Bukoba!

Saturday 6/22

After breakfast at the Uhuru Hotel in Moshi, we loaded up the bus to go to Kilimanjaro Airport. Our flight to Bukoba was originally scheduled to leave at 12:20, but it had been changed to 10:30. When we arrived at the airport, we all lined up to get our passports checked. We went to the check-in desk and Pastor Chad got all our boarding passes. I didn’t get a boarding pass at first, but that issue was resolved quickly. After checking all our luggage, we went to wait to go through security. There’s free wifi at the airport, so all of us had our laptops, iPods, and iPads out. There was a British news channel playing on one of the TVs. We went through security to wait near our gate. When I say gate, I mean a double door in the wall of windows that looks out onto the runway and taxi area. There are no jetways at the Kilimanjaro Airport, so when you board a plane you just walk out the doors and up the stairs into the plane. We were assigned to Gate 6, but Gate 5 was about 15 feet away and if it was unlocked, it would have made no difference which gate we went out of.

After a delay, we boarded the plane. We didn’t actually take off until about 45 minutes after we were supposed to, which was accredited to the plane being late from Dar es Salaam. I was seated in the last row of the plane, which was still only row 18. After we took off and ascended through the clouds, we saw the peak of Kilimanjaro sticking out above the clouds. This was probably the best view of the mountain that the rest of the group got while they were in the country. After a short flight, we landed in Mwanza. Since we were delayed out of Kilimanjaro and half the passengers on the plane were our group, our next plane was waiting for us in Mwanza to continue to Bukoba. We walked across the tarmac and boarded the other plane. As soon as our group was seated, we took off again. This leg of the trip was almost entirely over Lake Victoria. We landed in Bukoba after a descent over the lake. The end of the runway at the Bukoba airport is on the edge of the lake, so when you land it sometimes seems like you’re about to land in the lake until the runway appears.

After we got off the plane, we saw a huge welcoming party all dressed in green and with a news camera, and we were trying to figure out who they were welcoming. After we got out of the airport on the other side, we found out that a governor of Tanzania had been on our flight with us, and we had delayed his arrival in Bukoba because we were late to Mwanza. We boarded a small bus to make the trip from the runway to the airport. We walked into the “passengers arrival lounge” which was a room about the size of my living room. It contained two wheelchairs and no other seats and was also where baggage claim took place. All checked luggage was loaded onto a truck and driven to the bottom of the steps outside the arrivals lounge, and a man carried the bags up the steps and set them inside the room to be claimed. There wasn’t even enough room for all of our group to stand in the same room to claim our bags at the same time. There was a sister of the church (not Lutheran like the sisters at the orphanage, but another denomination) who got impatient that she could not claim her bags right away and walked down the steps and grabbed her bags off the truck herself.

Our group’s connection to Bukoba was through the Johnson family from Prince of Peace. There are actually two separate Johnson families, but they are so close that they may as well be related. Rebekah and I thought they were one family when we first met them. Sue Johnson hired Smart at the bank she works at in Minnesota in 2001, and even though Smart has moved back to Tanzania, he is still good friends with both Johnson families. Smart has an amazing life story, but seeing as it took him almost an hour to tell it, it is way too long to try to write here. To give you a brief background, Smart came to the US in 1998 with $20, and by the time he left in 2007, he had gotten at least one college degree, worked at the bank for six years, and started a non-profit called COSAD (Community Solutions for Africa’s Development). When he moved back to Bukoba, it was to see his non-profit grow and actually start benefiting the community he had grown up in.

Outside the arrivals lounge, our guide while in Bukoba, Smart, was waiting to pick us up. Also with Smart were Israel, Jasper, and other members of the Imuka singers, which I will explain the importance of later. We loaded into the van and cars that Smart had brought to hold all of us. There was a huge procession waiting to take the governor to his destination in Bukoba, but Smart happened to know the governor so he talked to him and he let us go first.

We went to the hotel from the airport. Rebekah and I were assigned a room that overlooked the lake and had an absolutely huge bathroom attached to it. We had a king-sized bed to share. After dropping our things in our room, we loaded up the vehicles again and went to Smart’s house. Smart, his wife Jessica, and their son Abessica moved into the house three days before we arrived, so it was still having the finishing touches put on it. The six Johnsons stayed at Smart’s house, while the rest of the group stayed at the hotel.

After a light lunch at Smart’s, we went to visit one of COSAD’s libraries, which was named after Sue Johnson’s husband. After a visit there, we went to see the first step in one of Smart’s new projects called One Woman, One Goat. There is a shortage of goats in the region around Bukoba while there is a surplus in the Kilimanjaro region (which is where the orphanage and the town of Moshi are located). Smart’s idea is to raise money to buy goats and give them to local women. This would help to resolve the shortage of goats and also provide a livelihood for local women. After this we went back to the hotel to visit with Smart and the Imuka singers (explanation still to come on them) and to eat dinner.

