Week 4/5

Saturday 14^th May

This update is a bit later than normal as finding the time to sit down and write a post is quite difficult as there always seems to be something else happening. The last 12 days have been really great with all the project work and there have been some comedy gold moments as well. Everything from team mates falling in pit latrine holes, playing netball in the heaviest thunderstorm ever where just looking into the wind hurt because it was raining so hard to seeing a 5ft diameter satellite dish strapped to the back of a Piki Piki. Tanzania always manages to throw up things that you’d never expect, like one of the Go MAD’s hire drivers, Hezbon, taking us to see his house buying us all a Fanta and inviting us to lunch next week with him and the rest of his family. The generosity of the people out here is so refreshing, even more so considering that they often have so little.

I’ll start with last week’s planning day where we bought all the materials for the week ahead. For some reason shopping in Musoma always takes ages as there always seems to be some form of complication and last week it was that Kovoyo (who we buy all of Go MAD’s hardware from) not having the parts we needed. Andrew (another one of Go MAD’s in-country leaders) came back from Iraq where he had spent two weeks with YWAM in one of the refugee camps in Kurdistan in northern Iraq, which is about 30km away from Mosul. The whole house wanted to hear what he’d been up to and he came back with some really hard hitting stories about the 2 million IDP’s (Internally Displaced Persons) in northern Iraq who had fled ISIS and the refugee camp he was working in which had over 80,000 people, mainly Kurds but also Christians and Yazidis. He was helping in the one of the health clinic’s there giving out medicines and administering and registering those getting them. Of all the horrific stories that some of the refugees  had one of the things that stood out to me about what he was saying was actually the stories of the people there trying to help the refugees. In particular, one of the missionaries out there with YWAM, who had set up a school for about 160 of the disabled children  who are otherwise hidden from the outside world by their families because in their culture disabled children are perceived to be a curse and the way that she was giving these children hope was so encouraging despite the desperate situation that Andrew was describing.

Over the last 10ish days we have been mainly working on our pit latrine up at the school in Mikirira with carpentry on formwork and door frames as well as concreting the lintils on last Thursday. Friday 6th  I went  with 6th month team to help build a 15,000 litre water tank at Mikirira Church which will  provide clean water to the surrounding community. After we had finished the morning session the vicar came out of his house and gave us all Chai and sweet potato which was such a kind gesture. Last Saturday was once again pretty chilled, but went for a 50 minute run with Rob, Sophie (who are both doctors, Rob came with Go MAD about 7 years ago as a volunteer) and Tommy which was great as it let us explore the area a bit  more and showed even the disparity in wealth even in Tanzania. Last Sunday Rob also did the sermon at Mikirira Church which he did in both Swahili and English.

Monday morning was again more work on the pit latrine block we’re building with formwork for the foundation and cutting the steel supports that will be embedded with the concrete to strengthen it. The afternoon was then concrete mixing 8 batches for the surrounding foundation for the latrine. For a sense of scale, one cement mix bag is 50kg and this is mixed with 6 buckets full of stone and 6 buckets full of sand and then loads of water is added to make the one batch. Although while we were mixing all the concrete at Mikirira school the number of children not in lessons was alarming as a lot of them were stood round watching us work instead of being in lessons because there are so few teachers in comparison to children. Tuesday was once again planning day which was buying guttering and pipe for our water tank so it can finally start collecting water properly.

Wednesday morning involved moving our 10 lintils which each weigh about  96kg each and then putting mortar over the wire mesh that goes between the gaps of the lintils. The afternoon was taken up by fixing the guttering on the house for our water tank although we realised that we hadn’t been given the outlet piece by Kovoyo so we couldn’t finish it that day which was frustrating. Thursday morning was yet more concrete mixing for the 3.5m by 2.2 metre foundation which was really hard work as once the water is added it becomes incredibly heavy and mixing it in the African heat seems to just sap any energy very quickly. Although afterwards once of the locals came round and sold us bananas (Ndesi in Swahili) for 100 shillings each (about 3.3 pence)! The afternoon was then split as some of the team went off to Girls and Boys Group and me, Kate and Sophie headed back to the water tank to fit the outlet piece we hadn’t done the day before. The only problem was that the pipe that links the guttering to the tank itself was left at the house and so we had to wait for Freddie (another one of Go MAD’s drivers/translators) to pick it up after taking one of the girls from girls group to hospital for malaria testing. So we had to wait for quite some time before he got back, I took the opportunity to sit down and attempt to talk Swahili with Philippo which really helped and was very funny because of my ridiculously poor pronunciation. But when Freddie did get back we were able to completely finish it all and now our water tank is fully operational. Yesterday was making doors for our latrine in the morning, which was good for my slowly progressing carpentry skills and fitting the 6month team’s door frames for their latrine which involved using a very powerful drill to get through the concrete.

Today is our day off and so its been a fairly chilled morning which has been mainly taken up by washing my very mucky, concrete covered and sweaty clothes, definitely the number one thing I like doing with my Saturday morning!