Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya and France

Hi all.

It’s been quite a long time since we posted anything… we’ve basically just been bumming around in parts of Africa and France for the last couple of months and haven’t got around to writing anything till now.

We decided that rather than boring everyone with long blog entries we’d just post a few photos. Our first album can be found here. These photos are from the two weeks we spent in Tanzania after we’d finished volunteering. The first few are from Stonetown in Zanzibar which has a really cool North African feel (as well as being the birthplace of Freddie Mercury). The rest of the album has photos from the four safari parks that we visited in Tanzania. Our favourite is Tarangire – the boabab trees there were spectacular, some of them were three thousand years old – amazing!

The next album is from when we met up with Al and Maha in South Africa and Kenya. You can see this album here. We started off in Cape Town, where the highlight was watching Germany play Argentina in a World Cup quarter final (six rows from the front). Then we hit the road for a trip along the Garden Route to Port Elizabeth, staying in a few beautiful towns along the way. Finally, we headed to Kenya where we were lucky enough to catch some of the Great Migration. Although it was pretty impressive, we did spend many hours waiting for the animals to cross the river, amusing ourselves by giving the zebras Mexican accents and having them quote Braveheart speeches – maybe you had to be there. ..

We then said goodbye to Al and Maha and headed to France. You can find photos from this leg here. We’ve made a concerted effort not to include too many pictures of food – given that eating and drinking has taken up a lot of our time in France, this was harder than you’d think. We started in Paris and had a great time getting to know the city through walking tours. It sounds lame, but we thought the tours were brilliant – maybe we’re showing our age. After a couple of weeks in Paris, we picked up our zippy Citroen C4 and started a five week driving holiday. We’re currently in Provence – we have a couple of weeks left in France and then it’s off to Berlin.

That’s it from us for now – we hope this finds you all well, and look forward to hearing your news.

Love,

Anne and Max xoxo

Week 6 - Bagamoyo, Tanzania

UKUN

With the schools closed for holidays, we both spent our last week of volunteering doing administrative office work at UKUN. UKUN is a HIV/Aids support centre. Their most visible activity is providing home-based care for HIV patients, but they also provide a number of other services including promoting women’s empowerment, HIV awareness and education.

A number of people came to UKUN to be tested whilst we were in the office. It’s a small place – the waiting area for clients is the same room as the office. When people are being tested, everybody knows about it. There is a lot of tension in the office while people wait.

During our week at UKUN only one person tested positive – it was a good week, relatively speaking. The guy who tested positive was someone that another volunteer had persuaded to come in. Volunteers usually get to know a number of locals, mostly men in their twenties, and the volunteers who worked at UKUN encouraged their local friends to get tested. Since there is a stigma around HIV, and therefore being tested, it’s good that volunteers can influence the locals in a positive way.

The local guy came in with a friend and they both asked to get tested together as they were pretty nervous. One of the volunteers does the testing, and they then take the result to Charles (the guy who runs UKUN) who counsels the patient regardless of test result. One of the guys tested negative but unfortunately the other result was positive.

It was terrible. For the rest of the week we couldn’t stop thinking about it. We saw the guy who tested negative at the local bar, and his friend wasn’t with him. We would wonder how he was doing, and how impossible it would be to process and register that you had HIV. Charles deals with the consequences of HIV every day, and this was just a small taste of his life.

Charles is a pretty amazing man. He has a very generous nature and it was a real pleasure to work with him. There are a number of street kids with HIV that hang around outside UKUN, and Charles lets them come into the office and encourages the volunteers to play with them during quiet times. The kids call Charles “Uncle” and obviously adore him. He prefers them to spend their days around the office with volunteers instead of roaming the streets.

The day before we left was African Children’s Day, and Charles organised for all the volunteers in the office and the street kids to join the local parade. We wore t-shirts and caps to promote the local condom brand, Salama, as Charles likes to use every opportunity to promote condom use.

We didn’t realize what a big deal the whole day was until we started the march. The parade was made up of school kids, organized into groups by their schools. The kids who hang outside the UKUN office are orphans and don’t go to school, so it wasn’t something they would have been able to participate but for Charles. They were really happy to be marching in the parade with us. They held the banner that we’d made as high as possible, and had a great time at the party at the end.

Disorganisation and Bagamoyo

In our experience, organisations in Bagamoyo are not run efficiently. Here are a few examples.

Geoffrey, was placed at the local sculpture college, and was asked to teach English to the students. On the day that Geoffrey arrived, the last student at the sculpture college graduated, which meant that he had nobody to teach. Not only that, but the college had begun to panic because without students or funding, they would need to close.

For the past five years the college had been sponsored by a Swedish trust. The understanding was that the college would use this time to establish an alternative source of funding. Although they had managed to recruit a handful of fee-paying students during that time, the five years had elapsed, and the college had done little to secure any future income.

