Daily Routine

The Mount-Zion-Orphanage is located in Kilimahewa, a small suburb of the city Mwanza in Tanzania.

The orphanage is a big house with two big bedrooms, one bathroom (a room with a window and a hole at the floor), one living room for having meal, a stuff room and a kitchen. Although, the cooking facility is placed behind the house on the ground.

A part of the daily life of the children is the independent sharing of their "household-duties". Alternately they are cooking, cleaning the house or washing dishes. Also by their own they are taking care of the stock of food and the equal distribution. It is amazing to see with which exactness and fairness they share the food among each other and at the same time they are paying attention on that there is always something left for the future.

Normally they used to have three meals per day, but recently they had to live without breakfast with the morning "chai with sugar", because there was not enough money available. Chai, sugar and even rice are expensive, therefore, at lunch time and in the evening they just eat a lump of Ugali (mashed maize or mush) with some vegetables. They start cooking at a fixed or predefined time, even if they were already hungry before. Dr. Andrew buys the flour for the Ugali in big sacks and brings them directly to the orphanage. Even if there is no flowing water in the house, the children are paying a lot of attention to hygiene and cleanness. Every day they are washing themselves and their clothes using a bucket in front of the house.

In the morning the boys have to walk 3 kilometers to school and in the afternoon they come back home at half past two.

In the afternoon they play with marbles on the ground or they go to a nearby sports field for playing soccer. Generally there are not so many possibilities for leisure activities. Because there are almost no toys or materials. Therefore, quite often many kids are just hanging around in the backyard. You can observe that some of them are sitting alone, and being introverted, either struggeling on there own with boredom or to overcome their happenings in the past.

During the day they are accompanied by a responsible person so that they have someone to talk to in case of difficulties or conflictions.

Once a week a teacher is coming voluntary in order to teach the children on polite manners, a good behavior as well as the basic rules and standards of society.

On sundays most of the children are going to church, except the Muslim-children or those who don’t have so-called "good enough" and thus appropriate clothes for going to church.

 In the evening, after having dinner together again on the floor of the living room, they prepare themselves to go to bed at 9 o' clock.