Moving Day

Well Friday was the big day, the beginning of the end of this amazing journey. I am thrilled to be one step closer to my flight home to America, but the tone of the day was mostly bittersweet.

In the morning, we went to school for our typical Friday half day. My one student, Juma, actually wrote a farewell song for Said and me. He sang it in front of all of form one, but not before he taught students the best to drum on their desks. While I couldn't understand most of the lyrics, I was heart-warmed by his sincere gesture. The school day concluded with a short speech from our headmaster and one of the local teachers, thanking the volunteers (Said and me) for the efforts over these past 7 weeks. I will miss these friends very much!

After school, it was a mad dash to get totally packed up. We had about two hours until our car came, and we still needed to eat lunch. The nice thing about living a life of simplicity is that it makes packing quite easy. Anything extra that we didn't care to keep (clothes, shoes, containers, a hamper, a lawn chair, etc) we gave to Dada, our cook. She's recently married and has a few kids, so she appreciated the gifts.

Finally, just minutes before the car was supposed to pull up, some students came over for another goodbye. First, two of my best girls came by. I gave them a pair of never worn sandals and my very worn watch. The girls loved both presents and gifted me back with some yummy kashata. Then, one of our young boy students stopped by, as well. At first, he seemed angry, he wouldn't speak, even when we tried starting a conversation with him. As the car pulled up, he continued to sit silent and stone faced on our couch. We packed up the car, we're ready to get in, and Athumani still sat unmoving. I thought maybe he was goofily protesting, but I was unfortunately wrong. We peeked back in the house, only to find our student fighting back tears. I tried to give him a hug, but it only made the tears break through and run down his face.

I felt so sad for the little boy sitting on our couch. He was obviously stone faced as a means of trying to fight his tears. Again, if made me thing of Tanzanian's gender laws. Athumani, a small, upset boy, wouldn't even let himself give hugs, because society tells him he shouldn't show emotions. I felt so sorry leaving him on our couch, but the journey had to be continued.

We were all a bit downhearted to leave our students and our friends. However, the stay at Sultani's had us excited for real showers and some refreshing air conditioning. Well, that expectation was a bit misconstrued, but, for another post....