Geoffrey agreed to help them – he got in touch with the same Swedish trust (something that hadn’t occurred to the college administrator), and was able to secure another grant, with the same proviso that they needed to be self-sufficient in five years time. We’re hopeful that in five years time they won’t be in the same position, but we’re not optimistic.

Anne and I spent our last week of volunteering doing office work at UKUN, as we mentioned earlier. UKUN takes more CCS volunteers in Bagamoyo than anywhere else. Securing funding is also a problem for UKUN. Just a few months ago, the six directors for the organization providing the majority of UKUN’s funding were sent to prison for corruption. UKUN now have next to no income and had to let go of all of their paid staff except Charles, the one guy who runs the place.

Charles and the other volunteers put a tremendous amount of effort and heart into UKUN. But from our week spent in the office we couldn’t help but feel that it would benefit from being organized and run more like a business. We realize that behind the scenes there might be order in the chaos, but we didn’t get a sense of order while we were there.

Since it now has only one paid member of staff, UKUN relies heavily on CCS and local volunteers. The CCS volunteers arrive for work at 8AM, however Charles only arrives at around 10.30AM. Home visits and testing can’t start without Charles because these activities require a Kiswahili speaker. So the first 2 ½ hours of the six or seven CCS volunteers’ day seem largely wasted.

Anne and I were entering data (for central government statistical collection) on computers that were riddled with viruses and are never backed up. The data entry is mandatory, but UKUN are over 18 months behind, with stacks of boxes of forms still to be entered.

Charles asked me to look at one of the three computers in the office that wasn’t working at all. I opened it up to find out that it was missing both its CPU and hard drive. This computer had been sitting there for years, taking up one of the three desks in the main office, and nobody had realized that it was useless.

From what we’ve seen, UKUN is fairly typical – it certainly isn’t badly managed compared to its peers. When you bring the problems to the attention of Charles (who is a really nice guy, and extremely generous as well) – he agrees that this is terrible, and says that he’ll definitely change things. But Charles is so busy running UKUN that it seems unlikely that these things will ever get prioritized.

One of the volunteers, Jerry, was a fire fighter in Chicago. He pointed out to us that Bagamoyo has one fire engine. It is about one year old and looks very nice. It was acquired after a spate of serious fires in the Bagamoyo district. However it has never been used, and is unlikely to be used in the future. Not only has nobody has been trained to use it, but even if there were people who could operate it, there are no water hydrants in Bagamoyo. The fire engine would shoot out its small tank of water in a couple of minutes. Then everyone would have to wait around while the tank was refilled with a trickle from the water mains and buckets from the nearest well.

These are just some of the examples that we’ve seen or heard about. It seems that there are a lot of good intentions in Bagamoyo, as well as a lot of compassion and a desire to help the community. However, in many instances the lack of organization really hampers any attempts to bring about long-lasting change.

Fishing

CCS has a policy that volunteers are not allowed to donate money or gifts of any kind. Rather than giving people what they need, we should be working with them, and where we can, teaching them how to meet their own needs. It’s the whole argument around not giving a man fish, but teaching him to fish instead.

The problem arises when as a volunteer you expect that people will want you to teach them to fish, but instead they expect that you’ll give them the fish. Especially when you come from a country with a lot of fish.

Just to stretch the fishing analogy a little further – CCS argue that the giving of fish is actually harmful. If someone can always get fish from CCS volunteers, then why bother learning to fish? This is a pretty tricky area – there is plenty to argue about. Anne and I don’t really feel like we have come away with any answers after six weeks in Bagamoyo.

Our first experience of this sort of problem was when our Kiswahili teacher pulled me aside after a class and asked me to give him ten thousand shillings (around eight dollars) so that he could get to a job interview. I was caught completely off-guard – I couldn’t think of a reason why I couldn’t give him the money, and I didn’t want to be rude to him. I guess that the fact that this was a teacher employed by CCS made it more difficult for me to turn him down. I gave him the money but the whole exchange left me feeling bad.

Tracy, our friend had a really hard time with her teacher at her placement. At first the teacher just made a point of telling Tracy about how little money she had. Tracy put it well when she said that in a way she could understand the teacher’s behaviour - she might be inclined to behave in a similar way if she went to work with Donald Trump. But the hinting became really persistent, and the hints turned into requests for money. When Tracy said that she didn’t have any money with her, the teacher said that Tracy could transfer phone credit to her instead. Tracy ignored her, but the teacher just took her phone and transferred the credit anyway.

One of the volunteers had to leave her placement early because the head teacher at her school first asked her for cash donations to the school. He then asked her to find out the contact details of all of the people who had previously volunteered at the school and then email them with requests for cash donations.

Madam Rachel would talk about all the things that previous volunteers had sent her. She would give me instructions about how, if I wanted to, I could send stuff to her directly without CCS finding out. She told me about a previous volunteer who had sent her cash to help her cousin with an ear operation.

