Rosemary Harris

November 2009

 

When volunteers Holly and Lauren met us in our hotel in Dar es Salaam, I confess I was a little apprehensive. They looked so young! And one of them had never even been out of the United States before. How would they handle the rustic experience of living in a Tanzanian village with few creature comforts like electricity and running water? How would they handle the strange customs and new food...to say nothing of the small children and chickens walking in and out of the modest building they'd be sleeping in? With flying colors.

As we watched Rosemary and Bruce slowly drive away that afternoon, Lauren and I had a mixture of feelings. Nervousness was a big one, as was the feeling of being outsiders left alone in a very foreign world. We had been so busy cataloguing books and cleaning in our first few days that we had not taken the time to properly realize that we were to live alone in a rural Tanzanian village for three weeks. But as we sat down on the library steps and finally took our eyes off of the distant dusty trail of the truck, we saw that we definitely weren't alone. The younger children of the village had gathered around us, the shier of them peering wide-eyed from around trees, masking grins with their hands and daring each other with nudges to approach the "Wazungu" (the Swahili word for "foreigners" and our Tanzanian moniker). Lauren and I laughed and decided to amuse them further. Lauren found a stick and began to draw squares on the ground for hopscotch. When she was satisfied, she motioned for them to watch (no problem there; they were gaping at this point) and hopped through the squares to demonstrate. They got the idea quickly and pretty soon were drawing their own squares and kicking up clouds of dust as they played. Though the game eventually descended into chaos, as all games do when they involve forty-some energetic children, the kids had decided that we were their fun new friends, and were our constant companions for the next three weeks.

And what a joy they were. Our most memorable moments always involved the children. They constantly surprised us, either by deciding that 7am was too late to sleep in on a Sunday and jumping in front of our windows calling for us to come out and play, or randomly surprising us with a chorus of 'Happy Birthday' in English one afternoon. We will never forget our conversations with the older girls about their lives and goals, seeing them laugh at our pitiful attempts to wash clothes then gently guide us, or when we taught them to use our cameras, which resulted in an hour-long fashion shoot. Every time a photo was taken, the girls collapsed into laughter. Their optimism and happiness was contagious. Lauren and I had never had so many faces to greet. On the five-minute walk to the library, there were no less than twenty calls of greeting to us from the schoolchildren, and many ran over to shake our hands or dance around singing. There seemed to be enthusiasm in everything they did.

Our greatest joy was seeing them at work in the library. The teachers (those wonderful, wonderful people) brought in large classes or students all enrobed in identical purple uniforms. It always amazed me that despite not having any modern utilities and the dustiness of the area, the uniforms were always ironed perfectly and very clean. The families that could send their children to school took great pride in it. The children were eager to learn and extremely bright. Lauren and I put on a variety of craft projects for them, and despite the large language gap between us, the children were so observant and clever that it didn't really matter. Most of our crafts involved learning the English equivalents for Swahili words and phrases. My favorite craft was helping them make their own Swahili-English phrase books. Our own phrase books were like gold to us, and we thought that the children might like their own versions. We made little books, then used our own guides to help them write down what they wanted to say. By the time we finished, there were choruses of "Good Morning" and "What is your name?" around the library.

Lauren and I were so grateful for our time in Chalula. It changed both our lives and we speak of it often with fondness, wondering what Mrs. Mohammed the teacher is doing, remembering our walks with Henry to dinner and the calls of greeting from the villagers as we passed. We hope that we did some lasting good to the library, and that we are as memorable to the kind and welcoming people of Chalula as they are to us.

Holly and Lauren

Contributions may be sent to:

Chalula Library - Friends Of African Village Libraries
PO Box 90533
San Jose, Ca. 95109

Book contributions or magazine subscriptions may be sent directly to the library
Chalula Community Library
Chalula Primary School
PO Box 993
Dodoma, Tanzania

Kwaheri,
Rosemary and Bruce

 

Read letters from previous months