Meet the Hamisi family! This is the 2nd family that has been sponsored. They are a family of seven children and one father. The mother is absent from the home and the children cannot afford to attend school. They eat one potato each day. We got the privilege of meeting some of their basic needs and helping the children return to school! The family was filled with gratitude and was so happy to have assistance from us!

I am fully recovered and am in action doing so many things in Bariadi! Over the past week I have come up with two major projects that I have started and am so excited about: sponsoring families and feeding the kids at my school uji (porridge). I have done all the research and budgeting and to feed the kids (700 of them) it would cost $25 dollars a day. I would need two buckets of maize each day and then I would take it to the mill in town to make it into a powder form. I would also need 10 kilos of sugar. There are two men that work at the school as security but I would hire them to cook the uji and pay them per month. The students would each bring their cup from home and be responsible for washing it after eating. Each month each student would also bring 1 piece of firewood so we could prepare the food. This would allow us to have a stock of firewood per month. I bought two 60L jiko pots to cook on the fire with two giant wooden spoons. I am so excited to start this at school because these kids are starving. So many kids don’t take any food in the morning before school and walk miles each day to get to school. Then school is from 7am-2pm each day without any lunch being served. This affects their energy level, their ability to focus, and their willingness to come to school. If they know that during break time (10:00am-10:30am) they will be served uji this will motivate them. With my budget right now ($100 a month, $25/week) I will start only serving the kids uji once a week on Wednesdays. Hopefully in the future I can increase the days maybe to Tuesday/Thursday or Mon/Wed/Fri!

            As for the families, I have sponsored two families myself. A BIG thanks to Devan Kuhn and Taylor Sockwell they have also donated and each sponsored a family of their own! I am so excited about this! I am finishing up on the second family by this Tuesday and then I can begin working on the next two families for Devan and Taylor. With sponsoring families my goal is to find families in extreme need of help. It is difficult because everyone is in need here but I am working hard with a close friend of mine who is also a teacher at my school, Mwajabu, and we are trying to come up with a criterion for this. I buy food and clothes to help get them back on their feet for the first month. So for Mama Minza’s family I bought a sack of rice, small fish, cabbage, tomatoes, salt, sugar, onions, cooking oil, soap for washing clothes and soap for bathing, shoes for the family, and clothes for the family, school uniforms, etc. (All of this totals to around $65-75 depending on the number of children in the family.) Mama Minza has 9 children. Mama Minza went to the big market with me, which is every Tuesday and helped me pick out the right sizes for the clothes, school uniforms, and shoes. Nothing is more rewarding then going back the next week to see them and seeing the kids smell so good in their scented lotion, so squeaky clean not covered in dirt, wearing all the precious clothes I picked out that don’t match of course because there are such limited choices but they still look so cute, and to see their area covered with pots and pans because they actually have food to cook now for their family. It gives me a feeling I can’t even describe to you; to see the babies crying for food now instead of crying because they are hungry, such a change from one-week prior.  

            After providing things for the family, I then asked Mama Minza’s education level and her skills. I want to know how she can provide these things for her family without my help. She has a primary school education level and is a very good cook. She says that if I provide her with 100,000tsh which is $50 US dollars she could go to the big market each Tuesday and sell mandazi, chapatti, chai, etc. African foods to the people. This would be enough capital for her to start her own business and she would be able to provide for her family each week with the money she earns. This is my goal with each family, I want to help them get on their feet but then to find out how they can be sustainable on their own without me.

            I am still trying to collect backpacks for the kids. Backpacks cost $5, and I have a list of 44 kids from Kidinda who need them. I will continue to work on that little by little.

            School is going well, I just started a new topic….Reproduction. haha. SO awkward. These students ask me so many questions it is so funny!! I feel like I am teaching Sex Ed.

            The hospital is going well also. It is nice because I am starting to feel like a part of the staff, everyone knows me and I finally am remembering everyone’s names. They ask me to assist in certain procedures instead of just referring to me as the “mzungu” haha.

