Thursday, January 4th
Hi everyone, this is Devin, I’m in charge of the blog for today! We will all be taking turns blogging throughout the trip. Today was our first full day in Tanzania following a long couple days of travel. Hailey and I flew out of Omaha and met up with the other 5 Buena Vista University students in Minneapolis. From there, we had a 7 hour flight to Amsterdam which included some surprisingly good airplane food. From Amsterdam, we had an 8 hour flight to Kilimanjaro. It was a long flight especially with some scary turbulence, but was made better with a few movies. We were all glad to be back on solid ground when we landed. We arrived last night around 9 pm and were stopped by airport security to look through all of our medical supply bags. This took a bit longer than we expected so we didn’t leave the airport until 11 pm. Gayle’s patience was definitely being tested by the airport staff, but we all made it out in good spirits. We headed to Tudor Village, where we will be staying for 3 days, and met up with Mamma Lynn, the head of Light in Africa. Light in Africa is a children’s home created to help provide basic needs for children in care, give them a quality education, vocational training, and most importantly, unconditional love! Mama Lynn wrote a book called Light in Africa detailing her reasoning behind starting the orphanage and how it has grown over the years if you are interested in reading more about it. A few of her wonderful children escorted us to our rooms and even carried our bags for us!! I showered and fell asleep very quickly being tired from all the traveling. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a thunderstorm but the rain was very relaxing so i fell back asleep quickly and didn’t wake up again until my alarm went off in the morning.
We all met up for breakfast the next morning, thankfully not too early, and went over our schedule for the next couple of days. We all thought it was funny that they served baked beans with breakfast but apparently it is a staple that Mama Lynn brought over with her from the UK. Then, we had some down time that we all used to to take some pictures around the village and explore a little bit. We also used much of this time to play with a little puppy in the village we named Boots. Gayle brought over some medical supplies for us to practice taking vital signs before we head to clinic tomorrow in Mererani to see over 200 patients in hopes that we’ll feel more prepared. Then, we finally got to connect to some WiFi to let our families know that we made it safely which we were all very excited about and I’m sure our parents, grandmas, etc. were all too! We grabbed some lunch which consisted of a tuna noodle-type casserole which is something my family makes now and then so it was kind of like a little comfort blanket being so far from home. We also found out that the oranges here are actually green, not orange and that banana trees only produce one bunch of bananas and then they die.
After lunch we headed over to the children’s houses, named Laughter House, Happy House, and Tumaini House. We were welcomed very graciously with a couple of worship songs by the kids. They are all amazing singers and have really great rhythm. We continued to the different houses and played with the kids while Gayle performed some assessments on the children. Many of us brought over toys to give out to the kids including stress balls, party horns, nail polish, and yo-yos. The kids absolutely loved all of the stuff, and we were all so surprised to see how well they shared with one another. I did not see one act of greed from any of these kids of any age which was really humbling. Some of the kids even handed us back the toys so we could also play with them. We all thought today was bittersweet. Bitter due to seeing the conditions that these children have to live in and for what all we take for granted in our lives, yet sweet because these kids and their caretakers all have such big hearts and are so happy with what little they do have. We saw two walking miracles today, literally. We met a little girl here who has very severe scoliosis and was told by the neurologist that she would never walk again but when we walked into the home she walked right over to us with a big smile on her face. There was also a little girl who had been locked in a barn for the first few years of her life and did not talk or walk when Mama Lynn took her in. She was up and walking around throughout the home when we were there playing with all of the toys and kids. Both of these girls were so inspiring and had such positive attitudes despite their hardships.
Overall, it was a super humbling to experience this village built by such a selfless woman of God, and to also see how these children give back to her whether it’s helping her out around the village or whether it’s them coming back after secondary school to teach and take care of the kids. We have some down time right now so i thought it would be a good idea to start in on the first blog before we head to dinner and devotions later.
