11 February 2010

Guest post by Bernie (Emily has a paper due!)

Well, we have arrived here in Tanzania; a very anxious Emily met us at the airport. She looked really good, nice and tan and ready to show us around Mwanza. We were immediately surprised with her knowledge of Swahili! We were even more surprised when a cabby who knew her by name approached her. “Emily, Emily, do you need a ride.” It turns out that Castro had become Emily’s favorite cab driver in the little while she has been here. A very generous tourist helped Castro purchase a car so that he could start his own taxi service and thus better support his wife and new twin boys! Anyway, back to Emily! Emily has carefully planned our visit with her and we even have an itinerary to follow (she was just a little anxious for us to come). First order of business was to get checked in to our hotel. The Ryan’s Bay Hotel is located right on Lake Victoria, the largest lake in all of Africa and the second largest lake in the world. We were very happy with our room and the lake view. We have a beautiful pool and a nice restaurant right at the hotel. Since it is about 85-90 degrees by the middle of the afternoon, the pool will come in handy.

All our flights went really well, if any of you ever get the chance to fly Emirates Airlines, please do, it was wonderful. Hot towels to freshen up with, complimentary refreshment bags with toothpaste, toothbrush and other little goodies and your very own 10” television with an endless array of movies, television shows and music at your fingertips! The only disappointment was that the food wasn’t much better than any other airline, but it didn’t cost extra, like U.S. airlines do now. Oh, and the combined twenty-one hours of flying time wasn’t that bad, the movies helped a lot!

This part of Africa is very lush and green (this time of year anyway), flying in you see farm after farm. Mwanza itself looks quite poor, lots of half finished construction and run-down buildings. The people are very friendly though and eager to be of service if you can get through the language barrier. Most of them speak some English, thank goodness!

Our next order of business on Emily’s itinerary was a visit to the Baby Home. We went just after lunch and after a tour of the home we went outside and played with the big toddlers. Just so you know, at the baby home the babies are put into categories. There are tiny babies, big babies, little toddlers and big toddlers. There were about twenty-five toddlers outside playing under a large tree. They immediately came running over to see us. Several of them were saying “Mama Emily, Mama Emily”. It amazed us how they wanted us to pick them up and hold them. No shyness at all. They are really all so beautiful. We played with them for a couple of hours, until it was time for them to go in and have dinner. The baby home runs like a well-greased clock. Every minute of the day is thoughtfully planned and thus everything seems to run pretty smoothly. Don’t get me wrong though, there is still at least one baby crying at any given moment. But it really seems like a very happy place for these innocent babies that have suffered so much misfortune in their short little lives.