            Besides that I spend most of my days trying to figure out how I can help these families, trying to find more families to reach out to, meeting with my headmistress discussing my food project for the kids and how it can continue once I come back to America. I am trying to plan a trip to the village which is about 6-9 km away from where I live I just need someone to take me so I can see the conditions of the village and what I can do there.

            Hope everyone is doing well! If you have any suggestions or advice please let me know!! laurenbrookeparker@gmail.com

Lord provide me with the resources to help these people. They are in such poverty and have so many basic needs that are not met on a daily basis. I trust you to open up a pathway where I can provide these resources to them and convey your love in their lives. I want to help them so that life is not so difficult and try to relieve the burdens that they are struggling with. You are the healer, the provider, the father to all children I trust in your ultimate plan. 

A view of Mwanza. Lake Victoria. 

My sweet baby Kulwa before I got sick!

When I think back about this past week, it is hard to reflect. I have been in and out of hospitals and trying to get well. I have been discouraged, and my spirit has been weakened. For as busy as I had been and for as much as I was doing my body got run down. My health slipped away and I could no longer do my work. On Tuesday I went to the hospital. I tried to push through but I had been pushing through the day’s prior. I knew a few hours after I had woken up that I needed to go to the hospital. I called the administrator where I volunteer here in Somanda and he came to check on me. At first I asked if he could just bring some nurses by the house but I wasn’t so lucky. He came by my house and after seeing me told me I needed to come to the hospital. I knew I didn’t have the strength to walk so he managed to get a car to come and take me. Even with being a “mzungu” and with Richard taking me past so many people in line to just get admitted it still took hours. At this point I was so sick I just needed to lie down. I didn’t care if it was the ground. I felt so bad and I hadn’t even been in a serious accident or didn’t even have a serious emergency and I couldn’t get past how long these people had to wait in line to get medical care. Richard took me to an area where I had to wait for the doctor. There were three other people waiting. The girl beside me had a pretty bad cut on her leg. We all were sitting on this skinny wooden bench but I was about to faint. I looked at her and looked at her lap and then looked at her again. She lifted her hands up as if giving me the okay. I laid my head in her lap and just closed my eyes trying to find some comfort. It felt like another hour went by before I was called. The doctor asked me my symptoms, took my temperature, which was 102, saw that my blood pressure was 90/50 and also saw that I had lost 14 pounds. She decided to admit me. They gave me fluids and oral antibiotics. It took 24 hours to wait for my results. They told me the next day that I had tested slightly positive for typhoid fever. This could have come from water or food contamination.

