Mleche, Chifutuka, Chibelela, Nghahelezi & Nagulo

In the last few weeks I have been to 5 villages to participate in distributions or redistributions. I’ve written about what goes on during these events several times already, so I won’t summarize the process again. Instead, I’ll just write a short story about each parish I’ve been to recently.

Saturday, 13 September: Hombolo Mleche
This parish is supported by a group called Friends in Colorado. It’s a group of 5 (maybe 6) guys who went to university together in Colorado and decided to work together to support 200 kids in Mleche. They initially started with 100 kids, but on 13 September an additional 100 children were added. So when we left Dodoma it was in an extremely packed car containing 200 mosquito nets, 200 pairs of shoes, 200 uniforms and 200 backpacks of school supplies.

Pastor Noah, Willy and I were joined by a priest from New Zealand named Bryan Carey. He and his wife Rosemary were visiting their friend Jo who works at CAMS. The drive to Mleche didn’t take that long and was actually quite pleasant because we were in the new Prado Land Cruiser. It’s amazing the difference good suspension makes! We arrived in Mleche and were greeted by a large crowd outside the church. It seemed like people here were more friendly than usual-which is pretty amazing given how welcoming people are in general. After I’d introduced myself and the distribution began, I started taking pictures for the distribution photo gallery. I was standing off to the side of the church when I heard “Eliza!” (This is pronounced ‘Ehleeza’-most Tanzanians tend to call me Eliza, although Noel calls me Liz and Mmoti calls me Lizzie) I looked over at the kids and the girl who’d said my name tried to duck behind a chair. I laughed and the kids around her must have taken that as a good sign, because they all started to do it as well. That is the first time that anyone in a parish has said my name since I’ve been here. Usually, I just get stared at and occasionally called ‘mzungu.’ (white person) It was nice to be Elizabeth again.

I also got to give some of the kids their uniforms. I’d handed out one or two before, but it felt different this time. Children are called up one by one to get their uniforms, so if you listen you actually know the name of the child you’re giving the uniform to. You can say their name and look into their eyes as you shake their hands and give them their uniforms. It was a great experience because it seemed very personal. They knew my name and I knew theirs.

One little girl in particular kept watching me the whole time. If I looked at her, she’d smile and wave and I’d smile and wave back. When the distribution was over and we took the big group photo, she made a point of coming over to say goodbye.

Saturday, 20 September: Chifutuka and Chibelela

Compared to our reception in Mleche, arriving in Chifutuka was quite a shock. Sarah, John, Willy, John Joseph and I were joined by a young woman from Australia named Ainslie who was visiting her friends Brian and Jill. Brian works at Mackay House and Jill works at CAMS and they are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. They always take time to say hello and ask how Sarah and I are doing whenever they see us.

The day began like most Saturdays do, getting into the Land Cruiser and driving for what seems like a really long time. When we arrived in Chifutuka, we all got out of the car and said hello to the parish priest and everyone else gathered around us. Instead of lots of smiles, we got lots of stares. I thought I was used to being stared at, it certainly happens a lot in town, but this was different. The priest invited us to his house to sit down and rest for a bit and as we were walking, I turned around and looked behind me. Sure enough, there was a crowd of about 30 people following us just staring. When we arrived at the priest’s house, we sat down in the shade and John chatted with the priest and Willy and John Joseph chatted with some of the parish committee members. Sarah, Ainslie and I sat there and talked to each other. When there was a lull in the conversation between John and the priest, I asked John if people in the parish had ever seen a white person before. He asked the priest and confirmed what I had suspected: the majority of the people had never seen a white person. That would explain the stares. I don’t really know how to explain it, but being stared at in Chifutuka just felt different than being stared at in Dodoma.

We brought some humor to the day when Sarah, Ainslie and I decided to walk around a bit and came across a group of piglets in a shed next to the priest’s house. Of course the three of us exclaimed over how cute they were which made everyone laughed. Sarah called them ‘pig’s watoto’ or pig’s children which made people laugh, but we discovered later that it’s actually very close to the Swahili for piglet. Sarah wanted to hold one, so John and John Joseph laughingly tried to catch one for her. John didn’t get too close because he was afraid of ‘Mama Pig’ and didn’t want to get in trouble with her. John Joseph made a valiant attempt to catch one, but didn’t have any luck.

