FOOD BAGS DAY!

Well, this was one of the most exciting days so far! We went early, at 7.30am to the orphanage and got a nice surprise - the children were all lined up in the school yard for their 'morning ritual' of singing, dancing and stretching - what an amazing thing to watch! We guess one of the reasons for this is to try keeping them busy until the last ones arrive. Lined up by the four grades (the smallest grade in the first row, the oldest in the last), they are chanting all kinds of children songs in unity, but also counting numbers, repeating the orphanage rules by heart and in a playful way, start stretching their muscles. There is no praying involved, all religions are next to each other - the most widespread are Christianity and Islam, but they are chanting songs about how grateful they are, that they are all coming from heaven and one song (that impressed us the most) was chanted from the bottom of their hearts: 'I am happy to share'. So these are the values that apparently are tought over here, and we have to admit that this is quite impressive and explains the peaceful togetherness of the people.

It was touching to see these small kids being so self-reliant and independent, walking all the way to school by themselves. The smallest kids or children with special needs are guarded by same-aged friends or siblings, so everybody takes care of each other. There seem to be no schools for special needs, they just get integrated in normal schools and seem to be so happy with this!



Juma with his friend


Once we entered the house, we saw that Alice and the widows had pre-packed most of the food bags, meaning that they measured out 2 kilos of each rice / beans / flour / sugar and salt and distributed each of those into 450 small bags. So here the real work started - we prepared 80 large bags, distributed the small ones into them, followed by 2 litres of oil (which we poured from large canisters), 2 long bars of soap, and not to forget - our IKEA blanket that we brought from Abu Dhabi!



preparing 450 small food bags



a full room of work

  

 

Zoe and Martina in packing action

Once again we unpacked and repacked and folded and unfolded and rolled and unrolled those blankets into their final destination - this made us laugh, since we got a sudden feeling that those blankets obviously were the most work in the whole trip!

Martina and Yves rolling and packing the blankets -again!

We had another visitor - Hanna, the founder of Glorious Orphanage Cooperation came to Arusha to spend two weeks on site, looking for potential land where another orphanage could be built, as an extention of Glorious Orphanage! Good luck with that!

refilling 160 litres of oil

exhausted Zoe

 
So we all worked together on the food bags, refilling oil, fixing torn sugar bags, scratching beans from the floor to not loose a single one and this all in a very busy environment with curious kids, guardians looking eagerly through the windows and Amos, Alice's son stealing the sugar and proudly showing it to the pupils outside. Being soaked in oil all over our bodies, having sugar on top of it and some flour on the skin and in the hair we finally understood how a breaded chicken feels before going into the frying pan!

curious guardians and kids

full action in sugar, oil and dirt

Towards the end of the packing - which took us around 5 hours - we were running out of plastic bottles for the oil re-fill. Note on the side - all empty water bottles are kept preciously for filling and re-filling over here, we felt a bit bad remembering all the Masafi bottles that we are just throwing down the garbage chute back home. However, this left us with only one choice: we had to drink 2 litres of water each and on the spot to get some more empty bottles. We never had such round bellies!



drinking water for a good cause



bags and us finished!

At noon, most of the guardians came - mostly women in their beautifully colored dresses - and lined up in front of the door staring at the food bags. The expression in their faces was so happy, excited and grateful! Some of them talked to us in Swahili but the only word we understood is 'asante' - meaning 'thank you'.

guardians arriving

queueing in front of the entrance

Outside, they wraped a scarf into the form of a small ring, placed them on their heads, tied up the bags (13-14 kilos heavy!) and placed them on their heads! This is the way they walked out of the orphanage, with a big smile on their faces! We felt a moment of sadness thinking of the rest of our management team. We would have loved to share this very rewarding moment with all of them since it gives you so much more back than you invested!

wrapping them up for the walk

all placed on the heads

look at her facial expression!

dancing for the picture!

happy ladies on the way home

Soaked with this beautiful experience, we left for the day - dirty, exhausted, painful backs but completely happy. On the way back, rain started and poured down heavily for half an hour (like every day so far), which managed to get us our last surprise of the day which we only could laugh about though - no water, electricity and light in the hotel! Cheers to that. 

salt packets