Goodbye goodbye goodbye

My time here is coming to a close. This wont be my last post, but it will be my last post from Hanga! I will make a few more posts with a faster Internet connection at home when i can upload some video clips and more pictures from my stay here.

This weekend was full of goodbyes. Anne and I will be leaving Hanga tomorrow morning at 5 AM to begin our journey home.

Friday night was the last movie night with the kids. This week, instead of watching with only the girls, i decided i wanted to include the boys too! This means i spent all day on Friday running around Hanga getting the equipment i needed! I borrowed the projector from the Seminary, the white board from the monastery store room, a stereo and extension cord from another one of the monks, and transported it all to St. L by foot one trip at a time. In the end it was all worth it to see the excitement on the kids faces. We watched Toy Story 2 together. great film :)

Just a quick shot from our photo shoot with our friend Gaudence. The new hostel in the background under construction again...

Good looking shirt Gaudence has on, hmmm?

On Saturday night we had our goodbye bash at St. Laurent's with the kids. What a celebration! Here is the gang walking through the village on the way to school...

Getting ready for the party in Kastor's office...oh! look at the cool new signs for the classrooms! this is for Standard 1 as you can see.

The rest of the crew preparing for the party. Charlie, me, Kastor, Anne, Wilma, Eva. Lennart was riding the bike back to the hostel to get water for us to drink!

Here we are at the head table. It was pretty fun.

Before the official celebrations began, we witnessed a flag lowering ceremony with the new flagpole! It looks great, and the kids are amazing at singing the national song. They sing it twice a day. Once as they raise the flag in the morning at 7:30 and once when they lower the flag before dinner at 7.

My Standard VII girls singing their goodbye song. This was pretty emotional. more so for the girls...but my eyes weren't exactly dry either :) I will post the videos from them singing in a later post.

The evening turned out to be more of an adventure than anticipated. In the middle of the presentations/songs it started to rain. Yes we were under the pavilion, but it was POURING! I think this was the hardest and longest rain that I have experienced here in Hanga. All we could do was laugh as the mist made everyone wet even though we were sitting under a big roof! I had a good time with it.

Finally, after the presentations were finished, the DJ cranked the music and we had a BongoFlavor dance party! Take a look at the pictures. it was a blast!

Lets see how many kids Ben can pick up at once. hehe.

After the music stopped, one of my students came up to me and said, "Ben, you can DANCE!" thank you very much. :)

After the kids left to return to their dorms, the teachers continued the party in the faculty office. I only stayed for a little bit. It was getting a little crazy. But still a lot of fun.

On Sunday afternoon, since i didn't get a chance to set this up due to the downpour the night before, I set up the projector that we used to watch the movie on Friday night to show the kids the 800+ pictures i had taken at St. Laurent's over the past 8 months. It was great hearing all of their reactions as they saw themselves on the big screen!

Perhaps more fun than the slide show was the impromptu game i made up while we were waiting for it to get dark. With all of the school just sitting, waiting for something to happen and at the same time listening to music, i thought to myself, this would be a great time for musical chairs! we played about 10 rounds and the kids never got tired of it. I only wish i would have introduced this game a bit sooner...we could have played a tournament every Sunday afternoon!

Sunday night was farewell party number two. This was a bit less exciting, and there was no disco, but it was good to gather one last time with the whole community of monks.

Here i am saying a few words of thanks for a good stay in Hanga. I will miss this place.

The guests of honor...

From left to right: Charlie, the Abbot of Mvimwa Abbey, me, and Br. Odo the Prior of Hanga Abbey.

Goodbye Hanga! Br. Kastor will travel with us tomorrow to Morogoro where we will stay for a short visit of two nights, then one night in Dar Es Salaam at the guest house there, and Friday Anne and I both have flights home. deep breath.

I might not post for another couple weeks, until I am back home in Winona. Once home, I will make at least a few good summary posts to show the various projects I have been involved in over the past 8 months as well as posting some video clips from my time here.

Thanks once again for reading :)

Happy Birthday, St. Laurent's Style

This past week there was a birthday at St. Laurent's! When your parent's supply the cake and juice for the school, you can have a party with THE WHOLE SCHOOL! I would like to invite 506 of my school mates to my next birthday party! 

Here is Josephat and I think his best friend at the head table. Josephat is the one on the right.

There was even an MC, kids rapping and singing popular gospel songs, and of course plenty of AZAM orange drink and mini cupcakes. mmmm.

Indeed. Thumbs up.

Here is the main man getting ready to cut his cake. 

After the cake was cut, Josephat fed certain people cake. This is a Tanzanian tradition i think. I was honored to be one of those chosen to be fed. As you can see, so was Lennart.

