Short Of An Ocean

To and From, Tanzania

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The Mamba Obsession

As a child, I happily hid under tables at family gatherings, staring at the parade of feet with some canine companion by my side. My sanctuary was inevitably their scouting post for disobedient crumbs, but we were happy together. It makes sense, right? Dog is man's best friend?

In Tanzania, this isn't the case. It is entirely logical, since dogs are wild, unvaccinated, nomadic, and inherently covered in bugs.

Still, I couldn't shake that attachment. When Mamba showed up, chained by one of the guards to the kitchen, everyone muttered about how it was wrong to trap a puppy and let it slowly wither. I was the only one, however, with the purchasing power and the insanity to arrive at school every day with a bowl of soup.

(Everyone’s favorite story to tell quickly became how the guard who had chained her up immediately asked why I brought soup and not milk.)

As such, I received a shadow. In an effort to keep things equitable, I would also bring soup for Sikujua and began to train the two of them. After the construction workers tried in vain to convince me not to spend so much time close to her, Isondo found a way to have her vaccinated and treated.

The students became instantly obsessed with Mamba. As she learned more tricks, she became a center of attention during breaks and lunch time. While walking to bring chalk to the teacher, the students would stumble slowly as they turned to beckon for her to follow along.

(I can’t even see her! Who IS that little girl?)

Their ever ready minds and eager eyes would follow my training techniques, and when I arrived at the school in the mornings, they would be training Mamba in Kikagulu, Swahili, English, and occasionally Kigogo as well.

As the teachers watched the children play with Mamba, they gradually approached her too. Soon, she became a school mascot and a constant topic of bemused conversation. 

Even Gonga, one of the guards who had been embarrassed when he had tried to teach her initially, began providing small lessons for the puppy while the students were in class.

Athanas became adamant that the fishpond would need its own trained dog eventually.

When conversations would drift to my inevitable departure, the question was always raised- what would happen to Mamba? Since when I wasn’t there, she would make the rounds of the fish pond, food forest, boarding house, tank, and classroom, the teachers decided that she would be my replacement.

(Why is that wall down? Find out here)

To see that the school continues on its trek to sustainability & Mamba stays busy as a guard dog, check out my page here: www.stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Teacher Ammon: Never a Day Without Laughter

Ammon has a wild laugh, but is very polite and aware of every action that he makes. He had wanted to be a doctor, but now he eagerly watches as his pupils move forward with their studies. He is very proud every day when his students show their knowledge and will come find me to tell me what they are learning.

Many of the students at QEA will be doctors someday as well. When ever this comes up, he closes his mouth, trying to hide his smile.

Ammon loves to show off his knowledge and to teach those around him. I've quickly become a target of his as he shares his experiences and education. Some of the other teachers will veer away, but he and Teacher Alex often begin deep discussions about the different types of snakes, cars, technology, or stories. These often end with puns and Ammon bursts into laughter while Alex purses his lips, trying not to laugh.

He is kind, perceptive, and forms a sort of secret glue between the teachers, breaking silence with a giggle, balancing out arguments, intervening when someone is despondent, and searching for the answer when no one knows.

To help bring more future doctors into Ammon’s classes and guarantee the sustainability of the school, check out our fundraising page here: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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New Thoughts

I retraced my original journey to Mlali for the first time the other day and I found myself, suddenly, an entirely new person with another's memories.

Everything which had seemed so disturbingly different now feels familiar. Even though we discussed the lens that every person has extensively in curriculum, I had still stared at the squat houses expecting true poverty. It never occurred to me that maybe the lifestyle in the US has been so disproportionally inflated by "Keeping up with the Jones'" that all else seems hardly even recognizable.

Now, driving past them, I feel like life here is tucked away within a painting. The sky is surprisingly vast and the horizon rests low in your plane of vision.

The houses almost mimic the landscape, blending in with the color of the road and replicating the expansive plains where they rest. Roofs have piles of stones on them, or are green like the adjacent grass. Everything has the clear feeling of belonging.

People are people, and just like anywhere, everyone here has a dream. They dream for their students, their children, and themselves. 

We’re lucky that we have the opportunity to invest in that dream. If you’ve ever listened to a TED talk or a person speak, it all starts with a dream. Now imagine how different the world would be if some person out there, all alone or standing shoulder to shoulder with their peers, invested in the dreams of one director, 12 teachers, and over 100 children? The community here already has.

