Volunteering

Well, I’ve almost finished my first full week of volunteering, and while I am quite tired, I have really enjoyed spending time with all of the kids, and I am looking forward to the next three weeks!  I say almost finished because tomorrow, I am spending the day at Jericho Home where my friend Sofia volunteers, and I am really looking forward to it because I have heard many stories from her!

I spent Monday and Wednesday at Good Hope School and Orphanage, which is where I volunteered last year for two weeks, and also where I have spent a bit of time volunteering already this trip.  I was off to a bit of a slow start Monday morning after our busy weekend, so after working with some of the children at the school, I decided to undertake a pretty big task at the Orphanage….organizing the children’s book/toy shelf.  It took us several hours, but with the awesome assistance of many little helpers, we got the shelf looking fabulous!  It was so funny to see the kids discover toys and games that have been sitting on the shelf for who knows how long, but were simply hidden from view in the mess! 

Before

Lots of helpers!

Finished!

On Wednesday, I had to pleasure of delivering many new clothes (thanks to my mom who had so much fun shopping for these guys in the months before my departure!) to the little kids who attend Good Hope school.  The kids were so excited about their new clothes, although one of the teachers told me that they didn’t quite know what to think since they rarely ever get gifts!  Many of the volunteers at Good Hope typically give their gifts to the orphans living at the orphanage, but as I’ve found from living here, many of the kids who attend the school come from very poor families who struggle to have enough money to buy food, let alone clothes and toys.  The school children are often jealous of the orphans, actually, because they regularly get gifts and get to go on trips. 

Excited about new clothes!

After spending some time with the kids at school, I headed back over to the orphanage to tackle my next task….the volunteer shelf.  This shelf is suppose to contain activities, games, and projects for the volunteers to use with the children, but from the looks of it yesterday, it definitely hadn’t been used in awhile!  It was nearly as disorganized as the kids’ shelf!  But with the help of another volunteer, we whipped that shelf into shape as well!  Now my fingers are crossed that both shelves will stay neat and organized!  I’ve talked to the kids, the volunteers, and some of the permanent staff about keeping things organized, so we’ll see how it goes.

Enjoying the beautiful day

On Tuesday and Thursday, I volunteered at Cradle of Love, which is a Baby Home about 30 minutes away from Arusha where I live.  I had visited Cradle of Love last Friday and completely fell in love with it.  I knew immediately that I wanted to spend some of my time volunteering there.  There are currently 47 babies living at the Home, ranging from 2 month to 3 years old.  They are all so cute!!  And they all love to cuddle.  There are several other volunteers there, but with 47 babies to take care of, there is always plenty of work to go around.  Lunch time in particular is quite an adventure as most of the babies need to be fed by an adult.  There are usually about 5 to 8 adults helping to feed the babies, but that still leaves quite a lot of babies waiting patiently, or not so patiently, for their turn!  My personal favorite place to be, however, is in the nursery with the very little babies (under 6 months).  It reminds me of my days as a volunteer cuddler in the special care nursery at Rush in Chicago.

Lunch Time!

Feeding Baby Charles

As much as a love spending time at Cradle of Love, getting there isn’t always the most fun part of my day!  I have to take two different dala dalas (the equivalent of public transportation around here, very crowded and sketchy vans), and it takes me over an hour to get there from my house.  It is cheap though, each dala dala ride costs me approximately 30 cents!  But the part that is really starting to get annoying is that in the short walk from my house to the first dala dala stop and the five minute walk when I switch dala dalas at least 20 people call out to me “mzungu, mzungu! (which literally means ‘white person’)  or try to start a conversation with me.  I swear, I am like a celebrity around here, just because I am a white person, or more specifically, a white girl.  I try to respond with at least a hello, but usually that results in the person following me for a block trying to continue talking to me!  It seems really rude, but sometimes I just look straight ahead, keep walking, and completely ignore people trying to talk to me!  Seriously though, nine times out of ten, they either want me to give them money or give them my phone number, or they want to tell me how beautiful I am and how much they love me and want to marry me!!!