Life continues in Hanga

I have been back in Hanga now since January 18 and upon my return I realized how much more this place is feeling like home. I traveled back to Hanga with my new friend Clare. She is from Canada and we met on the ferry on the way back from Zanzibar! I hung out with her and her brother for a couple days in Dar Es Salaam and then told her she should come visit Hanga and see another side of Tanzania before returning home. So she came with!

I decided not to continue with the same teaching schedule at St. Laurent's this semester since I will be leaving before the first break at Easter. Instead, I have been focusing my efforts on completing a lot of the projects that I began last fall. The school is still being painted, we have installed the television in the girl's cafeteria (it had previously been sitting on the floor in the box in Kastor's office for the past 8 or 9 months), I painted the new ball box that is now being used every day at the school, I had some help testing computers and setting up the lab again to begin teaching some computer classes next week, and of course there is always more cleaning and organizing to do. Our Bennie friends that are staying in Imiliwaha also came for a visit last weekend, and Cara came to help me clean one of the storage closets on Tuesday morning. We happened across big pieces of molded plastic from a "little tykes" play set, and I assumed that it must be broken somehow, otherwise it would be put together and out in the open for kids to play with, right? It turns out, it was sitting in storage simply because no one knew how to put it together! So with Cara and Anne's help I muscled the thing together (pretty tight fit!) and now the kids have a new toy. I think they like it...
Here is me on the way to a meal sometime this week. I call the kid on the left the "tano kid" every time he sees any of us volunteers walking around Hanga he runs after us and yells, "mzungu! TANO!" so i smile and give him a five.

And the dishes after dinner. I like the drying the best. Here we have Lennart on the left, the three Italian vets in the middle (Patricia and Maria arrived just about a week ago to help Francesca), Eva in the back, and Clare to the right. Our total international count right now is:
1 Canadian
2 USAians
2 Germans
3 Austrians
3 Italians
Thank you WINCRAFT! Though I no longer teach the same students every day (who are now in Standard VII) I still like to stop in and say hi every day. Two days ago I stopped in the classroom in the afternoon and gave out Minnesota Twins lanyards that WinCraft sent from Winona! The kids were sooo happy. Now they are all Twins fans, too!


The Vikings pennants and Timberwolves signs are also from WinCraft. I think they will become dormitory and classroom decorations!

I also rode the motorcycle to Nakagugu pre-secondary school today where I will be doing some English tutoring a couple days a week.

So, a different schedule this semester, but I am still keeping busy! And somehow there is always time in the afternoon for a few games of cribbage and an episode or two of "The Wire" with Charlie. Life is good.

More pictures of projects to come soon. all for now.