Regina's Smile

Thanks Beth!

This past week I am most thankful for all the donors.  First off, we had a wonderful celebration of Pilau thanks to Beth Keen!  The children enjoyed the pilau and we even added a little extra food (a local favorite) bananas and meat!  What was truly special about these bananas was that they were from our own banana trees planted outside of our hotel.  It made the bananas taste extra sweet.  The children will be talking about this feast until the next Pilau Day!

Additionally I want to thank Anna Tarkov for her wonderful article about the children and my role here at the school.  It was nice to talk about the children and I appreciated her very kind article.  It is so inspiring to know that our project is always growing, the children are receiving more attention and most of all they continue to inspire generosity.  I never tire of talking about how they changed my life and opened up my heart.  I could not love them more and all of you who take so much interest in helping a small village in Africa.  

It started off as an extra special week with one of my best friends Matt Partain or “Dr. Matt” as the children affectionately refer to him, visiting our project.  He has visited Tanzania so many times before, but every time is special.  He continues to give and serve the children in every possible way.  He makes time for them during his busy academic schedule by working for them during his Spring Break.  Selfishly, I was just happy to spend time with one of my buddies, but his research on our children (focusing on their health and malnourishment) has helped secure a grant for extra Pilau Days and a more “bean-filled” makande.  Not enough can be said about his commitment to the children.  Along with the financial support of Barb and Ed Walters, I know our children are benefiting greatly from the improved diet. 

Dr. Matt and I after the accident

On to my favorite memory from the past week…on Tuesday we were playing outside at break time like every other day.  I was playing catch with the children when a few ran up to me yelling “Mr. Terry, Regina needs you”.  I went over to see her lying face down on the gravel, I lifted her up and saw blood coming from her mouth.  I quickly took her to the bathroom, got her washed up and examined the damage.  Luckily her beautiful face was fine, but she had chipped one of her two front teeth in half.  I took her to see Dr. Matt and matron Agness.  Agness explained that these sorts of things happen but most people just live with it, which is absolutely true.  I have seen many chipped teeth on children as well as adults.  Dental work is a luxury, but Regina is a fragile child, she is small, shy and doesn’t talk much to most people, which in turn makes me love her more.  I want nothing more than to protect her and it was heartbreaking to see her hurt and insecure.  She was reluctant to even open her mouth.  Nothing is worse than having your smile stolen from you.  

Regina with her friends Subira, Diana and Gema

So I asked Agness call her grandparents to ask them if I could take her to the hospital the next day.  Initially this met with some objection from our administration “Schools don’t do things like that.”  My response was simple “my school always will”.  That of course ended the discussion.  Knowing her family situation, I knew that the dental work would be too costly for her family.  The next day Regina, Teddy, Innocent and I traveled to Kibosho Hospital to visit our friend Dr. Alan (insert every positive adjective to describe the dedication and love Innocent and Teddy, our hotel employees show our children).  We left at 8:00 a.m. met with Dr. Alan and were directed to the waiting area.  The African pace is well recognized to be slow, and in case you were wondering, African hospitals are also very slow.  We sat together in the waiting area for about 5 hours before we were seen by the dentist.  Truthfully this was probably the most enjoyable time and experience of all though.  After I got her to giggle a few times and reveal her broken smile Regina finally relaxed and told me how she had never been in a car except a “dala dala” aka mini bus.  Also she had never even been to Kibosho before, even though she said she thought her mother was from Kibosho.  Before long the excitement wore her out and she fell asleep, in my lap, holding my hand.  I sat motionless, her head on my leg, hand in hand and just knew “yup, this is where I should be”.  

Regina on my left with her smile back

After waiting for hours and hours, napping, talking and playing the dentist was ready.  I held her hand as they put a brand new veneer on her chipped tooth.  Even though the dentist was kind and welcoming, I have never had a little 45 pound girl hold my hand so tight.  After they finished Regina looked in the mirror, opened her mouth wide to see all her teeth and stuck her tongue out feeling the new tooth.  She gave a nervous giggle, thanked the dentist and then thanked me.  I instinctively picked her up, gave her a hug, a kiss on the forehead and then thanked her too.  I took her home so we could enjoy some nice beef and rice from the hotel with Mr. Matt.  The next morning when I saw her she smiled, gave me a little hug and she continued on with her day.  I will never forget the day we shared, but most of all I will never forget her smile.  We never really know who we are until we become truly connected to someone and I think that is why I felt the need to thank her.  Everyday I am blessed to feel connected to every child and pushed to want to be what they need.  Giving a child a reason to smile again is exactly who I will always strive to be.  I cannot thank you enough for your love and support.  Also prayers and thanks are owed to the wonderful dentists and doctors at Kibosho Hospital for giving a beautiful child her smile back.

