25 January 2010

If you have ever experienced riding on a dalla-dalla you should know that it is the best form of transportation ever. A dalla-dalla is technically a “mini-bus” (although it is actually the size of a van), which is the local form of public transportation. Dalla-dallas are all over the place, covering every main road (any road that is paved). Every ride is 250 Tanzanian shillings (Tsh), which is about $0.19 no matter how long or far you ride. Honestly, I love the dalla-dallas because I can get to town and back for less than 40 cents. On every dalla-dalla there are two crewmembers—the driver and the money collector (who jingles a handful of change in your face when he wants you to pay). Because every person pays the same amount of money to ride, the crewmembers want to fit as many people in the dalla-dalla as possible for every trip down the route. A dalla-dalla is built to seat 18 people on average. When there are only 18 or so people the ride is quite comfortable. The issues arise when there are 30 people crushed onto the dalla-dalla, and for some brilliant reason the money collector thinks that he can fit two more. The good thing is that there are rails around the inside roof of the dalla-dalla (hopefully) that way when you have to stand you have something to hold onto. Along with fitting as many people as possible on them, the dalla-dallas also race with each other to get to the waiting passengers up ahead. Speed is not only good to get to the people ahead first; it also means that they can complete more trips along the route, which inevitable means more passengers. In these races the dalla-dallas pass each other constantly, which would be fine if it wasn’t in busy two-way town traffic, and try to find shortcuts in the little turn offs so they can cut the others off. If that isn’t enough when more than one dalla-dalla is at a stop the money collectors are fighting for passengers pushing people toward the dalla-dalla where you want to ride or not. The government has actually built speed bumps into the road about every quarter to half-mile attempting to get the dalla-dallas to slow down. It was a good try on the government’s part, but now the question is how fast can the driver get the dalla-dalla to go in between the speed bumps while still being able to slow to a crawl in time to meet the next one. As you can imagine, riding on a dalla-dalla is quite an experience. It actually isn’t as bad as it sounds, and is a lot of fun because you meet so many people. Tanzanians are extremely friendly so even on a 15 minute dalla-dalla ride I can find tons of things about the person sitting next to me, like his schooling, family, interests, and career aspirations (his name is Frank).

There are not very many things that make me sad when I spend time at the Baby Home (which is a bit surprising). I probably feel basically every other strong emotion in the course of the day—happiness, frustration, and anger—but not sadness. The kids are all happy, health, and loved, so what more is there to ask for? So far I have only been sad for the kids twice, both of which happened this week. On Thursday I was doing a shift in the Tiny Baby house from 6:30-10am. I really like working with the Tiny Babies because all I have to do is sit and give them bottles (the kids range from about 3-6 months in age). During my shift 4 of the Tiny Babies started to wean off of their bottles for the first time. This means that I got to feed two babies (Anna and Wakuru) their first bowl of porridge. It was a ton of fun because they had no idea what to do with the food or the spoon so it kind of just dribbled down their cubby chins, which was hilarious. You are probably asking what is sad about that. As I was feeding them I realized how big of a deal this would be if they were still with their families or some place in the Western world. The family would be overjoyed, taking pictures and putting it all into the baby book. Honestly, we do our best to give them that at the Baby Home, but it is so difficult when you are caring for 50 children. Luckily we do put together “Life Books” for when the kids go home or transfer to a different orphanage. These contain a small biography of how the child came to the Baby Home and a dozen photos from over the years at the Baby Home. But feeding Anna and Wakuru their first bites it made me so sad that they didn’t have their family there to share the moment. The other moment of sadness was just a few days earlier, when a set of twins (Noah and Moses) came to live at the Baby Home. From what I have heard the boys, who are a year and a half old, are now orphans after their mother died a week or so before because of AIDS. The family does not know who the father is, and the grandmother is over 80 years old and unable to care for such young children. It is truly sad that these boys lost their mother, but what struck me is the state that they are in both physically and mentally. Noah is incredibly skinny; I don’t know how his neck and hold up his head because it is so tiny. He back is all skin and bones and hunches over all the time. Both of the boys are so quiet, sad, and scared. They barely walk even though we know they both can. Amy (the director of the Baby Home) says it will only take 6 weeks for the boys to fatten up and probably about two weeks for them to cheer up and become comfortable at the Home. I am looking forward to being able to watch these changes happen.

On a bit of a brighter note, as well as receiving two new kids this week two have also gone home. Today, Mayega went home with his family after being at the Baby Home for two years, and a few days ago Joyce went home with her family as well. It is definitely a bitter sweet moment, and it is incredible how well I have come to know them in only a few weeks. Joyce was one of my favorites because she was so loud and would yell “wewe” (pronounced way-way) all the way across the garden whenever she sees someone coming to announce it to the rest of the world (wewe basically means hey you). Mayega on the other hand is quite quiet, even though he is a bit of a bully when he thinks you aren’t looking. Whenever he is upset he walks over to me with his thumb in his mouth and looks up at me with terribly sad eyes, which of course makes me melt, and wraps his other arm around my leg and will not let go for anything. I will miss both of them very much, but it also makes me so happy that they are going home to be with their families, which is the way it should be.