17-38

Jambo!

Today we got up bright and early to go to Mtimbwani to survey last year's PUC team's project as well as attend a ceremony honoring TeV's beekeeping projects there. TeV, as our partner NGO, has been an enormous asset to PUC and we were honored to be invited to the ceremony! The ceremony itself, called "Mwembe", is similar to the Olympics ceremony in that a torch is passed around to different communities where the government honors development projects in the region.

The team arrived at Mtimbwani and, to our surprise, Mwembe ended up being a HUGE party! We had a blast dancing (horribly), singing, and meeting the community. Seriously, those guys had some MOVES. They also had a Swahili pop band come and give a live performance where they flirted with some of our female members!

Anyways, a major part of the PUC program is sustainability, and this is why we evaluated the rain water harvesting system from last year. We followed the sustainbility evaluation from last year's team and are happy to report that the project passed with flying colors. Great job, last year's team!

Once the evaluation was complete we had an enlightening meeting with the school's faculty and members of the community in order to review possible projects for next year. Mtimbwani, unfortunately, is in dire need of a clinic, as well as a new class for its kindergarten students. For us, it was a moment of sobering realization that many of these communities, like Pongwe and Mtimbwani, are in need of things we take for granted and that we can only try to help as much as we can.

Finally, to cap off our busy day, the PUC team got to meet a member of the Parliament of Tanga! He was an extremely nice guy that actually was an aerospace engineer at OSU. He promised to visit our project on Friday, and maybe go out for dinner after!

Kwaheri!

SWAHILI PHRASE OF THE DAY:

Lala Salama: Good night!