To believe in a dream, check out my page here: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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The Many Faces of Felista

Felista regularly disappears with my phone. These are some of the clues that I have found left behind of her adventures.

To help support not only a quality education, but also a quality future, for Felista, students like her, and an incredible school, chekc out this page: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Meet Teacher Daina

Daina was the very first teacher to greet me. She was the one who peeled the heavy backpack from my back, even though she seemed as if it might break her. She is quiet, sincere, and intelligent. She is one of my many self-appointed Swahili teachers and insisted that I sit in on her  2nd Grade Kiswahili class since, "You can learn too!".

When I try to take her pictures, she freezes up and stares at the camera like a deer in headlights, like many of us. This is frustrating since she is a gorgeous person and I wanted to capture her smile. Her most recent favorite activity has been taking the camera and turning it back on me, "I'm going to steal your picture, Annemarie!".

"What is your favorite thing to do?" "To teach and to sing." “Why do you love to teach?” “I love to be in front of the class and watch as they understand something new.”

When I asked her if she wanted to blow bubbles ("Annamaria, you are always playing." She had just said), she went and brought her younger brother to come blow bubbles with her. When I first met Agape, her younger brother, she had told  me that he was her first born and laughed shyly when she confessed that it was a joke.

She is gentle and polite, always laughing, and has the same free spirit as the children she teaches in 2nd and 3rd Grade.

Daina has become one of my closest friends here and we have gone on adventures up mountains, into town, and just laying on her bed beside her when she became sick.

Before fundraising had begun for the classroom, she came up to me, suddenly enlivened with a defiance I had never seen before.

"All of the work that has been going on up there at the bweni and the classroom still doesn't have a roof!"

Her passion easily transforms into being the student's advocate, always telling people when the school is running low on a supply and readily rejoicing with the children as they receive back their test scores.

To help support the school’s sustainability and see Daina’s classroom’s well-prepared for her excellent lessons every day (indefinitely), check out this page: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Seashells At the Seashore

I've been to beaches, I've seen beaches, I know about beaches, but I've never been as astounded about one as I was with Twiga (Giraffe) Beach. The sand was a light beige and I couldn't stop yelling "It feels like flour!"

It wasn't even powder. We walked along the beach, watching the couples amble by and admiring the distance the tide insisted on retreating to.

Every one in a while, you would see something on the edge of your line of sight, and if you chased after it, you would run at full speed, feet pounding on the ground, all to catch a glimpse of a tiny crab. Alfred, Ryan, and I found one and circled it, forcing it to skuttle angrily about, slowly losing momentum and the energy necessary to outpace us. It ended up crouched next to Ryan's open hand and taking slow lethargic steps when poked. It was speckled with dots, delicate, nimble, and sturdy like a spider. All of this mixed with the unabashed friendliness that we tend to anthropomorphize crabs with.

While Ryan disappeared into the ocean's horizon, I tried to explain what a "Great White Shark" was to Alfred in an attempt to pry the Kiswahili word from him. Hannah, Alfred & I wandered the beach. He told me that he loved the necklace I had brought for Kilines from Gertrud, made of eggshell and wood. When I told him about her art, he nodded, suddenly seeming intensely interested in the sand rather than my explanation of how she reshapes bones, eggs, wood, and gourds for her art. He told me he liked the colors and suddenly began bringing me handfuls of seashells.

As he brought back piles of seashells, I remembered pacing the beach, wearing a bright pink fanny pack, of one of Foster City's lakes while my dad taught fly casting. I would marvel at small fragments of broken shells. That child would have been overwhelmed by this treasure trove of colors and shapes. I had never done anything with those collections. What would I do with these? I turned and asked Alfred.

He looked at me, astounded, and responded matter-of-factly, "They are for Gertrud to make more beautiful art".

To see how we’re writing the legacy of the school, that Alfred’s wife founded, into stone, check out this page: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Rocks Rock

As we walked up the mountain behind the school, the girls told me a story of a man who found a rock. He recognized it as gold and took it to the locals. When they offered him several cows and a nice house, he insisted that he would go to the city instead and find a better price. He went in to a store and they told him they would bring it back in a moment. They brought him back a stone and switched it, without him knowing. They told him that they wouldn't buy it. When he returned to the locals, they told him that he had been duped. Why did this happen? The girls smiled as they told me, he didn't have an education. Similarly, there was another story about a woman without an education who left a shiny rock behind and a snake swallowed it.

