Merry Christmas!

This holiday season we have so much to be thankful for and this morning it was a very merry christmas for the entire family. Santa does visit Africa and Stephen got a watch, Mackie a serious Maasai knife and zoe got cool jewelry along with Jessica. That is a river running through our yard, which happens after a night time rain. We are excited to visit our church today, Arusha Community Church, where we have met many good people that we see extremely often in this community of almost 1/2 million people.

500 Bucks!

We have some good friends who gave us $500 to do whatever with (there was a stipulation to have it benefit people here somehow). These are the items we have used it for thus far:

$135 - PlasterHouse.org - This post is coming soon regarding the visit my family took to this house where children are kept from 1 - 3 months while they recover from their corrective surgeries. Surgeries are primarily to correct mishapen bones from too much floride but other operations are done, including an operation on one very small boy who happened to be 8 years old (pictured on left) with cerebal palsey who was having seizures and he had brain surgery which helped eliminate those seizures. We purchased a $270 web site for Sarah Wallis (a New Zealander volunteer who now heads up the occupational therapy department at the new hospital) which is expenisive but includes two years of e-mail and a built-in editor and half of this money ($135) was used from the "500 Fund."

$8 - A gentlemen with one leg was getting donations from people for a $500 prosthetic leg, most donations were at this level (he had a list). Still need a picture but I can tell you that it is obvious when some people sincerely need money for a good cause. Unlike a lot of cute little kids who will run up to you several times a week laughing with their hand out and simply say "Give me your money!"

$100 - Jewelry Purchases for Africaid - We purchased about 60 items at less than $2 a piece that will sell for $20 for one item, $35 for two back in the states and all funds raised will go back to the Losinoni school and purchase probably about a half year of lunches for the 700 plus children at the school (which is actually the reason they have so many kids, who likely get their only meal of the day).

$80 - Fistula Operation - Sorry to be somewhat graphic but one of the complications of having children in the "bush" is that some women "tear" and are incontinant and banished from the village for that reason...this operation was paid for through our church here, the Arusha Community Church, and will pay to "fix" this issue and allow them to be part of their community (it likely happens near the time of delivery so they don't have to go through the ugly process of being asked to leave their village.

$1 - Kilimanjaro Beer for me.

$90 - Money toward getting a wheelchair made locally out of a lawnchair and bicycle tires for a man living on our street who has no use of his legs. The family saw him in a care tire with a stick dragging himself up the road. The most wonderful thing is that Zoe raised money from so many people toward this project and the additional money made it possible. This is really "her" project.

More to come soon! We are in our last week so I've got almost $50 more to blow! Really liked this "project" of spending the money. Thank you to my friends who supported it!

Love,
Ben's Little Family

Awesome Visit to Mt Meru Waterfalls

Today we went to the waterfalls of Mt Meru which is about a 25 minute drive from our house and then an hour and a half hike into the jungle. Check out the video of (s)Mack being tarzan on the bottom of the post (right before it starts he asked me if he could swing with just one hand).
So here are several pictures of the amazing trip down into the river and then barefoot along the river into the waterfall. It was the coolest waterfall any of us have ever seen. About 150 meters high. Smacks found a frog that Jessica is holding in her hand. The funny thing is that Janet Balentyne, who did all of our shots and immunizations for the trip, specifically told us not to touch any animals, and the kids have not been good at all on that front. Mainly she was talking about the dogs, which are wild and have some nasty diseases associated with them apparently. But they have a long list of animals from lizards, to turtles to kitties to frogs to goats and cattle that they all love to pet.

I can tell you that on a trip of this length in a place such as Tanzania you do fall in love with the culture and the slow pace. Standing in lines for an hour is no big deal. When the electrical company turns off your power for non-payment and you wonder why you never got a letter informing you prior to the disconnection, it is no big deal. Everywhere you go all you have to do is smile at someone (and there are typically 50-100 someones about ever kilometer) and the chances are likely they will give you a smile back that is so big you walk away thinking you just made their day. So many people we have met come here and then keep on coming or decide to stay for good. I'd say the weather alone is a reason to live here, ever single day is roughly 80 degrees during the day (lots of humidity) and 60 at night, without fail. Perhaps a little rain will fall.

