April 30, 2019 - It's already been a week into our European adventure and I'm just now finding the time to post this. We've been keeping busy!

It’s really hard to believe that our time in Tanzania is over. We’ve left. As I write this, I’m sitting on an airplane bound for Europe. There were a few tears when we left (mine). It felt like we’d made a home and a life in Arusha. It feels different than when we left Ontario because we knew we’d be coming back.

During March, I also initiated our Books for Kids project. At the beginning of our time in Tanzania, I had watched our kids devour books that could be easily borrowed electronically through our public library, having basically an infinite supply of books available to them. In contrast, there were no books in Tanzanian homes. There were no libraries. There is such a limited selection of story books in Swahili. Most books in english for kids are not at all culturally relevant for them. (I think I may have found them all - about 200 titles). Also, I was so struck on our visit out to a maasai school that Pamoja has partnered with, that there are no extra resources. Most of the classrooms didn’t even have desks, let along story books that are freely available to the children.

While we were on vacation in Zanzibar, I picked up a book from the communal shelf at the resort - one of the few in English (most were in German). It was called “Leaving Microsoft to Change the World”. It’s the biography of John Wood who left his job as a Vice President at Microsoft, to start Room to Read, a non-profit organization that builds libraries, supplies books and sponsors girls to attend school around the world. Through John’s story, I was inspired just to start. I also felt like I wanted to leave something behind that would benefit the communities we had come to care for. So, I started looking for publishers in Tanzania and I put out a call for funds. Amazingly, my friends and family took up the call so much more generously than I had imagined. Since I always work better under pressure to meet a deadline, I was still working on organizing the books in our final week. Finally, two days before our departure, I was able to send books home with the kids from our Kids Club!