Daily Sister Adventina goes out on the streets of Bakoba looking for children. Not any child. Children who have been abused and abandoned to the streets of Bakoba. When she finds them she tries to convince them to come to the Tumani Shamba to live. The shamba is a working farm on the outskirts of Bakoba.
Tumani means HOPE and that is just what the shamba is to these children. Sister Adventina and her staff are funded by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania. The children stay at the shamba for a year or more.Some never leave until they are grown. The sister and the staff work with the child to try and find extended family in their villages that they can eventually live with.
They are placed in school and educated. Some have never been to a school and it is hard to catch up to their grade level. They have a doctor that takes care of all the children s physical needs. Sometimes, though, the psycological damage is so great that the child returns to the streets. A lot of them have had so little food that they are stunted in growth and sixteen year olds are the size of ten year olds.
When you enter the shamba with its many gardens and buildings you are greeted by the children jubilantly singing greetings to you. They also dance for you. It is Haki dancing which is very old and only done in this reagion. The feeling of love, kindness and joy permeates everyone and everything that is done there. The children are loved and safe here and they know it.
There is 56 children at Tumani at the present time. They range in age from three years old to eighteen. Can you imagine being dumped on the streets of a city at three because you are not wanted or are a burden to someone? The older children help take care of the younger ones. They work in the gardens that produce the food that they eat.
The evening that we were there for their supper they had ugali and a beans in vegitables and tomatoes. Ugali is like our grits only a little courser. They patiently wait to be served their food. The helpings are huge and they can come back for seconds after everyone is feed. No one goes hungry. The youngest are fed first and the oldest last. The eat setting on the ground that is covered with sweet grass.
All food is cooked in giant pots over an open fire, every meal, every day. No fancy kitcheons at Tumani.
The next day we went back to do art with them. I had watercolor, brushes, collored pencils and lots of paper. They used every drop of it. They even turned the paper over and drew and painted on the other side.
The clients at We Care Arts, where I work in Dayton, Ohio had made butterflies and decorated them for the children of Tumani. Such glee and joy. Their eyes wide with amazement as we passed them out. They absolutely loved the butterflies. They even added to the decorations with there own brush and pencil marks and made them their own.
I took the 20 bottles of fingernail polish I had brought from the US. Everywhere we have offered nail polish has created great amoiunts of giggles, laughter and pride in the girls. But Tumani was the most fun. From the youngest girl to the oldest every toe and finger was decorated with bright bold colors and everything was topped off with a coat of glitter polish in gold or silver or both. Oh my do I have pictures to share from that afternoon.
It seems like so little but I have been told that everything that we had and everything we helped them do was huge. From toes nails to watercoloring we gave them all a chance to express themselves in color and line. None of which they had ever done before.. And they had a lot of pictures that they can keep and remember with. They were so proud of what they had done that day. The children humble me.
This is my last blog from Africa. I am heading to Uganda tomorrow and flying home on Wednesday I will be at the house about 6 pm on Thursday. The first thing I will do is take a long hot shower. Washing a a tiny bowl with a t-cup to rinse with is getting pretty tiring. I will then call everyone to let them know I am home.
I will blog some more when I get rested up. I have several more to put in.
Love you sharen
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