Schools Out! and other stuff

Oren and friends after last day of school

When a blog has not emerged for over 10 days, it is a good bet that we are busy in some ways after work, because I usually work on it Monday or Tuesday evening these days. But it has not been a typical two weeks, either at work or on the home front.

We were entertaining visitors in our last entry and Kate and James, having returned from safari have been with us again in the past week. Oren was also heavily into exam week which he was relieved to finish last Friday. The last week of school was a breeze by comparison, and there were quite a few days of in-class parties and school ceremonies. They also got their results back and I was quite impressed with Oren's work. I think he was even taken aback given the difficulty of the tests. But in the British system they generally make the tests very hard and grade on a generous curve. Consequently an 80% can be a high A. Oren found that he had high 'A's in Math and Science, and A+ in History, and also Geography.

Before I get to the end of the week and last day of school activities it would be good to back up and recall some of the other highlights. Kate and James got back before the weekend and on Saturday we took them to Snake Park, a favorite place for the kids. It is a kind of herpetarium with every venomous snake one can find in East Africa. It is quite interesting and at the end you get to hold some animals including some of the non-venomous ones. The mole snake was one the kids liked the most as you can see by the photos.

Our guests also went with us to church last Sunday which was nice because Rebecca was preaching. She did an excellent message on Jesus calming the storm and began with a harrowing story of getting caught in a mountain storm on Kootenay Lake as a child with her family. When everyone was really on the edge of their seat, she said "that is how you should feel when you listen to this story". She asked the question about why God leads us into storms, (because it was Jesus' idea to cross the lake) but reminded us that he does go with us-- it is his trip, not ours, and when we remember that, we can have assurance that he is master of the waves and water. (I did not do it justice, and tried to record it, but the phone recorder app shut itself off after 5 minutes). Here is a link to the written form: Jesus and the storm. After church we took Kate and James to Georges, one of our favorite after-church restaurants. We met some fellow Mennonites there who had been in MCC in Indonesia in the late 90s-- Jim and Laura.

dinner at Khans

Monday was the last week of school and I am really relieved to have a break from getting up at 5:15 am. I do still intend to swim in the morning when the kids are out of school, but the super early wake-up was to allow me time to get their stuff ready, as uniforms and everything we need for the day has to be ready by 6:30. The pool is now around 58F in the morning, but the wetsuit is amazingly warm. It is very strange experience to swim in it because everything around you is really cold, but you just don't lose any of your body heat; even though you are completely wet in very cold water.

Rebecca and I had a pretty normal day of work Monday. I am still acting Country Rep. as Sharon is still in Ethiopia. On Tuesday, I went with Lucia, our finance officer to Longido, about an hour towards the Kenya border to do a financial review of one of our partners. A bit dry, but it is nice to get to do some work out of the office right now. We got back in the afternoon without any problems--and no traffic tickets which is becoming more challenging these days as there seem to be new road rules on a weekly basis.

On Tuesday evening we went to Khan's barbecue, an outdoor halal restaurant on Mosque street near the central market. They make excellent Swahili/Indian food and the owner is very friendly and gregarious. The kids love it, especially the Jelabis for dessert. It is a very unique cultural experience that our guests enjoyed thoroughly.

Wednesday during the work day Rebecca took Kate and James to visit the school for severly physically and mentally disabled children MCC supports in Arusha--Step-by-Step Learning center. Kate Luger is an occupational therapist, and James Long is a music teacher for special needs students, so we were really interested to hear their impressions of a special needs school in a very low resource setting. Personally, I think the school has been extremely creative about finding appropriate  therapies for the children they have using very simple materials.

James singing with Bryson

They spent a part of the day there and had a great time seeing the school, but also interacting with the children. They had some very good advice about finding a better way to restrain a boy, Bryson, who has CP and very little limb control, and even explored possible connections to donors who make special needs wheel chairs for lower income countries. Kate and James found it engaging enough that they returned on their own on Friday and spent another day working with Bryson and even took some measurements to get some consultation from colleagues in the US. My impression from talking to Kate is that it is emotionally hard for her to see kids with such challenges in settings with so little capacity to help them. But on the other hand, to recognize that a school like Step-by-Step is hugely committed to treating every child with dignity and the staff genuinely care for and do the best for the children with what they have.

