Today was Jane's last day at Juvi. She has a real job (what?!) to get back to in New York. Obviously, all of the boys and I are going to miss her tons. What will I do without her on Monday? Well, with Jane's help we've finished the hardest part (the scraping of tons of paint) and created some work for ourselves filling in our mural...here are some pictures of our work thus far:

First the wazungu (foreigners) set off to juvi to paint...

Then much vigorous (but not particularly careful) painting ensues...


Today we moved on to trace, trace, tracing away...

And striking a pose to be silhouetted...


And refining said silhouettes so they look human (if you look closely you can see the white chalk outlines on the beautiful, clean, blue wall)...


and Done (at least for today)!

Coming Soon!

A mural!

That's right, all week we've been working on a mural at Juvi. Jane and I thought that doing the mural on the wall inside of the boys dorm room would be nice since they spend so much time in there...and there wasn't much to look at.

So on Monday we arrived with pictures of murals and started our work...what we thought would be easily accomplished in a week is probably now going to take two, at least one and a half. We spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday scrape-scrape-scraping the old (very dirty) paint off the walls. We tried a power sander (a good try that didn't work out -- took off most of the plaster with it), but we mostly ended up using hand scrapers. With hip-hop/rap music playing in the background, our many hands made light(ish) work. And, finally today we were ready to plaster over all of the holes we (accidentally) made during our scraping!

This afternoon our plan is to head over to Juvi with a group of our fellow volunteers to paint the walls baby blue--the base color of our mural. So hopefully by tomorrow we will start sketching on the walls and get the mural going! The theme of the mural is music/dancing...it's partly inspired by a mural in my home town of Homer, Alaska. Each of the boys is going to pick a pose and we'll trace their silloutte onto the wall. We also have some bright colors for embelishments ...we're getting there!

Here are some pictures of our work thus far:

It got a little bit dusty in the room...


But it's all good -- we kept on keepin' on...


with a break for breakfast!

Kwaheri!

Judgement Day

Today was E and S's (both prefects and Juvi) Judgement day.

Jane and I arrived at Juvi at our normal time, said hi to everyone, and then walked S and I over to the court house holding/waiting area. The court house is about 200 yards away from Juvi, so it wasn't much of a walk. Once we got there, we waited for the adult defendants to be brought from the adult jail (which is much farther away). Finally, after about an hour of waiting I's case was called. I, S, Isaac, Jane and I all walked over to the court house and then into the courtroom.

The courtroom itself was about 6' by 12', with benches lining two walls for the accused and witnesses, and a table for the magistrate. After sitting ourselves down on the benches, Jane and I were asked to leave, apparently because of the sensitive nature of the case (not because S is a juvenile). However, we walked out of the courtroom and ended up standing right outside the court's open windows, with a clear view of the room. The proceedings were in Swahili, but body language is universal. S kept his face as blank has he could, but the paper he held in his hands was shaking. About a half an hour later, after one witness testified, everyone came out of the courtroom and we learned that S would have to come back on Feb 9th because one witness did not come. Feb 9th will mark S's 15th court appearance since his arrest.

E did not fare any better. Isaac had to leave to go to work before E's case was called, which left Jane and I alone as his support. When E's case was called he went into the courtroom with 7 other defendants, all adults. When we walked into the court room we learned that the judge is on vacation until at least next Friday (how this fact wasn't known before today is unclear...especially after his last court date was postponed due to the magistrate's absence). So next Friday I will be going back to court with E. It will be his 18th time at court in the 6.5 months since he was arrested.

Neither E or S seemed too distraught that their cases are still pending, perhaps after so many court appointments it's what they expected. I don't understand how some of the Juvi boys come to Juvi and are released within 1-2 weeks, and others are there for months. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the severity of the charge; instead, it appears to be chance. If your witnesses show up, if the judge shows up, if you get lucky.

So, on February 5th and February 9th, please thinks positive thoughts for E and S.

