I'm in Tanzania now. We've been through the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater and are now making our towards Zanzibar with a stop off in Dar Es Salaam. I'll write more about this later but in the meantime, I wanted to use this unexpected internet access to let those who gave me clothes know how some of the distribution went.
On our last day in Rwanda, me and three of the girls on the trip went to a local village in Ruhengeri to distribute some of the clothes you donated.
To make sure the families we gave them to really needed them, we did a bit of a reccy first and went to a women's cooperative. Members make baskets by wrapping grass in long pieces of dyed straw. I'm not very good at describing the process but see below for photos!
They insisted we all had a go and despite being petrified I was going to mess it up for them, I did quite well. So if things don't work out with this new environment body, I reckon could turn my hand to basket making.
As usual, a large crowd of children gathered around us wearing tattered, torn and dirty clothes so we gave them some of your donations.
The mothers and children at the cooperative were genuinely surprised and excited at getting new clothes - it was really heart warming to see their faces light up. It was one of the loveliest experiences I've had in Africa so thank you again.
There was one little girl in particular that was so thrilled with her new pink dress (Ann, I think this may have been from someone at Acorn), that she didn't want to put it on straight away because she was dirty so ran over half a mile home to wash before running back to show us.
By time she reached us, she was out of breath but couldn't stop smiling, shyly coming up to me to cwtch me and hold my hand, saying thank you over and over again.
We also popped into an orphanage to drop some clothes off. Whilst we were there, the 'Auntie' in charge showed me the dormitories, rooms that had two sets of bunk beds in them. Each bed held up to four children between the ages of four and fourteen in some rooms, so there would potentially be 16 kids in a room no bigger than 14 x 12 foot.
I've posted some photos below so have a look to see if you can identify anything you gave. Also, one of the girls who came is writing a blog and has posted some photos so have a look at www.milkundmidnight.tumblr.com if you're interested.
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