We have a home!

Umoja has a home! Yesterday's contract signing was successful, and the couple who owns the house left the meeting truly happy to have been able to help a new NGO get on its feet. The possibilities that having our own space opens up for us are basically endless. It is a HUGE step for the organization. It's given us new energy to keep working on the registration process -- Liza and I went to a government office today, where we were pretty much given the run-around by a bunch of incompetent employees, but we'll try again on Monday.

Government operations here are so unbelievable inefficient, I'll never whine about the RMV again. I now realize that virtually every US office is, by comparison, a remarkably smooth-running, clean, well-equipped office full of friendly, competent, well-trained people who know what they are doing. (I know ...)

If Monday's effort to penetrate the beaurocracy is successful, we'll take the bus down to Dar Es Salaam to try to continue the registration process ourselves there over the weekend. Time is flying by, and I'm happy to be busy.

(Happy almost Halloween!)

Fingers crossed ...

Last night, the Umoja Staff (me, Liza, Jessica, David, Linda [our visual art director] and Tiana [our dance director]) entered into a verbal agreement for a two-year contract on the BEST potential new home for Umoja that we've seen yet. We made the decision to go for the house very quickly.

We'd been engaged for a few weeks in a long decision process about another potential house. It was in a fabulous location, close to where the U.N. is conducting their Rwanda genocide tribunal, and we had received three bids for a renovation project. But almost all of us were getting cold feet about spending all this money on a place whose structural integrity and quality we couldn't really vouch for.

But two days ago, our long-suffering realtor, Rose, found us the perfect place, probably less than 200 yards from the fixer-upper headache house: a big compound with lots of parking, a main house and servants' quarters in excellent condition, tons of rooms, a lovely garden, and a former basketball court which is virtually a ready-made space for outdoor dance classes and even an in-the-round performance space. (The weather is so good almost all year in Tanzania that planning year-round outdoor dance classes isn't considered crazy.)

This afternoon Liza and Linda will attend the contract-signing meeting, in which (hopefully) our offer will be formally accepted. It's so exciting! And scary! Being part of an organization with six staff, basically unpaid, teaches you how much courage, work and foresight it takes to try to start an organization. A learning experience, certainly.

Cross your fingers for us. I'll update again.

We need a holidaa-ayyyyy ...

This week is ... well, WAS ... our mid-term break from teaching, and Jessica, Liza and I were all pretty eager to get out of Arusha for a change of pace. We got lucky enough to stay at our friend Tom's place in Pangani, a town on the coast of Tanzania, about six hours' drive south of Arusha. It was wonderfully relaxing and amazing to get to see this part of the country. The Indian Ocean is warm, bright and inviting ... the beaches of Pangani are almost unbelievably quiet and remote-feeling (compared to pretty much everything I've experienced). Some of the views make you feel as if you are dreaming. And people say it isn't nearly the prettiest coast in East Africa. Well, WHATever, I loved it.

After several hours' drive, we reached the coast, and took a quick ferry across the water to continue our trip. With us is Tom's stepdaughter, Irene:


Tom's place was a quiet, simple hut-shaped structure with a simple kitchen, a few beds, running water (but no electricity), and a fantastic porch on which we could all sit and read, drink tea, and stare at the ocean:




On our second way, we hired these guys to take us out on a somewhat dubious-looking boat, to a marine park where you can swim, snorkel, etc. It rained during our trip out to the marine park, and the boat pitched back and forth in a way that made me really nervous ... the trip was longer than I would've liked, but eventually we made it. I didn't take my camera, but it was like paradise! It was just a tiny dot of sand that got bigger and bigger as the tide went out. And I got to go snorkeling, which, as a Pisces and a former aspiring marine biologist, is something of a life-dream. All around this little island were small coral reefs full of beautiful tropical fish. I got a wicked sunburn while I was floating on my stomach down in fish-land, but it was worth it. Basically. On the way back, two of our party were fishing off the back of the boat ... and they caught a GIANT barracuda! I mean, I guess barracuda are pretty big. When it leapt thrashing from the water, we all gasped and yelled. It was huge, and had pointy teeth. The ancient, slow-moving African guy who appeared to be the captain of our ship (but also appeared really stoned) came over to the barracuda, seized it by the gills, and squeezed the life out of it. Its jaws still snapped a few times, too close for comfort. Once we landed back on shore, I ran inside, grabbed my camera, and captured both the boat and the beast for posterity:




Now there's just seven weeks of teaching before I return home for Christmas, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't counting down the days. I'm doing fine here, but absolutely can't wait to be home. With lots of love,

Ellen

Handel's Maasai

Yesterday Liza, Jessica, and I played in the "orchestra" for a pretty crazy choral concert at the Lutheran church in Arusha. It was a fundraiser for the hospice of one of the largest hospitals here. About twelve choirs from around Arusha were performing, and they were each performing a big chorus from -- you guessed it -- Handel's Messiah, in addition to one traditional Tanzanian choral piece. (On the phone with Liza, our Tanzanian guitar teacher, David, called it 'Handel's Maasai' in earnest. David isn't even Maasai. Anyway ...)

