The big milestone

24.09.2010

Whilst I was minding the house almost by myself last week during Lauras absence, this week was totally different. Not only came Laura back on Sunday, but we had our newly “renovated” side-building inaugurated by hosting 3 guests (amongst them Chris of the H2K board) for the first time (and by the way the gutter is still on…!!). Not only that, but on Monday we were paid a visit by a first “mama” (like a care-mother for the orphans) that came by for an interview, so we already got a little taste of what is to be expected once the house is full with children. We decided to employ Glory after our interview with her, which meant that we were ready to accommodate the first children. Already on Wednesday, the social officer paid us a visit passing by with a child “Nasra”. We were happy to already have Glory “on board” since she did a great job and welcomed Nasra who must have felt very much at home. After that meeting, we briefed the board of Help2kids, and later on got the OK for us to take up Nasra. We gladly and immediately informed the social officer about this decision, who promised to come back on Friday. This means that since this morning we officially have our first child at our orphanage (more about Nasra to be found on the website) and we all are very happy about this. Reason to celebrate tonight in any case, and I might even go as far as trying out some of Chris’ Konyagi (kind of a Tanzanian Gin) even though I am still convinced that it makes you blind…

I also had my first “Nazi” from our own garden yesterday – now don’t worry, even though in fact once pealed, it reveals a brown shell, it is just the Swahili word for coconut. It was very interesting to see the Fundi (worker) climb up that tree which was at least 7 or 10 meters high, more or less secured by a rope, and cut down the coconuts. But in any case it tasted very nice and made a good dessert to last night’s dinner.

As you might have discovered by now I am a bit slow with adding pictures (or to take pictures to start with) – but finally I managed to take some pictures from one of our countless visits of Kariakoo market so that you get an impression of that. The most beautiful sight however I had this week when trying out a new jogging route. Normally I would run along the road for quite a bit on my morning round. However, I really almost felt like the Marlboro man after such a round. Not only does Dar Es Salaam have quite a traffic problem (and let’s say the cars are no hybrids with almost no exhausts), but people along the road burn all kind of garbage, plastic etc., so my lungs forced me to try out a new route, and I opted for the one along the beach. Coming there at 7 in the morning, under palm trees, the crème, almost white sand of the beach, and the beautiful dark blue sea, the sun still a light red…. it’s really amazing, but these pictures will come next week hopefully. But with respect to the lines about people burning rubbish – one can see that the people’s awareness for nature and resources is not as strongly developed. If it wasn’t for that this little anecdote would almost be funny, but thee Fundi who laid the floor tiles in the house left a pile of sand, cement, plastic and other rubbish in the main room. When I told him to please clean up and remove it, he neatly cleaned it, put everything in a bag, just to dump it again right in front of the door, but still in our garden..

So, time to go celebrating. Thanks for reading the blog again this week – have a nice weekend.

Tobias

The newly renovated, cleaned and already inhabited rooms…