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So i know i havent blogged in a while but that is because i had no interenet! so lets start with everything that has been going on and im sure i am going to forget to say everythign that happened.
First 2 weeks ago i headed to Shamba which is where the school was and omg what an experience! First of all the travel took us 9 hours and its only 50 kilometer away! We then got stuck in wet send so we climbed to the back of the track and ate passion fruit and watched the stars! OMG you guys i have NEVER seen so many stars in my life ... it was a sky full and everywhere you look they are just shinning at you and the moon was giving out so much light it was just the most beautiful sight! when we reached the school we were tired so we just got into our beds and went to sleep. When we woke up it was such a refreshing suprise to open your eyes and all you see is beautiful trees all aroudn! to the right of our guest house we have the soccer field where the kids have sports every day at 4:30. the boys get to play soccer while the girls have this game that is very simillar to dodgeball and i got to play with them a few times! those girls are so strong you cannot even imagine i was scared of getting hit by the ball! to the left we have the school and the place where the kids sleep! everymornign we will go to the office which is where the teacher stay they have their breakfast/lunch/dinner there as well as office hours and just reading time. therei s a huge library but sadly i dont think the students are capable of reading most of them. i mean the books were donated by american people mostly and its college books with very complex language i mean i even found my college biology book and gosh do i hate that book!
In the school i got to teach First aid to almost all of the students as well as many teachers. the head master believe that they should be prepared in case of an emergancy. i thought them all the basic that i figured they can handle and actually need; CPR, basic burns, basic cut care, infections, snake/bee bites, heimlich, etc. I then asked them to try it with a partner and they were laughing so hard while trying to practice CPR on each other! I could already tell who are the out going students in school and who are the shy one. i tried to choose a few of each for the demonstration just because its good to take them out of their shell at times. Later that night i showed the teacher where all of the first aid material is and gave them a furture explanition of what is the purpose of each. Emily and i ate dinner with the staff and i got to talk to the academic master that brought up the issue of obama and then later on brought up israel which i thought was pretty random yet funny. He seemed to be very knowledgable and it made me feel a little better that i already made one friend in the school. Emily and i headed to the room and i headed to take my beautiful cold bucket shower ... ha ha though i am getting used to it and actually at times its quite refreshing! Oh did i also mention that our restroom is now a hole in the ground? yeah thats what happens when you are no longer in the city. Emily told me that its actually healtier to go to the restroom in this position because its the natural position we are suppose to go #2 with ha ha ... if you ask me i would take a toilat over it any day!
The next day i got to teach math/statistics to form 3 class! Form 3 is the way they count grades in Africa, form 3 is the highest form we have in the school and they tend to be the older kids though its not true in all cases. Sometimes the kids join in older age and have to start from form 1 so in for 1 there is a kid that i believe is 17 and i met a girl that is in form 2 and is 19 and i am sure there are many other cases. Hazakia is trying to get older kids to go back to school and to understand that education is the future for Tanzania. He thinks that if we send more of the kids to school the country will have more resources and those kids will advance the country. The class was very good i got to teach them sequances and patterns ( a subject i haven't done myself in years but it was not a problem to refresh in about an hour) the class was very interesting because many of the kids didnt understand me a 100% so i was assigned a class assistent that explained to them when they couldnt understand my english. i also had to control the speak of which i spoke in. The class passed pretty fast and the kids got to go to lunch. Food here seems to consist every day with just ugali and beans ... emily and i cannot handle it so before we got to Shamba we shopped for food! we got some rice, beans, passion fruits, potatos, tomatos, avocados, cucumber, green bell, peppers, mangos, ginger and more and we decided to cook for ourselves! We have a little kitchen in our room by kitchen i mean gas stove and some plates and pans to make the food. Every day we cut a salad and next to eat rice and at night its rice with cooked/ steamed vegtables. we also have to bring bunch of water bottle with us because we cannot drink the local water from the wale.