I was very thankful for the visitors I had during my time at the hospital. My headmistress came, Mwajabu and Mkama came, and many nurses that I’m friends with from other wards came to visit me. I was very happy. When Emily got out of class she came to bring me some fruits to eat. The hospitals here in Africa do not provide you with any food or drink that is up to friends or family to bring to you. My fever was still elevated and nothing was improving but they did not have a mosquito net in my room and they felt it was very important for me to sleep under the net so they let me go home to sleep. That night Dr. Mponya forced me to go eat chips mayai with him. He was determined I was going to eat food. I just couldn’t eat. Every time I would eat I would get so sick. Let me remind everyone that chips mayai is an omelette with French fries. I was surprised I kept it down…until I woke up the next morning. It was sickness all over again. I talked to my field director and she encouraged me to transfer to a better hospital that was three and a half hours away. I knew at this point it was my only hope to feeling better. I just wasn’t sure if I could withstand the bus ride. Bus rides in Africa are brutal. You cannot move positions and they fit about everything known to man in the bus. Goats, babies, charcoal stoves, if it can fit then it can come. All the fellow World Teach volunteers felt like Mwanza was the best bet for curing this sickness so they were really encouraging me to go. The hospital was more advanced and could provide better care…I just needed to get there. Emily missed a day of school to come with me. We managed to get a window seat and I didn’t budge the entire ride. Three and a half hours turned into five and a half hours. After about the three-hour mark I couldn’t hold in the tears any longer. I just wanted off the bus. It was so crowded and so hot. We kept going through checkpoint after checkpoint and there was not enough airflow. The last two hours my head just hung out of the bus. We finally made it and I ran to the “choo” (bathroom) as fast as I could. The taxi driver dropped me straight off at the hospital. They had to re do the tests that Somanda did and I got my results in 30 minutes (crazy the difference). It showed that I had a large amount of amoebas (parasites) and that’s why I was not getting any better. They gave me different medications and told me no matter what this would stop the constant bouts of sickness and all would be good. I left and checked into a hostel and then tried to get some food to take my medicine before I went to sleep. I couldn’t even finish my food and I was so sick again. It was a very rough night alone in my room just wanting to feel better but my body wouldn’t let me. Emily and I got separate rooms so this added to me feeling even more alone. It was so hot and I just wanted to be in my own bed back in Bariadi with a fan not in this hotel room by myself. It was hard too because I had no TV or no music it was just me in a room thinking about how awful I felt. The next morning I was not any better. I decided to go back to the hospital and they admitted me for two days. They gave me IV antibiotics and fluids for dehydration. They switched the medicines again and this time it actually worked. Third time is the charm! After a day of rest in my hospital bed and a day of fluids I felt like a new person. Emily brought me dinner and I was able to keep it down which was a huge sign of improvement. They had a TV in my room and believe it or not they had good shows playing! I watched Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives. I didn’t feel so alone with the familiarity of American television and a nicer surrounding. Emily brought me a milkshake that night which made me happy. The next day it was the same routine, white walls caving in on me. I just wanted to go home. I finally left the next day after 24 hours of no sickness. They sent me home with 5 days worth of oral antibiotics. On the bus ride home I couldn’t stop thinking about how important my health is. I have to stay healthy in order to stay here. I want to accomplish so much while I am here but I will not be able to do that if I cannot remain healthy. It makes me so sad that something like water can be such a setback for me on my journey but I am trying to remain strong. I lost my spirit for a while this week but now that I am recovered I am going to work so hard to regain my strength. I love it here too much to go home early. I love the people, I love the work I am doing, and I love the passion I have created inside myself for helping these people. When that got taken away from me this week I felt like my entire spirit was drained out of me. Please pray that this will not happen again, that I will stay healthy and that my spirit will remain strong.

"For my strength is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9

Haven’t posted on my blog in over a week so it is time for an update! Between now and the last time I posted I have been very busy. I got my first bout of sickness. Pole sana. (I’m sorry) Is what I heard all last weekend from many of my friends. I got an amoeba from the water or the food I’m not sure which one but it was awful I know that. I think I made the outdoor toilet my new home for the weekend. I texted a doctor from the hospital and he brought me medicine. He told me to take 10 pills at one time after eating a lot of food, I was a bit skeptical at taking ten pills at one time…so I ended up just taking my cipro.

That Friday Dr. Mponya insisted that I go with him to hear the mzungus (white people) preach. I was really interested in going! How many times are white people preaching in Africa?! Low and behold they were from NC! They spotted me in the crowd pretty quickly considering I was the only white girl. They came up and asked me where I was from and if I was a missionary. I told them I was a teacher here in town and heard that they were preaching for the week. They invited me to dinner that night but that is when I got so sick. They were Pentecostal and they preached a lot to the congregation about how to speak in tongues and how imperative this was as a believer in Christ. I knew nothing about this so it was very foreign to me to listen to. It was very interesting to see that the African people believe anything that mzungus say no matter what. They lack critical thinking skills to the extent that they never question anything for themselves to think ‘is this right or wrong.’ The preacher spoke about having visions from God and seeing demons many times in his life….lets just say it was an experience for me to be there, hearing congregations speak in tongues, and then there was me feeling very isolated. That Sunday when I was somewhat recovered from my amoebas Dr. Mponya came and got me and insisted I share a meal with the team. So I had dinner with them. The locals were begging me to ask the team if they would pray for a certain man that was very sick. I said I had no problem asking the preachers if they would do this. They said they didn’t mind. The man showed up after dinner, and was face down in the dirt flailing around like a snake. The team immediately told me he was demon possessed…They started praying that the demons would come out of him. I have never been around anything like this before. So after they prayed he was still lying there and literally started freaking out!!!! His body was moving in ways that I didn’t know were possible. They moved him inside and he was just out of control and they just left him there. I’m not really sure what happened there.