One of the resources that seem to have magically been hacked apart here and scattered everywhere are rocks. I'm constantly marvelling at them as you find clear rocks like glass chunks embedded in the soil. There is another type that has a coppery sheen to it along the top and appears like a wafer from far away. When you pick it, it is heavy (as you would expect a rock to be). One of the teachers, Alex, goes into the mountains after school and comes up with small pieces of ruby and other stones that he found on the ground.

(Teacher Daina and I posing with Rose Quartz that we found on our first mountain hike (of many))

When the school was first built, some of the girls were telling me, all of the students went up into the mountain behind the school and picked out their favorite rocks to line the path. They brought them back down, and used them to decorate the school. The student commitment to the school is unparallleled by anything I've seen before as they constantly are engaged in the different projects we have here.

To help ensure that the school becomes self-sufficinet, hceck out the rest of this blog and donate here: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Kituoni: New Friends and New Places

I was initially fascinated by the Kituo when I arrived because of it's promise of Italians. "How could it be", I thought, "That I travel across the world and yet somehow I still end up in a town occasionally inundated by Italians". I still haven't figured that one out.

The Kituo was a Cappuccin Monastery that built a Center for Disabled Children. Maybe it was due to my fascination, but we've become exceptionally close with the Kituo since I arrived. It turns out that the Italians are no longer present, but make surprise visits like ghosts once every year.

They help us with everything: giving us water when the water lines are cut, allowing us to cut down milunda for building the tower and tank, renting out their tractor for us to level our land and showing us their garden of Eden. The Bustani ya Edani is a food forest that is inspiring as a vision for the potential future of the fish pond and food forest here at Queen Elizabeth Academy. The boughs of the avocado trees are so laden with avocados that they need wood planks to support them.

From one avocado tree, the Kituo harvested 120 avocados within a week. All of those could be either eaten or sold, all were used.

Everything about the Kituo was meticulously planned by the monks that founded it so that it would be the entirely self-sustained entity that it is today.

"Sometimes God gives us rain and sometimes He does not. In those moments, we need to make our own rain." The director told me one day as he watered his small patch of beans.

The Kituo had to make its own rain and now is teaching Queen Elizabeth Academy how to make our rain as well.

To help provide the seed fund for QEA to become self-sustained, check out my page here: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Strangers, Visitors and a Mzungu

At the breakfast table in Morogoro, I greedily devoured boiled egg after boiled egg, relishing the experience while piling butter and jam on my toast. Alex and Athanas wandered back and forth between their rooms and the table, muttering to each other about the plans for the day while I remained in deliberate blissful ignorance with my buttered and jammed toast. The man sitting beside me offered me some of the cold water that he had just purchased. I declined and we started to talk, alternating between English and Swahili. He was a teacher from Dar Es Salaam and seemed confused as to why a Mzungu was living out in the countryside of the Kongwa District.

 I started to explain the school, a comforting rhythm of words that drift from me without thought as I've recited them so many times since I started to work with Mama Hope. After that, Athanas sat down and the two of them began to speak rapildy in Swahili. My attention turned to the cup of hot coffee that welcomed me with a familiar fragrance. In my blissful moment of food variety, I was befuddled when Athanas turned to me and asked for the school's phone number. Daniel, the teacher from Dar Es Salaam, after speaking briefly with Athanas and I, wanted the number of the school so that he could be updated when the boarding house is finished. "I want my children to go to this school", he said, beaming already even as we had just met. That's the impact that Queen Elizabeth Academy has on people.

Regularly, strangers wander up to the office, asking to speak to the Head Teacher. They come from all across the country, sitting in buses and cars for 8 hours at a time and wandering into an isolated little village, all for the chance to enroll their children in what they expect to be one of the best schools in the region.

These students will be both paying and at risk students. The paying students, whose parents are already trying to form some sort of wait list, will have affordable fees that will replenish school supplies, support teachers, and help create an institution out of the exceptional framework that is already here.

This morning, as Hannah and Ryan were leaving, Athanas said, "Uliona nyani jana?"

"What?" I asked.

"Uliona nyani jana?"

"What?"

