The next day, we all said our goodbyes to the amazing people at the Old Moshi Hostel, and then Sadock drove us to Arusha, where we met up with our next contacts from the Asante Africa Foundation. Our driver for the remainder of the day was Martin, who would also be our Safari guide the next day. We also met Juma, who will be our guide for the rest of the trip, and Ewald, who has been one of the contacts that has gotten us a place to stay and other accommodations. Before we left Arusha for Mto Wa Mbu, we made a quick stop at a store to pick up some things like rice, beans, coffee, and some other things. Then we were off to Mto Wa Mbu. Once there, we all settled in and met our host, who is one of the teachers at the Rift Valley Secondary School. We went to bed pretty early again in preparation of the Safari the next day.
On Sunday, we were all up early to get ready for the Safari. The park that we went to was called Lake Manyara National park. We were a little unsure how many animals we would get to see, but even before we made it into the park, we saw monkeys running around in the parking lot and on the roads, so we became a little more confident. This was good too, because the day turned out pretty much perfectly. We saw elephants, giraffes, hippos, and even a lioness. One of the coolest things though was seeing the leopard. None of us even noticed him up in the tree, but as we drove by, our awesome guide somehow noticed him perched on a branch and pointed him out to us. Even after he pointed the leopard out, we all still had trouble finding him up in the tree. Overall, the Safari was a great success, and Martin was an amazing guide.
The day after that, we finally got a look at a few of the places we were going to be working at, which are Mwalimu Anna's Primary School and Majengo Children's home. We were lucky enough to have our adviser with us for the tour of the primary school, but then she had to leave for the airport to catch a flight home. Once finished with the tour at Mwalimu Anna's, we made our way out to Majengo children's home and also got a tour of their facilities. Once finished there, we were finished for the night and went back to rest.
On Tuesday, we went to Mwalimu Anna's again to set up a more concrete schedule and begin our ICT project, which is the micro computer installation project. We also worked on some of the computers that they had at Mwalimu Anna's that weren't working and looked at them to see what we could do. Tuesday was a short day though, and we didn't get any more work done before heading back for the night.
Wednesday and Thursday were both pretty relaxed days because the holiday of Eid was being celebrated, which is the celebration of the end of Ramadan. The schools were closed for the holiday so the children weren't in school, so we all just hung out and relaxed.
Finally, today we spoke with Majengo again about our plans moving forward at the children's home. Next week all of our projects should be kicking off and hopefully we will hit the ground running.
Posted by: Matt Burfeind