More dispatches from the Deines in Tanzania
Hello to all - Group emails work best for us while texting is better for individual communication. Our teaching responsibilities remain the same - Stephen/Dad/Gramps does math and I - history. In math, they are doing decimals and percentages. I am trying to get us out of the Stone Age! We keep working on learning the girls' names. Glory, Jane and Teddy are easy - Soilal, Yokibed and Nailejilej take more time. Thursday we will start teaching music (singing with the guitar) and English. The weather is warm to hot - some thunder and occasional, short, hard rains. We had no water for awhile last week. Ciwilla, the civics teacher who lives next door, said she thought it was because the elephants in the hills smell the water and break the pipes - especially if they have babies. We soon got water back but, for an unknown reason, no hot water yet. Stephen takes cold showers and I do "cup" (really yogurt container) baths. On Friday we had a special outing to the Snake Park - owned by friends of a fellow volunteer. At the Snake Park - besides seeing snakes, you can ride on camels (we did not), visit a Maasai women's market and, if needed, be treated for a snake bite at a clinic that is part of the complex. It does much good in the area. A boy we met had been bitten by a puff adder which is lethal! But he had been treated in time and was doing well. Children herd goats and cows in the grass and so are in more danger. We had dinner at the dirt floor bar. A description of the floor goes without saying but the ceiling is just as interesting with hundreds of T-shirts and a crocodile skin. Stephen/Dad/Gramps was delighted to have a hamburger there!
Soon it will be chapel which I think I have said is a favorite part of the day as one or both of the choirs, Maasai and Swahili, sing. Wonderful!! There energy is amazing.
More later, hope everyone is well.
Barbara