Patience

Lining up for a race

One of the most difficult aspects of working in a school or in a non-for-profit school in Africa is the constant feeling of wanting to do more.  I am constantly bombarded with the feeling of “if I could just change this one thing…”  I have realized over the years of my service here that there will always be another thing to fix, another person to help but I still can’t help the feeling.  Because of the structure of our school, the nature of schools in Tanzania and my own limitations of not knowing too many certified teachers in Tanzania we went two months without a full staff.  Finally this problem was remedied last week, which means the teachers are all making it to their classes, but we can never get back the time we missed.  To me, as an educator and a person who cares deeply about my students, my children I found that to be unacceptable.  For two months I was stuck wondering when we would meet our responsibility to the children.  We can all rest easy now knowing that our staff is complete and look towards the future in establishing the processes and expectations that are required to be met.  I will however continue to push on behalf of all of you at home to constantly be the “fire” that lights them to try to do their best.

Of course there are many bright spots coming out of the past couple weeks.  Our library is currently being renovated by our outstanding volunteers Katie and Joost.  We will have a constant reminder of their impact and role at our school and how we benefited from their work here.  They have painted it with an “around the world” theme and with the help of Joost’s friends in the Netherlands will outfit the library with some brand new furniture.  Additionally a University student from South Carolina, also named Katie, has started a University book drive for our students focusing on early and emergent level books to fill up our library.  It seems the children have found a way to inspire every person they come in contact with, by inspiring them to do more.  Our next step will be adding computers (when we have some generous donors donate more…) so that our children can truly connect to the world and those who have helped them.  The children have very little concept of the outside world, or even their own country outside of Mailisita.  With the help of these resources they will be able to finally reach out to the world and discover it for themselves.  

 

As I have still been slowly recovering from malaria, you will all be happy to know that I am finally able to exercise again.  Those of you who know me personally know how important that is and probably feel very sorry for those who were forced to be around me when I was not working out.  Believe me, the staff and my friends here are all breathing a sigh of relief, because I can imagine that I have been a bit on edge lately.  Case and point was when the workers decided to start burning the trash at 8:30 in the morning during my first period English class which resulted in smoke filling my P4 classroom.  That lead to me storming out of class, finding the construction worker and apparently raising my voice enough in “disappointment” that the children heard me.  The moment I returned to the class my children all laughed and said “sorry sir!”  I pride myself on not ever raising my voice in the classroom so it was certainly the first time they had ever heard anything like that from me.  On the plus side, we established a ground rule, ‘no burning trash during school hours’.  A problem that we would not encounter in the States, but luckily a problem we will not encounter at Stella Maris again.

Even during this trying beginning of the year, the children still remain the example in patience and happiness in our project.  They make many mistakes, do not get me wrong.  They fight a lot, they argue with one another and they still have friendship drama (especially the older ones).  They still find a way to remind us all that they are just as loving and funny as ever.  One small problem I have been noticing when I come home is that I end up with small red stones from our playground in my pockets.  I had no idea how they got there and it seemed impossible that they would end up “jumping” into my pockets.  Every day I came home, took out my keys and these little stones would fall out.  It was usually just one or two very small stones, but enough that I noticed a pattern.  It wasn’t until today that I realized who the culprits were.  Two of our P4 children, Witness and Dennis have been working together to slip these small stones in my pocket almost every day for about a week and then sneak off to laugh.  I never noticed, but they would come up and start to talk to me.  When I was occupied one of them would put them in my pocket as a few children would sneak off to laugh.  Yesterday however I caught them red handed as I felt a little hand get too greedy trying to slip multiple larger stones into my pocket.  I grabbed the hand, whipped around and found a whole group of P4 students laughing as Dennis screamed with laughter right in my face.  No one will ever confuse me for being the smartest man in the world, but it was only today that I realized that I must have been teaching them too well, they have already surpassed me.  I immediately felt guilty for the time in high school when I snuck a powdered donut into my teacher’s closed coffee mug.  Now I understand the feeling, too bad it was a 10 year old who tricked me. 