"Did you see the baboon yesterday?"

"What?" I asked again as the question still did not resonate in any schema I had ever used.

Later on, when Athanas and I were walking to school (I think that we are a bad pair to walk to school together, since we dilly dally and play with bugs, plants, and pick flowers along the whole way), he told me what he had said during the teacher meeting.

"Parents are always coming to the school to see if they can have their child come to the school. A parent wanted to bring her daughter here and when you teachers saw her, you chased her. We need to welcome all parents like we welcome their children. Today, many of you were chasing a parent away". The teachers eyed each other, guessing who was guilty of this crime. "The baboon had seen our school from the mountain and wanted their child to come here! We welcome all parents!"

The raucous laughter during the meeting suddenly made so much more sense.

I can easily imagine a world where all parents are so inspired by this school that even baboons brave the human world to have their children enroll.

To join this venture, check out how much we are accomplishing here: Stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Hando: The Head Teacher

Hando, the head teacher, is gleeful and delightful. He is always joking, smiling and adores the children. He regularly leaves the office to sing, dance, and play with them.

One of my happiest memories of Mlali will be walking home from school with Hando and having him suddenly start jumping in place and smiling wildly as he did so.

His passion for the school is only interrupted when his phone rings (never in class, only after school). He lets it ring and belts out the lyrics of his ringtone.

This transcendent joy quickly transforms in the presence of work to a determined passion. I hate that in all of the pictures, as someone so lighthearted, he appears very serious. Yet, that is one of his gifts. He is able to quickly move from playful to professional and never misses a beat.

Hando often falls asleep during his teaching break period, especially as he seems to spend every waking moment of the day pouring his energy into the school. When I have waited to walk home with him, we have returned as it was getting dark, and he hardly seems able to muster the energy to walk. He is the first one here and readily undertakes any additional responsibilities without a second thought.

In the classroom, he is lively and engaging with the children. He illustrates things, asks them questions, and has them interact. He makes sure that they are following along every step of the way. I sat in on his infectious diseases class and he seemed genuinely perturbed when he asked, "Who uses a mosquito net?" and only half of the class raised their hands. “How many of you have had malaria?” He asked afterwards. When half of the class raised their hands yet again, his eyebrows furrowed and he explained the importance of mosquito nets passionately, such that each child nodded vigorously as he spoke.

To help support the school that Hando has dedicated his life to, check out this page: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Athanas on Italians

The Italians come every May to provide surgery for Club Foot at the Kituo.

Athanas has a very keen interest in Italian, he studied it in university, and has been spouting random Italian words at me since I arrived. While I'm still trying to parcel out the Swahili words, he will start listing things in Italian, hoping that I will chat with him.

My favorite thing, though, has been his description of Italians. It's strange to hear something as familiar as my family described so objectively and to find it all true.

"They come in huge groups and in the afternoon, they go through the town. They go to buy candy for the children and even drink in the pub. They go in huge groups and all smoke cigarettes." Yep, Italians.

"They are short," he explained matter-of-factly,"but their legs are strong. They have dark hair and very  hairy arms. Like you!"

Thus, I've learned, the italian doctors are Southern Italians.

To look at our project, explore this blog and check out my fundraising page: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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The Day of the Baby Goat

Every day here is punctuated by a meeting. This is only the best of things, since it ensures the continuation of infrastructure and the constant evaluation of the work that we are doing.

On this particular day, we discussed what we would do next regarding the fish pond. The land had to be cleared, but the two male workers who had agreed to complete the work  for 6000 were busy building the tower and would soon after begin making bricks for the boarding house. We would be waiting a long time and no progress would be made.

It was mentioned that a few women were waiting outside for work and had said they would be eager for any work we had.

"Women can't do that work. It is too hard for them." One of the team members said. The raging feminist that has brewed inside me has become such a gut reaction that I didn't even think before quipping, "I didn't see you carrying any of the buckets of water up to the temporary tank". They laughed, shocked, and admitted that they hadn't carried the heavy water buckets up to the tank, but had been willing to help the men roll out the hoses. They agreed to give the women a chance.

The women smiled earnestly when we spoke with them and we all went down to the kolongo to investigate the work together.

