We have been away from the internet for a few days while we spent time with Tim and Jenaya in Longido, Tanzania. We are at a hotel in Arusha for tonight, so I will introduce you to Longido tonight while I have access to the internet. On Tuesday morning (Nov 29), Tim and Jenaya had work to do, so Art and I had a morning to just relax. We walked up to a place where Tim's son, Cory, has built a permanent tent camp. As we walked up to the site, a couple of women met us along the path and came and sat for awhile with us. They didn't speak any English. My Swahili consists of "welcome"and "thank you", so the conversation was pretty sparse! But we smiled a lot at each other and they were quite happy to have their pictures taken:
Below is the view we were enjoying with them...
It was actually pretty funny - it was like the word spread about these white people sitting up at the camp, and the visitors continued to come. So this was our next visitor - one of the Masai men from the village. Once he saw we had a camera, he insisted on posing for us. And what fascinated him the most was our binoculars. He couldn't stop looking through them and grinning - who knows if he was focusing them or what he was actually seeing through them, but he sure enjoyed them:
The next visitor was a young boy who we had been watching as he herded his sheep on the hill just below us. I imagine he would have been about 7 or 8. He spoke no English at all. But he seemed to think we were hilarious - he giggled a lot with us. He loved looking through both the sunglasses and the binoculars. He especially liked looking through the binoculars backwards - he and I spent time sticking out our tongues at each other while he looked at me through the binoculars backwards - he found it very funny!
After lunch, we went out to one of the sub-villages of Longido called Oltepesi, which is where one of the child mothers lives. She lives in a group of houses called a "boma" - several traditional Masai homes grouped together. Inside the grouping of houses, they have enclosures that are fenced in with the thorn bushes to keep the livestock close to them at night. The child mother we visited is a woman named Sara. The first two pictures are outside their home. Sara's mother is holding Sara's daughter, whose name is "Happy". There were several other family members visiting with us as well:
This is a picture of Sara holding her daughter Happy:
Beside Sara, is a woman who works with Sauti Moja Tanzania - her name is Happy as well - kind of a popular name here apparently! Once we had finished conversation outside, we were invited to go into their home. You will see the little girl in the red stripes behind Sara? That is the doorway we were to go through. Honestly? It was completely dark once you stepped inside. I literally had to be talked over to the place where I could sit - it took forever for my eyes to adjust! Once we were seated in the house, we had some chai tea. Here are a couple of pictures from in the house:
As we were sitting there enjoying the hospitality of this Masai family, the grandmother, who was sitting right beside me, leaned over and said she had a present for the "mama" - that is me. She took a necklace off of her neck, and put it around mine. Later I was told that the Masai people are very generous and like to give gifts. I don't think I will ever forget the feel of those cool beads as they touched the back of my neck - I felt very honored to wear the necklace that she had been wearing. You can see it around her neck in the first picture I posted of her holding her grandchild. And here is a picture of us standing outside. I think we were deeply connected - mother to mother - it was a very good moment.
All in all it was a wonderful first day in Longido. I have more pictures and stories from our second day, but Art and I are off on a Safari tomorrow - yeah!! So I won't be back to the internet until Sunday evening. Check in again in a few days...I will just leave you with this picture of Art in the little patio behind the guest house in Longido. The frigid temperatures of the Manitoba prairies, and the chaos of a busy work place, seem a very long ways away at the moment...
No comments:
Post a Comment