Later that week, I went to the big market that they have here in town every Tuesday and found baby clothes for the first time! I was so excited! I bought 25 outfits for $12. I am going to distribute them to some of the mothers in the hospital who keep asking me for clothes for their baby. They are truly in need and leave the hospital with their baby only wrapped in a thin sheet called a kanga. I also got a list from the school beside my house of kids who need back packs. Many of the kids carry their books in black plastic bags. I am going to try to work on getting them backpacks for school. I was so sad when I went to go give my sweet little twins that I visit every day at the hospital (they are 7 months) their outfits I bought them and they were gone. I was trying to ask where they live but to get directions around here is comical. People were telling me “beside the cows” I’m like there are cows everywhere around here haha. My friend is going to help me find them because I miss them so much and they are truly suffering from malnutrition and I want to help them.

This week we had a 2-day holiday. It was Eid Mubarak, a Muslim holiday and also the end of Ramadan. It was so nice to have a break from school! I went over to my friend Mwajabu’s house (she is also a teacher at Kidinda) and we made pilau and mchicha on the jiko! It was honestly one of the best meals I have had since I have been here. I met her roommate Ummy, which I loved. They both speak such wonderful English and I connect with them so well. I feel so bad for her because she has not received her salary from the government since March. She is a teacher at Mahaha, which is a school in Bariadi. They keep saying she is not approved, which is a lie. It makes me so angry how corrupt the government is here. I asked her how she was surviving here with no salary and she said Mwajabu was helping her and her parents are too. Today BiBi told me that she found out that all the kids who board at Bariadi (250 students), the government is supposed to pay for their food. They eat 3 meals a day so that costs 1,500 tsh. That is almost $1 per student to eat 3 meals a day, but the government hasn’t paid this money for their food in 1 year. We were trying to figure out how these students are going to continue to get food….makes me so angry.

I want to try to grow food at my school for the students to eat but Bariadi is a desert area so not many people garden here. All the food we get from the market is imported from bigger towns like Dar. I will have to give this more thought to see if this could even be a possibility.

School has been going well. I get so frustrated with my students some time, because I feel like no matter how many times we go over material they still act clueless when it comes to quiz time. If they have 1 hour to take the quiz and it has 20 questions, they will have 30 minutes left and still be on #1. I’m like!!!!!! Let’s speed it up! Or if I have them draw diagrams of some sort and label things on their quiz, like draw the neuron and label a b and c, or draw an eye and label a b and c and they will spend so much time on this!!!!! Shading and adding patterns and texture to the picture you’re just like sweetheart that’s wonderful but lets get to the next question! They are such perfectionists and test-taking skills have not been taught here whatsoever.

One day this week I walked into my class to find three male teachers beating half my class for no reason. All the girls were in the corner of the class trying to protect each other covering themselves and the teachers were just looking for people to beat. I walked in the class so upset. I may not have the authority to say anything in a large school setting when that is going on but when it is my class time that is not okay. I walked right up to them and said, “get out.” They looked at me with their stick in the air ready to hit the student again and said “Madam let me finish I have 4 more I need to beat.” I said, “No, please go.” They walked out and all the students were saying “thank you Madam thank you for saving us, thank you for saving us.”

I was walking home late one night and ran into Suzy my neighbour. She is 6 years old. It was very dark outside and not safe for her to be walking alone. I said “Hi beautiful! What are you doing out by yourself?” She told me it was her sister, Rachel’s birthday tomorrow. I love Rachel she is 11. Her and Suzy come over and spend time with me a lot on the weekend. Last weekend they came over and watched the Lion King on my computer while I worked on some worksheets for my students. I said, “It is! How special!” She said, “I am going into town to get her a jift.” I love that she says gift with a ‘j’. I said “Do you have money?” and she said “No.” My heart sank. I didn’t have a lot of money on me to give her, all I had was 900 tsh which was not that much at all. I gave it to her and said, “Here take this, go buy Rachel the best jift ever.” She was beaming with joy and ran off saying thank you Madam!! I was teary eyed the whole way home thinking wow. All the time and energy I spend on my birthdays and Rachel is going to get a gift that is less than $1 tomorrow and will be so thrilled. That will be her birthday. I made her a card the next day at school and went to her house to give it to her. She was so happy! It’s the little things here.

