Lameloki

This morning we headed south about 30 miles to the Maasai village of Lameloki. Although it is closer, it took just as much time to arrive as it did to Kimokouwa because we traveled most of the way on dirt roads. It started out in average condition for Africa and continued to get worse--more and larger ruts we had to naviage around and the last 25 minutes or so their was a deep layer of fine dirt on it. We drove in a cloud of dust literally. We were following another vehicle that was going with us to Lameloki and there were numerous times we had to stop because we couldn't see anything outside our vehicle. I have ridden on very rutted roads in East Africa before some even worse than this one in terms of ruts and enormous potholes, but never in that kind of dust. We were way back in the bush and we followed one of the men who lived there on his motorbike to find our way out. But the fine dirt was so think he was fishtailing much of the time. I was impresseed that he could stay on his motorbike, frankly. Most of the people who live here really never leave. A few people have motorbikes but most don't. It is an hours walk to get to the nearest public transportation. Here is a picture that might give you a little sense of what it was like. It actually got much worse than this picture at times.

 Our destination was an "orphanage" with 40 children. I put orphanage in quotation marks because it isn't like a normal orphange. None of the children live there, although the women are trying to raise money to build some dorms for them. Many of them live with very poor grandparents and that is where they sleep. But the two women who founded and run the "orphange" have paid for their school uniforms and they make sure the children attend school. After school they come to the "orphange" where they receive a meal and they have programs for different age groups. Some of the girls are learning to sew, for example. The two pictures below show the welcomr we received when we arrived and the two women who run the "orphanage' with George and Sayuni. Because I was giving a talk on marriage, a number of older single and married women attended as well as a few husbands.

Geroge and Sayuni had purchased some simple school supplies for the children and they asked me to hadn them out.

You might notice the purple bags the school supplies were in. Tanzania has outlawed the use of plastic bags throughout the country so they now use these cloth kind of bags.

I gave a brief talk to everyone about how we are God's beloved sons and daughters and then the children went somewhere else and I gave a shortened marrage talk, with emphasis on women being equal partners, not second class citizens. George translated for me.