Environment Day in Eluai, last night in Arusha

Friday 8/24 was my last full day in Arusha. However I spent most of the day not in Arusha but in the Maasai village of Eluai for Environment Day. It was a special event and Kitumusote and MWCS had been preparing for it for weeks. Angie and Mark, Kitumusote's sponsors from Los Angeles with whom he had gone to Dar that past week, would be coming and would be the honored guests. Kitumusote was founded in great part due to their help and support.

Katie, a fellow volunteer with whom I later traveled to Zanzibar along with another volunteer, Melissa, came with us to help take video of the ceremony. I'd helped Maurien translate the schedule from Swahili to English so we would have copies in both languages to pass around at the ceremony. The existence of a schedule at all impressed me as that's not so much the African way...pole pole ("slowly, slowly"). Despite our best efforts, the ceremony ended up starting about 3 hours behind schedule. Kitumusote had rented 2 daladalas for the event. We first met at the Kitumusote office at 8am, waited for Kesuma to pick up Angie, Mark, and Mark's brother as well as Zik from CCS, stopped in town to get some breakfast, and stopped in Monduli to pick up some more folks before heading to Eluai. We picked up a Tanzanian woman named Rebecca, who is a teacher at a school in Arusha that is another one of Angie's projects, and her son David. We also picked up a couple Americans, a guy and his girlfriend, the guy spending time in Tanzania working on a project with a Maasai friend, Grosper, who also came along, to build a secondary school near Monduli.

The van Angie, Mark, and Kesuma rode in was probably a few miles behind ours by the time we arrived. Not long after we got there, figuring the other van wasn't far behind, a group of about 30 Maasai women decked out in their finest, started dancing and singing in procession in the direction from which the van would be coming. They met them about 1/2 mile away, and everyone in the van got out and walked and danced back with the women. The ceremony took place outside the MWCS classroom and shop building which is situated on the side of a mountain. From our vantage point there we could follow almost the entire procession of vibrant reds and blues with bouncing white necklaces against the tan background of the savannah, and the closer they came the louder their songs. It was an impressive and memorable sight.

To kick off the ceremony Kesuma spoke about Kitumusote and MWCS and invited some of the MWCS members to speak as well. Kesuma was the only tri-lingual one there (maybe Grosper also) and also one of the only ones who could speak both Swahili and English, so Zik was there to help with Swahili-English translation. After speeches, there were performances by a Lutheran choir and a Catholic choir, all Maasai. If it hadn't been written on the schedule that the choirs were Lutheran and Catholic, I never would have known as their performances were very much Maasai from my perspective. Afer this was the official presentation of the trees from Kitumusote to the village followed by a delicious meal prepared by chief cook Maurien. I helped run food back and forth from the cooking site (a pit dug into the ground for the smoldering embers and massive pots filled with rice, bananas, meat...). By the time I had a chance to eat I had to rush to leave and there were no utensils so I just shoveled rice into my mouth with my hands. It was worth it. Her cooking was some of the best food I had in Africa. After lunch it was true Maasai style celebration. What I found interesting about the way the Maasai celebrate is that everyone participates. Everyone sings and dances. Unfortunately it was getting late and we had to leave to head back to Arusha, but I imagine that celebration continued for hours.

The 3 weeks had gone by so quickly and he had been so busy the entire time with traveling to Dar, preparing for Environment Day, preparing for Maasai Cultural Safaris... Kesuma didn't even realize I was leaving until I handed him his office key and his flash "disky" and said good-bye. We said a hurried good-bye, and it was back to Arusha for our last night at CCS. Fortunately I got a chance to visit Kesuma a couple months later in Los Angeles while he was staying with Angie and Mark, who were kind enough to invite me to stay with them for a weekend. It was good fun walking down Sunset Blvd with a fully geared out Maasai.

When we got back to Arusha some of us went to Said's Pub outside the CCS gate to have a few beers and spend our last evening together and say good-bye to some of the Tanzanian friends we had made. When saying good-byes what struck me was how profusely thankful everyone was to us. From the CCS staff to the people we'd worked with at our placements to Thompson to Elly and Temba. They thanked us over and over and truly appreciated that we took the time to come there and made sure to let us know that. They said that they knew that we cared because we were there. It made me feel sad and even guilty in some ways because I knew that in a matter of weeks I'd be back into my old routine in my comfy house on my comfy couch...and relishing in that comfort. And that has happened, but I have not forgotten Africa and I have been keeping in touch with the people I met there and hope to continue to do so. I hope that by sharing my experience it's at least a tiny bit as educational as the experience itself was. I hope that anyone who has followed it and who hasn't had an experience like it has a new awareness of different ways of life that are happening all over the world this very moment.