spirit carries

We are walking on a thin muddy path that borders her rice patty.  This is the land she works with her husband in order to feed her children.  Before she obtained the loan from BEST, a locally founded NGO, she barely had enough to survive.  Her house was nothing more than pieces of sheet metal rigged together with scrap wood and rope.  Now she works this land and sleeps in a simple bed in a solid house with the profits of her own labor.

She is the tiniest slip of a woman, but her smile is wide and her steps are strong.  She is proud to show us what she has wrought with her own hands.  Her pleasure in this task radiates off her body, though she keeps her gaze to the ground and hardly says a word.

I try to wrap my mind around what it takes to keep this field, this family, alive and thriving.  I know I should be watching her hopeful eyes and capable hands for a sign, but all I can see is her feet.  How she carefully picks her way through the muddy field, how she knows where to step, how to walk, where to stand.  How the immense strength of her spirit carries her, even as the frailty of her body dares her destiny and expands her hope.

There's More

On the surface, it appears as though this is more than enough. Plenty. But it was the only source of food I could see for the three families we visited on the quiet edge of the village that day with Arusha-based non-profit BEST (Business and Entrepreneurship Support Tanzania). There was no kitchen. No pantry. No grocery store. Just this basket of tomatoes and an anxious dose of hope that rain would fall on this modest patch of ground to produce the maize.

* * *

Shutter Sisters is proud to support our non-profit partner Epic Change and their TweetsGiving project this year – a global celebration of gratitude on November 24-26. Our friends Stacey Monk and Sanjay Patel graciously extended their support to connect us with Mama Lucy Kamptoni and Shepherds Junior School in Arusha, Tanzania. Jen and I are so grateful for the work they are doing and were thrilled to contribute our images and time to produce a video in support of TweetsGiving. I hope you will get involved and share your gratitude.

Teacher Johnson Goes to School

It is the last day before everyone leaves.  The internet lab--the first of its kind in Arusha and maybe even Tanzania--is humming as the kids type their tweets back and forth to one another and then their new counterparts around the world.  Teacher Johnson, handsome as always in his dress shirt and freshly polished shoes, logs on--could it be?--on the last day, for the first time?

Teacher Johnson!  You don't have any followers!  Where are all your tweets?  I don't know what he'll do on Monday when everyone is gone.  Did you go to the class for the teachers?  He feels my panic and flashes me that sheepish, worried smile. We both know how hard the volunteers worked; how insistent they were this could happen, that it would be easy, even if we both had our secret, silent doubts.

I'll get it.  I'm getting it, he says, as he hunts and pecks his way forward into his new responsibility as internet advocate extraordinaire. 

This is how it is when we bring new things halfway around the world.  We have no idea how foreign things  feel.  We glide right over how strange it is to trust that we'll still be together when we've always been so far apart.  We have no comprehension of what it means to be over and over again left behind and then in one instant, forever included.

I promise to retweet him religiously.  To help him get the most followers of any tweeter in the school.  His eyes flash with the spark of competition.  His fingers move a little faster as we joke and smile.  He is deciding to believe it might stay, this tiny thread connecting divergent worlds.  He is deciding to put a sliver of hope in it.  He is deciding to try.

You can follow Teacher Johnson's clever quotes and honest questions at @teacherjohnson1 on Twitter.

Between Us Sisters

I was so inspired by these young, hopeful girls at Shepherds Junior School in Arusha, Tanzania. They are just full of life. Watching them gather in a circle to dance and sing Swahili songs together, reminded me that the essence of sisterhood is a universal concept.

Let's see images that represent sisterhood for you.

Getting Schooled - An Update from Picture Hope

Jen and I are here in Arusha, Tanzania on our second Picture Hope assignment this week. We've so enjoyed sharing time with Mama Lucy, founder of Shepherds Jr. School; kind teachers; and more than 350 children ages 3-12 thanks to our friends at non-profit Epic Change. As in Rwanda, I'm finding that relationships hold great value.  It seems that connections between people are stronger here in Africa, or perhaps these connections are just more visible when you strip away unnecessary physical possessions – when you cut away the clutter and focus on the person seated before you or beside you.

Africa is flattening me. She's taking me back to the basics. Asking me in a gentle and honest whisper to question long-standing assumptions about my life. She makes me cry. She brings me great joy. She makes me want to rebuild a better me. I'm eager to let the images speak to you over the next couple of weeks.

Thank you for sharing this journey with us.