A Whole Lot of Money

Holy crap today was crazy. As we begin to wind down at Matonyok before our safari, things are actually getting much more hectic. Per usual, we woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast, we walked to the dalla-dalla station and got a dalla-dalla to the outskirts of the village, upon which we began our walk to the orphanage. Since we've been here for some time now, are getting tired, and generally feel pretty comfortable being aliens, we've decided that the best way to respond to the hundreds of people yelling "WAZUNGU! (white people)" at us is to yell back "BLACK PEOPLE" in English. We figure since they don't think we can understand them, they probably can't understand us. Whatever works. So anyway, we got to the orphanage and did the usual teaching thing. My class moved on to the "th" sound, which they pronounce like "z." I tried teaching them the word "father," but since I am from the south, I pronounce it as such, whereas they pronounce it "fatha." My mom quickly corrected me, saying that we weren't here to teach African kids Southern dialects. My mom's class is working on making their own books. We brought with us several blank hardbound books, so her kids are telling her what they want to write, she writes it on a sheet of paper, and they copy it into their books. It's quite a project. I'm not sure what Amy is working on...maybe math or something. Oh and one of Ashton and my's kids peed on the floor again, but that is just everyday stuff now. During the school day, a group of 7th Day Adventist ladies showed up to give Ndemno and Emmy some food supplies and say some prayers and sing some songs. All of it was in Swahili so I don't know exactly what went on. After school we were lying around waiting for lunch when we realized it was getting close to 2 o'clock and lunch wasn't close to be ready. So...we decided to leave. Oh and I forgot some important points. The money that Ashton and Amy raised came out to about $2,500 dollars. In Tanzania, that is seriously like 8 million shillings. We talked with Emmy and Ndemno about what they would like us to get for them, and we ended up with the following list: a playground, 2 cows, several chickens, and maybe some banana trees. Surprisingly, we will still have quite a bit left over (we are thinking about getting some bicycles, food, etc.). Let me put this into perspective for you. To buy a chicken here costs between 2,000 and 4,000 shillings. Thats like 3 bucks. We have 2,500. A cow is about $200 to $400, and the swingset that Mike and I are going to build (more on that in a bit) is about $100. It's a great problem to have, really...too much money to spend on a really good cause. So anyway, we left the orphanage and hopped on a dalla-dalla with Mike. Amy and Ashton were starving, so we sent them on their way to Shoprite, while Mike, my mom, and myself got off at a wood shop to see about several large pieces of treated wood for the frame of the swingset. We're planning on building a basic A-frame thing, but long enough for 3 swings and a tire swing. We assembled a collection of 8 pieces of wood (these are like log-sized pieces), which we will purchase tomorrow. After that we all met back together at the same restaurant where I had the wrong panini the other night (they gave me the wrong one again) and mapped out what all we would need for the supplies. After lunch, Mike and I walked around town to price some stuff, while the girls went to the bank and back to the hotel. Let me talk about Mike and my's adventure. About 90% of the stores here are closet-sized shops lined up in rows on the sides of streets. We went into about 20 of these hardware stores looking for stuff like hooks, chains, ropes, nuts, bolts, etc., but no one had any. So we've decided to use rope to hold the swings, and then we're going to buy long steel bolts which we will then have cut and welded to form big enough loops for the rope. This is going to be a process. Once we figured everything out, we met with my mom back at the hotel and she handed me 300,000 shillings for tomorrow. Let me talk about the plan for tomorrow. Hold on to your seat. We will wake up early. Mike will meet us here for breakfast. The girls will get on a dalla-dalla for Matonyok, while Mike and I will take all this money to go around Arusha and bargain for all our supplies. In addition, we will have to hire a truck to get it to the edge of the village, where Manuel will pick us up in the Land Rover that somehow still works. When we get all this to Matonyok, the girls will join up with us and we will go out to shop for 2 cows (that is going to be awesome). We will get the cows, hire another truck to carry all of us and our 2 cows to the edge of the village, where we will then drive the cows Maasai style to Matonyok. All of this is going to happen in a period of 5 or so hours. I doubt it will go down as smoothly as we say, but you'd be surprised at how with all the chaos here in Tanzania, everything is actually very organized. I'm just excited to go cow shopping. On Friday we will go shopping for the $3 chickens, of which we will get several, as well as bicycles, food, and possibly some banana trees. We have a lot of money to spend, and not a lot of time to spend it. These next two days should be a summation of our time here in Africa, before we take a 4-day safari vacation and then head back to America and the land of milk and honey. I really can't wait to go cow shopping.