Madam Rachel invited me, Anne and Monica to her house so that we could see where she lived and meet her sick mother. We were apprehensive about the visit because we thought she would lay a guilt trip on us. In the end, we were wrong. The visit to her house was really nice – she was nothing but generous and hospitable. Entertaining us would have cost her a lot of money, relative to her salary, and she asked for nothing in return.

We’ve talked a lot about this and we think that we’re completely on board with the teaching fishing concept. But, not everybody in Bagamoyo is asking to be taught. Sometimes people in the local community will ask for fish, and given the disparity in wealth between volunteers and locals, that’s understandable.

Next stop South Africa

We left Bagamoyo last Friday and have now started the ‘holiday’ part of our trip. We had an amazing time doing our volunteer work, and we made some great friends from around the world.

We’re currently travelling around Tanzania, and next week we’ll meet up with Al and Maha in Cape Town.

We probably won’t be blogging as much. But we’ll definitely be putting up some pictures every now and then.

Much love,

Anne and Max.

Week 5 - Bagamoyo, Tanzania

Poisoned Fish

There are some basic food rules that we’ve been told to follow to avoid getting sick in Bagamoyo. We’ve been instructed to try to avoid eating outside of Homebase – the food at Homebase is great, and they always use filtered water when cooking so we can eat everything knowing that we won’t get sick. If we have to eat outside Homebase we’re told to make sure that we eat it hot. We’re to stick to vegetables and avoid seafood especially. Men often ride past on bikes trying to sell “fresh” seafood that has been sitting out in the sun and is covered in flies.

Our visit to see Madam Rachel at her house had been arranged for weeks. We went with Monica, another volunteer who was working in Max’s class. We had discussed it beforehand, and prepared ourselves for the possibility that she might want to feed us. We knew that we couldn’t refuse.

When we arrived at her house, it became clear that the food was just for us – she had only prepared enough for her visitors. Everyone else at the house (including her sick mother) just sat and watched us eat. She presented us with chapatti (similar to roti or naan), vegetables and a small fish each. All were lukewarm, bordering on cold and looked like exactly the sort of food that we should avoid.

We were each given soda (very generous since each bottle costs about a dollar), but the top of Monica’s bottle was completely rusted, and no amount of wiping could clean the neck. We would all cringe every time Monica took a swig from the bottle.

The three of us sat in the garden with pasted on smiles as she brought the food. We thanked Madam Rachel politely as she served each of us a sentence to at least a couple of days of vomiting and diarrhea. We started to eat, and when Madam Rachel popped back into her house, we whispered to each other about how long it would be before the nausea set in (concluding that some poisons act more quickly than others).

We didn’t even have the option of leaving any food on the plate. Madam Rachel’s mother was sitting on a seat in front of us, and anytime we put an unfinished plate onto the side table she would gesture to us that we’d missed some. To avoid offending anyone, we polished off the lot.

Despite our fear of being poisoned we didn’t get ill and we ended up having a really nice time at Madam Rachel’s. She was so generous, and welcomed us into her home so warmly that we felt lucky to have experienced some authentic Tanzanian hospitality (as well as guilty about fearing the worst).

Saying Goodbye - Max

The schools that Anne and I teach at close for summer on the 11^th of June. This was one week before we were due to leave CCS. We both feel that this worked out well for us. Saying goodbye to the children in our classes was very emotional because we had grown attached to them. We still had one more week in Bagamoyo and we arranged to volunteer at UKUN, the HIV/Aids support centre. Although UKUN could be very intense for many volunteers, we were doing administrative work in the office. UKUN was like a decompression chamber for us, allowing us to wind down and gradually get Bagamoyo out of our systems.

On our last day at school, I needed to leave early because we had arranged transport to a safari at Selous at 9.30AM. Madam Rachel was particularly late, and as Monica and I taught the kids in the sand outside the classroom, I was wondering if she was even going to show up.

Madam Rachel arrived at 8.45AM and she quickly got down to the business of getting the class to say goodbye to me. I had taught the children a couple of songs in English and they loved to sing them – so we started with these. Madam Rachel then addressed the kids in Kiswahili and reminded them that I was leaving today. There were some prescribed lines that that children chanted back to her in unison, and she translated for me, telling me that they were going to miss me, that I was a very good teacher, they wished that I would never leave, etc.

Next came a presentation ceremony. I gave Madam Rachel a katenga (piece of dress material) and also I gave sixty pencils to the class. I was pretty embarrassed about the pencils because Madam Rachel had previously gone to the trouble of pointing out which type of pencils were good, and which were bad. No shop in Bagamoyo stocked more than around thirty pencils, so I had been travelling from shop to shop, buying up their entire stock for myself, and a similar gift from Anne to her class. Ninety percent of the pencils fell into the ‘bad’ category. On top of this, I had tried to sharpen them the day before, and many of the pencils had lead that was so badly broken I had had to sharpen them down to a couple of centimeters long. Nevertheless, Madam Rachel paraded the gift around the classroom, making sure that every child looked inside the envelope of pathetic pencil stubs.

