work

Working at Shaurimoyo is extremely frustrating for me. I have never worked with disabled children before, so I feel completely out of my element. Every day, me and my partner Vicky stand around, and check kids' work, and watch them play. We bring our own activities, but most of the time we end up standing around, especially because the first and last 45 minutes of the day are without kids.

The area where we really can help is when the kids work in their notebooks on simple math and spelling. But even this is tough, because my swahili is terrible and many of the students cannot understand simple body language and hand motions. All the same, we try our best, I guess thats all they can really ask for.

Back to the safari, it was insane. We went for the weekend. We were in jeeps, and just stood out the roof. At Ngorongoro crater, we saw so many animals in one place, it was pretty unbelievable. Gazelle, various birds, warthog, buffalo, wildebeast, flamingo, zebra, dik diks, elephants, giraffes, lions, hippos, rhinos, implala, hyenas. Pretty much everything, I'll try and upload some more photos when I can.

After all this, we went and visited a "traditional" massai village. It was one of the most awkward things I've done this whole trip. We roll up to this little circle of huts made from cow shit, and immediately all the women come out and start dancing. So we're standing in the sun watching these people hop up and down dancing, and they're taking volunteers to dance with them, and its just wierd. All this time, little half naked children are running around with flies all over them, crawling in their eyes and stuff.

Then, we got a speech about massai culture as all the massai women unrolled their mats of goods and trinkets to sell at ridiculous tourist prices. I'm really not sure who was exploiting who at this point. We left soon after this.

Despite all of this, the Massai tribe is a really cool one. They are the only tribe in tanzania that still practices and ilives in its traditional way. Villages consist of one chief and however many wives he has. Children do simple work, and when they are 15, they are sent out into the jungle with the chief to learn "everything they need to know." If another tribesman comes to the village, he can sleep with his friend's wife if he pleases, he just has to leave his spear by the door as a courtesy warning.

The massai also believe that all cattle belong to them, no matter what. They'll go and steal/raid other tribes and take their cattle because they believe it is their right. They also believe in female circumcision

That all for now I think.