Well I've finished with my placement. We had our community festival on Sunday and the finals of our sports league. It was a stressful affair because the day before everything looked like it was going to fail miserably but luckily on the day things seemed to mostly work themselves out. We had a guest speaker from VCT who spoke really well about AIDS and the importance of testing and unfortunately we couldnt get the mobile testing like they'd promised because they just told us that day that its not possible (TIT!!). We also had most of the village leaders and important [View Full Entry]

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Firstly my little calf died :( I came back from Njombe and it wasn't there and Fledita informed me that kitoto kimekufe (baby cow has died). I was so sad, i bet it was those damn ants!! Anyway other than that sadness things are good. I went to Njombe on friday on a motorcycle (2.5hrs) and my god...pain!!! The roads are pretty bad here so it was extremely bumpy and the motorbike didnt have very good suspension, i almost flew off a few times but the pain was intense. When I got off I almost fell over and had to get [View Full Entry]

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07.06.07 6:00 in the morning we left the African Parks house in Kalabo for the ride home. Still pitch black outside we navigated withy GPS to the entrance of the dirt road that would lead us back to Sitoti and further to Katima Molilo (Zambian Side). There is no petrol station before Livingstone at all, so we calculated hard and decided we would make it. Well, we arrived on the vapour in Livingstone. What a ride again. A shortcut turned out to be waterlogged and we had to double back another 50 Km through very deep sand. Once again, the [View Full Entry]

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So a lot has gone down in the last week. We taught a lesson with our real partners, found out where we are placed, had some placement issues, made an SPW calender, wrote a song, said goodbye to Clare and soon (on Monday) we will be saying goodbye to eachother. The lesson with my partner Neema went ok, it wasn't great because SPW had some trouble finding students for us and we didnt teach until about 2.30pm and we hadnt eaten so we were all grumpy and the kids were tired and bored (they had to sit through 3 of our [View Full Entry]

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So you've already heard about some of the big changes that have occurred in the SPW Tanzania program due to funding issues, well heres another! We were getting all prepared to leave for our village placements this Wednesday, the wazungu were stressed but ready and then yesterday in walks Clare (our program manager) looking kind of scared and nervous and says "So I have some news...some of you will like it and some of you wont." - from this point on our imaginations went wild, thoughts like "omg only some of us are going to placement, they are sending us home, [View Full Entry]

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Mambo all my lovelies!! Habari za Australia??? Ninapenda sana Tanzania na wiki hii ilikuwa nzuri lakini ngumu pia. This week has been good but hard too. We have been plodding on with training, practicing lots of teaching methods, getting to know the Tanzanians and eating tonnes of chocolate. Last Wednesday we had teaching practice and we returned to the school we have taught at before but this time we were in pairs with a Tanzanian partner which made it all the more interesting. I had a great time and worked really well with my partner, Tuse, and we got some good [View Full Entry]

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It rains everyday without fail now, it'll start off sunny and hot in the morning but by the afternoon a huge storm has rolled in and there is rain and lots of lightening and thunder. It definitely hasn't made me love storms any less. Yesterday afternoon we had a cooking session with all the Tanzanian volunteers and in groups we had to cook Ugali, rice, beans and vegetables on charcoal stoves out under the trees and it was a lot of fun. I definitely learnt a lot but I still feel sorry for whatever Tanzanian I get partnered with. After we [View Full Entry]

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I'm off to village in 3 weeks and im sooo nervous!!!! I've just realised what a big task this is. We've had a week of training and we've experienced the kind of misconceptions that exist in tanzania about sexual health/contraception/HIV AIDS and even just with the Tanzanian volunteers. This is going to be a challenge!! The Tanzanian volunteers (there are 15 of them - 11 girls and 4 boys) are all champs and we all get on really well. Some of them are a bit conservative so it is going to be interesting when we get to placement and will be [View Full Entry]

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Today was the last day of swahili lessons and tonight is our last night living with our families. I am feeling such a mix of emotions, I'm so excited for zanzibar and to move onto placement training and to meet all the Tanzanian volunteers but at the same time I am really sad to be leaving my family and to have finished this section of the program (swahili lessons). I can not get over how quickly it has gone. February is almost over and 2 months of the 8 months will be done!! We didn't really do much swahili learning today [View Full Entry]

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So I've come to realise that im totally obsessed and in love with the African sky! Night, morning, day, dusk..it's always so beautiful. I especially love when it's about to storm and the entire sky looks like it is being swallowed into darkness. the huge black cloud moves so quickly (as Nathan pointed out it reminds you of Independence Day when the giant mothership or whatever is taking over the sky) and then the rain comes on so suddenly and so hard. The entire family runs outside trying to get all the washing in but the downpour is tremendous and you [View Full Entry]

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