Then Madam Rachel presented me with a katenga for Anne, and a card with roses on it. She asked me to read out the printed message on the card that she had chosen for me: “I’m so grateful for your special thoughtfulness and your kindness too, that’s why this brings a big and bright bouquet of special thanks to you”. And then in her own handwriting she had added “says Madam Rachel”. The children sat in silent confusion through this part of the ceremony.

Next Madam Rachel had the children stand at the front of the classroom. She got them to start singing a slow, sad song with just two lines in Kiswahili. The lines were repeated over and over. They each put one hand to their face and tilted their head to rest on it. As they sang the verse over and over, they worked themselves up into some kind of heightened emotional state. Their eyes welled up and they seemed to feed on each other’s misery. By the time they finished, half of the kids had tears streaming down their faces.

Next, the children had to come up to me individually and shake my hand while I knelt down to receive them. Two of them were so upset that they could not even look at me while I said goodbye (Madam Rachel was on hand to force them to do it again).

It seemed like the goodbye was finally over as I stepped outside the classroom. But Madam Rachel had the class follow me to the school entrance to say another round of goodbyes and wave at me as I walked off across the playing fields and into the distance.

The morning had seemed torturously long, and slightly ridiculous at the time. But after it was over I found it all quite sweet, and I was actually really moved by it all. I walked back to CCS thinking about how much I would miss the kids.

Saying Goodbye – Anne

My last day was not quite as dramatic as Max’s. The teachers had decided that there would be no class that day – we would just play outside. This meant there was no proper forum for me to say my goodbyes. All that I could do was walk around outside saying goodbye to my kids when I could actually find them. I don’t think they quite got it – and probably just couldn’t understand why I was making such a big deal. When I said goodbye they would reply “kesho” meaning “tomorrow”. Unfortunately, my Kiswahili doesn’t extend to “No, I won’t be here tomorrow, or ever again. Please say goodbye now”.

I was beginning to think that the day would be just like every other, when the teachers (there are four of them in total) called me and the two other volunteers into a classroom. In the room they had arranged bottles of soft drink and biscuits, and we proceeded to have a little party. They thanked me and gave me a gift (a kanga which is a piece of clothing/cloth that women wear here) and then insisted that we drink lots of soft drink and eat biscuits. So, that was my goodbye – sweet and simple.

Fortunately, I got to see my kids one last time before we left Bagamoyo. Max and I decided to go to my school for an hour on our last day in Bagamoyo (a week after I had finished my placement there). My school had decided to stay open for the holidays. I thought it would be nice to visit them one last time, and also Max would be able to meet them.

As we walked to my classroom, the kids saw me and ran towards me screaming “Mwalimu Anna” (“mwalimu” means “teacher” in Kiswahili, and Kiswahili words always end in vowels - people tend to add a vowel to any word ending in a consonant, so instead of calling me Anne they call me Anna). It was so lovely – they were so happy to see me that I couldn’t help but get a bit teary. It was another “play outside” day, so Max and I got to play with them for an hour before I said my goodbyes (again). This second goodbye was sadder than the first – the kids seemed to understand that I was leaving this time, so they were pretty upset and would hold tight onto me when I hugged them. So very sweet.

Safari in Selous

Max and I went on our first safari in Tanzania at the end of the week (immediately after saying goodbye to our kids for the last time). We went to a game park in the South of Tanzania called Selous (pronounced “Sell-oo”). Selous is a little less popular that the parks in the North of the country, but we liked the idea that we could do a river safari where we could see crocodiles and hippos.

It was great to take a trip outside Bagamoyo, and we really enjoyed seeing a different part of Tanzania. The camp was lovely – we had a “tent” with a proper shower, it was so much better than the cold trickle at Homebase.

All the camp staff were lovely. We know very little Kiswahili, but we enjoy trying to speak the few words that we’ve learned – and the staff seemed to really appreciate our efforts. Our waiter in particular took it upon himself to teach us more words, which was great.

Selous is a huge game park – they told us that it was the same size as the Netherlands. However, less than a quarter of the park is for regular tourists. The majority, in the South of the park, is for hunters. We didn’t find out too much about the South, except, for two facts. Firstly, according to our guide, most hunters are wealthy Arabs. Secondly, there is a price list for hunting the animals. The most expensive item on the list is a lion, at fifty thousand dollars. Hunters pay their fifty thousand dollars whether they hit the lion or not – if they miss, and want to try again, that will cost another fifty thousand.

In our lodge, as with many lodges, the guards are Masai. They would just appear from out of nowhere whenever we walked anywhere in the camp. They were like Jedi – we would try to shake them, but it was impossible.

