Week 10

Sunday 19^th June

I’m sitting writing this blog post from upstairs in the house and I’m looking out over about 400 metres of swampy ground which then merges into Lake Victoria, which is so huge that it basically looks like the sea. I can only see a very small section of the lake, Mara Bay, which has lots of islands scattered through it: one of them even looks like a giant crocodile’s head. There are always fishing boats out on the lake which look so flimsy that they could capsize with only the tiniest wave. Its strange looking at the same view that I’ve seen for the last 10 weeks and thinking that this coming week is my last full week here in Tanzania which has brought up quite a few thoughts about going home and getting used to life back in the UK again. This has provoked mixed feelings of wanting to go home but also wanting to stay for longer here.

This last week has felt slightly odd in a way as we are starting to come to the end of a lot of our building work, with the doors being completed and moving an absolute pile of soil that was still there from when the original hole was dug. However we do now have a fully functioning pit latrine block at Mikirira School which will hopefully be a real blessing to that school and the immediate community. This week also seen the completion of Edwardo’s goat shed, which started with hammering all the corrugated sheeting in place round the sides and roof of the shed so that in the rainy season the goat doesn’t get pneumonia. This continued on Thursday morning where we had to get wood for the dividing section of the shed so as to separate male and female goats when they are in season. However in order to get pieces of decent enough wood we had to take apart the old platform of the old shed and salvage what we could that wasn’t rotten because Edwardo hadn’t brought anymore branches which is what we usually use for that job. But after an hour and a half of hammering and sawing we had the right amount of wood at the right size to screw in place. Friday finished our work on the shed with attaching the locks on the doors of the shed and painting the whole shed with green wood preserve to try and halt the advance of the termites. Although a funny moment of Friday was getting to shed and seeing the goat in one side and Edwardo’s grandchildren playing in the other. This was compounded Sam (one of the six monthers) having to get into the part of the shed where the goat was to paint it and the goat abruptly escaping. This required a short struggle in which we managed to grab the rope that the  goat was tied to and drag it back into the shed even though it nearly pulled Sam and the rest of us over on multiple occasions!

One of the other highlights this week was the Sports Day we did with the kids at the Lepers community. This meant lots of face-paint, plenty of organised chaos and good times all round. Ella and Juliette were dressing wounds and helping the adults still suffering with the after effects of Leprosy whilst the rest of the team and some of the six monthers played classic sports day games with the kids such as egg and spoon, or in this case pin-pong ball and spoon, under and over, skipping etc. The afternoon ended as it always seems to with a big game of football which seems to be what the kids really want to do!

We finished the working week with starting our second water tank which was plenty of digging, bending tying wire and concrete mixing: I won’t lie, it was very sweaty. The mixing of our last few batches of concrete was definitely my highlight, even though it is really hard work is very satisfying when its done as the results are definitely tangible.

I’m exited what this next week will bring and I’m definitely going to make the most of it.