Monday, August 13, 2012

August 9: Project is progressing and we are enjoying ourselves!

We are enjoying another fabulous day. The project is progressing well with most of the interior and the exterior painting complete for the resource centre. The kids are already beginning to use the laptops. Today we were visited by the Executive Officer of Matipwili and 4 other neighbouring villages. He very graciously introduced himself to each of us, welcomed and thanked us for our work and contributions.

Frankie and Irene, are friends that are helping with the accounting at Kisampa on a volunteer basis so they are staying with us too. Frankie brought 3 soccer balls and started a great game with almost 30 kids playing soccer outside the resource centre. The Executive Officer requested one of the balls for a neighboring village which we were pleased to give him. The children all gathered and sang the Tanzanian national anthem for us.

This is a particularly special trip for me, since I first visited Kisampa and Matipwilli as part of an economic development global business project with Queen’s University Executive MBA program in Sept. 2004. To be returning as a team lead for DWC is a dream come true. The village has come a long way, recently with the help of 3 previous DWC projects. I love that Nick Foster, another team lead, who has led many trips to Rwanda and recently Uganda, often takes people from his company, Softchoice to participate in these projects - what a great way to connect and build team loyalty. I met the people from DWC at a business conference called “Doing Well by doing Good”. It is an amazing way to build connections and company loyalty and I hope to be leading this type of trip in the future.

Another amazing moment was when our Corie, a special ed teacher in our group, taught a hearing and speech impaired child, Juma to speak his name. She placed his hand on her throat to feel the vibration and had him watch her lips closely and he was able to speak his name – very exciting! He is also learning sign language and connecting the dots very well. He is a lively acrobatic child who our host will be driving in for an operation to stop his ear infections.

The ladies are all so much fun. Every day we make our way into the village in a Land Rover and at times have the feeling of being on a roller coaster. Kay, Loretta and Bev, always raise their hands in the air and add a "wheeee".....this does not seem to lose it's novelty - they have such great energy! We have had wonderful authentic African meals in the village for our lunch break as well as wonderful food at Kisampa.

I was also able to meet a child I sponsored for secondary school, “Ashura” – she is quite lovely and it was emotional to finally meet her face to face. Corie is leading the team in yoga again so I will sign off for the day! Hakuna Matada (no worries)!

Edye St.Hill
DWC Team Leader
Tanzania, August 2012

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