Ba-rock!

Please note who's face is all over ine and Jane's kanga wraps. That'd be Obama.

Last night was spent by myself, my fellow volunteers, and a whole crew of others at a bar called "Glacier Inn" ( although there is no Inn to speak of). The drinks were cold (a wonderful surprise), the tv screen large, and all the seating outside; all-in-all a wonderful setting.




but wait! around 11:35 DC time, the power went out. It was 7:45 pm here in Tanzania, pitch black, and the Tanzanians, Canadians, Brits, Irish, Aussies, and Americans in the crowd all let out a gasp together...only 25 mintues till inauguration and we'd lost power! EEK! Luckily, Glacier Inn was prepared for this kind of thing, and they had a back up generator ready to go...just a few minutes spent in the dark and then the screen lit up again.





oh no again! 11:45 DC time and the screen starts to flicker, we loose sound, and then we loose the signal from CNN altogether. Luckily Aljazeera was doing live coverage as well. So with less than 15 minutes to go till Obama's inauguration, we were ready!





And praise be to Krishna, there were no more mishaps until the very end of Obama's speech...we missed the last few minutes due to another loss of power, but I'm pretty sure he ended with, "I will Ba-rack you! Peace!"

After the inauguration itself a reggae band set up, and played until late into the night. They even had a rockin original reggae song, with a chorus of "barack obama. barack obama. barack obama. oh yea."

And earlier in the day Jane and I spent the morning at Juvi talking about Barack Obama, his daughters, his wife, where he went to school and other such things. Now, if you've been reading this blog semi-regularly, you may remember that we no longer have a local liaison to translate for us at Juvi. So then, how did we manage to share all of this knowledge with the Juvi boys? Well, we spent much of the prior afternoon sitting down with our program coordinator translating some select sentences...which we then practiced saying before heading off to Juvi. We also brought with us two Magazines (Time -- Person of the Year, and Washington -- Special inaugural issue) and spent a lot of time pointing. We wrapped up our civic lesson with drawings/letters to Bais Obama, which we will be packaging up and sending off to him in the near future.

As Promised

First! I have a tanzanian cell phone number... 011 255 71 691-8678. I think this is the whole number, including the code to get out of the US, into Tanzania, and my number itself. If you want to try calling I'd suggest skpye, it's cheap!

And now:
In the past week at Juvi we've had about a 75% turn over rate...which is great for those boys who get to go home, but hard to know why the new boys are there without our local liason (we're not sure if he's taking a vacation or has a new job elsewhere...hakuna matata). Today while Jane and I were walking back home after Juvi, we saw one of the recently released boys walking back to Juvi. He'd been released, but was bringing the other Juvi boys mangos. How great is that?

And luckily there are some things that don't require local liason translation, namely music. Here are some pictures from our little lesson:

E, Godi (the warden's son, not a Juvi boy, c'mon he's only 4!) and I, with musical genres on the board in the background...



Now we try some swing dancing to jazz music...



Raj and I trying to box-step to classical...



getting down to hip-hop (by far the favorite)...


and here's everyone posing in the classroom.

Tha-tha-that's all folks!
(for now)

A Story

Today I would like to take a minute to recount the story of one boy at Juvi, let's call him E.

E is 16 and has been in Juvi for 8 months. Before coming to Juvi he lived with his grandmother because his parents died (of what, I'm not sure), and since coming to Juvi his grandmother died, which means that he doesn't have a home to go back to. He is accused of stealing, and from what I can gather it seems to be a wrong place-wrong time kind of thing.

He's now one of two "prefects" (british school system, a la Harry Potter) at Juvi, and is responsible for locking the other boys in their room when we leave, cooking the meal(s) and other things. The other boys seems to look up to him, and he is a very curious guy. The other day he asked if I could explain the meaning of the word "versus" (I used: Mike Tyson VS Evander Hollyfield). Yesterday, January 14, was supposed to be his Judgement Day (seriously, that's what it's called). He went to court with Isaac, our local liason at Juvi, but the magistrate didn't show up. His court date has been rescheduled for the 27th of January, but this is the second time it's been rescheduled due to magistrate absence...and if he doesn't get released soon then he will miss another year of school.

