Rice, Respect and Radiance.

          Yesterday was our last day helping out at the pre-school for a little while. In the morning Elena and I, along with Teachers wife Dativa, hopped on a dala-dala into town then walked from there to the school. That morning Brook went with Teacher and Gregg into town to get gear for her Kilimanjaro ascent in the next couple weeks. At the school we again went to baby class b, the class of mid-level six year olds, and were greeted with "Good morning teacher!" from the 60 children in the classroom. We helped them with their math lesson, labeling groups of dots with the correct number, and then the teacher handed the class over to us and we went through the alphabet matching letters to words that began with that letter. "Capitol letter A, small letter a, a is for apple." We made it all the way to Z! Later we helped serve lunch and clean up after porridge, which is a cooked cornmeal sort of soup that is a staple in schools and households here. After lunch it was time for us to go so Elena, Daniel and I all hopped on Daniels motorcycle. Daniel is a very good driver, the roads here are dust paths riddled with ditches from the rainy season and man-made speed bumps that you have to navigate around. Weaving around potholes we took a side trip up to a smaller pre-school run by a woman called Teacher Happy. She started teaching at this pre-school that was first started by a church pastor, but after six months the church withdrew support because the pastor was discovered to have been embezzling money and left town. Teacher Happy never received a single pay check but hung tough because she was so committed to the children she was teaching.  When Gregg, Daniel, and Teacher heard about this they contacted her and now help with supplies, rent, and salaries for the school which teaches 26 kids. Daniel had to go talk to Happy because the preacher at that church (who isn't a very nice man) has been threatening to take away the desks at the pre-school because they were bought with church money.  He now wants to start at a new pre-school and will need to reposes the chairs and desks to support his next scam.  It's hard to imagine such a selfish man exists. Without the desks, the kids would have to sit on the dirt floor of the unfinished building where the school resides. Once Daniel got the details of the story from Happy, he contacted Gregg and new desks are being made as we speak so that the church can have theirs back.
On our way back to our neighborhood we paid a visit to a women who used to tend a garden for the orphanage.  She claims to be 103 but people are very loose with birthday here so it's more likely she's in her late 80s.  Either way she is completely on her own.  Social Security only became a concept here within the last four years so people of her age don't have that kind of support.  HIV has wiped out almost an entire generation of people here in East Africa, leaving many orphaned kids but the even more over looked demographic is the elderly.  The women we met lives in a small mud hut that she graciously invited us all into.  She has a few chickens but not much else.  Teacher and Greg drop by and give her money periodically and make sure she's doing well.
It was a full day, and that night Rachael the fundraising coordinator for Peaks for Poverty, a charity based out of Dar es Salam, came over for dinner. It was nice to have company for dinner!

Today was very busy as well! We began to process the rice that the orphanage has grown. After running errands in town, we headed over to the orphanage and began to sweep the grass and debris from the drying rice in the courtyard.

 This was only five fifty kilo bags of unprocessed rice, at the orphanage and in the storage shed there are still 2000 kilos left to process!

After getting the grass, leaves, and rocks out of the rice, it was re-bagged and loaded on top of the Land Rover to the processing machine where it was fed through a grinder to remove the chaff. Leaving us with beautiful, home grown, white rice. The rice that the orphanage has been able to grow on its farmland, Gregg thinks, will be enough to last them an entire year. That will save them about 2000 used in food costs! With one of the new bags of rice Daniel, Gregg, Elena, Brook and I drove out to Shanty Town, which is must be ironically named, as it is the nicest neighborhood in Moshi.  We visited a small orphanage run by a woman named Cecilia. Cecilia got a masters in social work and saw the problem of orphaned and at risk kids in Moshi. She took action and opened her own orphanage all out of pocket and how has five kids living permanently at a house she is renting. She is an amazing, selfless lady with so much love for helping the kids. But even though her operation is small, taking care of five children single handedly without a steady source of income is hard, and she has been having some financial stress. She's been battling to get electricity on her property for two years and it just now seems like she's finally made progress in getting such a basic necessity.  There is no government support for the much needed operations people like Cecilia run.  The orphanages that the government does support are big operations and unfortunately not very much of the money goes to actually helping the children.  When we went out to see Cecilia we brought books and school supplies that the Kilimanjaro Orphanage had extras of, as well as a new bag of rice. The gifts were greatly appreciated and in the future we will be out there more to help out and spend time with the kids.
We've met the most amazing people in our short time here.  People that battle with the poorest of circumstances and face a new challenge everyday, they're truly unsung heroes.