This was the Messiah in Swahili.

It was, of course, insane. Randy and Carol Stubbs, two American musicians who run the only music bachelor's degree program in the whole country, helped to coordinate the concert. Randy told crazy stories about going to visit each of the choirs and check out their progress, and discovering they'd been singing it in a completely different key than what the orchestra was playing in. Or realizing that no one in any of these choirs could read music, and that they were learning "For Unto Us a Child is Born" by ear. There were definitely a couple of choirs who ended about a half step flat of the orchestra ...

And, in typical Africa style, the event started very late and took twice as long as expected. It seems every Tanzanian (and American!) representative of the hospital needed to give a long speech, which then had to be translated for everyone. We were at the church from 12:30-6:20; the performance ran from about 3-6:30. We were ready to tear our hair out/hysterically laugh by the time all twelve choirs finally piled onto the stage for the finale of the Hallelujah Chorus.

It made me think of the McSweeney family Christmas Eve ... which brings me to my next point. I'm coming home for Christmas! A tag team effort between me, Tyler, my parents, and my Poppa Joe has resulted in a British Airways ticket, purchased today! I missed Christmas last year, and I hate to miss it twice in a row. I'm so, so excited to come home. Should be home Dec 17-Jan 11. It will be amazing to be in the comforting nest of home for a few weeks. I'm hoping to have a fundraising recital for the Umoja Arts Project while I'm home ... any old friends want to play chamber music for a good cause?

Lots of love,
Ellen

House concert!

Once a month, we give our outreach students a group class instead of an individual lesson. Today, we were a few minutes late ... and arrived to find a big crew of kids and parents waiting for us. They love group class! Everyone came on time! Truly amazing.


Also, the Arusha Suzuki Program had its first house concert of the year today! The program has several concerts every year, and families volunteer to host them at their house. The Blumers' house is a beautiful place, and everyone had a nice, really relaxed time. My students Maike, Saskia and Georgina all played, and did beautifully. I took a few pictures in the nice afternoon light.

Liza and David jam a little bit before the recital starts.


Jessica shows her student, Andy, where to stand for his performance.


Me with my students, Georgina and Aliya.

Our wild, wild adventure.

Our spontaneous trip to Oldonyo Lengai was one of the most intense adventures that I have ever been on. It began in the Patisserie, the little Internet cafe in downtown Arusha: Liza received word from a friend that Lengai, an active volcano several hours from Arusha, was erupting, and that the site was awe-inspiring. We had to go see it! Liza turned to me and we instantly agreed to make a quick trip: leaving Saturday at noon, returning Sunday night, camping overnight at a campsite by a river. It sounded gorgeous, perfect, exactly the rustic bush experience I'd been wanting. How long would the trip take? Four and a half hours, maybe.

We set out on the road after our outreach teaching, as prepared as we could be: a full tank of diesel plus a big container of extra; lots of food and drinking water; lantern, flashlight, matches, sunblock, bug spray, first aid, knife (for cutting food and ... any unwanted visitors). After about an hour on paved roads, we checked in with a local police station to confirm where the turnoff was for Lengai. We entered the bush.

It was tremendously exciting to be out there: hardly a soul around, the occasional sighting of a rare bird or a Thomson's gazelle. It's difficult to describe the beauty and peace that comes with being out there, although as Liza pointed out (and as I'd later learn firsthand), there's really no such thing as wilderness in this country. Even the most remote, dry, seemingly desolate landscape probably contains a Maasai boma (compound) or two. Just when you think you're alone, a tribesman or woman will appear at the side of your car, seemingly from nowhere. It's difficult to imagine sustaining life in a climate such as this, but the Maasai have been doing it forever.

After a couple hours of bush driving, though, we were in trouble: though Liza had traveled to Lengai before, we really didn't know which way to go. It's difficult to describe just how unfriendly these roads are to an unskilled traveler: not a single man-made thing ANYWHERE, let alone a sign ... and an unvarying landscape of dry grass, scrubby brush, and the occasional acacia tree.

Several men in the first Maasai village we stopped in gave us some unhelpful directions. As we turned around to try again, we met with two men about our age, traveling uphill on this crazy road with their bicycles. After a brief exchange with Liza, they discovered we were headed to Lengai, and told us their village was on the way. They piled into the car (after a struggle to fit their bicycles inside) and were our guides for a few more hours of bush driving. They told us that they were biking from Bible school. That is a HUGE bike ride, just to get to Bible school. It had taken us several hours to drive it. This kind of commuting time is fairly typical in Tanzania. We know people who commute two or three hours a day on a bicycle just to get to work, or kids who walk two hours uphill to get to school. We shared hard-boiled eggs, cookies, and water with them on the way.

We dropped our guides off in their village (and met their mother! they also were Maasai and she was an old woman, quite excited to see us), and began a race with the setting sun. We were still quite far away from our campsite destination, and still hadn't even SEEN Lengai, the erupting volcano we'd come to see. This began a quite stressful mood in the car, with long silences and straining eyes, trying to spot Lengai on the horizon, to give us the hope we needed to continue the journey. The sun was beginning to set, and the glare made it difficult to see.

