Pictures of projects

Here's some pictures,if they actually upload!

The first 2 weeks

Tuesday 26th April

Yet again this week has passed pretty rapidly. Life in the house has a tendancy of flying past despite the water and electricity going off fairly intermittently- definitely all part of the experience, especially the rather chilly bucket showers. Several cockroaches have also met a swift end to their brief existences at the hand of one of my flip flops. This past week has been a bit rainy but only for very small amounts of time each day, but when it rains here, it really rains. Normally this takes the form of dramatic thunderstorms with spectacular flashes of lightening, the rain is great because it cools everything down which is nice as it makes a change form the usual 30 odd degrees it usually is here.

Last Sunday after a 2 ish hour church service with lots of readings and almost entirely in Swahili there was a small auction at the end in which a large variety of things were up for sale, everything from fertiliser, sweet potatoes to a live chicken (which had its legs tied together during the service and had been hopping around in a vain attempt to escape).  After that we headed over to the lake where Graham took us to do a bit of rock climbing/ scrambling, its quite liberating how there is no health and safety here. I also got to play football with some of the other missionaries in town who take their football fairly seriously even though it is only 5 a side.

This week’s projects have been really great, with planning day last Monday we made sure that we completed Samwhelli’s bed for him (I’ll try and upload a picture) and his two sisters so they didn’t have to sleep on the floor. I think Graham said that he was going to employ Samwhelli next year to help with the carpentry for projects at Go MAD which is great as that will provide his whole family with a really good income. The smile on his face and how thankful he was for us making him the bed was really humbling as he was so thankful for something that we in the UK take completely for granted. Also our first water tank is now underway after buying the steel mesh and wire to make the frame we then had to mix concrete using just a shovel which was really hard work in the heat as well as digging out he whole for the tank and making sure it was level. After all that was done the frame for the tank was concreted in place and the local fundee’s will finish it as it takes a fair bit of technical skill and knowledge to construct the rest.

On Thursday the whole team attended the Rafiki group meeting, which is the cooperative farming group that organise which members get goat shed’s and water tanks next. Although this seemed fairly chaotic at first with lots of members trying to loudly talk over each other in Swahili it eventually got sorted out and it was really encouraging to see the group take decisions and responsibility for their members. They also have an idea to start a small scale soap factory which will be a great source of income if they can get it off the ground. Friday was good fun as myself and some of the other guys from the 6 month team went off to Boki and Moshi’s house to build them a veranda whilst the rest of the 3 month team went off to Bunda girls school to look into the education opportunities we could do as a team there. At Boki and Moshi’s we had to put 5 trusses in and level out the ground which involved moving 5 HUGE rocks which we did by levering them out or hitting them with sledge hammers which was great fun.

Church on Sunday was again very long especially with the rain storm making so much noise on the roof that we couldn’t even here the preacher at times! There was also a small snake found in the back of the Church which was exiting, although the locals reckoned it wasn’t poisonous, but you never know with snakes. There are 12 types of venomous snake found in Africa and all of them live in the area where we are. Yesterday was Malaria awareness and we went to a big event organised by Hezbon who often works with Go MAD and is really involved with health in the Bweri area. This was such a good day as both teams doing games including parachutes, puzzles but I was on Bucket ball which was quite challenging explaining the rules with my very limited Swahili so it ended up being a lot of demonstrations of how to play and trying to stop them al just wrestling the ball off each other, but by the end it worked really well. Both teams also did a Malaria awareness song to the tune of the Cha Cha Slide which I hope the crowd got something from as it felt a little surreal doing the song in front of at least 1500 people.

I’ll try and attach as many photos as possible but with Tanzanian internet this might be a bit tricky so hopefully I can upload some!

Hello fromTanzania!

Hello from Tanzania!! This is the first time i've had internet since getting here a week ago and already so much has happened.

Saturday 16th April

This last week has been crazy, lots has happened since setting off from Heathrow this time last week. The flight over to Dubai was long about 7hrs in total and I didn’t sleep at all so was very tired by the time we had to fly to Nairobi which was an extra 5hrs and again didn’t sleep at all so I was finding it hard to stay awake especially when having to queue through Nairobi immigration for over an hour. After that once we’d all got our  luggage we then had to get some Kenyan money for our overnight stay in the ACK guesthouse. At that point we met Lucy who had just flown in from South Africa and then went through customs which was really easy as the person on the desk just waved us through which was in great contrast to the other airports we went through in terms of security!

Once through the airport we met Peterson who then drove us to the ACK. African roads are VERY different to ones in UK. No seat belts and somewhat crazy/dangerous driving and a lot of pollution lent itself towards a fun journey. Once we got to ACK, Graham met us and we settled in and had dinner which was chicken and potato so not too far from what I’m used to in  the UK. Early get up on Monday morning as we had to get a bus from Nairobi to the Tanzanian border. Again travelling through Nairobi felt equally precarious as the day before and got to the bus. As we went through Nairobi into the surrounding countryside there were a lot of shanty towns with rubbish everywhere which was hard to see for the fist time. Out of Nairobi travelled through the East African Rift Valley which was super cool. However the bus was very slow and constantly had to slow down for every single speed bump which was basically mud mixed with stones. The Kenyan countryside was really interesting and every village we went past had a market with all sorts of fruit and clothes. We finally got to the Tanzanian border at about 18:30 having set off from Nairobi at 8:30am and spent another hour plus going through Tanzanian immigration. After that another hour and a half and finally got to Musoma. The house is great and both the 6 month team and us 3 month team are already good friends.

Tuesday was really interesting with house orientation and then going round the local villages which was really hard to see. We visited Boki and Moshi whom the other team had built a house for them. We also visited Esther and her brother Samwhelli who’s story was pretty heartbreaking as she had been sexually abused when  she was 12 and was responsible for the rest of her family even though she was only 16 herself as both her parent had died of HIV/AIDS. We then saw the water source that some of the villagers had to use which was a filthy pond which Graham said would contain at least 6 different diseases. This really moved me to see how important water tanks are in providing free clean water and I felt convicted about how much we take water for granted back home. The rest of the week has been pretty varied but we have started building our first goat shed for the Rafiki farming cooperative which has been a steep learning curve but also really fun. The goat sheds are super important to stop goats getting bitten by snakes and ticks and can breeding and selling a goat can provide a family with a years income. This area of Africa is so special and the people are ridiculously friendly and have spent over 2 minutes just shaking hands with some of  the locals in the market in Musoma. Any way off to lunch now with at Rehema for rice, beans, goat and possibly some water melon. I shall try and upload pictures of my team's projects on the next blog posts, if the internet out here can cope!

Leaving for Tanzania

Well this is it. Catching the train to Heathrow, fly tonight.