The only television in the camp was at the staff quarters. So when we wanted to watch England play the USA in the world cup we had to go to the staff dormitories. When we arrived to watch the game, the staff insisted that we sit at the front. So the two of us, plus one American guest, sat on the first bench of six. We peered at a tiny portable set, surrounded by Masai with their spears, and about fifty very enthusiastic local guides, drivers, cleaners and cooks. We felt pretty guilty to be intruding, but everybody was so generous and welcoming that we had a brilliant time, despite an abject performance by England.

Week 4 - Bagamoyo, Tanzania

Football matches and football fans

The afternoons are hot and humid. One day last week as we left our sticky room, tired and grumpy from the heat, we heard the sound of a small noisy crowd, coming towards us. Around 40 football fans were on their way to a match. They were so happy, beating their drums, waving their huge banner, singing and honking on a cheap parping trumpet. It instantly cheered us up.

It was around 2PM on a Tuesday, and they were on their way to watch the local team play. We guess that because there are so few formal jobs here in Bagamoyo they can play football matches at any time of day, and people will still turn up. They play on a pitch that is 90% sand, it has just enough grass for the local goats and cows graze to there. But people pay to watch the game – just a few cents we think.

We’ve walked past a few times just as the game has finished and a few hundred people spill out onto the road. The result doesn’t seem to matter too much since they’re always cheerful, and always singing.

Internet weirdness

Our friend Sarah has been banned from every internet café in Bagamoyo (actually there are only two). Her crime was using Skype.

The internet café next to our Home Base is always full and should be very profitable. Jackie, the owner of the café pays for her internet access using a pre-pay card. She buys a 10,000 shilling card, and this will frequently run out while we are using the internet. On one occasion the card ran out, and she didn’t have enough money to pay for her next card – so we had to have a whip-round amongst her customers.

The real problem seems to be that the internet cafés charge by the hour – but they pay for the internet by the amount of data consumed. They have no way to monitor the data usage of each individual customer, so the prepay internet access is frequently used up before the customers have finished – leaving the café owner out of pocket.

The solution: ban Sarah.

Max’s Hospital volunteering

I went to Bagamoyo hospital today to see if I could help in any way with their computer systems. My school will be closed for the last week of my placement, so I need to find something else to do.

I met Dr. Ponza at the hospital. He took me to the Malaria Unit where I met Alex, the I.T. guy. The Malaria Unit, in stark contrast to the rest of the hospital (which we blogged about earlier), is very swish indeed. I walked into the air-conditioned reception area to find a bright, clean waiting room. It looked similar to a newly built western hospital, and I saw the same insignia that I’d seen on some very new four-wheel drives that I’d seen around town.

I had to go back the next day to speak to the administrator. It turns out that the Malaria Unit is a research unit. They are funded by Glaxo Smith Klien, who have a malaria vaccine that they are testing out here. The unit has four beautiful new labs, including equipment for DNA analysis. Their computer systems are hooked up to Beijing, where test results are analysed.

Meanwhile, the main hospital doesn’t even register patients on a computer. Medical records are stacked floor to ceiling, semi-exposed in an outhouse with three walls. Patients are given, and asked to memorize, a patient number, which is then used to find their medical records. The problem with this is that patients don’t remember their patient number between visits – so the stacks of medical records are usually unsearchable.

I think that Dr Ponza referred me to the Malaria Unit because there aren’t really any computers anywhere else in the hospital (they have a couple for word processing, but nothing else). It’s a bit of a Catch 22: the reason that the Malaria Unit has computers is because it is well funded, because they are well funded, they don’t really need my help.

The problems with the main hospital’s computer systems (i.e. they don’t have any) can’t really be solved in a week. So I think I’ll find somewhere else to work when school closes.

Settling in at school

We have both been finding working with the children at school gets more rewarding over time. We’re getting to know the kids better - Anne knows all of her kid’s names, while Max knows the vast majority of his (there are about 10 girls with names starting with Z and he tends to get those mixed up).

It’s really great when in just a few weeks you can see big improvements in a child’s writing skills, their vocabulary increases, and they can solve more maths questions. And the children are getting more comfortable with us.

Max thinks that Anne is particularly gifted in coming up with silly games that the children love. The kids have christened their current favourite ‘mwa mwalimu’ (mwalimu meaning teacher). This is pretty simple – Anne pulls a scary face and says ‘mwaaaa’, chases then tickles the child on the tummy. The kids come up to her now, pushing the tummies forward and asking for ‘mwa mwalimu’.

It’s school holidays next week, so this week we both have to say goodbye to our classes, which is going to be sad. Max’s teacher, Madam Rachel, warned the kids that Max is leaving at the end of this week and the kids were unhappy (well, that’s what Madam Rachel said – it all happened in Swahili) – one of the younger girls started crying which was really sad. So we’re preparing ourselves for tears at the end of the week – if not the kids, then definitely us!