They made that sign for me. 

A group of my standard VII girls enjoying the party.

After almost two hours of celebration, it did get kind of long, though :)

You can also see from the top picture that this birthday was celebrated on St. Patrick's day! Not much more of a celebration for this feast, but I did take the opportunity to wear all green all day long, and speak a few words of Gaelic instead of Swahili. Happy St. Paddy's day!

Earlier tonight we gathered with all of the students again after dinner and watched Toy Story 2 in the assembly area. I had to do quite a bit of leg work around Hanga today rounding up the necessary equipment (projector, extension cord, speakers, popcorn...) but in the end it was all worth it to hear 400+ laughing together at Buzz and Woody. 

Tomorrow we will gather together again for a little going away party for me and Anne. We will both leave Hanga on Tuesday! That means only one or two more posts from this Hanga computer lab. it's been quite a run. Thanks for reading. the next pictures will be from the going away party! maybe i will get to feed people cake...

Happy Halloween...finally

At the beginning of this week i received a few more packages here in Hanga from home. One was posted from the Winona, MN office on October 27, 2008. One was posted the 4th of November 2008. Better late than never right? 

The package from November contained Halloween candy! The week after this holiday last fall i began telling my students that there was a surprise coming for them. My brother Tim was excited to have new friends in Tanzania, and was also feeling overly blessed by his abundance of "loot" from the night of the 31st, so he decided to send some candy over here! I told my students that it was on the way and they would most likely receive it from me after Thanksgiving break.

When it didn't come after Thanksgiving I promised them that it was still on the way, but probably would be here before Christmas. After Christmas came and went I was certain myself that it would be waiting for me in Hanga after I returned from my safari with my Dad in January. 

When it still was not here in February I gave up. But then it was here mid March! 

Immediately after receiving the package I went to school and asked my students to write thank you notes to my brother Tim. They were very excited to have the candy and be able to write new letters to their penpals in Minnesota. 

Thank you Tim! it was well worth the wait.

West Coast Reconnaissance : Kipili

I decided to save the best for last when talking about this trip...

After struggling through a 9 hour bus ride on mostly mud roads and finally reaching Sumbawanga, then traveling another two hours the next day on to Mvimwa Abbey, Charlie and I decided we still did not have enough of the backcountry rainy season travel. We pushed on to see the beautiful site of Kipili village and the house that the monastery has there on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.

Here is a view of the road...and this is when it is dry. It seems that there were repairs planned, but during the time that we were driving on them there was no one to spread out this new gravel...so that made for about half an hour of straight speed bumps. not fun...

But when we arrived, it all seemed worth it. Here are some shots from the grounds...

Charlie standing in front of the dormitory building...
This is looking back at the property from the water.

The water reminded me of the Carribbean, only it was freshwater! It was great to be able to swim in a lake again. We even got to take a boat ride. It made us a little nervous when we rode out into the lake for about twenty minutes and then the motor suddenly cut out...but we were close enough to shore that we could paddle our way in. And it was all for the better. If the motor wouldn't have cut out and forced us to paddle to land while the operator made the repairs, we would not have had the chance to swim at this picture perfect secluded beach. simply beautiful.

Me and Charlie with Br. Joseph

Here is Charlie with the open lake behind...and the mountains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo rising on the other shore...

We stopped at another small village on the lake as well.

The kids were pretty excited to have their picture taken. Though I am not sure what the deal is with the karate poses always...

Our second night there seemed to be a lot more commotion in our little bay area. We found out that there was a large passenger boat called the MV Liemba making its weekly pass through the area. The boat has been on the lake since the Germans used it in WWI! this was pretty neat to see, even though it was too dark to see much... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Liemba

Here we are with Br. Simon of Mvimwa Abbey on the left, Br. Teoton (also from Mvimwa, but now stays on the lake to run the guest house there) and Br. Joseph on the right by me.
Before we left, Charlie and I carried on the tradition that Br. Theodore of Hanga started when he was visiting last Fall of planting a tree. Charlie and I both planted our own papaya tree. Maybe the next time a Benedictine Volunteer from Minnesota visits the lake house there they can eat the fruits of our labor :)

This concludes the pictures and posts of this reconnaissance mission to the west. All said, it was a long, exhausting bit of travel, but well worth it to blaze the way for volunteers in years to come, and just to see more of this beautiful country for ourselves.

There is not much time left for me in Hanga. I will leave to start my journey back to the USA on March 24. There will be a few more posts from Hanga before I leave...

Thanks for reading. Please leave comments if you wish.