Back to Marangu West and Paying the Tailor Fundi

Sunday today but no rest for the ABCD: Art Building Children’s Dreams team! We were exhausted after yesterday’s trek and off we went for another today. Today we had Peter Hurson, a member of the group, along with us because the rest of the group are off on safari and he had the time to spare and an interest in what we were doing. Joseph’s mom had kindly offered to make lunch for us so after a return visit to Gabriel’s home for more photography, we arrived at Joseph’s home where his mom had prepared a wonderful spread of ugali (maize mash), chicken (freshly killed that morning!), veggies, a green spinach-like leaf, pineapple, mangos.

Then we set off to visit the homes of Godfrey, Robati, Arini, Joseph, and Adeline. It was a lot of walking and the sun was very hot again. We had to stop in the shade several times to get our breath back and rest. The children were all very happy to see us and the families were very happy to hear that the school costs were covered. Art was done, lots of photos shot, updated information taken, and gifts/letters from sponsors shared. Peter was a big help in carrying the gear and in the photography (he came up with the idea of photographing the tailor contract for our records as we didn’t have access to a photo-copier)

We had another appointment with the tailor fundi in Marangu so we hiked down the the main road to catch the daladala for the ride into town. The fundi’s shop is a kind of stall in a market area. He has 4 tailors working for him at treadle machine of every description. They had already started to make the children’s uniforms and I was impressed at the quality of the work. So we paid him 270,000 shillings (about $200) as an advance and wrote up a contact for him to sign. The cost of a full uniform of shirt, skirt or pants, and sweater is around $20, and that includes his time in measuring the children. School uniforms are a big industry in Tanzania. The fundi who is a friend of Joseph’s, also provided a couple of freshly made mango juice for Airini who is still in Kilema Hospital suffering from malaria.

So then we caught another daladala for the rough ride back to Kilema in time for some dinner. We were so exhausted and so went straight to bed.

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