Kelsey: Traditional dancing

Yesterday (Friday) we had a free day so we traveled into Arusha town to do some more shopping and explore. Town is very dirty and very crowded so it is very exhausting to spend time there. I’m glad we live outside the city a little bit. Since there are so many people it is hard to take pictures because I am scared my camera will get stolen. When we were in town we went to the Maasai Market which was a quieter area where a lot of souvenirs and our things were sold for pretty cheap. Nothing has a set price so you have to bargain everything that you buy to at least half the price that they ask of you. I miss the set prices in America and will definitely be looking forward to that when I return.

We barely made it back to TCDC in time for lunch, but thankfully we did. For the rest of our afternoon we worked on our paper that we were assigned by one of our teachers, Dr. Msuya addressing the challenges that Tanzania is facing in achieving the Millennium Development Goals of reducing the child mortality and maternal mortality rates. Today (Saturday) we returned to TCDC to work on our papers some more.

Last night after working on our papers we watched some traditional dancing that was being performed at TCDC. I even got up and danced a little (they made me).

For the remainder of the weekend we don’t have much planned. Our family is very sick so we plan to be out of the house as much as possible. We think they all have the flu because they are throwing up and also have really bad coughs.

Our host sister came home yesterday from boarding school because she was sick as well. Apparently she had had really bad stomach pains for 5 days so the boarding school which is about 30 km away from our home called our host dad to tell him to bring her to the hospital. I’m not sure what her diagnosis is but she has to go back in to the hospital for the next few days to get more injections and check-up with the doctor. Our host sister, Vivian, is about 15 years old right now and has been going to boarding school since she was in pre-school. I guess this is pretty common in Tanzania—if you have the money you send your children to boarding school right away. I can’t imagine any parents in the States sending their children away when they were only 4 years old for boarding school.

Our two host brothers do not attend boarding school right now and are living at home because one of our host brothers is not our host dads biological son and thus our dad did not plan on having to pay for boarding school for two children. When he took in care of Brian when he was 2 years old, he decided to send both of the boys just to normal primary school because it was cheaper. He had to take care of Brian because Brian’s dad died in a mining accident. He was mining tanzanite really far down in the mines where there was no oxygen and the oxygen compressor broke causing all 25 people to suffocate. It is a pretty sad story but at least Brian was pretty young when this happened so he thinks of our host dad as his father. Brian and Venance will go to the boarding school for secondary school though which I believe is in the equivalent of our 7th grade in the States. Currently Brian is in 4th grade (class 4) and Venance is in 6th grade (class 6).

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