Sunday 6/23

Sunday morning we went to church. The first service was just finishing when we arrived, so we stood outside during the after-church auction and then went in for church. After church there was another auction, and then we gathered all the gifts we had brought for the children. Justina, the principal of the school next to the library we had visited the day before, took the children into another building to hand out the gifts. There were pens, candy, bubbles, and other items. The children sang as Justina and a few others handed things out to them. After church, we made a quick stop at the hotel and then went to Smart’s house.

Now I will explain the Imuka singers. When Smart was a young man living in Bukoba with dreams of going to the US, he was a director of a choir. He raised money to pay for his one-way ticket to the US by taking his choir on tour. When he came to the US, he had a scholarship for a degree in music. He lost his scholarship because he decided he didn’t want a degree in music anymore, but music remained part of his life. When he returned to Bukoba to work with his non-profit full time, he still wanted music to be part of his life. He started the Imuka singers as part of COSAD, and there are now dozens of choirs supported by COSAD. Smart directs the Imuka singers, and the group has toured the US.

After lunch at Smart’s house, the Imuka singers and a local secondary school choir did a concert for us in Smart’s yard. Smart insisted that each member of our group stand up and introduce ourselves to the rest of the people gathered. Our group also sang a song as a thank you to the rest of the singers for their concert. The concert was beautiful, and afterward, we had a delicious buffet dinner outside. Rebekah and I sat with the secondary school students, and they asked us if we would ride along when a church elder took them back to school (it’s a boarding school). We said we would ask. We asked Pastor Chad and he said to talk to Smart. Smart agreed to let us go but said that we shouldn’t get out of the car and he was more comfortable with us going if Aaron from Prince of Peace came with us.

The three of us, a girl named Alice, and all 17 or so students piled into the 13-passenger van with our driver, the church elder. Aaron and Alice were both in the front seat and Rebekah and I were crammed into the back with the rest of the students. One girl had to sit on another student’s lap because there was not enough room. The whole way back to their school, the students were singing at the top of their lungs. Some songs we had just heard at the concert, and some others were new. When we arrived at school, we had to get out of the car to let people out even though Smart had said not to. One of the students still wanted me to write down my email address, so after I did that, the students pulled us up to where their headmaster was standing. He announced to all of us that the students had missed their curfew by two hours and that they were going to be punished. Aaron spoke for the three of us when he said that we were sorry they had missed their curfew and hoped they wouldn’t be punished.

We were dismissed after that, and we got back in the car with the driver. After we left the school, the driver said the students probably wouldn’t actually be punished which made us feel a little better. We returned to Smart’s house after a much quieter car ride than on the way to the school. Most of the crowd had dispersed by the time we got back, and the Imuka singers were singing again before our group left. After a song or two, the folks staying at the hotel loaded up the van for the trip back there. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were all very tired from the day’s festivities.

Monday 6/24

This morning I set my alarm to wake up to the see the sunrise over the lake. I actually got up when my alarm went off (around 6:30) and I was rewarded with a beautiful sunrise. I sat on the patio at the hotel and watched the horizon for almost an hour before anyone else came outside. Pastor Chad finally came out and almost immediately left for the beach. I didn’t follow him at first, but one of the hotel staff came back from the store and pointed to the path to the beach so I decided to follow. The girl from the hotel called this the “main road” to the beach but it was more like a small dirt path between some houses. I felt like I was trespassing on their land, but no one complained about it. I even got a few “good mornings” from some residents who were surprised to see a mzungu (white person) walking through their neighborhood. When I reached the beach, I got a stunning view of the sun over the lake. I took my shoes off and walked a little bit into the water. It wasn’t freezing, but it wasn’t the warmest either.

I finally drug myself away from the view on the beach and returned to the hotel for breakfast. Rebekah and I took another walk to the beach after breakfast because she hadn’t been awake for the sunrise. As we were finishing breakfast, Smart pulled up with the Johnsons. As we were about to leave for the airport, the van decided to break down. We were delayed by about a half hour while Smart called a friend to borrow another van. We could have been at the airport sooner than that if we had taken a couple trips in the cars, but Smart wanted us all to go together.

When we arrived at the airport, we found that they were not at all equipped to handle a group of our size. When we walked in the only door, we were immediately directed through security. We didn’t know what to do with our checked baggage so we left it outside security. When we got through, Pastor Chad started to check us all in. The lady at the check-in counter (which was actually a wooden table and a metal cart on wheels with a laptop and a printer) asked us where our checked luggage was and Pastor Chad pointed to where the pile was still sitting outside security. She said it needed to be with us still, so Pastor Chad told some members of our group who were still outside security to start sending our bags through. The lady at the table collected all our passports and started printing our boarding passes. I didn’t get one at first again, but she checked in her computer and printed mine.

We moved to the next room which was where we were supposed to wait until we left. Our tickets told us to check the monitors to see if our gate had been changed, but there were no monitors in sight and even if there were, there was only one gate, if you could even call it that. There was a door out of the waiting room onto a porch that had also seats to wait; there was a low gate in the fence around the porch with steps leading down to the taxi area for the planes. After a short wait, we were called for boarding. The same ladies who had just checked us in at the desk were standing at the top of the steps checking our boarding passes. There was a bus waiting at the bottom of the steps to take us the short distance to the plane. I guess it was too dangerous for us to walk there ourselves even though our flight was probably the only one leaving the whole day.

