House of Compassion- Kigera Village

Father Mike Basano M.M., Liz Mach MKLM and watoto wengine (other children)

How do we describe the experience we just had?  Lord, help me.

This month a group of Americans have come over to Tanzania with a trip called Friends Across Borders (FAB) in order to see what MKLM, the Maryknoll Sisters, Fathers and Brothers are doing here.  Today the group got to travel to the House of Compassion at Kigera village, about an hour from Mkoko Language School and we were invited to come along. 

House of Compassion is a compound of about 70 people, all abandoned for one reason or another by society, even by their own families.  Here men and women with mental illnesses, orphans, people with HIV/ AIDS and other disabling factors that have left them unable to care for themselves in Tanzanian society, come together and live in community. While the rest of the society has told them that they are throw away people who are an unwanted burden, House of Compassion welcomes them with open arms, understanding and love.

To briefly describe the site, it was started in 1992 by a Tanzanian parish priest, Father Godfrey Bisako, who responded to the desperate needs he was seeing of homeless and abandoned people on the streets of Musoma and Mwanza.  He had started a similar house closer to Musoma in the 1980’s, but the house at Kigera is far bigger.  About two to two and a half football fields in size, the buildings were designed to provide security and a sense of community by surrounding the perimeter of the area, forming a rectangle, with the exception of a cross shaped chapel and a dispensary within their shape.  On one side are the rooms of an Italian Marist brother, Father Mike Basano and the other homeless men.  Adjacent is a long guest/dining room, another dining room and the kitchen, and adjacent to that are the rooms for women and children.

Bougainvillea

Still, describing the setting in no way conveys the experience of walking through this campus full of ducks, chickens, orange and magenta bougainvillea trees, people sitting on the ground with dejected faces that easily melted into smiles, people coming up to us, greeting us with that unique, warm Tanzanian hospitality, small children grabbing our hands and pant legs, babies being passed from arms to arms, people with obvious physical and mental disabilities wandering aimlessly, dancing and laughing. All of this was happening in one of the poorest countries in the world, where running water and electricity are not even a guaranteed luxury. Personally, I don’t think we have ever seen a place so desperate.

Yet, the day was filled with hope.  Without any fanfare and a with bouncing run, Father Mike Bassano, a Maryknoll priest, came running to greet us as we pulled in this morning.  Fresh, excited and eyes wide open, Father Mike toured us around the “village”, scooping up random children like a young grandfather and telling us their unimaginably heart breaking stories as he naturally bounced them on his hip or lovingly pinched their cheeks.  As we toured, a severely mentally disabled man interrupted Father Mike’s explanations several times, but the second generation Italian didn’t miss a beat and began joking with the man. It was clear the man thought he and Father Mike were equals, something he clearly learned from Father Mike who frequently is heard saying “We’re all in this together”.

Father Mike’s phrase is exemplified in many ways at the House of Compassion. Even though all of the compound’s residents have burdens of their own, they all manage to take care of one another. We saw babies being passed around between adults and older children, young children pushing wheelchairs of their elders and teenage girls helping with the cooking and cleaning. No one is forgotten about and everyone gets what he or she needs. Clothes are old and worn, the food is simple and the bedrooms are humble, but it appears that everyone’s needs are provided for.  

Mass was one of the most moving experiences we have had in a long time.   We sat in awe next to a seventy-five year old Tanzanian women, surrounded by people the world has more or less forgotten. Watching a boy called John Eybel (named after the priest who found his pregnant mother, who would later abandon her son, wandering the streets), diligently helping Fr. Mike on the alter we knew that here God had come in such a gentle, emphatic, loving way to tell these people, “I know your pain, I too suffered abandonment, loss and physical torture.  And I am here with you now.  You are not forgotten.”  The beautiful, tender harmony of the people’s singing and solemn kneeling on hard planks testified that possibly nowhere in the world was God’s love appreciated more, than here. 

After lunch, we took a trip to the lake to see the wind powered water pump and the meager farm.  Moses, one of the many children who from the beginning had latched on to our hands everywhere we went, kept saying to Caitlin, “Twende kaburini!“ (Let’s go to the graveyard!). It seemed like such an odd place for a four year old to insist on visiting, but when Father Mike explained that he often liked to take walks there with the children to remember the people, which their community had loved and lost, it made sense. It was so beautiful to see Moses and the other children walking happily among the dirt mound graves as if they were visiting old friends. The graveyard wasn’t a scary sad place for them, it was a familiar place filled with people they had been told stories about and people who they had loved and who had loved them. Truly death had lost it’s sting.

In the future, on desperate days when we ask, where is God, or what is he doing in this world, hopefully we will think back on what we saw today and remember. 

To see a video of the House of Compassion and Father Mike's work made by someone else, visit http://youtu.be/VhP7C9mUxxI

How We Spent our Language School Vacation . . .

After a whirlwind week in Mwanza, we have returned to Musoma to finish out our last month of language school. While some students spent the week pumzika (relax)-ing, we spent our week away from school taking care of business.   This included getting licenses, visiting work sites, shopping for rental houses, practicing driving and finishing our tax return.

