Greetings from Tanzania!
All is well here in Il’Kidinga and it is hard to believe we have reached the halfway point of our trip. Since we last wrote, the construction on the school has made much progress and the roof has been raised! Today our fundis are putting up the corrugated roof and tomorrow we will begin to plaster the walls.
Over the weekend we took a fabulous trip to Mulala, a village about an hour up the other side of Mt. Meru. We visited the cultural tourism program run by Agape Women’s Group. The group began in 1992 with one cow from Heifer International and has now blossomed into a dairy business that makes 6 kinds of of cheese and butter. The students learned how to make gouda and mozzarella cheese, butter, kahawa (coffee) from start to finish, and some will come home with stories of their feats of cow milking!
Sunday morning we dressed in our finest and went to the Lutheran church with our neighbor Mama Penina. Although the service was in Swahili, the pastor was quite animated and entertaining. In typical Tanzanian style, there was much harmonious singing. The school board chairman was there and introduced the students and their volunteer work, and the students got up in front of the entire congregation and sang “Lean on Me.” After the service we filed outside to shake everyone’s hand while the children’s choir sang. Afterwards there was a small auction to raise money for the church – a bundle of grass for cow feed and a sheep that all the students thought was going to be "sacrificed"!
This week is sure to be busy while we finish up the project at the school, students complete their independent projects (which are some of the best and most interesting we’ve seen) and explore Arusha market with our Mamas. The students have been learning to cook Tanzanian food, singing Swahili songs, building drums and generally having a fabulous time.
Hope all is well at home.
Kwa heri,
Francesca & Barrett
