Ninakwenda safari!

During our orientation in Arusha, our group visited a number of schools throughout the region, both in rural and urban settings. One of the schools was Peace House Secondary School, a secondary school (roughly grades 7-12) for orphans which was actually founded by two Luther graduates a few years ago. Out of all the school we saw, it was one of the most impressive educational establishments by far. It's not just classrooms but also dormitories, teacher housing and a dining hall for the secondary students. Fun fact: the school was built to eco-friendly standards including its own orchard and garden in order to be more self-sustaining. Not so fun fact: because the school is only for orphans, school officials go through a long, complicated process of screening applicants, as it seems there are frequently instances when children lie about their parentage just to get th chance to attend the school. According to the new director, the officials interview village elders as well as other family and community members until verifying that the child is, in fact, an orphan. It makes me sad to learn about the desperate measures children will go to at these young ages, willing to lie about their parents being deceased in order to have the opportunity to receive an education, not to mention that these kids are not able to receive the same quality of education anywhere else.

Despite the school's success thus far in their relatively short history, their school library is still currently in somewhat of a state of disaster - as you can see from the picture. Pictured above is probably 1/3 of the classroom in which boxes and books are in random piles beginning on the floor and nearly reaching the ceiling in some places. The woman who gave us the tour of the school said they are in need of a librarian to volunteer and set up their library because the hundreds of donated books are completely unorganized. After leaving the school, their circumstances weighed heavy on my heart and mind, and I just could not get that image of the room packed full of the students' only literary resources in need of organization in order to be put to use.

LCCT participants are given a two week period of independent travel time prior to the start of classes, and after finally making contact with the volunteer coordinator at Peace House who responded with great enthusiasm - much to my surprise and delight - to my offer of staying at Peace House during that time to help with the library. So ninakwenda safari, which means I am going on a trip!

Although safari carries the idea of animal sightseeing, "safari" is the Swahili word for trip or journey. This coming Sunday, I will be heading back up to Arusha and helping organize their school library using the Dewey Decimal Classification system with the help of two students from the school. I will be living in the dorms and taking meals with the students, so hopefully my Swahili will bump up a few notches with this experience!

I prayed a lot about the decision to travel back to Arusha during the independent travel time. Although I'll geographically end up seeing less of Tanzania than other travelers, I really feel like God has got something for me to do while I'm here in TZ besides be a tourist... don't get me wrong; tourist-ing is a bundle of fun too, just in moderation. And thus far, we've done more of it in the last month than what I've done in my entire life. I'm ready to put myself out there, hopefully in a position where I can give something back to a culture and country which already have taught me an unbelievable amount about their people and customs as well as about myself and my own culture and ideas about the world in which we all live.