Caki, caki

Last Friday, friends (Jo & Cath) at St. Mary’s College Crosby, helped me organise  a coffee morning.  We were raising money  for Sr. Brigitte’s charity which will provide  safe refuge, education and care for girls living on the streets in Tanzania. (See 'Continuing Links')  Staff and 6^th formers gathered in the library at break time where tea, coffee and copious amounts of cake were served.   Everyone was extremely generous and we made £100 which is just great.  Many thanks to all who ate!  Only £1100 to go now...

Dodoma

We arrived in Dodoma on 14th Jan after a 7 hour bus journey through a surprisingly green and tropical looking Africa – it’s the rainy season which is apparently the reason for the current lusciousness. There are lots of ‘Christmas trees’ – nothing like fir trees but they have big red flowers all over them for Christmas and through January.

Dodoma is nothing like Dar es Salaam. Although it’s the administrative capital, it really is just a town with very few amenities. The climate however is great- much cooler than Dar.
The Jesuit community here is lovely - I’ve never been subjected to so much football in my life though. They’re in the middle of the Africa cup & they’re all passionate supporters of the Premiership so between the two it seems they’re never without a match...

I think we’ve been lucky with accommodation too – the volunteer house (in picture) has the perk of screens on the windows & doors which means few mosquitoes and more to the point – no giant moths! There are only 3 of us at the moment – Erin and me plus Mira, a German volunteer who’s been here for 4 months, has a good grounding in Kiswahili and knows how to avoid being charged ‘mzungu’ (white) prices at the market! So, the house is fine – the call to prayer at 5am every morning which next door’s cow & cockerel join in with gusto is less so...

So far we’ve just been finding our feet, visiting the various projects and trying to decide which to get involved in. I’ve been surprised at the standard of provision at all of the projects. The Jesuits have done a great job of securing both international aid and local support – we had dinner on Friday with the Education Minister and the Water minister. They seem to know how to get everyone on side and it shows in the projects!

There are glaring differences between what I’ve seen here and the lack of support and development available for Tamils in Sri Lanka though. Tanzania is apparently one of the darlings of the aid donor community and while I’m sure its not the case all over, the places we’ve seen really are testament to how far that aid can go when combined with local vision and drive.

At the moment I know I’ll be teaching at St. Ignatius primary school for part of the week but I’m hoping to combine that with time in the local orphanage or youth centre. School only starts back tomorrow from the summer holidays but we had a tour yesterday which included visiting the cows which provide the milk for the children’s porridge breakfast, the chickens who provide meat & eggs for lunch and more disturbingly the desperately cute bunnies... I think I’m going to have to get over this squeamishness though – so far we’ve tucked into goat and were gleefully informed yesterday that we were eating ‘bush meat’ – no one could quite agree whether it was antelope or zebra, but it beat goat whatever!

Dar Es Sallam

So after four days of delay, we finally made it to Africa! Fr Edmund was there to meet us at the airport, all smiles and welcoming. Our first African task was to physically push down the back window on his ancient jeep and pass our bags through – not the first time I’ll bemoan my inability to travel light I fear...

The Jesuit community is on the outskirts of Dar Es Salaam, where the Chinese money and the paved roads have yet to reach. I was quite grateful for my Sri Lanka and Bolivia experiences or the journey to their house, with all the sights, sounds and smells of the developing world would have been rather a culture shock.

We spent our first day catching up on sleep and seeing some of the local area. Fr Edmund took us to meet some American Jesuit volunteers and en route Erin and I were accosted by the cutest little kids who were hugging our legs and telling us how beautiful we were – definite flattery given our red faces, frizzy hair and lack of sleep!

This morning Edmund took us down town to change money and get our bus tickets for Dodoma. Than after lunch we visited Gonzaga, the Jesuit primary school. It was the first day back after the holidays and the main attraction was the two swings and see-saws that had appeared over the break - the little ones especially were beside themselves with excitement over them. In one class when we were saying our names, they couldn’t get ‘Erin’ and called her ‘Heaven’ – she loved it! Then it was to Loyola High School – all I can say is that it was another world totally from my more recent experience of high school! It felt like school in Sri Lanka, except this one has really benefited from international aid and has good facilities.

So now we’re making the most of internet access which is right next door to our room here but I suspect will be much harder to come by in Dodoma...

Keeping in Touch

In the last few days of preparation for my 6 months in Tanzania, my mind has been turning more and more to the people I’ll miss. I’ll miss family and friends here in UK enormously, but also friends from further afield... Over the Christmas period old (and new!) friends surfaced through cards, phone calls, Facebook, IM chats and good old e-mail - and all of these methods of communication are going to be limited in Dodoma. I fear this may be one of my biggest challenges! Lots of people have been asking to be kept up to date with my travels and I thought a blog might be a good way to do that. We’ll see how it goes!

So the plan so far it that Erin and I meet up in London on 6^th Jan and spend the night at Jesuit Missionary HQ in Wimbledon before flying to Dar Es Salaam, having a couple of days there to sort visas etc and then make our way to Dodoma where our placements are. In the meantime there is loads of preparing, packing and organising still to do...