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.