Yes, I know it has been several weeks since I last wrote a blog and I am sorry. Big thanks to the Gordons for allowing me to pet sit while they took a weekend trip and allow me some much needed introvert time to clear my head and get my writing juices going again. This blog is dual purpose. The first part is to introduce you to Adam, one of our students. He and is brothers are typical of the Maasai kids in our area. Unlike most of the students and kids in general here he and his brothers don’t push their way into any picture opportunity. So in the end I don’t have a lot of photos of him. In fact I knew I had the second photo of him and his brother I wanted to use but it took me weeks combing through various photo storage to find it.

Adam is a sweet kid. He and his brothers hang out together. They make friends but when on site they don’t have a specfic item they play at a lot like the playground equipment, digging in the san or even trying to play soccer. They do a little of it all but are never attention seekers in what they do. Adam is middle of his class #16 out of 34. The reason I looked for this photo so hard is because any afternoon I go to walk after school I run into the Luka brothers headed out to get their cattle from the water source and drive them back home. That means walking around 2-3 miles to the water source then driving all the goats, lams, cows and bulls back home 2-3 miles. As you can imagine it is normally 6:30 by the time they get back and they have to do homework before night time because they don’t have electricity. But they get their homework done almost every day. That is pretty good for 7 year olds.

So and update on what is going on in Tanzania and where the school and I stand going forward. Well if you read the Tanzania news, President Magfuli has declared COVID-19 has been defeated in Tanzania and no longer exists there. Though they still import herbal remedies and operate sweat booths to help cure it. They have not provided any data on people sick or dying from the disease since late April when the administration sent tests to the lab from fruit and goats and got positive results.

The schools offially reopened on June 29th, one week ahead of the planned start for the second semester. We are implementing hand washing stations and trying to get people to wear masks. We did spend our down time sending activity packets to keep the kids in school mindset and learning while the school was closed.

The school opened with handwashing classes and trying to do as much outside in the sunshine as possible.

In Tanzania though social distancing is difficult because they pack you in the mass transit systems. The big change there was that everyone had to have a seat, so no one standing.

You can see how hard it is to get kids to social distance in the photographs of them getting to see the new playground equipment purchased by the Mauldin UMC Men’s Fellowship.

As for my personal status of going back, it is still in limbo. KLM airlines has indicated they will restart flights to the Kilimanjaro ariport in August as long as things continue as they are going. Unfortunately, Kenya closed their border with Tanzania after 50 truck drivers tested positive in a single day. My status is still a visa so I have to be able to depart Tanzania every 90 days to keep my 1 year visa legal. Without a trip to Kenya that requirement gets too expensive to attempt to go forward in returning. So in the near future I will be looking for a job that requires little training (I don’t want someone to invest in me knowing when I can go back I will) and allows me some flexibility in hours to still lead the Bible study I have started and do some of my projects. Good thing is I am just trying to have enough money not to be a burden while living with my parents and not dip into my support fund while on hold.