Simba Rock

Last weekend we finally made it up Simba Rock – a rocky mountain (or more correctly kind of outcrop) dominating the local area. We've been planning to go almost since we arrived, but something always seemed to crop up. We went up late afternoon to avoid the worst of the heat and in hope of seeing the sunset. In the event the sunset was nice but not spectacular. I loved lying on the warm rocks at the top though... It was a good time of year to go as the vast plains are incredibly green due to the particularly generous rainy season this year. Typical that I’d come to Africa and have more rain than I’ve ever seen before! The good thing is that it comes in spectacular down pours and is accompanied by beautiful lightening shows, usually at night. It is also obviously great for the crops but the accompanying mosquitoes are a nightmare! At one point I feared my feet were going to be parted from my ankles they were so badly bitten! Storms also have a tendency to see off the electricity for a few hours, so we’ve had many a cosy candle lit evening...

Celebrations

One of the great things about Tanzania is the enthusiasm for celebration. Everything is a celebration – Sunday mass is a weekly example. ‘First Mass’ (at which I’m not a regular attendee as it is at 7:30am!) is a massive affair. When the President is in town he attends alongside the hundreds of regulars who pack in. The choir is amazing – I’ve never heard anything like it. Even hearing them practice in the little band stand in the parish grounds is beautiful, but in full swing with harmonies, dancing and whooping it’s just brilliant. By ‘Third Mass’ (where I’m more usually found and where there is fortunately a similarly good choir), the sanctuary is often littered with gifts bought at the earlier offertory processions. It’s usual to see crates of soft drinks, huge branches of bananas, sacks of rice etc, but last Sunday featured a rather generous amount of toilet roll too!

Every gathering, whether it’s the parish workers’ party, community night at the Sisters’, or just a couple of friends round to our house, features dancing. Attempting to get us mzungus to move like Africans is proving a favourite pastime...

Last Saturday was the school’s annual ‘Family Day’ where staff bring a member of their family and generally celebrate being part of the school. Everyone was appointed to a committee and spent the morning preparing, cooking, decorating, sorting music and entertainment. I can just imagine how such an event would go down at home – get up early on a Saturday, cook all morning then spend the afternoon with colleagues... The lack of cynicism and general enthusiasm here is refreshing though and means the capacity for fun is considerable and opportunities for dancing, many!

Bingo

Last week was a really good one, I feel like things are falling into place and I’m adjusting my expectations... My time at school was more filled. I introduced the ever faithful bingo to standard 3 & 4 (9 & 10 year olds) and they totally loved it, it as did Mama Moshashu, their teacher. She got so excited we couldn’t just stop at one line & then a house – all the other lines were checked and rewarded with stickers too. The kids absolutely loved the stickers and I was mobbed at the end with kids waving bingo tickets & wanting their picture taken. Mama Moshashu greeted me for the rest of the week with “Teacher Clara – BINGO! Very nice game...”

I also started at the orphanage properly. The older kids were at school so I just stayed for the morning and played with the pre-school kids. Mostly they wanted pushing on the swings, to be held while they shimmied up the frame of the swings (some with already with impressive technique!), to have piggy backs & be swung round. One little girl though just wanted to be held and hugged as much as possible – after all the running round I was quite glad to sit down with her while the others conducted a game of ‘cooking’ with 2 jam jar lids, some leaves and soil...

There isn’t much in the way of toys there but the kids (most of whom have lost their parents to AIDS and are HIV positive) are well looked after by the sisters and seem happy. The sisters have asked me to come after school to do some English ‘teaching’ with the older kids. The first time I did this was a Friday and I was worried they wouldn’t want another ‘lesson’ after a week at school, so I’d taken animal snap – once they got over being too polite with each other, they really loved it. We played some other word games – learned such useful vocab as ‘shuffle’, ‘deal’ and ‘cheat’ and they were really keen to know when I’d be back. So much for not wanting lessons after school! The kids were all standard 4 but some of them were older as they’ve missed out on school in the past. One girl, Paulina was 17 – I’d like to try to figure out some more age appropriate things for her. She was totally lovely & really keen to chat & practice speaking English.

As for the Jesuit community – they’ve been incredibly warm and welcoming and have helped us out of more than a few fixes! We decided to have them all over for dinner last weekend but with the lack of dead meat, no oven, no appliances and at one point in the afternoon, no electricity we were hard pushed to produce anything approaching sustenance! Still, somehow we pulled it off and it was a lovely evening. We were 12 people from 9 counties: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Ethiopia, USA, Germany, England, Scotland... That’s one of the best things about this whole experience, coming together with people form very different backgrounds and realising how much we actually share.

A Bin Bag Full of Peanuts

I’ve been assaulted with so many new experiences in the last week that I can’t quite even remember everything but I’ll probably manage the main things... We started school on Monday. As I suspected, it is actually well staffed and organised so I’m not too sure at the moment how much volunteers are really needed. That said the lessons I’ve seen have been mostly copying, partly due to a lack of text books, and the teachers often wonder out to take phone calls etc! St. Ignatius is much better off than government schools and although the buildings and grounds are lovely, they have incredibly limited resources which makes anything but the most didactic teaching methods difficult.

The bus ride to and from school is a real experience. For a start kids are piled about five to a seat and the little ones are passed out of the windows on the journey home! The routine prayers are hilarious – after everyone has been picked up the monitor shouts “Are you ready?” ‘Yes’, “Are you sure?” ‘Yes’, “Let us pray...” and off they rattle through pretty much the entire Mass and the 10 commandments! All this is going on while the ancient bus is bumping along dust roads and everyone is holding on tight over the many ditches and crazy turns.

Next week I’m starting at the orphanage so Erin & I cycled the route on Friday – it’s only about a half hour ride, but with a bike too small, only back brakes working and most of the route through the bush it was completely exhausting! I’m hoping it’ll cancel out the carb laden diet...

One of the most striking things about Tanzanians is how they take time to greet you – every time you see someone there’s a hand shake and system of greetings, depending on age, relationship etc. I’ve just about mastered the basic Kiswahili greetings but every time I think I’ve cracked it, someone adds in a new one... I’ve also become ‘Clara’ again. This was what most people in Sri Lanka called me and I’ve almost given up saying Claire here, as they just look confused before changing it to the Kiswahili ‘Clara’ anyway. At least that’s one word I’m OK with, otherwise I’m proving a slow learner. Despite having learned (I thought) my part of the conversation I somehow came away from my first solo shopping trip with a whole bin bag full of peanuts rather than the small packet I’d meant to add to our rice! We’ll be living off peanuts for a long time to come...

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...

Not Quite According to Plan...

Well we made it through the snow to London but – no further! We spent a night at JM being ‘briefed’ then spent a couple of hours at an unbelievably crowded Heathrow before our flight was cancelled and BA sent us packing, with no info, no reason and no alternative flight. .. The £70 taxi ride back to JM did not add to our good cheer!
So the next flight is on Monday- when more snow is forecast... In the meantime we’re stranded in freezing weather with only summer clothes! We’ve been pointed in the direction of the ‘store room’ consisting of 80’s men’s clothes which Erin cut a dash modelling last night!
Still, like the intrepid travellers we hoped to be, we braved the elements in a very dubious collection of clothing and went to play on Wimbledon common in the snow this morning– all very pretty but not exactly Dar Es Salaam where we are supposed to be relaxing and acclimatising...