We parted ways with James and Kate from Wednesday after school through Thursday evening--this time it was us who left. Rebecca, me, the kids, and Zoe, our SALT volunteer, loaded in the MCC landrover and headed up to Karatu on the way to Ngorongoro crater to visit the maternal and child health project that our Maasai partner (NDI) is implementing. I wanted to collect some data from the health centers there and do a spot check of the meds that had procured through our project. Zoe and Rebecca have both wanted to see the location and community where this program is implemented as it is very remote and on the edge of a game park. I had to get us permits before we left on Wednesday as entering Ngorongoro is a multi-step bureaucratic process (moreso than other game parks because it is a conservation region). I had to visit no fewer than 2 offices and a bank in Arusha and Karatu, then when we got to the gate, still had to get 2 more stamps from different officials before driving in the gate.

On edge of Ngorongoro crater.

We arrived in Karatu on Wednesday evening and stayed in a hotel. Rebecca and kids and I stayed in one room to keep it cheap, but it was fine, only very cold. (Karatu is higher than Arusha I think.) We left Karatu the next morning because the plan was to drive into the crater region, visit the project site, then drive all the way back to Arusha by Thursday evening. I did pretty well, driving there for the first time without any guide, and got through all the bureaucratic hoops without a hitch. The drive to the ward where our project is, is quite far--about 60 kms on very rough road around the lip of the crater, and down the far side. the project site itself is spread over another 40 kilometers where there are a number of villages and sub-villages.

The land is very high and open like highland steppes one would imagine in Mongolia. The panorama is incredibly vast, but it is cold and very green with short tufts of grass. It is not flat like the savanah though, there are gigantic depressions that rise to distant mountain peaks. The people are also very spread out but tend to live in small communities that one can see in the distance. It is very pictureque and we even drove up to Embakai crater as it is at the far end of the project site. Most of the day was spent driving and we picked up Laangakwa, our project director at one of the villages and he took us to Embakai then back to health centers where I was able to verify that their dispensaries were fully stocked with the meds we supplied. I was also able to get some data of trends for births and ante-natal care visits over the past 12 months to see what impact we are having. (I will be presenting some of these findings at the CCIH conference in Baltimore in July.)

The kids were surprisingly good considering what a hard day of driving it was in the park. The landrover airconditioner was also not working so we had the windows open. By the end of the day we, and the entire contents of the car, were covered in dust. We looked like we had been on a tractor plowing all day and the kids said they felt like they were suffocating from the dust they were breathing all day. We drove, covered in dust, all the way back to Arusha and got back to our house about 7pm. Zoey stayed the night with us so we had a very full house, and had to share our bed with David so Zoe could have his room. Needless to say we all had showers and had to wash everything.

We took the kids for the last day of school on Friday. It was also Oren's 13th Birthday. Actually both kids very happy to go back for the last day as there were some school celebrations involving candy. Oren also received two Year 8 awards at an awards ceremony-- for enthusiasm and effort in both Mathematics and History. At the end of the school day, Oren's request was that his two best friends Abraham and Abraham (one has a french pronounciation) could come home with him. We agreed and they all came back with us after school to Gymkhana to have dinner. There were no world cup games on that night which was too bad because Gymkhana, our 'country club', has a nice large screen TV. We had dinner and James and Kate joined us. It was a lot of fun, and when we got home we played a game called "Werewolf" which James taught us. It is a kind of group game that reminds me of the card game Killer, but with more roles. We all played and had a great time before going to bed.

The next day we had Oren's Birthday party with cake and a piniata (a family tradition). Oren wanted one with the face of "Chica" a character from a video game (don't ask). But we do our best to be creative and clever, so I made a pretty good likeness that they enjoyed smashing.

I can't say it was not a relief to have them finally go home. I feel like we have been running on all cylinders and next week is nearly as full. We are heading to vacation time which I will say more about next week. James and Kate leave tomorrow as well and should be back in Baltimore on Monday.

There was much to be thankful for this week--especially the answered prayers that our kids would make a transition to a new school situation and make new friends. Oren was particularly worried about these things and right now he is looking quite happy and successful.