Hey everyone, sorry I haven't posted since the safari but there really hasn't been much going on and it felt monotonous to be repeating most of what happened in the first week. My host family is still awesome, and they took us to a tailor on Thursday to get some dresses made which is pretty exciting. It only cost about $12 for the fabric and about $25 to get two dresses made especially for me! I'm not sure if I mentioned it earlier but this week I got assigned to a new service learning agency called Dream Center where they treat patients with HIV/AIDS for free. I did the filing and the pharmacy log number adding for the past two months (just going through and totaling how much of each med was dispensed then carrying the totals over to the next page and so on). On Tuesday, instead of doing this I went to a different orphanage to tour and they showed us their new center (which opens at the end of the month) for older children who have been kicked out of the system at the age of five. It was really amazing and if I didn't have strong roots at home I would seriously consider moving here to be a part of their new staff. Thursday afternoon, before the dress maker and after the service learning and lunch, in the place of our normal OU class time we went to tour one of the agencies that the boys have been working at called the Watoto foundation. It's a home and training center for street boys. They take in up to 64 boys from the ages of 13-18 and put them through primary school onsite in the mornings, then in the afternoon the boys train for jobs like carpentry, metalwork, etc. They also have their own cows, pigs, chickens, and rabbits (the rabbits are kept just as pets and to sell rather than for the boys to eat) that the boys care for and a garden and farm that they maintain. It was a really excellent place!
Friday after school (our last day of classes!) we went home and on the way picked up a hairdresser who was a friend of the family and it took six long hours and a lot of pain but I now have an African hairstyle (temporarily of course).
Today we shook things up a bit because we left for our trip to Zanzibar and Dar Es Salaam that will last all week. We were supposed to leave at 10 am this morning but our flight got delayed and moved to a different airport so we had to wait at TCDC until 6:30 pm to leave for the airport. The flight was short, only an hour, and we made it safe and sound. The hotel is pretty nice:
Also here's our tiny plane and what I had for lunch:
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