Volunteer Amani
5th Dec 2006Christmas Comes Early To Amani With Some Funny Faces! It is now Tuesday 5th December and I really cannot believe that we are just 3 weeks from Christmas Day! The weather has been somewhat interesting recently with extremely hot spells, and quite regular torrential downpours which have created the familiar mud problem! I think that my shoes will begin to rot if I wash them much more! The problem is that my daily walk to work is now through what you would describe as rough forest trails I guess. I weave my way between houses and smallholdings dotted around between huge mango trees. banana palms and lots of other pretty amazing plants and shrubs. I see lots of wildlife, including numerous lizards, geckos, birds and lots of really large insects. One part of my walk takes me through mango trees which host some incredibly loud insects. They sound like power tools! I will save the rest of my sightings for another time as they warrant a seperate diary entry! My point is that when it rains I get very muddy! Even when I get close to Amani I still have to negotiate a very muddy path down the edge of a deep drainage ditch! I continue to settle into my new house which is rather too big for my own needs but was the only one available at the time. I am still not too sure about how I feel about staying in such a large place with spare rooms when people around me struggle to exist in inadequate accomodation or single rooms. It does not make me feel too good but at least for the time being I must call it home. It is also very quiet at night, sometimes too quiet and at least a good 10 mins walk to the main road. During powercuts it is also very dark, so I have to be sensible at what time I go out and about at night. It doesn`t help when the water goes off either, which has happened quite a lot recently. I am now used to doing my daily chores using buckets of water, including all of my laundry by hand! The plus side of living at Njia Panda is the spectacular views of Kilimanjaro, which just recently have been spectacular! Just this evening the sky cleared and there was a full moon lighting up the mountain and this morning the view was also spectacular. Kili has a lot of snow at the moment and its glaciers look huge! Now back to the main theme of this entry the Amani Children`s Christmas Party, which was held yesterday! What an event! The planning and preparation started last week and on Sunday all Amani staff were asked to come into work to help out with the big clean-up! Everything was cleaned and tidied within the space of a few hours ready for the big day! We even wiped down the swings and climbing frame! Monday morning I arrived into work early around 7am to help out with the decorations and preparations for the party. It seemed really strange decorating a Christmas tree and hanging up streamers, balloons etc when the sun was blazing hot and the ground was baked hard! It did not feel like Christmas in the slightest! Unfortunately the sunny weather did not last and 2 or 3 times it poured down which soon created the usual quagmire in the Amani compound. We blew up lots of balloons until I was feeling quite light headed, and fixed them up along with other ribbon decorations where we could on the Amani gates and around the gazebo. Other staff created a backdrop from fabric for the important speakers, including an African Father Christmas, who looked rather surreal and the wierdest dressed Santa Claus I have ever seen! I remember him once being described as a red and white version of a member of the Klu Klux Klan and that is not far wrong! Still the children didn`t seem to care as he gave out lots of sweets and balloons to them during the day. The table for the guest speakers also looked quite amusing with flashing fairy lights, pink and white fabric and 2 inflatable girafffes! I took lots of pictures and hope to upload some to my site very soon! Within a couple of hours the proceedings began and there seemed to be hundreds of people and extra children in the compound all trying to shelter under the holey tarpaulins from the downpours. The Amani party is open to friends and neighbours of Amani as well as the Amani children themselves.What a pity that it had to rain after all of that effort with the cleaning up! I spent quite a lot of the day face-painting the children along with Chris and Thirza and we had a great time! We had to lock ourselves in the office to prevent a small riot developing as so many of the children wanted their faces painting! There was a huge que outside the door and sometimes the waiting children were becoming impatient and minor scuffles began to break out! In the end another member of staff was put on crowd control duty! We painted all sorts of designs on an awful lot of faces, maybe 50 to 60 of the children and even some staff. Designs included spider`s webs, pirates, geckos, dog`s faces, flowers, skulls, Tanzanian flags, bees, flowers and just some very crazy faces! The children loved it and I even noticed partial designs still on children`s faces the morning after the party. Spot the children who don`t have a daily wash (there`s lots of them at Amani!) Back to the main party in true African fashion it went on for hours with so many items on the agenda that it is very hard to list them all. Highlights for me were performances by an ngoma dance/drum troop from Dar. and some superb performances from the Amani children`s ngoma group. What made the Amani performances even more entertaining was the fact that the performers were in full costume, and many of them still had painted faces as a result of efforts earlier that morning! Even one of the Education staff members wandered around all day with his face painted as a dog complete with tongue hanging out! There were also lots of speeches and midway lunch was served, which was an amazing undertaking as Amani must have fed around 300 plus children/people that day! The food was excellent, and cleverly prepared with next to no facilities in the Amani compound, by a team of ladies. It reminded me of school dinner except for the mud underfoot! After lunch the proceedings got underway again and the crowd was noticeably thinner! I got the feeling that a lot of people just came along for the lunch, but who can blame them!? The Amani dance and drama teacher did a fine job as MC for the day. It was not easy with so many children who were finding it very hard to sit still and listen for any period of time! Another highlight of the day was the giving out of presents to the Amani children. It was great to see their faces light up as the crazily dressed Father Christmas gave them each a large brown envelope with some small gifts inside. The younger children especially loved their presents. Some recieved lego, whilst others a small animal on wheels, which travelled quite fast when a string was pulled to work its mechanism. These toys have infact been flying around the compound ever since, each day looking even more the worse for wear and minus yet more pieces! Nothing lasts for very long at Amani as there are just so many very active children there. The older boys recieved watches which they were very pleased with. I don`t recall what the girls were given only that they all looked so smart in dresses that made them look like African princesses! I`m not too sure just when the party ended but I had to leave Amani as the light was beginning to fade, to make it home in time before dark. I had spent almost 12 hours at Amani and was totally shattered and muddied up! I walked home with a spectacular view of Kilimanjaro as a back drop. The cloud had cleared, it was almost a full moon and as the light faded the stars shone amazingly bright in the night sky. What an incredible place to live and work I thought, as I arrived home, and my thoughts drifted to Christmas in England and the amazing Christmas dinner my mum always makes! It will taste even better next year I think! The days since the party have in a way been quite sad as it is the time of year when many of the Amani Children are encouraged to go home to stay with family or friends. Some could not wait to go, others were a lot more reluctant, and some will be umable to go and will remain at Amani for Christmas. I am already missing some of the Amani characters but have been kept busy with the remaining children and even some newcomers. As established children have left for their Christmas break other new ones have started to come to Amani. I really do hope that we start the New Year with all the familiar faces having returned.
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