Kilimanjaro, Maasai and Padlock Issues

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Since I got here I’ve wanted to visit a government school. Having seen them on Blue Peter and Comic Relief I wanted to see for myself how cramped the classrooms are and how few resources they have. Up until this week they’ve been on holiday so I only got to go yesterday to Meserani Primary. The school took about 30 minutes to walk to from the road across dust which was occasionally crossed by huge chasms; these are rivers in the wet season. I can only imagine how muddy the dust gets! As we walked, three white girls and a Maasai man, Alex, who was wearing a woman’s Christmas sweater under his Maasai blanket, we gathered a crowd of children mysteriously on their way to school halfway through the school day. Normally we have to return stray children to their houses so the crowd was unusual. I felt a bit like the Pied Piper.

When we arrived it was break time and we were greeted by 600 children, supposedly all primary age but some looked a lot older and one boy said he was 14. I think some just stay in primary because it’s free and they have to complete all 7 grades and then pass an exam to progress to secondary where they pay. Lauren and Helen who I’d gone with taught a class comparing the geography and politics of the UK and Tanzania to the top class of 75. It wasn’t really so bad, in fact I found it quite nice to see a full class rather than the classes of 4 and 6 in the school where I’m volunteering! I think a lot of the children were Maasai, they had tribal scars on their faces at least, so it’s good to see they’re getting some kind of education. Two of the girls with us have interviewed quite a few teachers and parents who’ve said (not sure if they think it’s in a good way or they’re complaining about it) that girls who go to school can’t be circumcised because they know it’s wrong. Hmm. Good!! (I bought something a couple of weeks ago that was wrapped in newspaper, one of the stories was about a school in Kenya I think that had to be closed because some of the pupils threatened to circumcise a female teacher because she’d caught one of them with drugs…just WHAT!?)

I’m not too sure at all about Maasai traditions. Drinking cow’s blood…borderline. Multiple wives…across the line. There’s a 12 year old girl who goes to the Kindergarten where some of the other group work. She is married to a man in his 50s (just one of many wives) and last year had a baby. The practicalities of that are disturbing to say the least. But here it’s “normal” and I’m finding it really hard to get my head around it. It’s just so very different to anything at home.

On a lighter note, last Thursday we managed to get locked IN our house. Oops! We’ve been locked out a couple of times. That’s less stupid. People seem to think it’s funny to whack on another padlock on our door when we’re out that we don’t have the key to. We text Key Man and he comes round, opens the lock and leaves the lock lying around near the door. Someone put one of these on on Wednesday night and we couldn’t get out to go to school in the morning. We put on a pan of water (kettle’s broken) and rocked up to school at 11:30 with an hour to go before coming home again.

After our distress we copied out the exams that are going on this week. We noticed yesterday that the teachers have uncorrected our correct English grammar to the bad stuff they copied from the text books. Same on Friday so we escaped early to go to Moshi. Unfortunately the two other girls we’re here with who aren’t teaching didn’t come home until about 3 so we couldn’t go anyway because we didn’t want to take the Coaster “Death Bus” and arrive in the dark. We took our guide books’ advice and went on Saturday morning on the “safe” Dar bus.

Moshi is the town which most people use as a base for climbing Kilimanjaro. We knew from our journey to Arusha from Dar that the mountain is BIG and definitely visible from the town but all day it stayed hidden away in the clouds. We went to all the rooftop bars in the city in preparation, had a wander round the market (they had some huge mangos) and Laura and Sophie bought bags that women lining the streets with sewing machines and bright colour kangas (not the Michael Jackson or Barak Obama ones!) were making by the dozen.

I really liked Moshi, it’s a lot calmer than Arusha and the probability of death by pavement is much smaller. We went back to The Kidarocka Hotel bar which we’d visited earlier for sunset at about 5:30. By then the clouds had cleared and the mountain came into view. It’s funny to think that as we were having a nice Serengeti people were already sleeping in preparation for getting up at 1am to climb to the summit. As far as I can see something ridiculous like that would ruin a perfectly good mountain! I like it quite enough from the base.

On Sunday having exhausted all the sights of Moshi, the clock tower, coffee shop and rooftop bars, we squeezed onto an already jam packed dalladalla to go to Marangu, a town on the foothills of Kili. The whole day was pretty much a none event. We got off the bus and picked up a couple of very persistent guides who wouldn’t leave us alone. One gave up after a huge discussion, the younger one went away and came back with a camelion to try and get us to be escorted by him.

We walked in the direction of a waterfall but got distracted by a nice bit of river (which was VERY cold) where we stayed for a while. Then we went to a hotel, Kibo Hotel for lunch. We ordered, an hour and a half later there was no food. Sophie went to check with the kitchen where she was assured it would be 5 minutes but some things they didn’t have. Like chips. Four of us had ordered chips. Eventually a poor waiter brought a selection of sandwiches, cheese, tuna, mayonnaise(?) they thought we might like. We paid for the 2 meals we’d ordered and eaten and escaped back to Moshi. On the way back our dalla-dalla was involved in a race with one of the Coaster Death Buses. Unfortunately it was the first dalla-dalla I’ve been in that has been uncrowded enough to be able to see directly out of the windscreen. Mistake. I settled for covering my eyes with my hands, it was best that way! We made it back to Moshi in time to get some masala chips (best idea ever) and a choc chip milkshake before getting the safe Dar bus back home.

I think that’s about it for now, apart from Lewis videoing a school assembly on Monday, during the national anthem one of the teachers Nai whacked one of the boys around the head for not standing like a soldier. We also had another water cut, Key Man came round and fixed it. Here’s the food news… I have a serious chocolate biscuit habit (I tried to stop snacking but it made it worse), me and Gemma make an AMAZING potato and spinach curry on Monday night. We put aubergines in it too but they vaporised by the time we ate it. I learnt how to make chipatis and now have a chipati and honey problem to add to the biscuit issue. I blame the additives, most things here don’t pass EU regulations, like Pinapple Fanta and Blue Band butter.

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