'Reflections of our time in Tanzania'
By Jamie Rossiter & Pam Leudke

Jamie Rossiter and Pam Leudke worked at a medical clinic in Tanzania, documenting patients' medical history for the first time.

Jamie Rossiter and Pam Leudke, Montessori teachers and Bolton residents, spent their summer vacation as missionaries at The Olive Branch for Children in Tanzania. If we had to summarize our experience in Tanzania, so far, it would be with the word dichotomy.

The country, the orphanage and HIV AIDS are full of dichotomies here, of which we never expected to experience.

Tanzania is a developing country in which the majority of people have only the essentials to survive, and sometimes not even those. We have seen dilapidated mud huts that families live in; women carrying large buckets full of water and bundles of wood on their heads, sometimes for miles; the primitive fire pits used to cook every meal. Yet we have also seen people sitting outside their mud hut talking on a cell phone and satellite dishes on top of leaky tin roofs. Modern technology is such a stark contrast with the primitive living conditions of the people.

The Iwambi Evangelical Lutheran Orphanage is an oasis in the desert of poverty and famine. The children get three filling meals every day, have placements in local schools, have a warm, dry bed to call their own, proper clothing and enjoy a shower and TV. Without the outreach of this orphanage, these children would have nothing but famine and sickness. We see how happy the children are and how they are thriving, both physically and emotionally.

The Montessori classroom is offering a high standard of preschool academic programming that cannot be found anywhere else in the region. The medical clinics run in remote villages and the seminars offered to early childhood educators are efforts by Deborah McCracken, managing director, to widen the perimeter of this oasis.

Our experience with HIV AIDS here has also created a dichotomy in our minds. We will no longer associate the diagnosis of HIV with a death sentence. We are playing with and teaching children every day, who just a few months ago, were deemed to die. Under the care of Deborah's program, these children are healthy; full of vitality and possess an incredible spirit.

We climbed a mountain with a young girl, who just over a year ago, could not get out of bed because she was so weakened with complications from HIV. Deborah nurtured her with food, medicine, and love and today she is a beautiful, healthy girl who can literally climb a mountain!

Despite the many obstacles the people in Tanzania face, they possess an incredible spirit of hope and love. They have made us feel so welcome and help us to feel good about the small contribution of our time and talents. It is humbling to be around such unconditional love and it validates that we were truly called to come here.