We walked down to the pond and saw one white form struggling amongst the brush. As we walked closer, we found a baby goat with it's mother, fresh from being born. Flies swarmed them as the mother goat tried to simultaneously nurse, clean the kid, and eat to refuel herself. Athanas, one of our partners, stood close to them, watching silently and occasionally mentioning awe at the magnificence of nature.

When I tried to take a picture, the goat came up and licked my hand, desperate for a little extra food.

As we were leaving the herder approached.

"I knew that she would give birth today", he justified to Athanas, "I tried to keep her inside, but she was stubborn and refused to stay." That's how she ended up giving birth, marking the first day when work would begin on our fishpond.

We returned to discuss with the women. It would be hard work and as I looked over the surrounding plot, I felt overwhelmed, imagining myself doing the work. They asked for a very high price and one of the team members told them we were offering the work for 6000 to men.

I looked at the women and all of the conferences I had sat in at in DC, along with my classes at UCSD, came swarming back to me, about women investing in their children and the future, about how women tended invest in things that would build the family. This isn't to say that women always do, or that men never do, but the tendency is there. I thought about how when one of the advocates had been sent to by matembele for the entire family, one of the men had told her to buy one fish instead. She had returned with the fish and the mother had looked at her earnestly, "How will we feed everyone with one fish?"

The women looked at me, "Sister, won't you stand up for us? We are women together." I told them that I had already asked that they be given the work when the men disagreed.

When they were told that I had stood up for them, they sat up a little taller and smiled a little brighter.

We ended up agreeing to have them complete the project for more and they beamed as they thanked us profusely. They caught my eye and, maybe the feminist in me has grown a little too strong, but something said 'let's show them that we can do this' in the way that they glanced. Before they left, they invited me to their home, thanked me more, and told me about their children.

On the first day of work, they didn't have equipment. One of the men remarked, "This is what we expected." He wanted to switch to having men work. After discussing, we decided to give the women a chance and let them know that we expected them to start. If they didn't start after that, we would find someone else.

Later that day, the man who had made all of the remarks came to me. "They work very hard without taking many breaks. I am surprised", he said. He wasn't upset, or dissatisfied, but instead smiled eagerly. They have continued to do the work on the fish pond, from tilling the land, to digging the swells, to digging holes for the plants that we will soon bring. I joked with the about how they should have a plaque in the garden commemorating their work. Every day, the man who had originally doubted the them comes to me and tells me how impressed he is with the work that they have done. Since then, most of the laborers that our partners have selected have been women.

To support the school and by extension the women in the community, check out my page here: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Meet Athanas: Permaculture and Science Extraordinaire

I am so happy that I have Athanas in my life. The previous global advocate had little contact with him. Yet, Athanas has been around since my arrival. After meeting the teachers, I ran up to him and told him that I was excited to get the permaculture project started with him.

Athanas is gentle and kind. He plays with children when he sees them and even in Morogoro, he was checking up on children he had never met before. "Have you already eaten? What did you eat? How much did you eat? Are you full?"

During the middle of dinner one night, he stood up and began sprinting around with Felicta, hiding behind bushes and ultimately allowing her to sneak up on him.

Athanas was the first teacher at the school, when it began its transition from providing children food to giving them the education to provide for themselves and their loved ones.

When I sit in on his classes, he doesn't let me complacently bore my eyes into the chalkboard, he invites me up to teach. He tells the children that I am a teacher in the United States and insists that I do the drawings for his science classes while he explains.

There are also lots of little Athanas'isms'. He has taught me that "No P." stands for "No problem" and then when you leave somewhere  you are "popping". I confused this once with Hando's "dropping", and he responded "we can not drop since we are not in a liquid state". He always beams as he says "Let's pop!".

When we were in Morogoro, Athanas continued to look after me. He insisted on carrying my backpack everywhere, nodded off to sleep beside me while I worked at the internet cafe, didn't eat out of excitement for the whole day, came to check that my room was safe when we checked into the hotel, balanced on the headboard of my bed to close the curtains, and gave me half of his chipsy mayai when I wolfed down my portion.

He studied agriculture in university and is still passionate about it. While teaching the students about biology, he takes them outside and shows them the different plants. He treats me like one of his students, quizzing me on the Swahili and English names of trees that I have never seen before and marveling at their beauty.

Athanas loves to pose with different types of plants and have me take pictures. He will choose where I stand, where he stands and what angle we take the picture from. In an effort to have a larger variety than him just staring pensively into the distance, I've started to snap some candid photos. "I've learned one thing about you", he told me the other day, "you don't wait until a person is posed, you just click, click click away!"