Back to the waterfall. When we got there Mackie proceeded to go directly under the waterfall (he's the daredevil of the family...we have to be careful what we dare him to do!) It was chilly down there even though when we popped out of the jungle canopy it was the typical hot day. For some reason there was quite a lot of wind even though we are way back into a grotto with 3 sides. Do you see the size of that tree (click to enlarge and see a picture of Mack with Roger, our guide?!?! The jungle here is incredible.

Kathleen's Post (by ben)

OK, a little unfair that I get to post what Kathleen’s life is like but she is cute and doesn’t want to sound negative. It’s not negative, it’s just the way it is. Kathleen has, after many years of child raising, found some great friends in Evergreen that she loves and respects. She loves her volunteer affiliations with the elementary school and adores swimming Monday and Wednesday mornings and teaching spinning and aerobic step classes. Her life in Evergreen, Colorado is hard to beat. Africa is quite different, as anyone would expect. She is home schooling kids (she is really great, but again, this is the first time she has taught her kids and it has its rewards but the word “easy” doesn’t come to mind in describing her daily efforts) and while she gets time in the morning for herself it is limited, not the same as having kids in school. She hasn’t made good friends yet but that should change in the next couple weeks but let’s be realistic, it can take month and years to make great friendships, not a couple weeks. She has a great attitude but her day is mostly similar to the following:
Wake up
Get some time hopefully for herself
Home school children
Take kids to the swimming pool up the street
Wait for Ben to come home from the hospital where I go on and on about how much fun I am having
Suffice it to say, it can be tough married to a completely extroverted, always positive person whose glass isn’t half-full, it’s always overflowing. My goal is to try and make this experience great for her and for the rest of my family, it’s actually going pretty well.
Love,Ben’s little family

Hospital Opening Ceremony

The opening of the new hospital occurred on Thursday, the 11th of December after years and years of work to get it ready. The cool picture of the chameleon has nothing to do with that celebration, fyi. For the past week either Jessica or Stephen has accompanied me to the hospital to assist in all of the activities necessary to pull off the opening. I received an e-mail from Sue Green, the wife of Mark Green who is the US Ambassador to Tanzania, saying that she had got an e-mail from my uncle Phil Hauck who she knows in Green Bay. She read our blog and her husband was happy to greet us at the opening. Small world. Picture to the left is Mark Green shaking the hand of Eunice Simonson (see info later). Apparently the country of Tanzania is the largest recipient of both malaria and AIDS treatment funds in the entire world (thank you USA), which is good, they need it. Kathleen and I found out on Friday that the hospital is assisting to educate over 5,300 kids in the Arusha region who don’t have parents, and 75% of those kids are orphans due to AIDS. The extended families take care of these children, they are not in “orphanages” as we think of them (there are orphanages in Africa but they are more like schools with extended “day care” Kids go to the orphanages during the day for school, meals and to be bathed. In the evening, they go home to the relatives with who9m they live). The president of Tanzania was supposed to do the opening ceremonies but unfortunately he was predisposed at the last moment and the vice-president came in his absence to do the ribbon cutting. FYI - Mark Jacobson, the man behind the whole hospital, is shown at right. A couple hours late but again, this is Africa, get used to it. But perhaps the biggest honor was meeting Eunice and David Simonson (see picture on left) who are partially responsible for the Lutherans even having hospitals in this part of the world. David is very aged but is the only white Maasai (he killed a lion that was accosting a village which earned him the unique title) that I believe ever existed. His wife, Eunice, in the 1980s was serving medications out of her back porch when 3 out of 5 children didn’t make it to age 5. It isn’t great now, “weanies” is the term that is used to refer to children who are off of breast milk and that is when the death rate is the highest because at family meals they are the last to be offered food, men first, then women, then children from oldest to youngest. It may sound awful but if, for example, you reversed that and fed the men last and they died then there would be no food for the family which would mean….you get the idea. Years ago I heard that they were bringing AIDS vaccine to Africa but were giving it to parents, not kids. It sounded so awful but follows the same logic, if the parents die, there is little chance for the kids. FYI - The picture of Mack and Zoe also has nothing to do with this post. But we were talking about the opening of the hospital. Cannot tell you how big of a deal this is, Arusha which is home to hundreds of thousands of people, now has an ICU unit opening next week. People with money will no longer need to go across the border to Nairobi, Kenya for great medical assistance, it is located in Arusha, right here, right now! Yea. So it was an awesome opening. We arrived at 8:30 and it was a lesson in patience to hang out for hours to await the vice president who was several hours late. Truth be known, we unfortunately left 15 minutes before he finally arrived because we were really late for an appointment to visit the International School where, if we returned to do work for a longer period, our children would possibly attend. We love it here. Need more friends for everyone but the next couple weeks should be fruitful in that category.
Love, ben’s little family

