Ellen Sykes

Ellen Sykes .

03/20/2026

Party Friday Susan leads the conga line on Day 10. It has beeen very rainy so we need to burn off energy.

03/19/2026

Day 10. Sunrise from our balcony in Tanzania after three hours of intense rain. What i imagine a monsoon must be like.

03/18/2026

Day 8. Children in Tanzania wash their own clothes.

03/16/2026

Let me introduce you to Ivan and Irene Amani, brother and sister, aged 5 and 11 respectively. They go to the Gyetighi Primary school which next to the Rift Valley children’s village where I am volunteering. Because Tanzanians take education so seriously these two children walk 9 km to the school in the morning and 9 km back home in the afternoon. Irene is the top of her class and Ivan is getting stronger. You should think about that when you see the yellow school buses go by and realize that it’s just not 9 km, but it’s 9 km up and down hills , muddy Hills. The school they go to is one of the best in the country. Ivan gave me a hug as I was leaving, and I find that that happens often here the children are friendly and trusting, and they are wonderful with each other.

03/16/2026

day 6. After a walk to see the pigs there was. Photo opportnity with teachers jackie and Anita.

03/15/2026

This is what took us up a long rutted road to lunch on Day 5, our day off. It was driven by a student driver with his teacher sitting along side. We hit every rut and deep puddle and my teeth were chattering by the time we arrived, but it was worth it as you will see in the next post.

03/14/2026

Day 4. Saturday. Morning meeting before we got divided up into groups. because I was a newbie I got assigned Donald who is 11 and smart as a whip. We read a couple of books or he read them to me and then he got bored so I thought we should play do something so we got paper and pencil and play tic-tac-toe. I beat them the first couple of times and then like any smart kid he changed the rules on me and made much bigger boxes and longer boxes and beat the pants off me. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture of him but his mother is a human resources director at the village and she’s about to leave and so he will have to leave with her and go to another village or town and make new friends and go to a new school which he’s not looking forward to his sister is in boarding school in another part of Tanzania. I told him that his name was the same as our president and that sometimes he was called a Cheeto and he immediately got the reference so it looks like people everywhere knows the orange person. This afternoon we’ll play dodgeball but inside because it’s teeming. Donald says he’s figured it out so he never gets hit. We’ll see.

Day 1 on the great African adventure. My hotel room at 2am upon my arrival in Arusha. Its the rainy season and the net...
03/12/2026

Day 1 on the great African adventure. My hotel room at 2am upon my arrival in Arusha. Its the rainy season and the nettjng is imortant. P. S. The things you see on the bed are not chocolates, but leaves with a little flowers in them . No ac. Day 2 was an 8 Hour drivve up to the Tanzanian children’s village, the last hour and a half on a road so rutted that it made the construction on 2nd Ave. look about look like the surface of the Grand Prix. Plenty of baboons on the highway more tomorrow on day three .

03/04/2026

The Birthday girl on the right and her friends Julia and Eliza at the start of a very chic 21st birthday dinner .

03/03/2026

Niel,s 75th birthday at Oxomoco in Brooklyn with the Sunday Bike Club.

03/01/2026

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra in a superb program of Mozart and Dvorak, at Carnegie Hall, and the encore a waltz. Of course. This was a sneaked video. Wish i could have filmed the whole thing. The heart of every Viennese beats in three quarter time.

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