September 3rd 2005

            Three new volunteers arrived yesterday and Nav and I tagged along with them this morning to visit Good Hope Orphanage.  It was a perfect way to end the trip.  The facilities are limited.  When Good Hope first opened, they housed 14 orphans.  Now, they have 42 and 30 are on the waitlist.  One day they hope to have 100 kids.    The older fourteen girls sleep in one room with eight beds and in another room, fifteen boys share six beds.  The outhouses out in back are holes in the ground surrounded by a few loose boards hammered together.  The chicken coop is also in back.  There are forty chickens inside of the coops – and each chicken lays an egg every other day.  This means that the orphanage gets twenty eggs a day.  Unfortunately, not all of these eggs can be used as a source of food because the orphanage has to sell some of them in order to have money so that they can buy shoes for the orphans to go to school.  Each kid ends up getting one egg a week – and eggs are one of the sole contributors of protein in their diet. 

There was this girl named Veronika, who was probably around eight years old, and she had one of the cutest faces that I have ever seen.  The oldest girls led some of the younger kids in a dance/song and welcomed us to Africa, Tanzania and Good Hope.  And out of the corner of my eye I saw Veronika.  She just kept looking over at me with the biggest smile on her face.  After the kids finished their song, I decided to go over to the grass and sit down.  Veronika followed me over and it was interesting because although I know some Swahili, I can’t really do much more than say “Hello,” ask how someone is doing, what their name is, where they are from – the basics.  But Veronika didn’t care that we couldn’t talk.  All she wanted to do was sit in my lap and hold onto my arms.   

If I ever come back to Africa, I would want to go visit other orphanages in the area and just hang out there for a while.  I’m not interested in hearing about the politics of the situation, all I want is to be able to have some sort of a relationship with a lonely heart – to make sure that every kid knows that someone, somewhere, is thinking about them and cares about them. The way those kids latch onto you really speaks to the #1 human desire – to be loved.

When I was in the airport yesterday I was looking around at all of the people – mostly tourists, some people with the full out safari combo – tan vests with lots of pockets and camera bags the size of my whole suitcase and I just kept thinking to myself  about how much of the country they are missing.  Yeah, the animals are great, don’t get me wrong.  But the people here are what has really made my experience what it is.  Being an active member of the community, living in the village, talking to the people, working with the kids and walking down the street while my students yell “Teacher Dory!” and then run over to me is what has been most rewarding.