I guess I realized how lucky I am to have so many people in my life that support me, the work here and the children I love.  Katie in South Carolina, Katie and Joost volunteering here, my friend and mentor Adam, the Mailisita Foundation board and my friends at home who send me messages and emails of support.  You are all always patient with me as I respond, slowly and constantly remind me of the example I should be.  I will always find a reason to laugh and enjoy the children, but I must also be patient as the adults grow too.  Our project is growing, we have overcome many speed bumps and will encounter many more, but I will remain patient and loving.  You all have always been that way with me, thank you.  God bless. 

Teaching with Malaria

Over the past couple weeks I have seen more acts of compassion and heard more words of encouragement then I have at any point during my work in Tanzania.  Thank you to everyone.  The outpouring of support and love has absolutely spurred me on and kept me going during one of the hardest points of my stay in Tanzania.  Malaria is no joke.  Teaching with malaria is also no joke.  Outside of a day and a half where I was suffering from malaria and the flu concurrently, I simply could not find a reason not to teach my classes.  Every morning and night I had new messages of support from home from my friends or family and all day long I had the help of the children to keep me going.

Their ability to empathize with me was incredible from the moment of the “I have malaria again”, class responds “ooooohhhhh noooo, soooorrryy” to the everyday lessons for weeks.  I have never had such quiet classes in my entire life.  They all sat, at attention, silently and even began to police their friends who would talk during class with reminders of “don’t disturb Mr. Terry, he is sick”.  It kept me laughing all week and most importantly kept me in the classroom.  As soon as I had finished my classes for the day I would drag my feet home, plop down on bed and sleep for four or five hours until dinner.  I would then wake up, eat and go back to sleep until the next day.  You cannot imagine the physical exhaustion of malaria until you experience it, and even now looking back on it, it seems unreal.  The weeks have been a bit of blur to be honest but I definitely still had my highlight.  It started on the Monday after my birthday with the simplest of gestures.

With the boys, Siggy is holding my right arm

Siggy, a student in P4 had asked his parents for money, went to the store and bought a Birthday card.  He had every child in P4 sign it without me having any idea.  In the afternoon I was already exhausted, dragging a bit and mentally drained when I entered the P4 class for their second English lesson.  Siggy stood up, walked to the front of the class with the card in hand and I asked him “what’s up Siggy?  What do you need?”  I will never forget his words, “Mr. Terry this card is for you.  We were in P1 for your birthday too.  We are now old and we are getting old together.  We are happy you are here with us.”  Siggy said this as he looked at me, then at the ground, and then back at me.  I noticed he was tearing up.  He understood his words and could see that they were impacting me and I could see that he meant them.  I then stared at the ground, teared up, looked at the card, and then at all the children.  Some of the children avoided making eye contact, and others just stared back with soft smiles.  They were all looking at me and waiting for me to talk, while I searched for the right words.  So I told them the truth “This is my favorite card, ever.  I love you all more than you will ever know.”  Then Lidia broke the silence and the tension with a loud “We love you too!”  which made everyone laugh and thankfully moved our class along.  

That moment, the thought he had in buying the card, getting everyone to sign it but most of all his words will always stay with me.  I realized my responsibility as a teacher, an adult and a leader of children is to sometimes do what is most difficult in a given moment.  We have made it so hard in our world to open our hearts.  Everything from fear of rejection to social anxiety to peer pressure has conditioned us not to share our thoughts and feelings.  We routinely joke about or call attention to displays of love in our media and call it “corny”.  We “play it cool” around others rather than share our thoughts.  Most egregiously we allow others to pass in and out of our lives without telling them how they make us feel.  As a result we close up, share less and less, and become less honest.  For four years I have told these children I love them, care for them and that they are special to me.  I know they will close up significantly, and some already take considerable effort to ‘crack’ their exterior.  There are many forces in their worlds far stronger than me.  I have learned that I can control my own example.  Even though they are getting older and begin to close up themselves I will still tell them how special they are.  How they made a sick man feel better and helped me through malaria.  I will still try to make them smile everyday whenever I can.  I will still tell them I love them.  So that there will still be at least one very sensitive young boy, with a whole lot of love, who knows it is ok to open his heart, even when he grows up to be a man.