At school on Thursday they had a debate on if Europeans came to Africa would this be a positive or negative thing. The whole school participates in the debate. They all bring chairs and sit under the trees and students from each form are called on to give a pro or a con on the topic. One boy was called on to give a con. He said that if Europeans came to Africa they would bring a lot of promiscuity. This would also cause a lot of sexual acts to occur and Europeans wear condoms, which cause cancer. WHAT?!! I was appalled. I called the student over after he was done speaking and said, “Who told you that condoms cause cancer?” He said, “Madam it is true condoms cause cancer.” I said, “No that is not true they do not cause cancer! You need to protect yourself.” Lord help us how can they think this. Education is key!

I am really starting to feel like a local now in the market near my house. I leave my house and grab some food before I head to the hospital or grab some food on the way home. I always go to the same little spot and the mamas always get so excited to see me. They always force-feed me soda and rice and beans. They are so sweet!! It is so interesting how you learn to love communicating in a language you don’t even understand. They speak Sakuma the local tribal language that I probably know 3 words of. I just sit and listen to them try to speak to me. I nod my head and hold their hands. I eat my rice and love their company. I don’t understand what their saying but I laugh with them and smile and I feel such comfort being with them. They are my friends. The other day a precious little girl came up to me in her school uniform and you could tell she was hungry. She handed me a piece of white paper all folded up. I opened it and it was her report card from school! She made all A’s this term! I pulled her up a plastic chair and got her a soda. I went and got her an empty bowl and spoon and gave her half of my food. We had lunch together and she was so excited! I had to teach her how to use a spoon because she was only used to using her hands, that is definitely a cultural thing here in Africa. She showed me how she could count to ten in English, and she sang me the song “head, shoulders, knees and toes.” She was 4 years old and the most precious little girl I had spent time with. She beamed with joy and didn’t want me to leave her. I told her I had to go to the hospital but I would visit her tomorrow!

One night this week I went to some of my hospital friends house. They live pretty close to me. They have a TV and they get some American channels. They love to watch the Kardashians. I was so embarrassed! “Is this what America is like? Is this what you do in America?” “No I said, not everyone lives this way.” “They don’t?” I was becoming so frustrated. The next show on E TV was a reality show where Americans were at a restaurant and all they were doing was screaming at the waitress because their guacamole wasn’t on the side just the way they ordered it. “Why are they being so rude?” they said. “Are all Americans like this?” What am I supposed to say to this? How am I supposed to explain this to them? I just said, “Why are we watching this? Can we turn the channel? Lets watch something else.

The hospital this week was eventful. My friend Monica who is my age had her baby! So I got to be there for her. She had a baby boy and he is so handsome! She did wonderful and I was so thankful for that. Another mother had twins, one boy and one girl. They are so amazing! I feel for her and try to help her as much as I can. The time one gets to sleep the other one wakes up and starts to cry wanting food, she never gets a break. They are always on the same schedule!  One morning I came to visit Monica and saw a lady across from her spoon-feeding her child milk. Monica speaks good English so I asked her, “Why is she doing that?” and she said, “She is having trouble with her milk coming in.” I said, “Why isn’t she using a bottle?” She said, “A what?” I said, “A bottle.” She said, “I’m sorry you’ll have to explain I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It hit me, oh my gosh they do not know what bottles are. That is why she is using a spoon. In my mind I was thinking spoons are not good to use because it will create bad sucking problems, why isn’t she using a bottle? But these people don’t know what a bottle is. This was a time where I had to take a deep breath and remember wow I am in a developing country. I just told Monica never mind and went on holding her handsome little boy.