We drove for at least an hour, both of us quite concerned that we hadn't yet spotted the mountain. (You'd think an erupting volcano would be a pretty conspicuous feature!) Finally, Liza said, "OH!" No wonder we couldn't see Lengai ... the mountain was being obscured almost entirely by the intense, blazing sun! We could see the faint outline, though, if we stared straight into the sun. As the sun began to dip below the peak, we could see more and more of the mountain, and could make out the plume of smoke rising from the peak. It was truly spectacular. We yelled for joy and high-fived each other: we needed a moment like that badly! We took beautiful photos of the blazing sun and the dark, smoky volcano:
black

We also took this opportunity to photograph ourselves. We had become unbelievably dirty -- more dirty than I've been in my entire life -- because waves of dust from the "roads" (term used loosely) poured into our car regularly, and filtered onto our skin for the entire trip.


After the thrill of finally catching sight of Lengai, unpleasant reality started to set in. The sun was going down, and we still had a ways til the Riverside campsite. We drove in increasing anxiety, and began to talk about possible campsites in the bush along the way. Finally, when it had gotten dark enough that the road was difficult to find, we decided to stop. It was a tense moment. We could hear the voices of Maasai children playing nearby, and the tinkling of someone's herd of cattle. We might be in the deep bush, but we wouldn't be alone tonight.

Our spirits were low, initially, and when two Maasai men approached us, we hoped for the best. They came by, said a brief hello, asked us where our men were, and said goodbye. During the night, two other men would stop by, ask us where our men were, and leave.

We pitched the tent easily, rolled our sleeping bags, lit our lantern, and ended up having one of those awesome, low-light, rustic dinners (of lentil soup, red wine, eggs and cookies) that make camping so much fun. We stayed up for awhile talking and enjoying the stillness and beauty of our camp. We slept well, and the transparent screen of the tent let me watch the movements of the moon across the sky each time that I awoke. In the night, we heard hyenas yowling in the distance, and an enormous herd of livestock passed right by our tent.


When we awoke to beautiful morning light, we met two Maasai women, who had come from their nearby boma to find out what we were up to. One looked younger than I am, but she had a big, healthy-sized baby strapped to her back, papoose-style. Her mother, an old, old woman, also came over to say hello, and they sold us bangle bracelets and gave us great directions to Oldonyo Lengai.

Finally getting to see the mountain up close was amazing:


We got home safely. Whew. Longest story ever. Gold star if you got all the way through.

Some little tidbits ...

Today I had the wonderful good fortune of getting to have lunch with Kathy and Garth Johnson! It's truly unbelievable how small the world is. Garth is the brother of my (amazing) Uncle Brett, and he and Kathy have been coming to the McSweeney family Thanksgiving festivities (which are, or should be, famous worldwide) for several years now. Their oldest daughter, Valerie, runs an incredible orphanage in Moshi called Amani (www.amanikids.org), which is just a couple hours away from Arusha. For the past two weeks, they've been in Moshi visiting with Valerie and her husband, Matthew, and getting to vacation in Zanzibar. Today was their last day in the country, and I got to meet them at Coffee Lodge for a relatively luxurious lunch. They're such nice people. It was really nice to see family and a get a warm hug from familiar folks. It made me long for the day when my parents might visit ... (hint hint). At any rate, hooray for family. They can report back to everyone and confirm that I'm alive and well.

In other awesome news, Tyler has a bona fide ticket to come out to Tanzania in February! We're trying to restrain ourselves on the whole countdown thing, but I'm already saving up my pennies so we can go on a cheap camping safari somewhere ... I can't wait. I miss him terribly, and I'm so grateful he gets to come. He's my favorite traveling companion, truly.

I'm settling down well into my teaching schedule, and time is really starting to fly. There have been so many moments where the teacher becomes the student. It's a unique challenge to get to know each child and figure out the best way to teach and motivate them. I can feel myself learning a lot from my teaching experience, and it's a luxury to have Liza and Jess around for questions and advice. I'm really grateful for this opportunity to learn.

Our kitchen is full of cooking, full of personality these days: Liza with her culinary experiments and hilarious stories; Jessica with her biting sense of humor, fabulous 80's music playlists, and love of hot peppers (pilipili); Frank, the Alpha Cook, with lots of kitchen ambition and tales of celebrities and energy-healers in his native Malibu, CA ... and Erica, who I just love, and who works insanely long days and always shares the latest organizational gossip with us. It's quite a whirlwind to be at home sometimes. My family might laugh, but sometimes, I'm actually the quiet one of the group .. In fact, I'm home by myself right now, and the quiet is shocking. (But nice ...)

I hope everyone's enjoying a nice autumn at home in the States. We're working our way towards summer, and recent winds have blown all the dry-season dust off the hills, making views particularly lovely outside town. Til next time ...