Driver’s License:

Pretty much the same process is involved in getting a Tanzanian driver’s license as in the U.S., except, we had to go back and forth to the police station two blocks away three times, make a deposit at the bank and come back the next day to pick the license up.   All the same, when we got our licenses they looked pretty fancy, even fancier than our Washington licenses in David’s opinion.  They have some anti-counterfeiting translucent holograms on them that look cool, two pictures that would be pretty hard to copy and a graphic explanation of what class driver’s license we were given.  The best part was that the TRA (Tanzanian Revenue Authority) trusted the Department of Motor Vehicles in WA and didn’t make us retest- even though here in Tanzania they drive on the opposite side of the road.  We also give props to the TRA for their graphic organizer, which explained the process that one needs to go through to renew and obtain a license. It may not have been an accurate representation of what our process looked like in reality, but at least they are trying.

Houses

We looked at a lot of houses last week, some which fit all of our criteria, some that didn’t fit any and some that we could never afford with our humble Maryknoll stipend. The house hunting experience was quite an adventure as there is no official real estate infrastructure in Mwanza. Our hunt consisted of driving around Mwanza, picking up random acquaintances of other MKLMers and then driving with them to various rental houses they had heard about through word of mouth.  In the end, we have narrowed our search down to two houses.  We are pretty torn. Here are the contenders:

House A is in a neighborhood called Pasiansi and is within walking distance to several other Maryknoll Lay Missioners as well as an outdoor market that sells fresh fruit, vegetables and fish. It is a 45-minute dalladalla ride to Caitlin’s work, about a 15-minute drive to David’s work and about a 20 minute drive into downtown Mwanza. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen and pantry, all in a pretty basic almost American style layout. The yard is huge with a cool cement wash table but there are no trees in the all grass yard (there is no such thing as a lawnmower in Tanzania). 

House B is in a hillside neighborhood about 10 minutes outside of downtown Mwanza called Mabatini. It is about an half hour drive to the nearest Maryknoll Lay Missioner, but about 2 minute walk to a Maryknoll Parish run by a couple of really nice American Maryknoll Brothers and Priests. The parish is very active and appears to be growing quickly which would provide us the opportunity to take part in the parish community and possibly participate in the development of outreach programs. The house is much bigger than we need and has a sort of awkward layout, but it has been well maintained as it used to be the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers house before they built a rectory at their church. The house sits on a grassy shaded lot with two other houses that are both owned by the former police chief, who lives in one of the homes part time. The other home is lived in by a current police officer. We aren’t sure exactly how long our commutes to work might be, but we think David’s commute might look more like a 40-minute drive and Caitlin’s commute by dalladalla we think might be closer to 30 minutes. One other thing we really liked about the house is that is also very close to an outdoor market and shops and there is a soccer field right beside it.

Opinions anyone???

 Caitlin’s Visit to Butimba

On Tuesday and Wednesday I spent two full days in my future classrooms. The teachers and students alike seemed very excited about me being there and I had to explain several times that I was only visiting and wouldn’t be starting full time until April. Even by the time I left, I’m not sure that anyone really understood.

The teachers I will be working with are very enthusiastic and appear very excited to have an American in their presence. They asked me several questions about America and told me several times that they wanted me to help them learn English. They were also very excited at my attempts to speak Swahili. It was a little bit awkward spending the entire day in the classrooms as a visitor because the teachers really wanted to put all of their energy into treating me like a guest. They were constantly coming to check on me, bring me tea, uji, homemade donuts and chapatti.  At one point one of my teachers even sent one of her 5 year olds out to the street to buy me a fresh deep- fried rice donut.  It was hard to find the balance of being polite and accepting all of their generosity and wanting to stand up and yell “FORGET ABOUT ME, TEACH THE KIDS!”

The children were also very enthusiastic, but amazingly quiet and focused in the classroom. That sat quietly on their mats; truly only spoke when spoken to and ALL of them participated in every activity.  It was like nothing I had ever seen in America. The kids were so eager to learn and please their teachers.  I think it is going to take me a very long time to get used to that.

The teachers use a lot of really great Montessori methods that allow for a lot of student participation.  They also use a lot more English than I expected. They give most directions in English which in turn require an English response from the students- like when the teacher says, “Stand up,” the students stand up and say in unison “We are standing up” or when she says “Sit down” the students all sit down and say, “We are sitting on our mats.” It is really quite adorable when they speak English because they have somewhat British accents so they don’t pronounce their “r”s . They say things like “sweata,” “teacha,” “ motha,” and “fatha”.  I think I could listen to them speak English in unison all day with a smile on my face.

Overall, the teachers are doing some really great things, but there is definitely a lot of room for improvement. I was literally bursting with suggestions by the end of my two days, but held back and bit my tongue knowing that I still have a great deal to learn about culture and education in Tanzania. (Teacher friends, I have a million other details to tell you about the classroom. If you are interested, send me and e-mail because I would love to tell you more about it.)

David’s Visit to Huruma

David’s visit to Huruma went just as well, although none of his teachers asked him to teach them English- go figure..   He said that the students appear to be learning and happy and the teachers seem to take great pride in the accomplishments of their students. It gives us a lot of joy to know that students with disabilities who once were not allowed to go to school and simply remained at home all day are now being educated in a flourishing school. The school is fortunate to have many teachers and aides, however, in time there certainly will be some ways to help them better their practice, and hopefully, integrate kids at other local public schools with the students at Huruma.

While David visited, though, someone had broken the spigot for the outside water, so he and one of the other teachers set to impromptu maintenance and made a makeshift stop.  Later in the week George Otte and David replaced the makeshift stop with a cap and placed a new spigot inside the small house where the water tank is.