The permaculture project is Athanas’ brainchild and he is incredibly passionate about it. He will continue with the project after I leave, see it through to completion, and eventually maintain it. We have both been learning so much together.

To help support Athanas’ vision of a food forest & fishpond (which will provide both nutrition for the students and income for the school), visit: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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When Turtles Fly

The turtle would always look up into the sky and see paths of birds flying. One day, the turtle decided to join them. He covered himself with glue and feathers and flew up into the sky.

The birds did not recognize him, so they decided to celebrate in order to welcome the newcomer.

The chairman asked that they each introduce themselves.

"I am Eagle", said Eagle.

"I am Vulture", said Vulture.

When it was Turtle's turn, Turtle stood up and said, "I am Allofyou". The other birds didn't know Turtle, so they accepted him at his word.

Introductions continued and at last, the chairman stood up and said, "This food is for all of you to eat".

The birds began to eat and Turtle cried out, "Wait! The chairman said that this is my food! You can't eat it!" The birds stopped and even though they were very hungry, they watched as Turtle ate all of the food. Turtle became very fat. He began to sweat from eating all of the food and the glue dripped off, the feathers began to fall. The hungry birds left to find food somewhere else. One remained and Turtle called it over, "Tell my wife and children to put soft things outside of the house."

The bird flew to Turtle's house and, as it was very hungry, told Turtle's family to put sharp objects outside. Turtle's family put axes, knives, and arrows all around the house. Then, the bird flew back to Turtle and told him, "It is all ready. There are soft objects outside of your house."

Turtle jumped - piuuuuuuuuuuu - thwack! Turtle landed on the sharp objects and his shell fell to pieces. Turtle's wife tried to put him back together again and that's why his shell looks like it does today.

To see the work our project is doing while we get to learn local stories, check it out here: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

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Sustainability in Motion

We are working on turning a proverb into a reality.

For every dose of medicine, meal, and desk that I feel pressure to buy, the sustainability of the school will offer long-term systemic solutions. There is tremendous need here (a term which I despise), but the important part to recognize is that we are investing in the community’s own long-term solution.

(Athanas and Hando look at pictures of the first class of students, who will be taking their HS Entrance exams this year, and point out the ones that have passed away)

The children often speak about their goal to succeed and have surpassed their peers in other local schools. They view their future as a personal challenge and a success that they can bring back to Mlali to improve their family's life. With over 100 children enrolled in the school and the first batch of students graduating, this change is imminent and immense.

The boarding house will welcome the students from outside of the region that have heard about QEA and are looking to have their children enroll. Weekly, while sitting in the office, visitors have come from states across Tanzania, all looking to see if there is a way to enroll their child. The boarding house fees will go into the school infrastructure, providing desks, materials, and teacher salaries, as well as making the education accessible to more children within Mlali and supporting the ones that wouldn’t be able to continue otherwise.

For our little 10x14m fish pond, we have lots of dreams and plans. This little pond will start out with 420 fish (3 p/ m squared of water). Each female fish has the potential to have 900 fingerlings. Every 3-6 months, we will be able to harvest them (and really should to prevent the fishpond from changing into a heaping pile of fish).

The 420 fish that we first harvest will feed the children and teachers at the school, and be sold in the local market. The ready availability of fish will lower the price of fish in the market, giving more families access to the protein and nutrients that fish carry. In exchange, the 200 or so fish that aren't served to the children will bring in revenue for the school's internal cogs and wheels. These appear in the form of notebooks, pens, chalk, food, books, and all of the lovely things that are crucial to a classroom.

The fish will be sustained by careful planning before in regards to their diet, environment, and oxygen levels. Our plan was a scant blueprint of the current one, thanks to the volunteer help of some students from SUA. One of which, Alvis (on the far left), has been building his own organic fish pond in Dar and will become “the Elvis of the fish industry”.

Permaculture is focused on creating as natural of an environment as possible for as self-sustaining of a process as possible. We are, in essence, creating a river like pond in one of the driest areas of Tanzania. The exciting part of this is that we can do it. We spent hours talking with the students from SUA (the preeminent agriculture school in the area) about every detail of the plan.

