Weekend at the City Center

After an exhausting, but nonetheless amazing week at the school, we are leaving for the City Center to spend the weekend there. Again, this meant a two hours walk from the school to the next village where the van would pick us up for another two hours drive to Dar-Es-Salaam. The walk from the school to the village under the burning sun was a challenge for everyone. Moreover, we were impressed by the girl that went with us to the city. She has been ill and couldn't eat for the last three days and had to go to the City to receive medical treatment at the hospital. For her, the walk must have been even more distraughting. The Shamba Center has limited medical resources and usually, if a students gets sick, he or she has to go all the way back to Dar-Es-Salaam. There they would stay at the City Center unless their worsening condition requires hospital treatment. On Friday evening, we finally arrive at the City Center where we met the younger kids for the first time (some of them we already met at the concert in the church). The City Center is basically a flat in a poorer area of Dar-Es-Salaam where Hezekia (Baba) lives with his family. It consists of one living room, an outside kitchen area at the back (they cook with charcoal), the office from where Baba runs the Orphanage and several sleeping rooms. The first thing that everyone of us thought was that this was not "an orphanage" but a big family. Indeed, when we later got to know that Nandula, a cute two-year-old girl, was Babas daughter, we all were surprised and impressed. We could not in any way see through the way he or his wife (called Mama) treated her that she was their own daughter, all the children are now their children, it seems, as they all already call them Baba (=father) and Mama (=mother).