Tanzania Begins!

After 2 amazing weeks travelling through Europe I have finally made it to Tanzania. 

I've learnt that in Tanzania nothing is as you would expect, and time doesn't exist. 8am may as well mean midday and vice versa.

Coming though the border required a strict Ebola related questionnaire, staff in rubber gloves asking if we have any kind of fever, and an electronic scan of each of our 10 fingerprints. 

I arrived at the IVHQ volunteer house late yesterday morning to around 20 volunteers, all about to embark on new adventures at different placements around Arusha; hospitals and pharmacies, maternity wards, schools and orphanages. We were the newbies, a further 40-ish were already here and have been here for up to 6 months, staying at a number of different volunteer houses and home stays.

My house is surprisingly really great. We have running water (non drinking), electricity, and even wifi! The house fits around 30 volunteers with 6 girls in my room and a team of "mamas" are here to cook meals and get us out of any trouble we may find ourselves in. They're gorgeous. We have showers which are cold and just a trickle but better than I was expecting! They make washing the hair a little challenging as I discovered last night but I eventually worked out that head-over-the-sink is much more productive approach! Three alarm "distress" buttons are positioned around the house in case of extreme sickness (common), home invasions (hopefully not common) and fire. In the last 24 hours about 6 living in our house have been violently ill with some kind of tummy bug, one of them tonight was taken to hospital as a result, fingers crossed she'll be much better once re-hydrated. 

This morning one of the Mamas escorted myself and my new teaching buddy Jack to our placement at Shining Star. Despite being told it was an orphanage we quickly learnt it wasn't, it's a tiny and wonderful pre-primary school for 3-6 year old kids, most who come from extremely poor families. 

The school was started by three local women a few years ago who started as volunteers to help the local kids learn.

As soon as we arrived this morning we were greeted by squeals of delight and kids running from all directions and jumping all over us. They've had a few volunteer teachers in the past but not for the last few months. 

Jack and I have a class of 20 each, I have the older kids, 5-6 year olds. The teacher introduced me briefly, gave me an example of maths exercises to work on and then left me to it for a while. There was as a broken black board and no chalk, tiny desks for some of the students and none for others, each of the kids had one exercise book and one pencil. Luckily I'd brought a pen with me and managed to find a piece of chalk but I hadn't brought much with me that day, thinking I'd wait to see what they needed before I got it. I had no idea they would have so little. Straight away I had around 7 kids saying " Teacher sharpen! Teacher Sharpen!" A sharpener was not something I had brought with me so I had no way of sharpening the incredibly blunt and stumpy pencils, there were no spares so without it they couldn't write. I eventually discovered one of the kids had a pencil case with (hooray!) a sharpener, so I spent the next 20 minutes sharpening pencils. I gave the pencil case boy (OK so I haven't learnt everyone's names yet but I'm working on it!) two stickers to say thank you and promote the sharing attitude. Of course then, it was "Teacher sticker! Teacher sticker!" and I caved and gave one to everyone, with the exception of three boys who got into a full on violent fight on the floor. I couldn't physically stop them but once stickers started being handed out they stopped and waited patiently for theirs, which I didn't give them until they apologised and promised not to fight again. Let's see how long that lasts haha. I'm also not entirely sure they understood me. Oh well, worth a shot, at least it stopped them fighting until the end of the day! So our lesson instead was spent practicing addition with our fingers and a writing with stumpy pencils in ratty exercise books. Some of the kids are great at maths and got everything right, others are unable to copy simple addition questions from the board and think 7 comes after 4. Hopefully with a little one on one time I can start to improve that. Their English is pretty poor (with the exception of numbers as their maths is learnt in English) despite it being one of their two national languages, so I've since learnt some key words in Swahili - sit down, stand up and stop should make tomorrow a lot a easier! I brought my camera out at play time and they went MENTAL. There is apparently nothing more exciting than having your photo taken! So cute. 

At around 11.30 the kids are fed "porridge", a mushy thick liquid made from cornflour, sugar and water. Delish.

School starts at 8 and finishes at 12.30, and despite sounding early, I was well and truly ready for a break by then! My arms were also red raw from kids pulling me from every direction begging for attention or wizzy-dizzys or work-marking or sharpening or stickers or whatever else they needed right now, urgently! 

As we were leaving a number of older students started arriving. Teacher Rose (one of the founders) walked us to the main road so we didn't get lost and explained that some of the kids wanted to learn but weren't allowed to go to school because their parents made them work, so they'd come after work and the teachers would teach them for free.

One of the girls in my class Rachael lives near us so we walked her home, she wouldn't let go of both our hands the whole way back to her place. A seriously sweet little girl who barely speaks a word of English.

Once home we dumped our valuables and headed to the stationary store. For around 160 000 Tanzanian Shillings we bought 100 exercise books, 50 maths books, 100 pencils, pens for the teachers, chalk, sharpeners, erasers, skipping ropes and a soccer ball. It felt like a lot but when I converted it it cost just over $100AU for everything. Many friends and colleagues have already kindly donated to a fundraising page I set up for causes I come across on this trip so this has just highlighted how valuable even a small amount can be. Plug: I'm still raising money so for anyone else keen to help, here's the link! Our next project is desks for all the kids, we are going to be introduced to one of the local carpenters tomorrow and teacher Rose has promised to get us get local prices. 

http://www.gofundme.com/d5ttvc

Walking home from the stationary store I attempted to carry one of the two boxes on my head like a local. Turns out it's harder than it looks! Needless to say we got a few good laughs on the way back and a few Mambos! Eventually we decided to heard into a Dala Dala which is somewhere between a bus and a car, stopping whenever it wants and crowding up to 20 people into a 7 seater vehicle. Good way to get chummy with the locals. 

Tomorrow should be fun, now to come up with a few lesson ideas for exercises! Tomorrow is writing and English day, feel free to shoot through any fun ideas!