Good Day, SCARY night : (

Woke up thursday for breakfast and school. We are still trying to teach the kids telling time in English. They have it for the most part except for when it comes to saying " It is quarter TO the hour," but hopefully they will understand eventually! We took some pictures with the kids today and they absolutely LOVE seeing themselves on the camera! It made me miss all my little neices and nephews at home that want to see the camera everytime a picture is taken of them! We made it back early because Justin, Talia, Trent, and Allie were all leaving for Zanzibar a day early. First thing that afternoon, we had James, Matiga, Maola, Doe, and Dickson from the Art Centre come to the house and teach us drumming, bead making, and painting! Drumming was a blast! We had fun learning a few beats from the locals, or at least those of us with any rhythm did!!! Bead making was fun too! We were taught how to make different necklaces, braclets, and anklets. I made a necklace that tooke foreverrrrr to make because it had so many beads and I got Dickson to tie the knot at the end of it. When he tied the knot, the necklace broke : ( ... just my luck! haha...but they were nice enought to do it for me over again, since they are much faster at it then myself! After our lessons, everyone made their way down to the dress maker to get our clothes made out of the congas we bought. On the way there I bought a painting from RASTI of massai warriors that I really liked! I'm really excited about putting it the new apartment! haha.
Since there were so many of us at the Dress makers, Charlotte, Meg, & I decided we would come back next week. So we headed back to the main house. When we got there, we werent sitting down for more than 5 minutes when we heard the loudest scream you have ever heard in your life from one of the volunteers across the street. She came running over and we had no idea what happened. We all just figured she had been bitten by a bee or something, but she kept screaming and running. When she came around the building and saw us, all she could say way " He has a gun, he has a gun." Freaked out and not knowing what to do, we all ran into the staff house and hid in a room on the floor. Once it was cleared that we were out of harms way, we made our way out of the building to find out what had happened. We could tell there was a mob of over 100 locals outside of the walls of our gate and we knew someone had been threatened with a weapon for money, but we didnt know exactly what was going on. Two seconds later, a man was dragged in by the security gaurds and everyone outside went crazy. Kara, the girl who had been screming and Nick were asked to go over and identify if that was the man that threatened them and it was. The gaurds, Mama C & Mama Thea, and others began beating the man on the ground. Kicking him in the ribs and face and punching him. We had never seen anything like it before and it scared all of us. It was one of those things you didnt want to see but it was so horrible that you couldnt help but watch. I was most worried about all of the volunteers walking back from the dress shop because I knew they would be walking right into the mob outside of our gates. Thankfully, they all got in safely! The man wouldn't stay still, so they tied his feet and hands together and continued to beat him. We thought he would be killed, but the cops were called and escorted the man away & brought the volunteers that witnessed it all down to the station. Later on that evening we had a meeting to debrief the days activites. We got the full details of what happened. One of the volunteers had met this man who said his name was George Wilson. He had used the volunteer to find out where the volunteers all lived and that afternoon came into the Annex house looking for John (this volunteer). When he didn't find John, he sat down to talk to the other volunteers in the house. But since we are not allowed to have locals inside our gates, he was asked to leave. When he stood up he pulled out a butcher knife and told them that if they didnt give him $100,000 he had a gun and would kill them. Kara gave him all the money she had but when he saw it wasnt enough, he freaked out. This was when Kara ran out of the room screaming. The man followed her to stop her but when he realized she had attracted attention outside, he began running down the street. When theifs are caught red-handed in Tanzania, many times they will be immediately killed by the locals. So everyone was trying to catch him in the streets because all of the locals respect CCS (our program) and what we do for the community. As the locals tried to kill him, our security gaurds grabbed him and pulled him inside to question him before he was killed. This is why so many locals were gathered outside our gates...because they wanted to see him killed.
Thankfully no one got hurt. It was a crazy situation, nothing like anything we had ever seen before. There was a lot of crying from everyone and people worried about how our parents would take it. But CCS assured us of our safety and that we had nothing to worry about. We knew we just had to be more cautious and think twice before befriending a random person from the community. After a traumatic night we all went to bed, ready to start a new day and leave for Zanzibar for the weekend!