The wale is mroe like a pump that is quite genius its like a step master but everytime you push you leg up on the machine water comes out from the side! i took a few pictures and i will show it to you guys when i come back! so now if you want to get some water to wash your clothes in or shower your self or your dishes you have to go there with buckets and pump your own water and let me tell you its HARD! i mean its cute all at first but if you have to get a lot of water it gets EXTREMELY tiring so i have a new apprication to the girls! oh yeah and i noticed that the girls are usually the ones that are pumping the water out even if the boys need the buckets! In the afternoon when we go to planet or care for the new papaya trees/ water mallons the girls need to get so much water pumped that i feel bad and i jump on the machine and walk my butt off until it hurts my legs and then i leave them to pump even more ha ha. So yeah shamba one of the projects is to planet fruits and try to sell it and also have enough for the students to have a better died because right now they can only effort ugali and beans (ugali its this fine wheat that tastes very blend and not much flavor to it and i guess its just cheap and used to fill you up as cheap as possible). right now in addition to the water mallons and papayas they also grow tomatos and small red chilli pepers that are extremely spicy and i know this because Emily tried it and i caught her face on camera and the look was priceless! At night the kids taught Emily and i how to make chapati and we helped them make it for dinner! the chapti i later found out was just for the teacher/volunteer but not the students and that kind of made me feel sad because the kids makei t but dont get to eat it themselves!
What else ... oh yeah so i had a project class put together. hazakia wanted to teach a more business/economics class taught to a few students that are not necesserly good in science/math/ school subjects. I was given a list of 10 students that are decent in english and have the mind of what they thought is required for a buisness people. I set the class in a circle so it will be more of a discussion rather then a lecture and taught them about many subjects in business and marketing. I had such a great time and so did the students that they ask me to teach another one the next day. To be honest i wasnt ready and i only had one hour to prepare for it but i decided to teach them about supply and demand and go from there. A few of the teachers decided to join and i got extreemly nervous. I explained to them the adevantage and disadventage of each and then they asked bunch of questions including the teachers. The kids as well as the teachers took notes and then we started talking about capitalist vs socialist governments and what would we think the best one would be for our countries and world. that by far was my favorite class just because the kids and the teachers as well told me it was so amazing and they are looking forward until i am back from Zanzibar to teach them a little more about it! now i have to think about what to teach them next!
Another interesting experience in shamba was the tropical storms we had. So yeah i have never been in one before. Our room doesnt really have windows ... well at least not ones you can really cover so at night it was raining like crazy so i woke up and i saw the floor was flooded with water so i had to move all our things to the middle of the room and try to tie the curtines to block the rain from coming in! it was such a crazy experience because the reason i woke up was from the rain hitting me through my mosquito net! that is how strong the rain was ... in the morning we woke up to a beautiful day though and this experience repeated itself for 2 days in a row!
The day we left shamba was another very interesting day because we had to take a piki piki which we then found out was not a 3 sitter motorcycle but rather a regular one and it had to drive through the wild with our big bags so i was freaked out but survived. we reached this local village where we of course got stared at all the time by the locals and the kids were calling us mozumgas or somethign like that which means white ha ha. we reached the city and checked into the hotel next door to the orphange well its more like a guesthouse that costs us about $6.50 a night for 2 of us! exciting ha?
We then headed to zanzibar which is the most beautiful island ever! it really reminds me of mexico but with nicer water. the beach is usually white sand and its so soft that you just woke around bare foot. We took the boat here and both emily and i got sea sick! i should have expected it because 2 years ago i got extremely sea sick in SD so why would it be any different. i was having cold sweat and my stomach was killing me! when we finally reached our destination i wanted to kiss the land but it was sandy so i didnt! We checked into our hotel that was really expensive ($40 dollars i guess its not expensive but we are used to our $6.50 ha ha) and went to explore the city. you guys this place is just so beautiful ... first of all zanzibar is known to be the spice capital so they sell it in all the croners and the streets or rather small alleys smell like spices and its just so amazing. the allies have small shopes that people run up to you and ask you to come and see their store their phrase is "no cost to look" its funny because i never thoguht it would cost me money to look at things! we got lost in the alleys yet you always hit a main street and find your way back. we got some kongas for cheap and learned how to bargin pretty well if you ask me!
I want to write more but i only have 3 min left on the interenet so i think will come online again tomorrow and update more because there is so much more to tell about zanzibar and i want to share it all with you.
By the way my brother told me i write like a 7th grader and i realize i do but its always because i am rushed to write as fast as i can because the interent is on time here so bare with me :-P miss you all!
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Tracie
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Sounds like you're having a great time. Miss you!