Pizza continued

Ok! So, we got done making the pizza and sliced it to feed 38 people and served it with their regular dinner of black beans and rice and water. The girls prefer the regular meals and do not especially like change much, even things that are big treats are so rare that they do not know how to react at first. The younger girls just stared at their slices and watched what the older girls did. Fatouma, Shufak and the others that helped ate theirs right away, and as i looked around the rest of the room at the girls, they were all waiting to see how the older girls reacted. The older girls took ownership of their hard work and encouraged the other girls to eat it, had they not participated in making the pizza, it would have all gone to waste...this is a vital example of how to run a non/profit or n.g.o. Without the help of the community, without local people becoming empowered by the responsibility invested in them, all the work and all the money in the world will not yield success! As the older girls urged the younger ones to try it, they all looked to me and Simon to see if we were watching...I sure as heck was but Simon kept his head down and the older girls looked at me and smiled as the younger ones were trying it and making funny faces. Sme of them really enjoyed it, others picked the cheese and tomoatoes and onions off and ate only the bread, and others gave theirs to the older girls. But for the most part...it was a huge success. Teaching the older girls something new, a different way of cooking, letting them try it on their own, entrusting them to carry out these tasks, and then letting them turn around to teach the younger girls these skills will be a great responsibility for them. So, my next job is to figure out all the necessary proportions for the dough machine and then formulate specific directions for the running of the bakery. Once I have all of that worked out, I will be able to teach each of the older girls and then watch as they pass it along to the younger girls! Vera and I may also be working at the Central Bakery here in Tanga to see exactly how they do it there...like an internship at the local bakery : )

The English classes are now running more smoothly. I have been able to assess each of the girls and what their skill level is and thus have broken them down into smaller groups for more one on one instruction. This has proved to work out much better and we have already reached sentence construction in one of the classes and prepositional phrases...which I have made fun by constructing a game where we pass the basketball outside but you are only allowed to pass it if you formulate a correct sentence with a prepositional phrase! It is really fun and the girls are very bright and sooooo eager to learn and try new things!

Last night at 4am i awoke to a very strange sound and thought Dan just kept flushing the toilet over and over again...but as soon as i checked out the bathroom, it was evident that something had gone really wrong...there was steam coming out and the bathroom was flooding! Dan had left on the water temp. heater and all day the water must have been heating up and then a pipe burst...it wasnt the fact that the water heater was on, that should not have caused a problem...its just poor plumbing and bad pipes!!! So hopefully someone will come fix it soon, in the meantime, we do have an outside shower...which kind of sucks, but hey, its a shower at least!

Last night we had friends over for dinner and it was quite an experience learning how to cook here and thank you Dad for the leatherman knife or we would have not been able to prepare anything for our guests!! Our friend Emelius from the TAYODEA tourism office came over. He will be attending one of the best universities in Tanzania for Wildlife Resources and tourism. He had us over for dinner the other night and he is a good cook and we wanted to return the favor! We made pasta, mixed vegetables, garlic and onion green beans, and Dan made some type of sausage and Carbonera sauce. I thought it was delicious and Emelius even took home leftovers so I hope he genuinely enjoyed it and didnt do that just to make us feel good, either way, it was nice of him! We also had over our freind Boris who is from Zimbabwe but grew up in Capetown, South Africa. He currently manages a lodge in Mambo and he has degrees in Wildlife management and tourism planning and is getting his master's in Environmental science. Both of them are great company and we all had a great time!!

Boris took me to Peponi, about an hour away from Tanga where there is a really nice quiet beach! We had a really great time and I got to take some great pics! Luckily he had a four by four or we would not have made it, the road was so rough that we were off our seats most of the time...bouncing and hitting our heads on the roof!There are little crabs all over and when the tide comes in they hide in these little holes they've dug and then when the tide goes out the pop out, crawl around, and then return to their holes. It is really neat to watch! Boris has invited us out to his lodge to stay for a weekend and his main job is guiding wildlife photography tours, so I think I may go see what that's all about.

Today, Samuel, the headmaster at the Toledo Secondary School took us to the Amboni Caves, its much like the Ohio Caverns, but it is dry and the stalagtites and stalagmites are no longer wet looking like in a cavern. It was a funny tour because it's not structured like an educational or historical tour rather it is more entertaining like 'look here, this rock looks like an elephant' or 'look at this formation, it resembles the female anatomy...' yea, it was pretty funny!!

Well, i must go now. i hope everyone reading this is doing well. i had some good meetings this past week that i will blog abt in a day or so. thank you for reading!