we then walked to this little motel called crater rim. if there were ever any tourists, they stayed here. it was the nicest place in the entire city. they had a little bar, and a pretty yard with tables to sit at and even a tv by the bar. it was like a little oasis for us and when we arrived, it was the first time i had felt safe since arriving in tanzania. the orphanage owned a little shop at the motel where they sold crafts and jewelry to the tourists to make money for the orphanage. it was here that we met ben, who is kabalos best friend. ben... oh ben... he was an interesting guy. i'll write more about him later. at crater rim is where we met him and the other volunteer lockee. they were making necklaces to sell. kabalo and ben left us there with lockee to make jewelry while they ran some errands.
(^the room where they sold crafts & jewelry for the orphange. karibu means welcome in swahili)
so as we are sitting there talking, alexis and i were saying how we just really wanted to go to the orphanage and meet the kids because that would make us both feel so much better. lockee then says, "well i mean there's no orphanage right now"
...........
let me repeat that statement....
there is no orphanage right now.
haha... ummmmm what?
so casually lockee just looks at us and doesn't even think twice about it.
it took lockee awhile to warm up to us. he wasn't super talkative at first so it was a huge struggle to get information out of him. but we learned that kabalo owned a small primary school which also doubled as the orphanage. there were about 20 students that went there and the kids that had parents left when school was done, and the orphans spent the night there. but the government said that the two had to be separate so they shut down the orphanage part of the school. kabalo was in the process of buying a house that he would then turn into the new orphanage.
yeah... imagine our surprise to find that we flew all the way to tanzania to volunteer at an orphanage that didn't exist.
but on the bright side, lockee also told us that the motel had wifi you could use sometimes so we got it and i was able to call my mom. best day ever. because of the time difference it was like 6am in georgia but luckily my mom wakes up early. thank goodness. my mom was so comforting. she told me if i wanted to come home tomorrow, she would book the flight herself. she said that if i needed her, she would get on the next flight to tanzania. she said she would try and contact the church leaders in arusha and see if they could get in contact with us. she said we could try and find another legitimate orphanage for us to volunteer at. she just made me feel like everything would be okay and we would work it out. because of the time change, it was like 3am in california (where kenneth was living) and i couldn't talk to him which made me sad. i felt like i hadn't spoken to him in a few days and i was really missing him.
well, a few hours later kabalo and ben came back to the motel. we quickly started to learn that tanzanian's have no sense of time or urgency to get things done quickly. they take their sweet time on everything. they can sit around doing nothing all day and be completely fine with it. this drove alexis and i nuts at first. we were soooo bored. we were so used to the fast paced life of americans that we couldn't handle doing nothing but sitting around all day.
when they finally returned, kabalo took us to visit one of the students that attended the primary school. but he had been sick and not been at school the last few days so he wanted to check on him. so we all walked over to his house. now when i saw "house" what i really mean is a tiny room made out of dirt and sticks. inside this crammed room about 5 people were inside. the room was pretty gross. his mom, or grandmother was a witch doctor. definitely an interesting thing to learn about. but many people visit these witch doctors in tanzania. i'll never forget the sight of all these water bottles scattered around this room. they were filled with this nasty black liquid and kabalo explained to us how that was the water they were drinking and how the witch doctor believed they would be fine as long as she performed the spells. after some arguing, kabalo finally convinced the witch doctor to let him take the boy to an actual doctor. so we took the boy and walked to hospital (only a few rooms). they diagnosed the boy with having dysentery and malaria. kabalo asked lockee for some money (about $5) and that's all it cost to cure the boy and he was okay. $5 saved that boy's life. if they had done nothing, it would have been only a few more days, maybe a couple more weeks before that little boy died. that really stuck with me. $5...
afterwards we visited another lady at her home. this dirt room was even smaller than the previous one. she was a single mom raising her 7 children. her husband walked out on all of them, leaving her to raise 7 children alone. i couldn't stand in that room for very long. it was hard to breathe in there. i can't imagine having 8 people in there. kabalo brought over a couple malaria nets he had and we put them in their room to try and help. this mom was the nicest lady ever and later on we would meet her again.
we went back to kabalo's house and had dinner with his wife and the twins and then head to bed.
sleeping was tough for alexis and i. we had a mattress that was about 2 inches thick and you could feel the boards from the bunk bed hitting your back. there were annoying roosters that would yell at all hours of the night (reminded me of good ole hawaii) and then there were mosque's and churches that would come on loud speakers at all hours of the day and night. it was just loud. not to mention that at this point, i still felt really scared for my safety. alexis and i just chatted about what we were going to do for 6 weeks without an orphanage.. i think we were both just pretty numb to everything going on at this point. we were emotionally and physically, exhausted.
when they finally returned, kabalo took us to visit one of the students that attended the primary school. but he had been sick and not been at school the last few days so he wanted to check on him. so we all walked over to his house. now when i saw "house" what i really mean is a tiny room made out of dirt and sticks. inside this crammed room about 5 people were inside. the room was pretty gross. his mom, or grandmother was a witch doctor. definitely an interesting thing to learn about. but many people visit these witch doctors in tanzania. i'll never forget the sight of all these water bottles scattered around this room. they were filled with this nasty black liquid and kabalo explained to us how that was the water they were drinking and how the witch doctor believed they would be fine as long as she performed the spells. after some arguing, kabalo finally convinced the witch doctor to let him take the boy to an actual doctor. so we took the boy and walked to hospital (only a few rooms). they diagnosed the boy with having dysentery and malaria. kabalo asked lockee for some money (about $5) and that's all it cost to cure the boy and he was okay. $5 saved that boy's life. if they had done nothing, it would have been only a few more days, maybe a couple more weeks before that little boy died. that really stuck with me. $5...
afterwards we visited another lady at her home. this dirt room was even smaller than the previous one. she was a single mom raising her 7 children. her husband walked out on all of them, leaving her to raise 7 children alone. i couldn't stand in that room for very long. it was hard to breathe in there. i can't imagine having 8 people in there. kabalo brought over a couple malaria nets he had and we put them in their room to try and help. this mom was the nicest lady ever and later on we would meet her again.
we went back to kabalo's house and had dinner with his wife and the twins and then head to bed.
sleeping was tough for alexis and i. we had a mattress that was about 2 inches thick and you could feel the boards from the bunk bed hitting your back. there were annoying roosters that would yell at all hours of the night (reminded me of good ole hawaii) and then there were mosque's and churches that would come on loud speakers at all hours of the day and night. it was just loud. not to mention that at this point, i still felt really scared for my safety. alexis and i just chatted about what we were going to do for 6 weeks without an orphanage.. i think we were both just pretty numb to everything going on at this point. we were emotionally and physically, exhausted.
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