After the pig escapades, we had tea and chapati with the priest and his wife. Sarah, Ainslie and I made John, Willy and John Joseph laugh really hard because we had a hard time picking up the extremely hot chapati. They, on the other hand, just picked them up like they were stone cold! Once we’d finished our tea, we headed over to the church to do the distribution. At the end, an old man gave John a chicken as a thank you present. The chicken’s feet were tied together and it spent the rest of the day under a seat in the Land Cruiser.

Chibelela

This distribution has the distinction of being the fastest one we’ve done since I arrived. We were all pretty tired when we arrived, and since this was a redistribution John decided that we could distribute the uniforms, shoes and backpacks quickly. We definitely learned why he has the nickname of Mzee Shasha or Old Man Chop Chop!

After Sarah and I had introduced ourselves in Swahili, John announced to everyone at the distribution that our Swahili teacher, Christina, is from Chibelela. That announcement drew a huge round of applause. Christina lives in Dodoma now because she’s a teacher’s assistant at CAMS but her niece is a Carpenter’s Kid in Chibelela, so we were very happy to have that connection.

Saturday, 27 September: Nghahelezi

Try to say that name five times fast. The Ngh- sound in Swahili is one that exists to taunt me, I think. It exists for other reasons to be sure, but one of them is definitely to taunt me.

Today John, John Joseph, Willy and I were joined by Miriam, Miriam’s friend Matt and Karen (the daughter of two of the teachers at CAMS) for our distribution. It was nice to be able to go to one final distribution with Miriam. We left Dodoma early so we could finish our distribution by 10am because the Bishop was scheduled to start a confirmation service at 10. Imagine our surprise then, when we arrived in Nghahelezi at about 8:15 and the Bishop was already there! They had decided to do the confirmation service first, so we were given tea and maandazi-like bread made with rice flour at the priest’s house. We were then shown to our seats in the church-right in the front of course.

The confirmation service was pretty long, but it was interesting to be a part of. There were about 30 young adults who were confirmed during the service. They came up to the front of the church in large groups – boys first and then the girls- and kneeled down on a long piece of material that had been spread on the ground to minimize the amount of dirt that ended up on their clothes. The material was made out of the large sacks that rice and millet are sold in. The bags had been sewn together to form a long cloth about 20 feet long.

Once each person had been confirmed, the service ended relatively quickly. The Bishop asked people to stay for the distribution immediately following the service. Some did and some didn’t. All of our Carpenter’s Kids and guardians were there and the distribution went smoothly. The women’s group from the parish played drums and sang and Miriam and Karen went over and danced with them. I was perfectly happy to take pictures. We went outside and took our standard group photos and were then invited to have lunch with the parish priest and the Carpenter’s Kids committee. The Bishop was just finishing lunch, so we said goodbye to him as he headed off to another parish to do a second confirmation service.

Saturday, 4 October: Nagulo

We left a little later than we anticipated this morning because there was something wrong with John’s bike and so John Joseph had to go pick him up at his house before getting us. We had two distributions scheduled for today and unfortunately, the parishes were not close enough for one group to do them both. So, Sarah went with Pastor Noah and Willy and I went with John, John Joseph and Callum. Two of Sarah and my neighbors, Leanne and Mika, who are both students from The Netherlands and are working at a school for deaf students here in Dodoma, went with us to get a sense of what The Carpenter’s Kids does. Leanne went with Sarah and Mika went with me.

My group got to drive in our old beat up Land Rover. This is the car that the Screening Panel uses each week. One of the doors doesn’t really close properly and sort of pops open randomly. It didn’t come completely open when we were driving to Nagulo, but it did come open twice on our way back. It just added to the adventure.

We did our distribution in one of the classrooms at the school which actually worked out well because everyone had a seat. I think it was the only distribution I’ve been to at which none of the kids had to sit on the floor or the ground. The actual distribution was pretty fast. After we finished, John asked Callum, Mika and I to say something to everyone. I can’t remember who Callum was supposed to address. Mika was supposed to encourage the kids to work hard in school and I was supposed to say something to the guardians and the parish committee. Normally, this is something I would have wanted to have prepared for, but I think I did an ok job. One of the guardians actually had tears in her eyes when I finished. After a closing prayer, we took some pictures of the kids and then had lunch with the parish priest and the chairperson of the Carpenter’s Kids committee. You have to watch for small stones in the rice here and unfortunately, I found two the hard way in Nagulo. I’m glad my dentist doesn’t read my blog!