Advertisement
The mob!
When cute little kids attack... Hey all,
Well it has been a little while since I've checked in and plenty has happened since then, so you'll have to bear with me and the ramble that you're about to read.
I arrived in Tanzania a little over a week ago, and have been enjoying every minute of it. Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world. Not long back it was one of the five poorest, but recently has put alot of effort into restoring its economy and is now at least out of the bottom twenty. Its main industry obviously is tourism, but it is also a major exporter of coffee and gold as well.
I'm currently staying in the village of Machame outside of the town of Moshi. It's about a forty minute ride by car, or hour and a half ride by Dala dala which is a stripped down minivan with about 30 people inside. Cozy and fragrant. Fun if you want to sit in the lap of your neighbor or have live chickens under your feet. Seriously. Good fun.
In Machame we rent a house that's about a twenty minute walk from the school, two minute walk from the pub and grocery store and splat dab in the middle of probably one of the most lucious tropical forests I've had the privilege of being a part of. The village itself is quite small, and you get the opportunity to talk to many of the local community. They're all absurdly friendly. I have never smiled as much as I do now.
Accomodation wise we have 'mattresses' on the floor which we throw our foam and sleeping bags overtop of. The toilet is a hole in the ground and there is no running water. 'Showers' consist of dumping cold buckets of water over yourself and scrubbing vigourously. On the plus though, we do have electricity. For food we're lucky enough to have a great cook, Jackie who cooks us traditional African fair. Predominantly vegitarian, very little meat... and if you saw the butcher's shop, you'd understand why I'm totally fine with that. Jackie like everyone else is very friendly and spends alot of time laughing at us. Not with us, at us and thus I tease her about it as much as possible. The accomodations might sound rustic but they're easy to get the hang of.
In terms of the group there are seven of us now in total. One leader and six worker/teachers. We all get along extremely well and bonded instantaneously. I'm the only Canadian though, everyone else is actually English with the exception of Lizzy, the leader who's South African. The project we're working on is building latrine facilities for the Nkwamwasi Primary school. On the face of it, it may sounds like a lame project but in terms of the community it's actually a really critical endeavor. The school itself can't afford anything, and I really mean anything not even pencils, and their overflowing latrine is a serious health risk for communicable diseases to the local children and villages. We're building a six station toilet block to replace the current one. Due to safety we don't have to dig the hole (15m deep) but have to build up the surrounding infrastructure. Our project last week was to move the piles of earth from around the hole and use it to build up entrance ways to our future toilet block. Pretty back breaking labour as there's a lot of dirt. Next week we begin the slab to put over the hole, in terms of effort that's supposed to even be worse. Days are long but you feel like you're accomplishing something. With the exertion and the diet I may come out with abs yet! Ha ha.
For teaching I have taken on teaching Class 3 english, and I love it. My little kids are awesome. They're around nine or so, and the class size is about 45. We started teaching towards the end of the week and I've had two lessons with them. I approach it with crazy childish enthusiasm and am a big supporter of loud class participation. They're really quite funny, although all the kids in the school are. There are 6 classes in total, ranging from Kindergarden and up. All the kids smile at you and want to look at you or touch you and so on and so on. Alot will shout Mazungu! Which translates to 'white person' but it's not a term of offence it's simply what you are. The kids provide a nice break from construction. If large groups come to watch I generally take the time to chase them, pick them up, tickle them, make funny faces and sometimes juggle for them. In one particularly extended spree (see photo) they started dragging me down in exuberance with me mock fighting back. If you'd pick one up, four would latch on to your arm, three on the leg of the one you picked up and two would try and pick up your leg. Test of strength more then the actual building. They're small so it isn't too bad, just play fighting.
When we get back at the end of the day we're generally exhausted. Sometimes we watch movies, sometimes we play card games, or have IPod nights. Just hangout for the most part. Because Machame is a village it's safer than many other places in Tanzania, but it is still not advised to go out too far at night. The crimes here are crimes of opportunity. The country is very poor, and one stolen camera could feed someone's family for a year. You can hardly blame someone for wanting to save their family from starvation, and that extreme level of poverty is very apparent. One child in the school, the sweetest little girl, has massive burn marks across her entire face from when her mother poored boiling water over as a baby to kill her because they could no longer feed her. She ended out surviving, but will have the horrible scars of the incident for the rest of her life...quite sad.
Overall though everything is great with me. I'm really enjoying it here, the environment and the people. It's more than what I was expecting. As I get better at Swahili I hope to be able to talk more and more to the villagers as their english is limited.
Okay... that's it for now! Thanks everyone for your emails from home, it's nice to keep up and talk. I'll do my best to respond a little to each of them as I go along. We only get internet on the weekends when we come in to Moshi or Arusha so if you don't hear from me in a while it's simply because I'm in the middle of the Tanzanian forest! Ha ha.
Take care,
Michael
Advertisement
Tot: 0.141s; Tpl: 0.022s; cc: 12; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0412s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb