Thursday june 22

​            The Tumaini School has a goal to plant 10,000 trees. They have already planted about 5,000 trees, and this morning we helped plant 42 more. We gathered after breakfast with buckets and boots and headed over to pick our trees. Each BC student was paired with a Tumaini student so we could learn how to properly plant the seedlings. Together, by digging holes, placing the tree, and filling buckets with water, each pair planted 4 trees. In order to fill the buckets, we had to walk over to an available faucet and then carry the bucket to our newly planted trees. While we will not be able to see these trees grow ourselves, they will provide not only a memory of our trip, but will provide shade, water, fruit and more to the Tumaini community.
            Another fun learning experience we had today was learning how to hand wash our clothes. To do this, we collected our dirty clothes, placed them in a bucket, added detergent, and then filled it with water. The Tumaini students taught us how to properly scrub our clothes by first applying soap, and then taking two ends of the fabric and rubbing them together. Once all of our clothes were clean, we rinsed them in a new bucket of clean water until there was no more soap. Then, we rung them out and hung them on a fence to dry. Because it was so sunny, it only took a few hours to fully dry the clothes. It is nice to have newly cleaned clothes to wear for our next adventure!
            After a delicious lunch, we had a dance lesson. The Tumaini students first taught us some of their traditional Tanzanian dances, and then we taught them how to dance to “Cotton Eye Joe.” We later met a dance instructor named Lucian who taught both the BC students and the Tumaini students a Makonde (a southern Tanzanian tribe) dance that we will soon be performing for the school community. We then ended the night with Phoebe, Sophia, Ian and Dorcus leading ANCHOR and a performance by Sophia and Lorelle on the ukulele.
 
Phoebe and Sophia