I don't mean for this to be a sob story, but it seems -- in my 1.5 weeks of experience -- typical of what happens to the boys at Juvi. Some of them are sent there for reasons that seems so trivial (certainly not worthy of months of incarceration) and have no way to get out. It's not like there's a case worker for each boy...hell there's not a case worker for any of them. The closest thing they have is Isaac and the CCS volunteers.

In order to shed a bit of bright Tanzanian sunshine (holy sunscreen it's strong!) on y'all, let me share a story from our music lesson today. We brought in an Ipod and speakers and played a wide array of music, from classical and opera to country and jazz and rap and tried to identify differences. Some of the music really made them stand up and start dancing (rap, pop, reggae) others caused a bit of head scratching (classical, jazz, country). There are more awesome pics/video that I'll try to get up later.

Boom Chicka Boom!

Alright, 3 days at the Juvenile Detention Hall (henceforth to be called "Juvi")!

Let's see...right now there are about 13 boys and 1 girl at the center. Oh wait, to start, Juvi is where the kids go before they go to trial, it's like a holding tank. Of course, some of the boys have been holding there for months, some even years. So people come and go depending on how fast the court system works (and also how severe the crime), on my first day at Juvi there were 2 new boys, both of who are very quiet...and one of who won the game of limbo that we played today (the first time I saw any kind of emotion of his face -- big smile).

I'm still getting the lay of the land at Juvi, but from what I can tell, the boys are locked in their room if we're not there and it's not meal time. Speaking of meal time, on a good day they will get porridge for breakfast and beans for lunch. However, on the not so good days it's just beans for lunch around 3pm. But the boys are very well behaved, and they seem really eager to learn. And so far, every day we've played soccer. The soccer field is across the road from the detention center, and the boys are allowed to go across the road as long as we (and maybe a guard too) come with them. Well, not all the boys, there's one who tried to run away, and the two new boys who can't come across the road. Still, I was surprised that we were allowed to leave with them at all. I think a lot of the boys that were street children feel a real connection to the place after they leave, right now there are two boys just staying there even though they don't have too. I think they don't have anywhere else to go and they seem to be welcomed back.

Alright, that's going to be enough from me for now! This coming Monday is a holiday (Zanzibar's independence day) and so we're going to go on a safari (which means "journey" in swahili)! I'll be camping in the Serengeti come Saturday night!

And...we're there!

Alright! After only a small mishap -- I left my wallet in the car (oops!) after being dropped off at the airport, but I got it back -- I was off! Thank goodness.

And after just a few hours of flying (about 21), we arrived in Kilimanjaro airport safe and sound (and looking good as all get out)!
Please note that Tim is wearing his international volunteer shirt...which meant that I never put mine on.

To be brief: the weather is hot, but not humid (whew), my skirts below my knees and shirts that cover my shoulders are rockin', there's a lot of curry in the food here (all of which has been delicious thus far), and everything's green and gorgeous as all get out. I have even heard tell of a bakery with cake...in the next few days i'm going to try and hunt that puppy down.

Orientation was wonderfully brief, less than a day and a half -- and we're off into our placements as of today. My swahili is coming along polepole (slowly), but it's coming all the same!

This morning I got my first clear glimpse of Mount Kilimanjaro from the front yard of our house. Not too shabby, huh?

More later about my placement, but I did teach a group of kids the "dum-dum-dada" camp song yesterday (big hit), and earned the nick name "Dum-Dum"...either that or "Dada"...I'm not clear which.

Also, if you're interested in a post card, give me your address and I'll see what the Tanzanian Postal Service and I can work out!