I saw a baby be born who had AIDS. This was wild to see. The baby barely had any skin; you could almost see its femur bone. It also had very little hair. The mother had AIDS when she got pregnant and never took any of the retrovirus medicine. I honestly don’t know if the baby will survive.

Just two days ago I was in the nurses room and one of the male nurses came and got me and said would you like to come see a breached delivery. I said “yes by C-section?” He said “No we don’t deliver breached babies by C-section here.” I’m thinking that is really dangerous, in the US most all breached babies are delivered by C-section because it can be very dangerous for the baby and for the mother. I go into the delivery room and I see the mother in the process of delivery and two legs sticking out of the vagina. For about 35 minutes we make no progress, the baby isn’t moving further out of the birth canal and the mother is getting tired. There isn’t a doctor in sight. The nurses decide to assist the mother. They begin to see what the problem is, why the baby isn’t coming out any further. The male nurse sticks his hands all the way into the birth canal and the mother is in so much pain. He discovers that the baby’s arms are sticking straight out in the birth canal and will have to be bent down in order to help the baby pass through the canal. At this point it has been so long that the legs have just been hanging out that they squeeze the umbilical cord to check for a pulse, they get nothing. There is no pulse. The baby is dead. Now the main focus is just to get the baby out. They finally managed to get the arms down and managed to pull the baby out but the way they handled this woman I was cringing. They laid the dead baby on the mother, cut the umbilical cord and told her the baby had died in the process. She showed no emotion. They would inform the relatives to come get the body for a burial.

Last week I came into the maternity ward and the nurse Angel said “You just missed a delivery!” The young mother was standing up!! She had just delivered her baby and was standing up over her child. I said, “I don’t think she should be standing up right now.” Angel said, “Brooke, African women are strong!” I look down and she is standing in a puddle of blood, she had started to hemorrhage. I said “Angel, get in here we need to get her on a table.” She came and helped me and gave her 3 shots of oxytocin, which is supposed to cause contractions and stop the bleeding. Women can hemorrhage after labor and die if you are not careful. Angel was massaging her uterus and literally had her arm up to her elbow inside of her pulling clots out of her uterus. She was losing so much blood. The mother was yelling in pain and trying to close her legs because it hurt so bad. At this time Dr. Naomi (a man) walked in and saw her resisting Angel, trying to close her legs. He walked over to her and started beating her. I was in shock. This woman was hemorrhaging!!!! He grabbed both of her legs and yanked them as far back to her head as they could go, started hitting her stomach so hard instead of massaging it and started taking his fist to her head. He was yelling at her saying, “Do not resist her! Do not resist her!” in Swahili. I was frozen. I could not believe he was doing this. The nurse Angel was laughing. I cannot believe that beatings are so tolerated here not just with students but with women too. This woman was probably in half a trance she had lost so much blood and you beat her for expressing emotion? I keep my distance from him at the hospital now.

I visited the Pediatric ward the other day. There was a terrible burn patient. The little boy was 5 years old. His entire face was unrecognizable from burns. He was in charge of cooking dinner for his siblings that night on the jiko (a charcoal burner) and the wind was bad outside. Boiling water + bad winds equaled terrible 3^rd degree burns for this precious little boy.  A 5-year-old cooking dinner for his siblings, I couldn’t get it out of my head. So many things I took for granted when I was growing up as a child.

Positive things about Tanzania:

The stars are absolutely mesmerizing. I get lost in them every night on my walk home.

The people are so kind. I’m walking home every day and someone stops to escort me, or to help me carry my bag.

Sometimes people just want to hold my hand while I’m walking to wherever I am going. That makes me happy.

The Lord works in such mysterious ways here. I feel so close to him. Little things happen to me throughout my day reminding me why I’m here.

I am so thankful to be here to love on these people and to help in any way I can. My life is being changed so much. People are teaching me each day to be so grateful and my heart is humbled every second of every day with each encounter I face.

The twins that were born at the hospital!

Cooking on the jiko at Mwajabu's house!

My student doing his presentation on Neurons.

My sweet friends.