Community Service Day 2

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I woke up before the alarm that I had set for myself at six then next morning because despite having a hard day of work, I was excited to see what other birds I would find by the pond. I was quite sore from the hard labour yesterday but I got up, went for a quick shower (due to the fact that I was up early, I got some hot water this time) and then picked up my camera and binoculars and went to the pond, there I saw all of the usual species such as weavers, doves and black crakes. Despite having seen them a lot over the past couple of days, they were still fun to watch but I also saw many of the slightly less common species such as common bul buls and speckled mousebirds. I also saw quite a few rare and interesting species, this included a long-tailed cormorant (reed cormorant) which at first was flying around quite high up in circles but then came lower and lower and landed in a tree on the island of the pond. Also on this island was a group of very nice brown-breasted barbets. The pond was full to bursting with tilapia, including some very large ones which I think the cormorant was trying to fish. That morning I also saw three sqacco herons, they were there when I first arrived by the pond, sitting in a thick clump of weeds staring at the water with complete concentration trying to catch a fish. I managed to see one of them catch a fish which it swallowed hastily. They continued fishing until one of the black crakes became suddenly startled and rushed across the water scaring the squacco herons into the tree where the long-tailed cormorant and brown-breasted barbet that I mentioned above were sitting.





After the time for birding in the morning, it was breakfast which was fantastic as always and then it was time to head out for goat shed construction! We got back into the same vehicles and then headed off to the site of the construction along the same bumpy ‘roads’. Once we got to the orphanage but we didn’t have to spend too much time going over the plans but we picked up the goats to take them down to the goat sheds (so we wouldn’t have to go back up and get them). This was slightly more difficult then it seems due to the logistics of moving a goat the approximately 800 metres from the orphanage to the goat shed. The goat absolutely did not want to move anywhere and if it did decide to move then it was always the wrong way. Eventually though, we got it to move by using a branch of particularly delectable leaves with one person holding the goat’s leash and one person walking one pace ahead with the branch of leaves, this worked quite well despite how ridiculous it sounds at least until the goat found some leaves that were obviously more delicious than the ones were using initially. But by this point no one had any more patience for it so we just dragged it by the leash the rest of the way. The goat soon worked out that it was just going to have to walk so we eventually got it to the building site and tied it onto a nearby tree. We then picked up our tools and started to work.



The group divided up into a few different tasks, these were building a ramp for the goat, a food box, a door and also putting the roof on. The roof was corrugated iron and quite dangerous to put on so for this bit we did require the local handyman who was overseeing us to help. You may or may not know that corrugated iron has extremely sharp edges and is therefore very difficult to install without slitting your wrist; luckily though, the handyman knew what he was doing and had the correct gloves and the roof was soon up and we could then hammer it on. The ramp was quite a simple construction which was just a plank with bits of wood nailed on for grips so that the goat could get into its shed and the box was also quite simple as it was just a box, though this was quite difficult because there was a lot of sawing and nailing to get the box together and supports were needed to hold it up. The door on the other hand was trickier. It was made by first building a frame for it and then putting planks on top, this of course had to be the perfect size to fit in the doorframe that we had built into the shed. We had a set of hinges and a bolt with us to secure the door but this proved very difficult due to the uneven nature of the wood that we had used on the construction, nothing fitted! We put the hinges on properly but then the door wouldn’t close so we had to take them off and carefully cut the door frame and the post where we were mounting the hinges down bit by bit with machetes, then re-measuring it and then cutting it down a bit more. The seemingly simple task of attaching the door hinges took over half an hour and then after that, the same process had to be done for the bolt which also took quite a while. Whilst some people were working on this difficult task, a few people who were art students decided to decorate the goat shed with some white paint that was spare. The pattern that was decided were handprints and flowers (I think the flowers looked like dead starfish but oh well :p) and a name plaque was carved into a piece of wood to go above the door. The name decided on was Sheila (stupid name for a goat in my opinion but I didn’t pick it) and this was carved nicely into a piece of wood and nailed above the door.



