Lost in Time...

I have so much to say and so little time to say it...but you all MUST know what is going on here!!

Christiana took Dan and Simon and I out on Sunday. First she had us over to her house for breakfast and wow does she have an exquisite house. It is decorated in African style and very nicely done and she has loads of pets around. Dogs, cats, monkeys, HUGE turtles...you name it! Just sitting on her porch is like getting a free view of a zoo!! And we had the freshest fruit you could imagine...just fell off the tree! She explained to us the way the system here works and how things have come to be the way they are. In all honesty, mismanagement of aid and structural adjustment programs and NGO"s seems to be the bulk of the problems. It is very interesting hearing it from someone who has watched it all happen time and time again. After breakfast she tok us to a convent where the nuns there sell her fish at half price so the children in the orphange get fish at least once a week. We arrived at the convent and the view was one that cannot be described! The back door of this place was literally the ocean. Many people come to the monastery for spiritual retreat and we actually met one of the girls that works there through our friend Dharmish. She is not a nun, but she lives there and we ran into her.
Christiana and I sat and just watched the ocean and talked about what is going on in that area right now...We could see all the dhow boats out and the fisherman doing their work and I asked Christiana what the average income of a fisherman might be as there are so many resources for fishing and the market is good. The story is a sad one though, the Tanzanian govt gives much of their contract work to Japan and China and in return, they allow open fishing right up to their coast. So, most of the income that could go to local fisherman is actually ging to fishing industries in Japan and China, robbing the local fisherman of a living wage...talk about offshoring jobs...

Then we discussed how beautiful the scenery was...another sad tale...Bush has recently been here and some tpe of agreement was reached to where oil tankers will soon be taking over the harbors...in the EXACT spot we were sitting in...she said that in about ten years...nothing will lok the same and the beauty that exists now will be no longer...the regin will be overcme with oil and the local ecosystems will parrish...its hard to digest and its so depressing...

On a lighter note...
Simon accompanied me to the bakery at the Stehmann House for our first day of bread baking!! IT WENT WONDERFULLY!! The oven worked! Going in to twn for all the necessary ingredients was irksome because it takes so long to get anything here...its not like a quick stop into the Kroger for all your grocering needs...any other day i would have been delighted to spend the day in the market...but we had bread to bake and making dough is not a quick task!! We decided to make a pizza that would feed all the girls! We bought onions and tomatoes and garlic for the sauce and used the leftovers as toppings, as well as mozzarella cheese! We had the older girls, Fatuma, Shufak, Suwma, and Nuru help us. Delegating the tasks such as slicing the vegetables and making the preparatins so they could learn and teach the younger girls as soon as we have an exact process down. While they were working on that, Simon showed me how to make the dough his way from scratch, without the machine. As soon as I learn how to use the machine and find the correct proportions, I will be teaching the girls. So, we made the dough, kneaded it, rolled it and put it on the pan and the girls came in to help with the rest and they had such a god time and were very inquisitive and eager to learn new things... We all sat by the oven the entire time to watch the pizza bake and we were so excited! We even had enough dugh left over to make bread...so I used my past baking skills and taught them how to braid the bread and then we put raw sugar on top and baked that too!
When the pizza was finally done...cutting it to feed 38 ppl was rugh...but we did it...im out of time now but i have so many more details and i want to tell you exactly what all the girls thought of it and how it went...so im sorry to leave you hanging...but it will be a good next read!!