Coffee Tour and Placement Update

Our morning started off by seeing Obama riding a dala

There is a coffee plantation in Arusha that is right outside of town. For a small price the company picks you up in the morning, gives you the walking tour of the village, orphanage, local hospital, and the coffee tour. They even fed us the best Tanzanian food I have had while here. The whole experience was very authentic, which I was not expecting at all. I assumed it would be a huge coffee plantation and we would see lots of other tourists/Mzungu’s there. The whole day it was only Angie, our guide and myself.  Our guide was 20 years old and absolutely wonderful. I had heard from friends that we needed to request him as our guide, but after having a confusing phone conversation already with the owner that morning, I didn’t bother in trying to tell him. Lucky for us when the car dropped us off it was Samwel who was there to show us around. 

We started the morning off by stopping in the local shop and Samwel bought us each a water and then he bought about 7 oranges and an avocado from some boys on the street to take to the orphanage we would be visiting. The whole village was built by a few German missionaries in the late 19th century and since then they have continued to build it up. The church, hospital, and orphanage are all named Nkoarango. 

The orphanage houses children under the age of 5 years. Most orphanages in Tanzania are not like the orphanages at home. An orphanage here is for children who are technically orphans but who are living with relatives or family friends and they go home at the end of each day. There are very few true orphanages that the children actually live there. Nkoarango is one of them, Cradle of Love is another. 

There were two mamas there preparing to feed the children when we arrived. There were at least 20-25 children. They welcomed us warmly and accepted help with the feeding gratefully. Samwel had obviously been there many times before because many of the children ran up to him and were excited to see him back. He was great with the children and did most of the feeding for the littlest kids. 

The children eating maze and beans

A photo Angie got when we had left the orphanage. This picture breaks my heart. 

After we left the orphanage we walked 5 minutes down a hill to the hospital. If you have ever watched Lost, this hospital is very much like the settlements the “others” lived in. It is in the middle of the jungle, and is white concrete sheltered with blue tin roofs. There are many sections to the hospital and all of them are linked together with outside walkways. 

Samwel knew the head doctor well and also that I was a nurse looking for a volunteer medical placement. He mentioned this to the doctor when we were getting permission to tour the grounds and the doctor was more than happy to let Amanda and I come and work there for our last six weeks. We now have a medical placement and it is all set up! We were very worried about finding one because the one where TVE was planning to place us stopped accepting volunteers three weeks ago and they couldn’t find anywhere that would let us come for free. A few people have even cancelled their upcoming trips because they were told they may not get the medical placement experience. It has been a very stressful three weeks wondering where I was going to be placed at this coming Monday. I am very, very nervous about starting at the hospital though because I have no idea how much will be expected of me from the staff and there is always the language barrier to overcome with the patients. We shall see how it goes! While there we also wanted to see inside of the Mortuary and were allowed to go in and they even opened up this large “filing cabinet” that had bodies actually chilling in it for us to see. Samwel said he would be having nightmares for the next week. It was very interesting to see how death is handled here in the hospitals. 

The view of my hospital from on top of the hill

Next we started on our coffee tour and along the way Samwel stopped at every tree and plant to tell us of its use. There is one plant that it is a tradition to give to another person to tell them you are sorry for wronging them. It is not a flower but just a normal long green leaf off of a plant. There is also a plant that holds in its stem the equivalent of our “liquid stitches” at home. Angie had a couple of open sores on her and Samwel applied the clear liquid inside the stem onto her sores. In less than two minutes it was already drying like glue. 

We went first to where the coffee beans are grown. It was a older mans house who lived with his wife and two children. It was not a nice house but the usual concrete slab houses that everyone lives in. He showed us the different stages of the coffee tree process and we even got to eat some coffee beans right off of the tree. Well, you do not eat the actual bean but you peel off the outer coating and then pop the insides in your mouth and suck off the outer juices that surround the beans. Once they pick the beans off of a tree that has been growing for two years, they put them through this machine that peels them and then let them soak in water for three days to remove that sugary liquid outer coating that we tasted. After they are soaked, they are then laid out to dry. Once they are dry, the man who owns the actual coffee business, Frank, buys the beans off of the farmer. 

After we went through the growing, picking and drying process of the coffee we walked to Frank’s house. His house is very nice, VERY. He is a Rasta Tanzanian man and is married to a Norwegian woman, a “mzungu.” They are very rich in African standards and in his yard is where we ate lunch. It was amazing. I ate so much that I could barely function afterwards. 

After, he took us into the small coffee factory where they cook the coffee beans and then grind them. He hires local people from the village to do the work and to hand make the bags that the coffee goes into. I do not drink coffee and I know nothing about coffee, so it was more interesting for Angie to see all the different kinds they made but to me, coffee is coffee and I would rather have a Coke :) The bags are adorable though and the coffee is only $3 a bag so I bought a few.  

The passionfruit was WONDERFUL.. I ate like 3 of them!

Chapati, goat stew, ugali, spinach, rice, fried plantain, veggies.

All in all it was a great day and I was also able to secure Amanda and I a medical placement. I love my children at school so much though that I cannot bear to leave them so I have chosen to spend three days a week at the hospital and then the other two with my children at school. I wish I could take every single one of them home with me.