Cold

Posted by Ali

I opened my computer this evening with one sole purpose in mind: to get warm. I know, I'm a Canadian girl living in Africa at the start of the warm season. For me to be cold is absolutely ridiculous. But I can't help it. It most definitely is true. I haven't been truly boiling hot once since getting here. Granted, it is just barely the end of "winter" here, but still, there's no reason for me to be cold. And taking a barely-lukewarm shower after work didn't help matters much either. I guess my problem is that I tend to get warm when I'm doing something. It doesn't even have to be something super active. Just walking from my office to the kitchen for lunch makes me warmer (although then, after making lunch, I sit back down to eat it and get cooled off again). Anyway, I've now written a paragraph when I only intended to tell you that I'm currently covered in a fuzzy orange blanket with a running computer resting in my lap and I'm cold.

Not much to report on today other than that I must have caught a slight sore throat over the internet, either from Jonathan or my grandpa. Oh well, I sucked on a couple cough candies this morning and drank a lot of water and it seems to be almost gone now. I worked on my own for most of the day today until Max came to help me for a little bit after he got home around 4 p.m. We're moving along with the ADRA Canada proposal and it should be finished and sent in by the end of this week.

Hmmm, interesting. Just while I was typing that last paragraph the lights got really dim and then went out altogether. I'm glad I had my headlamp nearby because even with the light from the computer screen it was really dark in here. I took a break and read a bit before the power came back on and I got back on the internet.

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So, I've been hearing from several of my faithful readers that you'd like to learn a little bit more about my surroundings and daily experiences. I'll do my best to accommodate. I live in a cement cottage with a thatched roof (or, at least, how I imagine a thatched roof).

My cottage (front left) and Mt. Meru (back)

There are three other cottages gathered in a neighbourly circle. Two of them are like mine, split into two rooms, each with a bathroom. I live in Cottage 1 and you can see my windows on the left of the above picture. The third, Cottage 7 (barely poking into the very right of the picture), is a joint kitchen/living room for us Cottage-Dwellers and also boasts a small laundry area with a washer. Behind Cottage 7 are clotheslines and then trees that resident monkeys enjoy playing on. In the middle of the four cottage buildings (remember there are four buildings, but three of them are split into two rooms each, equally a total of seven rooms) is a well kept-up garden area. I really enjoy opening my door to the view each morning.

Centre garden

From the perspective of my front door looking out, if you were to turn left around the circle and head in the direction of Mt. Meru (consult first picture again if confused), you would come to the Cradle of Love Baby Home, commonly referred to as "Cradle" or simply the baby home. Max's wife, Davona is the director of the baby home which, at the moment houses around 40 babies from about 5 or 6 months old to around 2 years old. The Cradle volunteers live in a four-room apartment above the baby home.

If you look closely at the above picture you might be able to see a pinkish building behind the group of trees in the upper left. That side of the building is the nursery where there are currently around 10 babies from newborn to 4 or 5 months old. The younger and older babies are separated because before when they were all together in the big house (another term used a lot by Cradle volunteers) the little babies would catch sicknesses from the older ones and there were a lot of deaths. Now, since they've been in different buildings and stricter cleanliness guidelines have been established in the nursery there have only been one or two deaths, which is apparently much improved. The other side of the pink building is a classroom where one of the volunteers on campus teaches Max and Davona's daughter, Staci, who is starting grade 1, in the mornings and does preschool activities with the older Cradle kids in the afternoons.

If you were to turn right and walk in the opposite direction from the baby home, you would pass Cottage 7, a small banana plantation/field/forest(?) and Max and Davona's house on the left and a set of buildings that I believe are where the Masai gate-guards live on the right. After passing through a gate that I've never seen closed, you come to the main ADRA campus. If you turn left, you face the ADRA offices, a series of round stone huts joined together (except for the hut where my office is...that one is detached for some reason).

ADRA Tanzania headquarters

My office is peeking into the picture on the extreme right. Between my office and the smaller one in the distance is a walkway to the Conference Centre where we meet at 8 a.m. to have worship. Near there is also a unfinished cafeteria. It has a floor, a wall on one side and poles on the other sides to hold up the thatched roof.

Opposite the offices is a line of Land Cruisers with ADRA logos painted on the front doors parked under a long tin roof, the mechanics shop, the carpentry shop and then the main ADRA gate. And that's the main parts of the campus. There are also a few warehouses with shipment containers and places to store the lumber for the carpentry shop.

I hope that helps to show at least a little bit of where I live for those of you who can't see the pictures on Facebook. (Sorry that there's not many pictures so far. It takes awhile to upload them and I also don't want to use up too much bandwidth. I'm trying to put more up on both here and Facebook for your viewing pleasure.) For more information, check out the ADRA Tanzania's website.