When we boarded the plane, the flight attendants told us we could sit wherever we wanted regardless of what our ticket said. Rebekah and I sat next to each other for the short flight. When we landed in Mwanza, we weren’t delayed like we were on Saturday so we actually had to go into the airport. When we got into the airport, we had to go to the outdoor seating area and wait for our next flight. There were some food stands along the side so some of us got a snack there. When it was time for our next flight, we had to go through security again on our way into the building. Once we got through security, we walked forward and took a left to our gate, only to find out we had to go through security again on our way into the gate area. We waited a few minutes in the gate area, and then our flight was announced for boarding. There was actually an overhead speaker system in this airport so they announced our flight number over that. Two guys checked our boarding passes as we walked out the door, and we took another bus to the plane.

Rebekah and I sat with each other again and there was an empty row across the aisle so I moved over there when we took off. Rebekah slept most of the way, and I worked on a picture slideshow on my computer. When we landed in Kilimanjaro and exited the plane, I was carrying the basket I had bought in Bukoba in my hand. One of the flight attendants had a bag with a few packets of cashews in the bottom, so he took out four or five and threw them in my basket. We hadn’t gotten a snack on this flight, but I guess that made up for it. We walked into the airport and out the other side to meet Nelson and Oscar. We loaded up our luggage into a van and got in our bus.

When we got back to the hotel, Chad announced that we were going to eat dinner at Kilimakyaro Lodge for the second time (in their nice garden) instead of at El Rancho which we would have been eating at for the third time and the environment there just wasn’t quite as nice. Rebekah and I went with the Johnsons to the Green Bamboo Barbecue to get something small to eat to hold us over until dinner. We both took showers to freshen up for dinner. We went to dinner at Kilimakyaro and Rebekah and I asked Sue and Ron Johnson to sit with them because it was our last dinner as a large group.

Tuesday 6/25

We had breakfast at the hotel in the morning. We left right after breakfast for the headquarters of the diocese for a presentation on Building A Caring Community (BCC). BCC operates day care centers for special needs children. They currently have a volunteer from New Zealand who is here until the fall who gave a presentation for us. BCC currently has 11 day care centers. They also have programs for the parents of the children. They train parents how to care for their child with special needs, and they also provide employment for mothers through the opportunity to make bags and jewelry to sell. We left the headquarters of the diocese to go visit a center. The volunteer from New Zealand said each center is unique, and the one we visited had about ten children.

When we left this center, we went into town for some souvenir shopping. While a few of us were on the bus outside one shop, a street vendor named Elvec came up to the open door and started talking to us. He liked that we were from the US because of Obama (which is a common theme here, especially with Obama’s visit to Tanzania on July 1st and 2nd). He told us that he was excited to speak to us because we are native English speakers and he is trying to improve his English. He finally pulled out his paintings to show us when Carol Zillmer asked if he was an artist, but I respected him for just talking to us first and only trying to sell us something after we asked about it. His paintings were actually very well done and each one was signed with his first name. I bought one that I liked, and by that time the rest of the group was back on the bus so we needed to go.

Our next stop was Amani home for street children. Street children have parents and a house but decided to leave home for some reason and end up on the street because they feel they have nowhere else to go. Because of this, Amani is not an orphanage. While we were there, there were only a few children there because it was the summer break from school. During the summer break, most of the children begin the process of reunification with their parents. They stay with their families for a month, and the stay is evaluated at the end of that month. If it is deemed successful, the children will stay with their families, and if there were problems, the children will come back to Amani. The goal at Amani is to house and educate the children for a couple years and then ultimately reunite them with family.

After our visit at Amani, we tried to go to lunch at 10 to 10 Pizza which we had eaten at before, but when we arrived they had much of the restaurant dismantled and were doing some remodeling. We went to Indo-Italiano in town instead, which is owned by the same guy as 10 to 10, so the menu is basically the same.

After this, we went back to the hotel to finish our packing. We all left the hotel to go back to the orphanage. When we got to the orphanage, Sue, Ron, and Brian Johnson helped Rebekah and I take our things to our room. We went back to where the rest of the group was standing to say our final goodbye. We had gotten so attached to the rest of the group, and it was very hard to say goodbye. I managed to hold back my tears until the bus pulled away and then I cried a little while we stood with Sister Elly. Rebekah and I went back to our rooms to unpack. I sat at Rebekah’s desk while she unpacked until dinner. We ate dinner and then came back to finish unpacking Rebekah’s room and then to unpack my stuff. We were both tired so we didn’t stay up much later than that.

I'm hoping to write a post about our time so far back at the orphanage and post it on Saturday, so look out for that! I was going to upload the slideshow for Bukoba with this post but the connection is really slow so I think I will have to add that on Saturday as well!

Until then,

Natalie