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Published: October 24th 2007
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Kili- Walking into work in the morning
The snow capping kili will apparently be gone in just 20 years due to global warming...pretty spectacular views from my balcony and the walk in So I’ve been here a while now so about time I bring you up to date with whats going on here…
First of all I’ll start with the volunteering since that’s what I’m here for…
I cake on factor 40 sun protection each morning before heading off to teach at a nursery school. It takes an hour and 20 mins of walking in high temperatures to get there, good job I guess after the amount of eating I was doing in S.A…and yes everybody, I did get lost on my first day of walking there on my own (ie my second day!!) but I’d like to have seen you not get lost when every dirt road basically looks the same and not always clear that it actually is a pathway!
With my fluent Swahili skills no one could understand me, and based on the African’s not really knowing about school etc..no one had heard of Faraja (where I work)- admittedly, I did panic for a bit as just wandered through another pathway and another, but fortunately I bumped into a kid about 5 years old who saved the day- hurrah- and led me to the school. Very proud to say
Walk to school and kili in background
yes its kili again, and yes i know i look beautiful when i squint like that... though that I haven’t got lost again since so I didn’t need a gps system attached to me afterall- hope you’re all proud of me, I am!!
My kids are great- they range from 2.5 years to 7 and there are nearly 50 of them in total so its really tricky to teach when the little ones can’t even draw a number 1 and only a handfull of the big ones know the alphabet! But, I do my best to teach some English and Maths and feel like they’re actually learning the right sounds and recognising the letters that go with them…as some of them are really small we break it up with some playing, drawing, singing and their favourite- dancing to “hey baby”- unfortunately they never get tired of that song and we have it on repeat just before lunch time each day…I get knackered and they point at the sweat on my face- because they hardly sweat so think its funny! Its knackering but great fun and you can tell the kids love the bit of attention that they get as half of them are orphans and the other half I get the feeling don’t get too
Better way of carrying
Had to put this one in just because its typical of here...can't say i've mastered the skill myself but it does make sense to leave both hands free much at home.
The school is really basic, it does have a blackboard but not many other resources which makes teaching even more difficult…The kids pile onto the benches which is really distracting when they each have their elbows in the others face due to the lack of space… they don’t even have a toilet but a previous volunteer has given the money to build one so I’m trying to help oversee that this gets done while I work there. (see photo’s for my class).
After we’re done with dancing I serve up lunch for them and for the only part of the day, they sit there quietly…for many of them it is the only time they get to eat. Last week the money for food ran out and the kids didn’t get lunch for a couple of days but we’ve put some more money in to help buy some more firewood, rice, beans, and ugali….Several of the children have HIV/Aids and so its really important for them to take this meal in order for their meds to work well.
I have to admit, I do sometimes worry about the HIV as the kids have cuts and grazes
Faraja Orphanage
my school- the man who runs it speaks pretty much zero english and his wife cooks the food for the kids all over the place, as kids do, but it is just a fact of life out here which is really sad…and yet, the kids all seem really happy, especially when they get to play and dance and even when they’re learning, they’re so proud to show off that they remember what they were taught the previous day which is really nice and satisfying for me too.
After lunch I teach netball to some secondary school kids…which is hilarious given I don’t know half the rules myself…but given its taken a while just to get them to understand about footwork think we can flex the rules a little, I’ve been trying to get them to understand they can’t just fight each other for the ball…one step at a time! The whole netball experience is another interesting one and typically African…basically they just play on a dirt pitch (will add in photos later as they're not on my memory stick- stupid!) with no markings…we do some training for the first half hour or so…and the kids get really competitive and try to race us, again knackering in the heat of the mid-afternoon!- they are just typical teenagers, gobby and stroppy at
times and difficult to get them to do what I want them too…but its still good fun.
After the training we have a match…the kids come with crushed chalk or ash or something and they basically make up the court each day before the match…the size of each third, centre and the goal semi-circle are never the same size twice but it keeps it interesting! Then just to mix it up a little more, the dirt track appears to be a major thoroughfair- remember what I said about roads not really being clear roads just dirt everywhere- well we can be in the middle of a drill or a match and people will either walk through or blast past on a motorbike…or the other day we had a car pull up in the centre of the court (no matter if we run over a few kids) to put out on a tanoy about free HIV testing in town!
Its all hard work, made harder with the heat, but its good fun at the same time plus the other volunteers are all good fun and up for a laugh once we’ve finished our projects for the day… its also great
to have a permanent base to sleep at after all the moving on through South Africa…I use the word sleep lightly, given that I have larium induced weird dreams, a lumpy bed, until recently we had muslums chanting every night for ramadam, and cockerals going off in the morning, goats bleating and stray dogs practically killing each other just outside my window!! Also- take a look at the view from our balcony, we have Kilimanjaro right there and we’ve had some pretty fantastic sunsets here. I’ve also attached a few photos from the walk in to work…
I’ll give you some more insight into the crazy African way of life in my next blog, I’ve had a few weekends away, projects are just Mon-Fri, and even just outside of my work hours and away from the kids there are some pretty unusual things that are now just normal that is pretty funny…well to me at least
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