Passion comes in a fruit/fluke

Hello! So- the past few days are indescribable- but i am going to try as that is the point of this blog :)

We met Christiana, the German lady from Eckinforde (another sister city of Tanga), and she runs a very impressive orphanage here that is known by the locals as a respectable establishment...and from my first step onto the grounds of the Stehman House (the girls orphanage), I could tell that working with this lady and these girls was going to be amazing! Orphaned dogs come up to greet you and all the girls come running out to greet you and help you carry anything they can! One of the girls, Suwmu, took my hand right away as we walked around the place! Christiana houses 35 girls in the Stehman House ranging from 4 years old up to 19 years old. They are all enrolled in local schools but she has asked me to structure English classes for the girls while they are not in school. The medium of education here has changed from being taught in Swahili to now being taught in English because the National Exams are given in English. The girls do quite well in school but they need to learn English and become proficient in the next months that I am here or they will not be able to understand what is being taught to them when school starts back up. I am also in charge of the bakery!! Christiana has purchased a nice baking oven and an industrial dough mixing machine and has asked me to run this area and teach the girls to make different types of breads and eventually pizzas that we will try to sell at the market here!! I am very excited about both of these opportunities!! Vera, a lady from Kenya, also works at the orphanage and she lived in Germany for a while and now she works here and is very involved with the girls' education and general upbringing at the orphanage. She is really wonderful to work with and she has told me so many amazing stories about the local culture here, the girls in the oprhanage, and other interesting things...she is a fountain of knowledge!!

Christiana also takes in dogs that have been abandoned and she currently has three that are in a sad state but getting better! And as coincidence would have it- the man who administers the medication to the dogs is Julius- our local contact for the Toledo-Tanga Sister Cities Committee and he is also on the City Council. He runs his own private business of livestock and animal husbandry consultation. There are also many cats, kittens, goats, chickens and other animals that Christiana has taken in!

We are staying at a Guest House currently and I cannot even explain how nice this house is... It is HUGE!!! And gorgeous! It has an immaculate garden, a mango tree, other citrus trees, monkeys and meerkats in the front yard, a gatekeeper, and an overall peaceful air about it that cannot be put into words. She has furnished it for us and has done so much for us that it is hard to even believe!!

I will tell you more about the wonderful girls in another blog- there is too much to say for one blog entry! There is also a boy's home that she runs where Dan will be working. He will be teaching English there as well as doing recreational games with the boys and just being a positive male influence in their lives. Simon, the guy writing his thesis on HIV/AIDS that we met in Dar is visitng and he likes it so much that he may come to live for awhile! He taught English in Kenya and has expressed an interest in helping out at the boy's orphanage as well! He also has a brother that runs a very good pizza business in London and is going to get me some tips and good information on how to make delicious pizzas so that the bakery runs well :)

Today was the day we moved into the Guest house and Christiana took us around to get us all the necessary furnishings for our place! It was very interesting to see how the city is mapped out- like how the streets are laid out and how one navigates through town and does business.

After we moved in we had a meeting with Julius & George. Both of them are on the Tanga-Toledo Sister Cities Committee and the City Council. This meeting was PHENOMENAL!!! We talked about different types of social programs that they are interested in starting with our help for organizational purposes. We discussed at length the different types of educational programs in the U.S. that provide self-empowerment and leadership structure among youth. They were most interested in drug prevention programs and young entreprenuer(sp?) programs. We told them about the models of the DARE program and DECA and Junior Achievement and they are very interested in us further researching these models to help them establish these programs in the 90 primary schools in the 23 different villages of Tanga! What a HUGE opportunity!! We also discussed setting up student volunteer programs, mentorship programs and environmental action programs. They were very dedicated and motivated towards getting these programs established and into the schools! Dan had the great idea of using the Toledo Secondary School as sort of a pilot for these programs- which will benefit the Toledo Secondary school, the City Council, the Toledo-Tanga Committee here in Tanga and in Toledo, as well as the sister school in Toledo!! One of the programs we talked about was the environmental clean up project- starting environmental clubs at each school whose mission would be to have the new student government designate a time and place each week where the students would pick up the trash and the garbage that litters the streets here. Since afterschool programs and sports teams are very expensive, this would be an activity that is costless and keeps kids off the street and away from the drug problems, while at the same time cleaning up the city!! Having the children doing this visbly in the community may also affect the adults in the community and change their perception in a way that will promote more environmentally friendly behavior! These are all just ideas at this stage but Julius and George seemed very interested in making them realities and so next week once Dan and I have it all in an outline form, we are presenting these ideas to the rest of the city council as well as the mayor!!

Dan and David from TAYODEA met yesterday and the meeting went well. We will be meeting with David again to hopefully solidify exactly how we can help him and establish a relationship in which he can be more direct with us pertaining to what his needs are to better TAYODEA!

All around the orphanage little ripe passion fruits fall. The girls always bring them to me to eat! Yesterday I was eating one and just thinking to myself- how funny is it that when I came here I was so passionate about something that didn't work out the way we expected- but by pure chance we have fallen into something different that I have always been passionate about- and falling all around me are these passion fruits!!

My perspective on everything has changed here. I used to be so certain about things that i am no longer certain about- and things i once thought were impossible- are the norm here! So each day i am learning and really experiencing things- and it has already changed me!

I hope to have pictures up soon. I hope you are all well and thanks for reading :)