Brittany Clifton

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

What we've been up to.

We were able to start working this week! Before the weekend Brittany and I had a tour of the school and the orphanage and had a talk with our friend James to get rough estimates of the building materials that were still needed so we had to wait for them to arrive. On Monday we spent most of our time at the school, periodically reading and teaching math and English to the older children as we waiting for the class teachers to gather thier students' test results.

Tuesday morning we were back at the Orphanage (which serves as the office for the school and where James also lives) helping to put in the children's test results. Brittany and I tag-teamed this, creating excel and word documents and then entering in the information so it can be posted. We also created some school-parent documents that I assume will be used for returning and new students. Today some of the school materials finally arrived, the ceiling boards for the orphange. We ran a few errands with James and had to make multiple stops to a few different ATM's in order to get our money for the ceiling boards. Thats one thing about Moshi, there are 3 or 4 ATM's-but at any given time they can all be broken, or for one reason or another cannot service your request. We did finally withdraw enough money to pay for the ceiling boards and when it was all said and done we had a huge, fat, stinky wad of shillings rolled up with a hair elastic (a stack of 800,000 shilling is a whooooole lot fatter than a wad of the equivalent amount in U.S. dollars). I mean I felt like a drug dealer pulling that honking thing out, pulling the ghetto fabulous hair band off, and counting the bills on the counter of the hardware store. The rest of the morning was spent paying for the material, entering more information into the computer, and unloading the heavy and awkward ceiling boards into the orphange.

For the rest of week we will be taking pictures with Brittany's camera so that we can create teacher I.D. cards and a newsletter that we will send to a foundation in the States that supports the orphanage.

Just to give you an idea. The orphange houses 47 orphans, and James and his wife and 3 kids live in the same one story building - its probably about the square footage of the main floor of an average size house in the States...with that many kids! In the same area they they have constructed another building that will have more toilets, another water tank (they do not have plumbing and water pressure everywhere) and more space so the rooms are not so crowded. The building is made of cinder blocks and a tin roof, but thats about it. Imagine if you didn't have any drywall in your house and just had the plywood, insulation, and electrical wires exposed and thats what it looks like. So hopefully by the time we are done we will have the ceiling boards up, the walls painted, and one more water tank for the orphange. The school, which we are also hoping we can work on, needs a roof over the kitchen area (where the students are fed lunch) and another water tank so they do not have to walk to fetch water.

On a much less important note but still very exciting - we were able to go on a hike on Mt. Kilimajaro this past weekend. It was amazing. The forest was lush and beautiful and the simple villiage life on the mountain was so neat to watch. We hiked to a waterfall that was 178 meters high. It was quite a sight.

We will try to post some pictures soon. The internet connection is slow.

Oh and one more thing. The stars are amazing here.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

We've arrived

We made it here to Moshi. The long flight to Ethiopia was actually pretty nice. The plane was pretty empty so we had room to spread out and sleep. We also watched a few movies each. The long part of the trip was from Ethiopia to Kilimanjaro. We arrived in Addis Ababa around 7am on Wednesday and were supposed to catch our connecting flight to Kilimanjaro at 10:30am. Our flight got delayed until 1pm. We finally got on the plane and left around 1:30 and ended up making an unscheduled stop in Mombasa, Kenya to drop off some passengers and pick up some others. We finally landed in Kilimanjaro around 6pm and found out that we couldn't enter the country without having proof of having received a yellow fever vaccination, something the travel nurse told us we weren't required to get. So a small argument and $100 later we got the shots, picked up our bags, and were on our way. Needless to say, we crashed soon after we were shown to our room.

Today we slept in (if it can be called that...the roosters start doing their thing around 4am right outside our window), took a cold shower because the electricity goes out about once a day, and went to the orphanage and new school with James. We were planning on buying bikes to get to the school every day, but we found out today that the new school is about 12 kilometers away so that option is out. We're meeting with James again on Sunday to figure out the transportation issue. We got home today around 2pm, had lunch, and slept for 5 hours. I guess we still have a couple days to get over the jet lag.

It's very hot here and we have to sleep with a fan right next to our bed. My feet are the size of watermelons because of the heat. Mark's not happy about it. Our place is right at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. We walk out our door and first thing we see is the snow capped top of the tallest mountain in Africa. Absolutely amazing. We went on a small walk yesterday and guess what we found? The Kilimanjaro Church of Christ, right across the street from where we live! What are the odds. We're excited to see what services are like on Sunday, and a little worried about the fact that they probably worship in Swahili so we might have just a little trouble understanding what's going on. But just being there will be a good experience.

We just had dinner and are sitting in the living room watching the news. We don't start work until Monday so tomorrow we might go out to town and do a little exploring. Saturday we've planned an all day hike to the first camp on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Hopefully I'll get to post some pictures soon. Despite the huge nap we just woke up from, we'll probably be going to bed within the next hour or so.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

A short farewell

Well folks, Monday is the day. We've slowly been preparing here and there for our big trip, but now that we're leaving in two days I feel like we're scrambling to get everything together. Our living room is currently littered with piles of clothes, toiletries, cameras and school supplies. I'm feeling a little flustered and unorganized, maybe even a little stressed. Mark, on the other hand, is calm and worry-free. I guess my obsessive-compulsiveness and his laid back approach to things balance each other out somehow because we seem to get things done pretty efficiently around here (even if it is at the last second).

We leave the Salt Lake airport around 5pm Monday night and stop for an overnighter in Washington DC. From there we have a very loooong flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and then on to Kilimanjaro. From what we hear, we'll be doing a lot of teaching and some building at the school in Moshi, but we're still not sure exactly what our days will consist of while we're there. We'll just take the orders as they come.

There are definitely some mixed emotions as we head out on this adventure together, but most of them are more on the positive end of the spectrum. This is a dream being fulfilled for both Mark and me and we're blessed to be able to fulfill that dream together. We don't know what our Internet access will be like over there, but we'll update as often as possible so you can all feel like you're traveling along with us! We've packed 7 cameras...all for different purposes, so don't fret, there will be no shortage of photos or video for us to share. Wish us luck and kwa heri!