Day 10: Agency Awkwardness

After class, we headed to our agency and even though we told our professors that they could not just show up and expect to be given a tour, they followed suit. When we got to the hospital parking lot, I told my professors to wait in the van and i'd let them know that everyone had come with us. That way the coordinator could decide how to engage the visitors. Nicole and I walked to the office and told them about the people who had joined us and they were taken aback and quite upset. However, they followed us and said they'd give them a tour of the Children's Village that they're building (the first house opens in two weeks). When we got back to the parking lot, the professors and other student visitors were not there. We searched the hospital and asked around, carefully navigating the lack of English known by staff, only to find out they'd gone ahead to the orphanage anyway. 

This put us in an even more sticky situation. The orphanage staff were really displeased that they had gone up to the orphanage without permission. The Nkwaranga Orphanage has a very strict visitors policy because they have a focus on attachment. They don't want to introduce people to the children who are just going to come and go. They want to foster strong, healthy attachment and development in the children. As such, when the staff reached the visiting OU people, they immediately asked them to leave. I was very uncomfortable with the position i'd been put in by the professors, but once they were gone we got to go do our normal chore of laundry duty. The mamas are really starting to get used to us and they really appreciate our help. It's so awesome to help them with something like laundry so they can focus on the kiddos :)

After laundry, we returned to the office and found that things had been worked out and everyone was feeling much better (though some were still a little off-put by the actions of our OU representatives). We all piled into a bus and went for a short tour of the Children's Village where they will house children who age out of the orphanage. Kids age out at 5, so now they will go to the older kids' home and will be sent to an international private school where they give them a good education. It was really great to see where they are expanding. 

After that awkwardness we returned to TCDC for lunch, then went to class. Our group from the orphanage gave a presentation about the orphanage (if you want to learn more about it or the organization that runs it, check out thesmallthings.org). Then, we learned about international child welfare, specifically child maltreatment in Dr. Riley's class.  We had a good  talk and i'm feeling like now we are getting into the meat of our coursework and learning a lot. 

At home, we chewed fresh sugar cain and sipped coffee with Baba and Mama while Baba discussed social welfare in Tanzania. He explained that there our 3 ministries that work together to make up the social welfare system: the ministry of health, the ministry of education, and the ministry of community development. We also talked about social security and how that works here. They don't have social security in the same sense that we do, but instead rely on private companies for their retirement or on natural resources that they have acquired such as trees, land, etc. If need be, they can sell these things later to supplement their income. 

It was a good talk and dinner was delicious as always, then I went to bed early and slept like a rock. 

Safi!