Photo fun.

I’m in Saudi Arabia now for 2 weeks. We left TZ on Wednesday. It was really hard. I have met some wonderful people in Moshi and I love, love, love the town with a vengeance.

So I’ve been meaning to update this blog for ages. But in Moshi time was running away from me, now that I do have the time I’m going to do a bit of a backtrack and write all the posts that I was going to do in TZ.

Rewind a week and a half ago.

As I’ve said before the TEACH website is well underway. We desperately needed some good professional pictures for it. I put ads up all over the place but to no avail. I got a couple bogus phone calls and it really seemed that we were just gonna have to us our little digitals and do our best.

So the awesome foursome (Me, Hawwa, Lizzie and Mel) are in the café having lunch. We are talking about our predicament. Mel says that we need to literally just go up to people and ask them if they have a decent SLR and if they would be willing to help us. We really didn’t want to do this, but we were desperate. So we start looking around for potential candidates. Mel points out a guy sitting in the corner and there is a general consensus from the table that he looks like the good camera type. So it is agreed that Mel and I will go and ask him (Lizzie and Hawwa would have to do the next person if this fails.) Up to random person we go, we explain to him about TEACH and all the things we are doing at the school. We then ask him if he has a good camera and if he could possibly help us.

Doug: Sure, I actually have a really good camera.

Boom first time lucky. Lizzie and Hawwa were relieved that their turn wouldn’t come.

Our view. Lol at Hawwa's finger poking Madagascar!

To cut a few long and winding stories short (one is quite funny) it took us 3 days to get all the pictures we needed. Doug was great he came to the school and he did a wonderful job at getting some of the trickier shots done. It took longer than anticipated and we didn’t finish that day so Doug LENT us his camera for the next day, as he couldn’t make it. It was tiring it was long but everyone had fun doing it. In the end we got loads of pictures, I’m excited to see them up on the website.

You know that saying fortune favours the bold, it couldn’t be truer.

7ikmat el post:Go out on a limb that is where the fruit is - Jimmy Carter.

The kids.

Our first Saturday in Moshi little sis and I woke up at 6am getting things ready, for what we knew would be a long day.

We are currently interviewing and putting together profiles for the poorest kids in the school so that hopefully they can get sponsored. Despite Mr Munnisi’s warning of ‘African timing’ loads of the kids were there bright and early on their weekend morning. As it wasn’t a school day we were able to hang out with the children playing games, have lunch and just generally getting to know them better.

I knew that the interviews were gonna be hard as we were interviewing the poorest and most deprived children in the school. I just had to remind myself that what we were doing was hopefully gonna make a difference to their lives, even though hearing some of their stories was incredibly sad. Zuhuri is a bright eyed, gorgeous, teeny tiny eight year old. From the moment we were introduced to the kids she stood out. I quickly learn’t that despite being pint sized she has a huge personality, not letting anyone mess around with her and telling off children twice her size if she felt that they needed it. Her rucksack also had a picture of the Obama’s on it, nuff said.

Hawwa and I took it in turns to interview the kids. So I went outside to talk to and get to know the kids better while Hawwa started the interviews. At first the kids were very shy but after half an hour, the boys were playing games on my phone. The big girls were playing with my camera and I was surrounded by enthusiastic hugs and kisses from the little ones. Hawwa and I fell in love with each of them that day, they were so easy to love.

The kids asked to borrow my sunglasses. They were laughing and posing, it amazed me how much fun they were having. After a while Zuhuri decided that she had enough of the kids playing with them, promptly confiscating them and handed them back to me.

I love this picture soooooo much, my three favourite boys!

Hawwa interviewed the lovely Zahir, whose mother and father have both passed away from AIDS, he too is infected and has been very sick in and out of hospital for years, he now lives with his neighbour who took him in after this tragedy. Zahir had an inner sadness that we didn’t see in most of the other kids, he declined playing musical chairs with us preferring to sit and watch. He wants to be a doctor when he grows up.

Sixtus Stevens is a 10 year old boy, who loves athletics and want to be a policeman. Hawwa said that she is gonna write a story and use his name for a main character, cuz let’s face it, it’s an epic name.

These are just a couple of the profiles that we are putting together for each kid for the TEACH website which is under major construction at the moment. Hopefully then we will be able to get these wonderful kids sponsored and help make their lives a bit easier. The profiles will have some information about each child, including their hobbies and what they want to do when they grow up. During one of my interviews I asked 8 year old Jenifa, what she wanted to do when she grew up :

“I want to be a Mzungo (foreigner) like you and help people” she said with a cheeky smile on her face.

It made my day.

7ikmat el-post: Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. ~Neil Postman