One of my jobs on the trip was to measure the length of rebar required to reinforce our drop box.  After the generator broke, I took my job to the market where there was electricity in one of the shops.  However, once the villagers started cutting they did not need my help.  Instead I played with three of the cutest little kids I have ever seen.  They lived off the market and on non-market days they used the booths as their personal playground.  They laughed and giggled and ran around.  I tried to teach them how to do some very basic dance moves, but they just laughed at me.  I got the same reaction when I tried to get them to make funny faces at me.  Eventually we started playing chase where they would run away from me laughing and I would follow them through the banana trees.  They ran past an old woman doing laundry a few times and with each passing she would give me this huge grin and laugh as I played with the children.   It was such a simple gesture that made the kids so excited.   Later that day when I returned to the market, the kids got my attention and then took off running through the trees wanting to continue playing with me.

 

The day before we arrived in the village, we received word that there was a landslide that blocked the water from flowing through the canal.  With nowhere else to go, the water forced itself under the wall of the canal causing the canal floor to cave creating a giant hole in the canal.  Panicked, I met with the technical chair and tried to come up with a solution to the new problem and completely revise our schedule.  We didn’t get too far before we heard from Canute, our main contact person in Masaera that the village did not want us to fix it; instead, they wanted to fix it themselves.  This was great news because not only did we not have to completely redo our plan, but it meant that the village was taking ownership of their canal.

A few days into the trip I had the opportunity to attend the village meeting to discuss the fixing of the canal.  From what was translated for us, it seemed like all the villagers were willing to pay money and donate their time to make sure the canal was fixed in a reasonable time frame.  At one point, all the villagers raised their hands and cheered.  It turned out that this was the official vote, that if each family did not contribute their 2,000 shillings (about $1.33) they would have to pay a $10,000 shilling fine.  I have never seen a group so willing to support a large fine.  I was surprised how important it was to do whatever they could to make sure the canal continued to bring them water.  It made me happy to see how the village was coming together and taking initiative to repair the canal.  This was the main objective of partnering with the village: to make sure that when we are not on implementation trips the village has the knowledge and skills to maintain the canal themselves.  Seeing this first hand was absolutely amazing.

So getting to Masaera, Tanzania isn’t exactly easy.  First we flew to Frankfurt Germany, than Edis Aba, Ehthiopia, and finally to Moshi, Tanzania.   There were had about an hour drive to Masaera, the village we worked in.   This ride was at least gorgeous since you could see the mountains and shrubbery.  As strange as it may be, Tanzania is actually pretty green with lots of flowers.  I personally loved driving by all the sunflower fields.  I also just enjoyed people watching out the window as they moved on the roads with goats and cows.  It was fun to look at advertisements in English as they did not quite grasp the right adjectives to describe certain things.  Obama’s face and name was everywhere including on buses and having hair salon’s named after him.

Eventually we turned off the main road onto a little dirt road that took us up farther into the mountains.  The rains had deteriorated a lot of this road so it was really bumpy.  The ongoing joke was that you needed to apologize to your kidneys afterwards because you moved around so much.  However, I enjoyed this ride quite a bit.  The kids we passed would excitingly wave at us as we passed and they were adorable.  Finally we arrived in the village we were working.  The next day I was coordinating the moving of supplies when out of nowhere I heard my name screamed.  I turned to see Jackie, my friend from last year, sprinting towards me.  We hugged and she welcomed me into her house to introduce me to her family.  That greeting alone made the 36 plus hours of travel worth it.