The last working week

Saturday 25^th June

This last week has been our last full working week in Tanzania and as per usual it has been pretty crazy.  Monday started off with our last visit to Jipe Moyo, the home for vulnerable children in Musoma, where some of the team did some dancing, face painting, football and parachute games. I was on football this time and it always strikes me how strong the kids are, as they always play in bare feet and are still just as fearless as if they were wearing football boots.  There were some really talented kids in particular Stefano and Juma who were 14 and 12 respectively who probably, if they had been born in the UK, would be playing for a professional team. Even though they don’t have a very good football to practice with and by football I mean a whole load of plastic bags stuffed into a ball shape with elastic bands to hold it together, they could still run circles round us.

One of the main highlights this week was adding the finishing touches to our pit latrine by moving the all the soil that was still there from when the hole was dug out which involved a lot of shovelling. While I was doing this the rest of the team were painting the doors to label them Wanawake and Wanaume along with the associated signs! In the afternoon we started our 3^rd and final Goat Shed which is also in Nyankanga for Winnefreda and her family. We expected on arrival that digging the holes for the support posts was going to be easy. How wrong we were. To dig the holes requires getting 40cm deep, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but 10cm down we basically hit a layer of clay which meant digging the holes took a lot longer than anticipated, I was told so kindly by the rest of my team that it looked like I had taken a shower due to the amount I had sweated! We did manage to get the post in eventually even though they were about the size of half a tree. Thursday and Friday were also taken up with bashing out the rest of the shed which it has to be said was much easier and more efficient than our first one which we made 10 weeks ago.

Wednesday was doing repairs in the morning which was wholesale changing the guttering on Richard’s water tank (Richard is the assistant pastor at Mikiringo church) which involved some very funny moments because of the nesting carpenter bees (which are about 4 times bigger than any bees in the UK) versus Philipo who was armed with just a branch. Wednesday was also our last Girls and Boys Group which felt really weird as we have played football with the kids and done a Bible study with them every single week so it was kind of sad leaving them for the last time. Today is Mike’s safari-themed birthday, so I have no idea what’s going on: classic!