The big relocation (English)

09.05.2011

This time it is a volunteer again, telling you about the happenings of the past week. My name is Kristina and I am from Hamburg, Germany. I am 20 years old and will start to study in October. But before that I wanted to travel the world and see Africa. Now here I am, writing the blog for you!

The last week was exciting as always for the team Tanzania and the kids. We got this week´s biggest smile from all the girls, since they moved in a new, colorful and – most importantly – big room. Since the beginning of last week we all helped to carry Cassie´s clothes and furniture in the new guest house and made her old room suitable for kids and especially for girls. We literally had to catch the girls on their way to the stairs, trying to peak into their new room and to tell the others how it looked like. Eventually some of them did make it into the room before the surprise was ready!

Another great surprise for the kids this week was Jason, Cassie´s boyfriend who was an attraction himself, as the kids (especially the boys) are always happy to have a man around to play with. On top of that he brought about 20 brand new balls for the kids, which caused a lot of excitement.

A huge thank you at this point to the donors who bought the balls and gave them to Jason. The kids play with them every day since then, and day by day they learn new tricks with the basketball.

I also sat together with Muhali and Francesca this week in order to think about a new arrangement for our teaching groups. After having done some afternoon classes with the children I had the impression, that some of the kids (especially the older ones) are not as far and fast as other kids in the respective group, which caused a lot of fighting and tears. So we worked on a math and English test for every child (while the young ones painted) to see individually how they are doing with numbers and simple exercises. The test underlined the impression and so we added a fourth group, the cats (Pakas) with all our youngest boys. Now we have smaller groups, which hopefully support those who are struggling in some subjects in school.

Although we were not that often at the hospital this week, no week passes by without going there. This week one of our older boys had malaria for the second time. The really sad thing is, that because of his cognitive disorders he can´t tell us if he is feeling bad. We just notice that he is not feeling well because he is not as happy as usual. Finally we received the blood results of our sweet HIV positive girl. The doctor said that she is doing well and enrolled her in a special 6- month medical treatment program. Let´s hope that she will be doing fine!

Another highlight this week was the barber, who came to the orphanage because our shaver is broken. So he did it for about 30 cents per kid, which was really urgent because unfortunately the kids tend to get a sort of mycosis on their heads very quickly if their hair gets too long.

That’s it for the news of last week! Thanks for reading and I am sure that there is a lot to write about in the next week. Until then, greetings from Dar es Salaam,

Kristina
Volunteer help2kids