wow...Two posts in one day, though mine is not after a nutritous breakfast of pringles and nutella, but a desert of delicious local pinapple and avacado (apparently considered a fruit here? .. or is that universal and I am just unaware?)
Anyways, today was a neat day. I piled into the taxi with 2 other girls volunteering at HOPAC, for what we througt would be a half hour meeting with Anja (an amazing, inspiring lady who is originally from Holland, but has been living here for 13 years with her family). She is a teacher at HOPAC and helping to coordinate what our time there will look like..on top of the million other thigns she does around and outside of the school. Our half hour meeting of talking about involvement turned into a 9 hour day of actually GETTING involved. Anja brought us around the entire school to talk to all of the teachers, and set us up with classrooms to begin helping in, teaching in and observing in. Part of what I will be doing is the musical, another part is helping with exam scribing for sutdents with learning needs (they have a 5 week long exam period for grades 10, 11 and 12 beginning this week.) and I will also be helping in History and Socials calssrooms, and even helping man the "Canteen" or snack bar, which we did for three hours today and was a lot of fun. It is a lot like Cafe for Kids, in that some proceeds go towards athletics and other in-school projects, but the majority of the proceeds go towards the community service projects the school has. Community service is another thing I will be involved in, and today I visited a place where I would love to spend time at this summer. There is a family from Spain that runs a rehabilitation centre for recovering addicts (young boys men mostly) right behind HOPAC property. Louis and his wife and 4 other women from Spain run a house, and rehabilitation centre for these men, meanwhile teaching them employable skills (such as carpentry, mechanics) and introducing them to Christ in hopes of getting them back on their feet. There are currently 45 men staying at the centre, and the centre is one of a kind, as these support systems do not exist in Tanzania. It was a unique visit, as Louis and his family only speak Spanish and a bit of Swahili, and Anja (who speaks Dutch and English does not speak any Spanish but a bit of Swahili) so we had a bit of a triangular converstaion of swahili-spanish-english as he toured us around and explained the work they are doing. I was invited in to the ladies home afterwards, and over a cup of tea (hard to drink something hot in this weather) was able to tlak to them and begin getting to know them. They don't speak any English, and my swahili is still limited to "hello" and "thank you", so it was a good chance for me to get to use some of my Spanish. I had been chiding Joel that this year we can go to Africa for the summer, but next year I want to go to Spain because I want to be able to practice my Spanish, but it seems that Africa has brought a little piece of Spain to me. I am looking forward to getting to know the women more, and doing what I can to help them cook, clean, and spend time in the little store they run where they sell the goods that the men make.
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