3 January 2010

I have arrived in Mwanza, Tanzania at Forever Angels Baby Home. I have settled into the volunteer house, which is only a 3-minute walk from the Home. I have 7 housemates and they are all amazing.

Today was my first official shift at the Baby Home. I worked from 11am until a bit after 6, and I will admit I don’t think I have ever smelled worse. We all know that babies make stinky smells, but generally babies are seen as soft, and smelling of baby powder. I am sad to tell you that this assumption is very far from the truth… babies only smell good for maybe the first 15-minutes after a bath, then once again they are covered in sand, drooling everywhere, and smelling like poop. I now understand why all the people in my house shower every evening, and not in the mornings like I usually do. The disgusting state that I came home in also put an end to another assumption of mine: that I didn’t need much clothes since I’m in Africa and no one is going to care if I wear things multiple times before they are washed. My skirt and shirt from today are now sitting in the laundry in desperate need of washing covered in sand, drool, snot, sweat, ugali (Tanzania staple carb dish), and sadly poop. I would not touch those clothes again with a ten-foot pole until they are clean again. But don’t get me wrong, I am loving it (well most of it; changing diapers not so much).

I am now a proud Mama for 50 African babies. Mama Emily is what all of the babies call me, which I actually like a lot. The babies say my name quite well, but the other Mamas at the Home have a very hard time pronouncing it. These Mamas seem to be really great women, but the language barrier with most makes it difficult to get to know them. So far our best form of communication is humor, meaning them laughing at me while I am making a terrible fool of myself with one of the babies. For example, today I had a quite difficult experience at afternoon naptime with Rebecca. Just so you know, Rebecca is sick at the moment with a terrible chest cold so that didn’t make things easier. I was putting her to bed with a bottle, but unfortunately the top of the bottle was not on properly so she quickly sucked all the air out of it (but not getting any milk). Thus I attempted to take the bottle to fix it. After fighting over the bottle for a few minutes I finally got it out of her little hands, which was a bad idea. If there isn’t a saying about never taking a bottle from a crying baby, there should be because I have never heard screaming like that before. I fixed the bottle and messed with Rebecca for a while to try to get her to stop crying and take the bottle, meanwhile the Mamas are sitting around laughing at me struggling with Rebecca. In their defense I’m happy they didn’t help because how else am I am going to learn and become confident with the babies. But it was not a fun situation. After that I had to take a short 5-minute break, even though these moments are funny later they are very stressful and unnerving at the time.

By the end of the day all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for the rest of my life. This was a very different kind of exhaustion to me, being both mental and physical. I actually didn’t get to bed until 11:30, but for a good reason: MY BIRTHDAY! So my first day of work was my birthday, so all of the ‘muzungu’ (white people) went out after work to dinner at Hotel Tilapila. The dinner and food was amazing, but Tanzanian meals are quite lengthy. There is no such thing as fast food or fast service. I think it probably took us about 30 minutes before we even received our menus. The entire meal lasted about 3 hours, and we were all exhausted and ready for bed by the end of it. But I will admit the food was worth it (especially since I am getting 3 meals out of 1 with all of my leftovers). The Lake Victoria region (where I am) of Tanzania has a very strong Indian influence, so anywhere that we go out to for a ‘nice’ dinner has a primarily Indian menu (which I find quite funny being in Africa).

So I guess that was my view of my first day at the Baby Home. My shift the next day is from 6:30am until 1, lovely.