Max’s tropical neck disease

My tropical neck disease has now completely cleared up. Towards the end of the first week I woke up with a red rash on the back of my neck about 20cm long, running into my scalp. The next day this turned into what looked like a small mountain range of puss filled bumps.

I was told about some type of fly that purportedly causes this kind of infection when it lands on you. I’m not convinced by that story – but it could well have been insect related.

Anyway, my neck seemed to respond well to the sanitizer, disinfectant and threats to take it to Bagamoyo hospital. It finally cleared up at the beginning of last week.

Changing of the guard

Last week we said goodbye remaining members of our group. Adil and Mina had left the previous week, and now it was time for Staci, Tracey and Jen to go – leaving just the two of us from our original group.

We planned a trip to Dar to have a nice farewell dinner, but unfortunately some last minute flight departure confusion meant that just the two of us and Tracey were able to make it. We said our farewells to Staci and Jen in Bagamoyo on Saturday morning.

We’ve become very close over the last few weeks and were very sad to see everyone go. We hadn’t expected that one of the best things about volunteering would be the friendships made with other volunteers.

The people in our group (i.e. volunteers who arrived at the same time as us) are wonderful, warm, generous, loving and very funny individuals. We’re grateful that we had the opportunity to build such good friendships, and we feel very lucky in that our group immediately got along with one another so well. We’ll get to see some of them later on this year during our travels, and hopefully we’ll see the others sometime soon – there’s talk of trying to organize a reunion for later in the year, so hopefully we won’t have to wait too long.

Although the rest of our group has left, there are still two volunteers from the previous group here at CCS, and we are quite close to them. They will be here for another month or so (they will be in Bagamoyo for a total of 12 weeks). In addition, last week we were joined by the next group of volunteers. This group is huge – about 20 of them. The majority of them are aged between 18-21 and on summer break from the US. Individually, every one is nice, but as a group it is a little overwhelming.

The quantity of people gives the place a bit of a spring break feel. When we go to the local bar for drinks it’s just a bit ridiculous. We turn up, asking for 30 seats and inadvertently take over the whole place – a big pack of mzungus. It makes it a bit harder to blend in. We’re readjusting to the change in group dynamics - it’s not too bad, just a bit of a transition phase.

Madam Rachel, Max and the photo shoot

One of the new volunteers is working with me in my kindergarten class. She’s called Monica, and she’s really great to work with. This week Madam Rachel asked Monica and me to bring in our cameras to take photos of the kids. At the end of the day Madam Rachel told us both that she didn’t think we’d taken enough photos of her, and would we mind taking some now.

We were a little surprised, but happy to oblige. She was quite specific about the photos, making sure that we got photos of her with both of our cameras. She asked us to take photos of her from the waist up. And she asked to borrow Monica’s sunglasses because she didn’t like the way that she was squinting in the sun.

The next day, Madam Rachel proudly showed us the new sunglasses that she had bought because she liked Monica’s so much. And she asked if we could bring our cameras in again because we hadn’t taken any photos of her teaching in the classroom. Hopefully she’ll be teaching in her new sunglasses when we next take her photo.

It is very expensive to get pictures printed here in Tanzania, and Madam Rachel has asked us to send her hard copies of photos when we get back home. I guess that her best bet of filling a photo album is to have volunteers with digital cameras take her picture. And if she’s going to do that, she might as well make sure that the volunteers take photos that she wants.

This week we are heading off to Selous Game Reserve, which is in the south of Tanzania. We’ll be doing boat safaris, which we’re pretty excited about. We’ll update you on the trip in the next post.

Week 2 & 3 - Bagamoyo, Tanzania

This week we’ve decided to try out headings. Here goes…

Sports Day:

One of the orientation activities that our volunteer organization, CCS, arranged was a sports and games day. Around fifteen volunteers and CCS staff went to an oval nearby Max’s school and played a game of football/soccer. Some of the guys are big football fans and pretty good players. As we got tired, we let the local children take our places. The kids had turned up to play on the oval – barefoot and with a bunch of plastic bags squashed together and then sewn over with material as a ball.

We played egg and spoon games, and when we had finished the staff and children ate their eggs. We also played “Red Rover”. This is a game where two sides line up facing each other, with arms linked. Players are then chosen one by one to charge at the opposing line and try to break the link (or arm, whichever gives way sooner).

For the last game, the staff pulled out a chicken from the back of our minibus. The idea was that they would set it free and we would try to catch it. We weren’t so keen on this sport – the chicken had been locked up in the hot van all morning and looked close to death – none of us wanted to be the one to tip it over the edge. We diplomatically suggested that we were tired and perhaps we’d sit this one out. The staff looked disappointed but cheered up when they had the idea that the kids could chase the chicken instead. Poor chicken!

