the kids to school while Rebecca and I went to Swahili, but then picked them up about an hour early and we all went to a place called "Snake Park" just outside of town. It reminded me a bit of the Bujumbura zoo (but better managed) and we were able to see just about every deadly snake in the region. Thc Gabon viper and black mamba are particularly the stuff of nightmares. They also had some crocs and tortoises.

Green Mamba

Next door there was a Maasai cultural museum which was quite interesting and well presented. A Maasai guide took us through and talked quite frankly about Masaai culture, including sensitive practices like polygamy and 'female circumcision.' The museum had a life-size diorama of Maasai houses (boma) and camps. At the end of the exhibit, there were camels that one could ride for about 30 cents. David and Oren braved a ride. The best moment was watching the camel get up off the ground. He got up on his back legs first and almost sent them pitching off forward before leveling off (Same thing getting down, in reverse). I don't have a picture of that but it is definitely better than the Baltimore zoo where the camel is already standing and you get on from a platform.

Friday evening we had dinner with Sharon (MCC rep) at a nice restaurant in town. It was nice to do some touristy things here since we hadn't until this past weekend.

Saturday was a really big day. We hired a safari driver and vehicle in town to drive us down to Tarangiri National Park for a day trip to see some wild animals. It is about a 2 hour ride down there, but well worth it! We spent the day driving around a small part of the park (it is huge), and saw 4 of the "big five:" lion, leopard, elephant, cape buffalo. (There are no rhinos in the park because of poaching.) We saw a lot of other "mnyama" as well. A highlight was the watering hole where hundreds of animals came to drink-- elephants, wildebeests, zebra, impala, giraffe, maribou storks all jostled and traded places in the water, quenching their thirst. I think we saw over 100 elephants alone as we drove through the park. It was particularly fascinating to watch a different group of elephants dig into the sand in an apparently dry river bed and pull up plenty of water to bathe and drink.


And the birds! We saw many of our favorites including the lilac breasted roller. I am adding some others below that I was able to photograph. One of our new favorites is the love birds that I used to see at Petsmart in Baltimore. Now we see them quite frequently in the wild here.

love birds

We got home Saturday evening and dropped into bed. It was quite exhausting. (We did Skype my mom though who remained in Baltimore.) Sunday we took my Dad to ACC, the church that meets at the Lutheran hospital and the place we have decided to make our church home. (Even committed to join the Sunday School team.) It was a special Sunday-- Harvest festival, not something we really celebrate in Baltimore in our churches. It is hard to describe, but the sanctuary was filled with the bounty of the harvest of everyone in the congregation. People contributed many fruits and vegetables as well as art, farm implements, eggs, baked goods, framed photos, furniture and even a laptop case. At the end of the service there was a huge auction where everything was sold so that the proceeds could go to a charitable cause, supporting the new neonatal care unit at the hospital. It was a very festive occasion. We finished off our Sunday outing with a meal at George's Tavern where we like to eat on Sunday.

Harvest festival

At 5 pm I took my dad to a cabby who could drive him to the airport. It was a very full weekend and we will have many memories to share about it for many years to come. I think one of the pleasures for me of having him visit and do a safari with us, was a chance to remember when my parents lived in Kenya and I was in college. I loved to come and visit them, and even spent a semester there. Going on safari as a family when I was young is a fond memory and this small bit of replication with my father and children was quite nostalgic.

Some other Birds we saw in the park:

Magpie Shrike

Fire Finch

Mouse Bird