We woke up early in the morning to get ready to go to the safari and to Arusha to the main site of One Heart Source, the orphanage in Arusha. Me, Marnee, Kristie, Yao, Clara, and Estela had breakfast and packed our bags and headed out in the most rain we'd ever seen since we've been here. We piled into Mohammeds car and took the longest airport drive we've ever had because of the rain. We got to the airport, and took a long ass time to get our luggage through (African time takes forever to do anything) and before we knew it we were on the tiniest plane in the world to go on the hour long flight to Arusha.
The plane we flew on through fly540 was a 12 seat plane where the first seat group is directly behind the pilot and the assistant. We flew over the water and after a quick nap we were in arusha!
I was so excited to get off the plane and even more excited to be wearing my sweatshirt and being completely comfortable for the first time since I had been out of LA. We waited around for our car getting hounded by taxi driver after taxi driver and I finally decided to call John and find out where he was. We found out he had been waiting for us at the departure gate and not the arrivals. We finally found him and got introduced to another girl that was on the metevez program starting next week and then we headed into a big van and heading to the site.
We drove past bunches of sunflowers and corn rows and the amazing views of Africa that I imagined when I got here. We landed at a huge road where we walked into the site and I was taken aback at what we saw. As we walked in this huge red gate with the one heart source logo on it and a tiny door on the left hand side that we slid through with all of our stuff. As we slid through the door we saw a huge stretch of land that was amazing. The whole front part of the site had a series of mud huts and chicken coops, and as we panned back we saw a huge stretch of farm land and a big house in the back which we learned was the orphanage house.
John showed us around after dropping our stuff off in our room for the night and we saw the community firepit for the staff, the chicken coop they were making. The showers and chos ( bathroom) that were literally little huts outside and a hole in the ground covered by sheets for privacy. We got to see all of these little gardens that they cook their own vegetables in and John told us about the plans to build some sustainability things on site to get them a bunch of energy. They're looking for a grant to get wind power through wind mills that would allow them to have energy at the house without wasting a bunch of it. We went to the big house at the back and saw the first look at the orphanage house. We walked up and there were kids running amok and people chasing after them talking in crazy Swahili that I hadn't ever heard. We took our shoes off and left them in the cubby holes out front and got a tour of the house.
When you first walk in there's a big open area that was obviously under construction and people were taking paint off the wall to repaint it. To the left there was a door to a room that housed the staff and another room down the hall that was the staff office which had a painting of Bob Marley on the wall and some of his lyrics in rasta colors. Then on the back wall is a kids room with a bunch of bunk beds for the young kids and a back room with a laundry facility that was a literal washer and drier, brand new, for the kids to get their clothes washed. The kitchen is to the right of that is a huge room were they were setting up a brand new stove and painting when we came in. The cabinet was filled with freshly picked vegetables and fruits and one of the mamas in the house was making pasta for us.
The other side of the house had three or four different rooms with bunk beds or cribs for the little ones. We were ready to help out and John gave us a task of clearing some brush. We took some hoes and pick axes and got to it until our lunch was ready. Suddenly cars pulled up piled with 20 people to a car and we realized it was all of the arusha volunteers. They had a three day weekend too so they were all hanging out at the site until they got dropped off at their perspective locations. A lot of them were going to Zanzibar so they asked us some questions about life there and pretty soon they left and we went in to eat lunch. They made us some amazing pasta and we talked to the volunteers that were left about the site and the program.
Pretty soon the kids were playing out in the sandbox and we got to go play with them. Clara found John's guitar and took it out to play and sing. She's got an amazing voice and I was upset I didn't know that earlier. We could have been writing music and stuff from the beginning. The kids loved it and we got a chance to bond with the kids we came here for, which is all I had wanted to do.
I immediately found the love of my entire life in Bahati. She is a just-turned-4 year old with the sassiest personality and loves to be the center of attention. She clung to me from the get go and never really let go. I love her more than words can say. We played together in the sandbox along with Ima and Baracka ( who i learned was a really abused child and that he has just started talking again. He didn't have a last name so the family at OHS picked Obama for his last name. That's right. Baracka Obama.) and his twin brother. We played in the sand and giggled and danced and broke up fights and I immediately realized that I should have been in arusha the whole time. I mentally packed my bags for next summer when I hope I can come back and be a mama in the house.
We talked to the other girls volunteering who stayed behind and heard all about their home stays and their life in arusha. Apparently there's a lot more witchcraft and crazy things happening here in the non-Muslim part of the world. A girl was telling me that people were moved out of their homestays because of prostitution and apparently one persons homestay family had an excorcism on the front lawn. Crazy!
The people there seem to have a really weird sense of reality. Apparently the teaching partners asked her in all seriousness how japan had flipped over. ( apparently they heard about it on the radio). They also said that they heard our president on their radio talking about how the reason the US is so wealthy and full of technology is because any intelligent person is locked in a room and forced to work on technology. Crazy!
The most interesting thing they said was after she told them she didn't believe in witchcraft: " well, what do you do in America when a person is just walking down the street and turns into a butterfly?". Like that's an everyday occurrence.
We had dinner with the watoto ( children) and then spent the next couple hours playing incessantly with these amazing kids that I seriously can't stop thinking about. We played games and talked and even taught them a little about animals because they were going to the animal park on Saturday. We finally put the kids to bed and Bahati cried and clung to me because she didn't want to go. I nearly died.
We headed to our mud hut and fell asleep pretty much immediately.
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