That evening we went to see the family of musicians that we had visited the week before performed at a local restaurant/bar. This time they were dressed up in traditional costumes and it was even more impressive to watch. At the end they grabbed us to come dance with them on stage. The youngest boy who really knew how to shake his booty insisted that Max dance with him. Max now has some new dance moves to showcase when you next see him.

As it was a CCS event, we were allowed to stay out past curfew, but as usual we were exhausted and headed home to bed at the first opportunity.

Traditional healer (Witch doctor):

Last week CCS, arranged for us to visit a traditional healer. The healer didn’t speak any English, so his brother was there to help. Both were in their 70s. When the brother introduced himself, Didas, the CCS staff member with us, started to laugh – the brother’s name translates as “Professor Excuse Me”.

The healer and his brother were quite nice, and for the most part they seemed to be reasonably sane people. There were a handful of things that we did find peculiar however, for example:

1. Apparently there are two types of HIV/AIDS: the real kind, and the other kind. Although traditional healers cannot cure the former, the latter (which is caused by a curse) is not a problem when treated with the right potion. Just as a side note, HIV/AIDS is a massive problem in Bagamoyo – the national infection rate is 5%. In Bagamoyo the rate is 9%.
2. They showed us their ‘x-ray machine’. This is a chunk of amber the size of a small fist. Somehow this lights up the parts of the body that need to be treated, although the lighting-up was not demonstrated.
3. They had laid out a number of potions and tinctures for us to examine. The items that they chose to present were: a love potion, a medicine for female arousal problems, and their own version of Viagra.

Anne’s placement:

After my week of observing, I was totally thrown in the deep end. On Monday, one of the teachers didn’t turn up, so I had two classes (about 70 children) and I was told to teach them Maths. Maths is taught in Swahili, and since I can barely count to ten in Swahili this puts me slightly below the level of the children.

Somehow I managed, and we learned to count in English and Swahili as well as covering some basic sums. There is no real comprehension around sums – like most things they are taught by rote learning. This means they can pratlle off 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 1 +3 = 4 … but as soon as I mix up the order they just look at me with a confused expression.

So, this week when I taught them Maths I went back to basics – i.e. teaching what the numbers mean. They know the numbers but don’t really understand that 3 is representative of 3 units. I used flash cards from 1 – 10 with corresponding numbers of animals drawn on them. I covered up the numbers and asked how many and then revealed the numbers – it seemed to go OK, but I’m not sure how many really got it.

For the rest of the week the other teacher didn’t turn up so I was teaching two classes all week and for half of this week. Although theoretically I would have a teacher supervising me, in reality a member of staff would occasionally pop in to check that things were Ok, leaving me alone to do whatever I wanted to with little guidance or input. It was pretty overwhelming at first, but I’m getting used to it.

The hardest part is that the kids often get rowdy and start playing up. I find it hard to manage them since all I can say is “Hapana” (“No”) or basics classroom commands. This makes it very difficult to maintain discipline, and it’s not helped by the fact that the rest of the teachers hit the kids (as is customary Tanzania). They use sticks to hit the children on their hands, legs, heads – wherever really. It’s really upsetting, especially because it often seems arbitrary – if the kids are being loud, the teacher will walk into the room and just hits whoever is nearby until the class becomes quieter again. Most of the time it will be a light smack on their palm, but often the teacher will hit the child really hard until he or she cries. It’s horrible to see the children cower and flinch in pain – and I can’t really say anything. Even if the teachers did speak better English it would be difficult for me to tell them to stop doing something that is so common and accepted.

The CCS line on corporal punishment is that we should just try to lead by example, and hope to change things that way. We try to do this, but it’s difficult as the kids don’t take our attempts at discipline seriously. One time I gave a kid a time out, and it seemed to work OK. But the next time I tried this the class thought it was a great game. They all tried to stand in the corner and kept calling for me to put them in the corner…. Anyway, I’m still very much learning what works and doesn’t. And although I have mornings where the thought of trying to teach 70 kids who don’t speak the same language as me in a small under-resourced classroom exhausts me – it’s hard not to smile when you see the kids.

Some of the children wait for me on the streets on the way to school so that they can walk with me. When I get to the school they all run towards me. They hug me and laugh and smile and start chattering away (in Swahili… but I’m sure they are saying nice things ). And then when I’m teaching (or trying to teach) and starting to lose patience they will do something really sweet. Sometimes when they particularly like something I’ve done they sing me a song that goes “Well done, well done teacher…. And you are the best, and you are the best”. The song ends with each of them giving me the thumbs up

This week Max helped me draw some pictures to go with the alphabet to put up in the classroom. The room needs brightening up a bit. The kids LOVED it – they were soooo excited as the pictures were being pasted to the wall. They were running around, dancing and singing the alphabet – I got a loud round of the “you are the best” song that day!

Max’s walk to school:

One of my favourite parts of the day is my ten-minute walk to work in the morning. Most days, as I walk out of the CCS compound I’ll see a few women walking by, balancing huge tubs on their heads.

