Blog Tanzania

Let the sunshine in

28.11.2011

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Jambo help2kids friends! This time Monika, volunteer from Austria, is giving you a few updates about the life here at the children home.

The little raining season has already ended and so we don’t have so many rain-problems anymore. Of course there are still some power shortages but we can live with that quite well and you realize that you don’t need power all the time.

So the sunshine is back and with that also two new “sunshines” for the kids came to the children home: Kurt and Marianne from Switzerland. They’re going to join us for one month and we want to say a big Karibu! The kids already adore them and we all have a lot of fun together.

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Kurt and Marianne are already hard working, as they stay with the kids during the day and work for a new project in the evening and on the weekend: a new garden at our Friendly Gecko Guest House. The idea of the garden is to get a lot of vegetables that will be used for our kids at the children home. There will be tomatoes, cucumbers, salads and potatoes, just to mention a few. The kids will also decorate the garden and help with planting.

Also Edward, Mama Grace and Marc helped a lot to build this garden. As there are more than 30°C and the choice of tools is limited, it’s really hard work. Thanks so much for all the work and have a look at the finished vegetable garden on the left! Next week, thanks to Marianne and Kurt, we will also begin new little projects at the orphanage, like building a washing place where the Mamas and the kids can do the laundry without washing in basins on the grass. 

Kurt and Marianne also brought a present with themselves: a new help2kids banner! As you can see from the pictures, it is bigger than the old one and it has great colors, as the old one was discolored by the sun. Thanks for that! Asante sana!

There will be only one week of school until the holidays are going to start. The kids are looking forward to this time and also for us volunteers it will be a great time as we can spend more time with the kids. We are planning to do also some activities outside the children home like going to the beach.

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Of course we well also do some lessons with the kids. It’s so great to see how motivated the kids are! They really love the lessons, especially Mathematics. Of course also English or for the younger ones just learning the alphabet is quite fun. We can be very creative with preparing the lessons. As there are single lessons we know about the level of each child and so we can prepare the lessons individually.

Of course they still enjoy the computer lessons. As they are learning how to handle a computer they also learn new English words, letters or numbers – depending on their level. “Teacher, computer” is still in their minds. Of course they also play a lot. They love coloring and so they also learn a lot of words like all the colors – learning by doing! 

We also did a lot of extra lessons for Nuru. As she will soon change the school, she has to pass a test in English and Mathematics. She also likes to learn and we all do our best to support her.

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We are still teaching English at the Wamato School which is really a great project. The kids, or teenagers, like the lessons and they learn a lot. We also play some games with them and they love them. Their levels are very different but as there are always two of us teaching we can support them where they need some help.

Finally we would like to welcome Wiebke from Switzerland who will be here for two months. She just arrived and she is already excited to see the children and to spend time with them. Karibu sana!

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So far the latest updates from the help2kids children home with our little sweeties.
A lot of sunshine from Tanzania!

Monika,
Volunteer help2kids