Africaid Schools

Dear friends and family,

On Friday, the 12th of December we spent the day focusing on Africaid projects. We started the day with me visiting a solar power shop to understand the intricacies of solar power then went to the old hospital where we picked up a long time supporter of Africaid, John Laiser. We proceeded to the Ebenezer School to evaluate new classrooms and Internet projects that Rockland Church in Colorado is championing and then proceeded to Losinoni which is on the other side of 15,000 ft Mount Meru from where we live (took us an hour to get there). For both schools we delivered a couple hundred dollars of school supplies and took pictures to prove it but more importantly at Losinoni we handed over a check worth almost $600 for lunches for the 700 children. Let’s talk financial dynamics at Losinoni for fun. The government funds education for children. This means that they pay 10,000 Tanzanian shillings per year for every child that goes to school. Wait, let me say that they are supposed to pay 10,000 Tanzanian shillings per child. In the case of Losinoni they only received 5,000 shillings per child. That is for the entire year. Wait, I don’t think I mentioned the exchange rate. One US dollar equals 1300 Tanzanian shillings per child. Let’s do the math, each child at Losinoni (did I mention many walk as far as 10 km away each day to AND from school to attend?) gets about FOUR BUCKS for the entire year of education. I don’t think that I’ve mentioned the number of teachers, there are 6, as in SIX, as in one more than five, for the school of 700 kids. I’ve attached a picture of the 6 teachers names and the number or males (left) and females (right) in each grade level.

OK, so we were able to deliver a check for almost $600 to provide lunches for children (thank you to everyone who purchased a bracelet) which can purchase months worth of food to the kids. The lunch meal for many of the children is the only meal that they will receive. Africaid has put in several classrooms and bathrooms for the children which are beautiful from African standards. This has significantly dropped the number of kids per class but the problem still remains that it is difficult for them to get teachers. The issue is primarily one of power, there is none at Losinoni. Think about that for a moment. No cell phone, no lights, no TV, no computer…the list goes on. And for teachers assigned by the government to go there? Good luck…they go to visit but they don’t come back. Would you? So my goal was to assist Africaid and Evergreen Rotary in finding out how we can implement a solar power system first in the staff houses that will help raise staff retention…if the staff can watch TV, use laptop computers and charge their computer they will be much more interested in teaching at this very rural school. I’ve attached a picture of the specifications of the system we are proposing to use.

Safari

So, if you ever have the opportunity to safari in Africa, please jump on it. I believe that this is one of the best trips we ever took as a family. Great time during the day and playing cards and journeling every night. We thought after 2 days that we would be bored with looking at animals after 6 days but no, on the last day in Ngorogoro Crater the end of the light of the day basically forced us to leave. The location of the lodges where we stayed was magnificent and again, please let us know if you are ever interested and we can point you in the right direction and share advice.

We probably saw several hundred giraffes and baboons, but more like thousands of zebra and definitely tens of thousands of wildebeests, who were in the process of their migration across the Serengeti plain. We saw close to a hundred hippos (the most dangerous animal to humans in Africa, able to reach speeds up to 40 km per hour…don’t ever get between these animals and their water source or else!). Also 25 lions, 5 hyenas and then 4 black rhinos in Ngorogoro crater (our guide boasts that the most he has ever seen has been 5 in his 8 years of doing a safari and there are only 23 in the 260 sq km park). To see the tougher animals requires concentration looking out into the wilderness or plains but it is so much fun when you “find” a tough to spot animal. But, the best part had to be seeing the huge herds, that stretch for miles across the savannah, and seem endless. We got to see a herd of about 50+ giraffe, a herd of no less than 10,000 wildebeest and at least3,000 zebra. We jokefully called these zebra "the ghandi of the savannah," because you would see them hangin' out with everything from buffalo to giraffe to impala. We got to see newborn baby warthogs, a baby elephant, baby monkeys, baby zebra, pregnant zebra, baby impala, baby hippo and baby lions. The guide let us get so close to the animals it was unbelievable! I don't know how we will ever be able to go to a zoo again, and get as much out of it as we used to, because nothing could compare to this.