As I turn onto the Dar Highway (with two lanes it’s the largest sealed road for miles, but has little traffic) I might be overtaken by someone pedalling an ice-cream cart. Or maybe a guy pulling a trailer on foot where you would normally expect to see a horse attached. Often I will pass a man cutting the grass in the overgrown graveyard with a machette. Sometimes I see one of the school-kids, bareheaded on the back of a motorbike, clutching his dad. He recognizes me, waves, and gives me a huge grin.

I turn off the highway and onto a dirt road. I pass the goats and chickens before I get to a neighboring primary school where the African drums are played loudly every morning for assembly.

Within a minute I am in view of my school – as soon as the children see me they come rushing towards me for hugs, and to find out how many children can climb on top of me before I can’t lift them any more.

Discipline at Mwanamakuka (Max’s school):

Two lowlights from Max’s teacher’s repertoire of cruel kindergarten discipline:

1. When busy marking work, if the class is not reciting excercises loudly enough, the teacher should go round to every single child in the class and smack them – regardless of whether the child was loud or quiet.
2. When smacking a child, if the child runs away, choose a small lynch mob of around ten children to chase the child, the same mob can then hold the squirming kid while the teacher hits him or her.

Bugs:

There are a lot of insects in Bagamoyo. These are mostly flies and mosquitoes, with the odd preying mantis. The strangest thing is that around 6.45pm, just after sunset, it seems to rain bugs. Hundreds of black, ladybird-sized bugs fall from the outside canopy just as we finish dinner. They drop on our heads, in our food, in the washing up and down our clothes. We’re reasonably blasé about it now - but the black bug shower usually signals the end of dinner.

Zanzibar:

We took a trip to Zanzibar last weekend with all but one member of our volunteer group. Getting there was quite the ordeal – we thought there was a 2pm ferry from Dar Es Salam, so we set off from Bagamoyo at 10.30am. About an hour into our drive, our dala dala (a small minibus, commonly used for transport in Tanzania) broke down. Luckily it only took about half an hour to get it all fixed, but it was a fairly anxious 30 mins. The only thing that we could understand was when he told us “five minutes… five minutes”.

Anyway finally we got to the ferry terminal and it turns out buying the tickets is yet another ordeal. We were swarmed by touts who told us that there is no 2pm ferry – we had to catch their 4pm ferry. They insisted that if we followed them they would “sort us out”. We were so confused about what to do we called Mama Christine back at Home Base, and she took charge by giving one of the touts a tongue-lashing over the phone, and then placing us in his care. We arrived at our beach-resort at 6.30pm – eight hours after setting off.

We had a really nice uneventful Saturday at the hotel. It was low season, so the resort was almost completely empty, and it rained for most of Saturday. It was good to relax in a slightly more luxurious setting for a day and a half.

The journey back to Bagamoyo on Sunday was even more epic than the outbound trip. We caught a different ferry called the Sea Bus. It turned out that this boat was half ferry, half puke machine. The ferry rolled so much that everyone except Max got very sea-sick, filling plenty of sick bags. It looked like 90% of the passengers were feeling ill, with many lying on the floor. The boat was sweltering because the air conditioning was broken for the whole two-hour trip.

When we got to the Ferry Terminal, we were again overrun by touts. There was a huge confusion because our original dala dala driver had sent another driver in his place without telling us (the substitute driver spoke no English). When we tried to call the driver’s phone around ten times before we could get through. And then the person who answered was not the driver and spoke no English. We had stressful hour or so while we tried to figure out if we should get in the bus with the strange driver. All the while a number of dubious characters were vying for our attention in order to ‘help’ with the situation, for a small fee. Once again, a phone call to the CCS staff eventually resolved the situation.

By the time we got back to the Home Base at around 10pm we were exhausted again.

Stay off Max’s mzungu patch:

This week we had a visitor at Mwanamakuka - my school. She drove up to the school in a newish 4-wheel drive – a real sign of wealth in this part of the world. When she stepped out of the car the children grabbed me and shouted “mzungu” (which means either ‘white person’ or ‘person who walks with his farts in his trousers’).

My initial emotions were highly territorial – this is my patch; the children hug me when I arrive at school; I know how to sing the Bagamoyo song with these kids; and I know how to speak about 10 words in Swahili. From talking to the other volunteers I get the impression that this is everybody’s response to being usurped as the only novelty foreigner.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the visitor to my school was lovely. She is called Jenny, she is a researcher, and has a long running project with Bagamoyo hospital. She brought a video of her five-year-old’s kindergarden class saying hello to my class. And she recorded my class sending a message back to them. The children absolutely loved it.

That’s it for this post. We don’t have any plans to go away this weekend, so it’ll probably be a quiet weekend in Baga. Hope this finds you well – take care, and send us any news.

xox