Mornin Teacha!

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Hello everyone!

This is coming from wonderful Tanzania, I am so sorry for the lack of blog posts recently, I have been busy, yes, busy.

After lacking any constructive focus for the last seven months, I decided to hook up with a small NGO for a few weeks. I have been very skeptical of volunteering and any organization that I was going to give my time and money to had to fulfill three basic criteria.

Firstly, I had to be confident that whatever I would be doing could not be done, better, by local people. So, for me working in an Orphanage would not have been right, as far as I am concerned children need long term and stable care that (in my opinion) can better be provided by local people.

Secondly, I had to be confident that whatever the organization was trying to achieve was sustainable and made a real difference.

Thirdly, I did not want to work for a huge organization, huge organizations tend to lose their way and more and more money get siphoned in to buying expensive 4x4 vehicles and salaries for Managing Directors.

What attracted me to this organization is that they provide adults with an education that they are simply unable to obtain in other ways, they will then, if possible, help them to obtain funding to start up a business and the skills required to run that business.

Can these skills be taught by local people, well yes, and that is the intention, the organization has only been running a couple of years but they already employ a couple of former students in a teaching capacity.

Lets be clear though, this is not a purely altruistic action on my part, I think it is good to be honest about such things. I will get satisfaction and cultural experiences that I would never get if I was here purely on a tourist basis. It also gives me an opportunity to put my bags down for a while, stop traveling and make some real friends.

This is going to be challenging on a whole load of different levels, not only will I be expected to teach a room full of people, and get results, after several months of living feral and nomadic, I am settling in to a house with five other people, and not just normal people either, but women.

As my dear Sister will testify, I am not very well house trained, so this is going to be tough. But as my dear Sister has also taught me, through much disciplining, I will simply have to learn and make an effort to become house trained.

I have been here a week now, and the teaching challenges are also great.

Until four weeks ago, most of these students had never even seen a Computer, so the knowledge base is low, this means that you are not only trying to teach what to do on a computer, but the entire concept of a computer. How do you explain to someone that the document they have created in a computer is a real and tangible thing, even though it is not physical and you can’t touch it.

And how do you explain this fiendishly difficult concept in Swahili? I have a translator called Rahim but I am confident that much is lost in translation due to the different structures of the two languages.

Most of the laptops we are using in class are creaky old relics, all with different versions of Windows, all with various appearances. This makes showing a standard method difficult, because of the layout.

In addition to this, as most of the laptops are so old their batteries are useless, which is fine when you have electricity, but when there is a power cut, half the computers die. Not easy when you are mid way through trying to explain things.

So, its early days, but it is going well and I am enjoying it hugely, the students are simply the best people I have even had the privilege to get to know. I have been lucky enough to have met many wonderful people on my travels, but not had the opportunity to really get to know them. This time will allow for building proper relationships.

So, must go.

All my love, I hope you are all well.

Love

John

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Photos

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My first shopping trip after arriving in my new home, I could be in England!

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My only real exposure to African wildlife, I hope to have more.

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A suburb in Moshi, the scourge of plastic continues to ruin the world. Usually they burn it but seem not to have for a while. Goats seem to like it though.

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A Moshi market.

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Yes, yes, that really is Kilimanjaro. It has a constant presence in the town.

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See that? An empty plane, luxury for a chap like me.

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Ethiopia from the air, it looks like an interesting place.

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Addis Ababa airport, these good folks were heading to Saudi to go to Mecca. It was interesting to see these village people making such a big trip. Many of them smell of mutton, like the folks in Mongolia.

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The restaurant in my guesthouse in Dar Es Salaam was surrounded by prison bars, I am not sure if these were to keep the natives out or the rich western tourists in.

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One day I went to the Tanzanian National Museum and was mortified to see this Rolls Royce Phantom 5 neglected and slowly rotting.

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This picture was taken roughly the same time my Grandparents arrived in Tanganyika, this is a witchdoctor healing a patient by holding the hot embers of a cigar on his back. Trying to change attitudes must have been a huge challenge to my ancestors.

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This was the first Radio Transmitter to arrive in Tanganyika in 1951. Now it seems even the poorest Tanzanians have mobile phones, how the world has changed.

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Can someone please explain just what, on earth, we were thinking? Answers via smoke signal.

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I met a slightly mad Danish Woman in the guesthouse who enlisted me to be the official photographer for her contemporary mime dance type thing. She was very brave. Her dance involved pointing at this chaps picture a lot. Before the dance I advised her to find out who he was before using his image as a prop, in case she picked and unsuitable face and attracted an angry crowd.

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These chaps ply the bus stations selling books titles such as “How to become wealthy” and “Become rich and influential” but it looks like they do not read the books themselves, otherwise they would not be selling books in bus stations.

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On Friday we visit a couple of students at home. It’s a great way to understand the sacrifices they make to attend the school. This is Delvia and her 90 year old grandmother. Average life expectance in Tanzania is 60, she is doing pretty well.

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Tanzania should be called the Land of the Land Rover, they are everywhere.

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One afternoon I was invited to watch one of the students play footy.

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Here are the students arriving for School in the morning, even though some of them have walked two hours, and been up since 4 am to do various chores, they always manage to be friendly.

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The first thing the students do when they arrive is to start clearing up, because they have pride in their school. Students in England would start dropping litter, because some one magically clears it all up.

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This is my room, its pretty small but we manage to fit 12 students in at a time, they don’t have room to use the mouse properly which adds to the various challenges.