So, my dear sweet Ori has been in Tanzania with the rest of the Birthing Attendant School for over three weeks! They have been waiting on their work visas all this time.........and finally were able to work their first day in the clinic on Monday! Yay(:
Well...I'm not quite sure what else to say at the moment, so I'll just post parts of Orissa's email to us when she first arrived in Tanzania. (:
Orissa's email:
We are in the country on 81 acres. They have a farm and grow food. There are a lot of mango trees here and the season for them is December. They also have pineapples and coconuts. ( Miji, how did you make haupia in Hawaii? ) We are very blessed here to have clean water. They have a well and have tested their water, it tastes good and it’s a relief to be able to drink from the tap without worries.
Today is our first day free and some of us are taking a trip to the city; to get out money, send our emails and buy fruit. By the way, it is Saturday.
Breakfast here is usually a piece of bread with peanut butter or sugar and to drink we have tea and coffee. For lunch we eat Ugali ( look it up ) it’s a staple food here. With the Ugali we have beans and sometimes a little vegetable or boiled potato. Last night the meal was delicious! For two days we have seen someone scraping the white meat out of coconuts and then they put water over that and squeeze it to extract the milk. They took that coconut milk and cooked our rice for last night in it. With red beans and a little salad of tomato and onion.
I had a hard day yesterday, and cried a little but I finally talked with someone and felt better. We shared testimonies with each other yesterday.
I am typing up this email in my room at the base and then I’m putting it on a stick to take and send quickly in town.
We wash our clothes by hand here and dry them on a line. We have a classroom with a concrete floor, windows and desks that seat two. In my room there are three bunk beds. We have one shelf that we’ve divided among the six of us. We keep our books in the windows and we have two chairs in here. I am the daily storyteller here and we have been reading ‘Little Women’. We hear the call to prayer here; the first one is at 5 a.m. The village surrounding this base is mainly Muslim.
If you want to pray for the base, you can pray for rain because they really need rain.
PS. UPDATE!! I bought a cell phone today!! I bet you’re smiling about this news as you read it!! My cell phone number is 011-2557-5-846-4573.
(NOTE: Tanzania is 8 hours ahead pf Central US Time)
I can’t wait to get a call from YOU!! I love you. (Mom's note: if you have at&t mobile you can add global world for $3.99 month, and then calls to Tanzania are only 55 cents a minute. You can cancel the plan form at&t at any time)
· We might get internet here on the base. But we could ONLY use it for sending emails and no pictures.
I want to write more Mom, but we’re leaving soon and I need to finish this e-mail before we go. Please give my love to the family. I love you soooo much. Thanks again for the wonderful box you sent. And for the card. I brought it with me to read in Tanzania. And I have the ‘Oh the places you’ll go’ book here with me too.
Love, Orissa