The pond will have it's own ebb and flow. The first challenge that was presented as we spoke with the SUA students was the dirt that the actual pond will be in. "It will suck all of the water out of your pond." They whispered cautiously as we let the red sand dribble through our fingers.

Our solution: Create a concrete and stone sub-layer to surround the pond. The textured environment will  support a vibrant ecosystem under the water's surface and help to create varied areas of shade under the water's surface, places for fish to hide, plants to grow, and textured currents.

The next problem: Circulation

How do you keep water oxygenated and prevent the deep water (where fish babies are made (Oh, baby)) from stagnating and becoming a graveyard of No Fish Land?

Our solution: Keep the water moving! Circulate the water once daily using a water pump (which we recently purchased for all of our projects), but have the water entering into the pond go through a canal with PVC water spouts, along with a gentle waterfall of rocks. The rough, brokenmovement of the water propels it into the depths of the pond, bringing oxygen with it. The movement will not kill the fish babies (that will live in the deepest part of the pond), and will keep them from suffocating- always a good thing.

When we exchange some of the water from the pond for the fresh mountain spring water from the tank (much like scooping the filthy water out of a fish tank), we will have the used water go into a small tank and use this nutrient rich water to water the trees.

There's so much more that we have planned, but I'll keep updating you along the way as we get to the next steps.

To teach a school to fish, join us here: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

[shortofanocean]

Where the Bweni Stands

While I was quite open with where my passions lie (*cough* permaculture and sustainability *cough*), we all know that the bulk of the money we have piled together will be going towards the boarding house.

Where is our news, Annie? What have you been doing? You talk about the pond and the tank all of the time, but where is this bweni?

I will tell you where it is. It has been one of the largest challenges of my short life thusfar. Every bone in my body aches to rush through it, but these are the foundations that we are dealing with. You can't rush the foundations (I feel like there is probably a good Godfather quote to drop here, but I don't know the Godfather that well (Instead, a You've Got Mail quote, "The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. The Godfather is the answer to any question.").

There is always a way to save things. On the portion that needed to be rebuilt (without bent bricks), we saved what we could, removing each brick that will soon return to their home in the walls.

We hired a tractor to level the ground for the boarding house. Leveling isn't just how you and I imagine it (at least me, I can't claim to be a mindreader yet), with a big swinging wrecking ball destroying all you've worked for, but it requires physically moving the land so that you start out on a level. Just as in As I Lay Dying, when the coffin was not balanced and everything fell apart, despite Cash's regular insistence that "It won't balance!", building on unleveled ground is a ripe recipe for disaster ("It won't level!"). It turns out that leveling the land is much more time consuming than expected as you are essentially challenging a hill to it's own nature.

Isondo phrased it best, "Sometimes we need new beginnings."

We hired a tractor from the Kituo to level the land and Deo, our friendly tractor driver, has been working very hard to ensure that the land is fully prepared for the beginning of building.

Mama Fai and I have been taking full advantage of Deo's daily drive to steal a tractor ride.

Yet, we were too excited to sit on our hands and wait. In the meantime, we've been making bricks, lots of bricks, so many bricks!

Once we begin, we will be off to a running start.

To support our steady progress, check out our fundraising page here: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea

[shortofanocean]

Tank Manifested

One of the truly remarkable things about this world is how malleable it is in the wake of decisions. If, today, you are in Mlali and you decide to go to Dodoma for the first time ever, tomorrow you will be in Dodoma. If, while in Dodoma, you suddenly realize that the internet is incredibly accessible and decide to stay another day, then you can stay another day.

The world is even more pliable than that, though.

You can dream up a structure that will change children's lives and fuel an entire institution.

A few short weeks later it will stand as proudly as the walls that archaeologists still dig up today. Maybe someday they will unearth this tank and date it as the start of one of the most prestigious schools in the world.

Dreams are made by decisions.

 The decisions for the water tank were all community driven, so we know without a doubt that they will continue long after Mister Misaka, Hando, and I leave this school (even though we will need to be pried from it with crow bars).

Please, do me a favor, and mold the world to your most idyllic portrait.

 Bring a dream with you as you make the decisions of the day, and watch it form like molded clay before you.

Out here in Mlali, we are rushing off to the next ones so that they can all be ready for next year's classes.

To see how this magnificent thing happened, go here: stayclassy.org/annemarieqea