We managed to get all of this done before lunchtime so before going up for lunch we put the goat in and made it at home. After that, it was time to introduce the goat shed to the family who we had built it for. The woman who was a grandmother who had to look after her grandchildren with no source of income was really very pleased with her goat shed and the goat that we had given her. She seemed very confused as to the goat’s name of Sheila and thought it a bit nuts that a goat would be given a name but she was very thankful for what we had given her and her family (this was all told to us by the person who was organising the project who could translate from Swahili to English). We all put our handprints on the goat shed, said goodbye to the family and then left up to the orphanage for lunch. We had managed to finish the construction and everything before lunch so we had the chance to go and visit a local public school after lunch.



After we had all finished eating and played with some of the small children who lived in the orphanage, we got back into the vehicles and headed along a different dirt track to visit a public school. The dirt track headed up hill and away from the more lush green areas surrounding Arusha to a drier, more arid area. By the side of the road, sheltering under some shrubbery from the sun I saw some blue-capped cordon-bleus resting in the shade and at another time, I saw some grey-headed sparrows doing a very similar thing in resting under a bush. The drive to the school on slightly better roads (though still dirt tracks) took about half an hour then we got out of the vehicles and were able to have a look around. The classrooms were very small and bare, with three children to a desk that looked like it could hardly cope with one child. There was a blackboard and in a few classrooms there were some posters stuck to the walls. It was unbearably hot in the classrooms with very poor ventilation and they became even hotter with 40 or 50 children crammed into them. The surprising thing was that all of the children had to wear school jumpers for the uniform! I could hardly bear the heat wearing short sleeves but the children had to wear V-neck jumpers, shirts and ties. I had a bit of a look in some of the classrooms and in the library who people who had been on previous expeditions to Tanzania had built (this was the service project instead of the goat sheds that our group did), we also had a look at the football pitch which was just a mostly flat area of dirt with no goals but it was just ‘mob football’ with everyone chasing after a ball. After about half an hour walking around we got to take a tour around the facility with the headmaster who showed us some of the classrooms and some of the basic facilities and then the teaching accommodation. This was extremely basic and apparently they had major problems with recruiting teachers because no one wanted to work there, we then had a look at the kitchen and grain silos. This seems like a weird thing to have at a school but the school fees were paid with five buckets of maize and two buckets of beans, this was then used to make a cornmeal porridge dish for lunch for the students’ lunch. We were then told that one of the big problems at the school was water as there was none; this was due to the fact that the school was at quite a height on top of a hill. This meant that the nearest surface water was several miles away down in the valley floor towards Arusha National Park and would be extremely difficult to pump up the hill over farmland to the school, a well was also an impossibility because the groundwater was so far away we were told that a well would be over 100,000 US Dollars and that if of course far, far too expensive. We stayed in the school for about an hour and then headed back to the camp with a lot of food for though.



We got back to the camp at around 5 o’ clock, I then had to write up a reflection on the service project for school and then I could have a shower and do some birding. I went back over to the same pond area and also had a bit of a walk around the farm area. I didn’t see any new birds but I did see a few interesting things such as crowned hornbills and an ochre bush squirrel, I also had the chance to watch a very cute little group of four brown-breasted barbets who seemed to be newly fledged and were sitting on a branch over the pond with the last little tufts of downy feathers just remaining. I also saw the same Masai guard who I had seen yesterday morning and he just had another look at what I was doing and I managed to get some nice photos of bul buls, weavers and other birds that were common (I will hopefully post a few of these photos and do the next review this weekend). After the birding I had a great dinner and then had the briefing for the next day’s activities. I was told that we were going to be touring around a village to look at bio gas machines, farming methods, local houses and handicrafts and a bit of hiking. After the briefing I played a couple of games of cards and then had another early night’s sleep.

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