by Barbara Joye | Feb 14, 2013 | Journey 2013
“Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.” Mother Teresa As we continued to handle construction and engineering priorities for the water project, our days have contained celebrations of hope and happiness in other areas as well. A visit to Kishumundu Secondary School allowed a wonderful reunion with Lucia Mbuya, the 2012 recipient of ICBD’s Hope of the Future educational scholarship. We were delighted to hear that she had placed 8th out of all Tanzanian students taking admission exams for her current grade level. Lucia’s favorite subject is biology and she is now hoping to be a doctor someday “so she can help people in her country”. Our Fulbright Scholar and Field Engineer Yana Genchanok welcomed her parents to Tanzania on Sunday, with a dinner at the Ngowi family’s home. We all enjoyed Eva’s wonderful traditional food as well as many stories, tall tales and some shared trepidations as the Genchanoks looked ahead to climbing Mt. Meru this week. We finished the evening with Yana proudly showing her family the water distribution system. We spent a wonderful Tuesday driving up to Materuni village to see Eva Ngowi’s dream in progress’ for a Coffee & Curio Shop. About a 30 minute ride up the mountain from her home, some 30 to 40 tourists drive daily then park their cars at Materuni for a hike to the Nambe’ Waterfall. Eva negotiated a deal with the owner of a small shop that is currently under construction there,where she plans to have the Acorn Women’s Cooperative sell home grown coffee beans, coffee, drinks and snacks, and...
by Barbara Joye | Feb 5, 2013 | Journey 2013
For me, the experience of Africa is living life at its fullest. It is a place where I am keenly aware that life is precious and fleeting and where I am constantly amazed at the resilience of humanity. There is little opportunity to avoid the darkest sides of life, with so many challenges to life itself apparent at every moment. But here in Africa I have no desire to avoid the dark because to do so would be to miss life altogether. We were invited this week to visit a church in the Meru area, about an hour from Moshi town. Leaving the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro we drove through the dry flat plains, dusty and near-barren from drought. We saw small children standing within a foot of certain death, as they vigilantly guarded the family’s goats grazing at the highway’s edge. We watched the Maasai herders walking countless miles with their cattle in search of even the smallest water hole, a residual blessing from infrequent rain. And we watched the owners of barrel laden donkeys retrieving water from a rare roadside standpipe, having walked days for water. Many people turn away from life’s challenges here in Africa, saddened by the depths of problems and convinced that real impact is not possible. But to turn a face from the problems means to turn away from the depths of the people themselves, all mirrors of the best and worst within us all. As James struggled to regain energy after a week long bout of food poisoning, we tried to manage some work progress during prolonged electrical blackouts, phone failures and...
