Week 3 update

Monday 2^nd May

Time seems to go so fast in Tanzania, this last week has yet again flown past. This week has been varied quite a lot in terms of the different things I’ve been involved in since last Tuesday. Although I thought I’d write a bit about Musoma and other bit’s and bobs that aren’t directly to do with project work. The house that I and the rest of the teams live in is just outside of Musoma in an area called Bweri (its about a 10 minute drive). We often go into town for lunch at the Anglican hostel which usually serves rice and beans with fish or meat (Samaki or Nyama in Swahili), however sometimes we get Ugali which can only best be described as eating  Play-doh made of maize and Boga-Boga which is like a mixture of spinach and cabbage. The hostel is right beside the Anglican Cathedral, which Graham helped design and build and was supported by the Anglican diocese of Wakefield, its funny how you can travel over 4000 miles and still be reminded of somewhere that’s just down the road from you at home. Rehema is also right next to the Cathedral and its an ethical clothing scheme that Go MAD have been really involved with since its inception and is aimed at helping women in exceptionally difficult situations by training them to work in the café or in the workshop and so provides them and their families with income. We often eat there on a Saturday which is usually both team’s day off.

Getting around is always interesting, being  thrown around in the back of a Land Rover on the tracks to the villages requires a certain amount of effort to brace yourself in order to stop yourself falling onto the person sitting opposite. Dala Dala’s are the main way of getting into town when there isn’t a Land Rover to give us a lift. Dala Dala’s are essentially a hollowed out van with seats and exceptionally cramped. On Saturday there were at least 22 people crammed into the one Dala Dala, which was a rather sticky experience especially seen as how the engine was located less than a foot below the seat I was sitting on and was constantly pumping warm air into an already humid vehicle. Most of the locals either use Dala Dala’s, Piki Piki’s (which are essentially motorbike taxis) or bikes, the amount of stuff they can put on all these things never ceases to surprise me, anything from 4 people on one Piki Piki to a 6  foot stack of plastic chairs.

Project work this week has mainly been the start of our pit latrine which will be for a local school, digging the hole and making the form work which is the frame which the concrete will be put into. Its very satisfying doing the carpentry work as the results of the work you put is so tangible and I’m getting better at sawing, drilling and using an impact screwdriver. We also had do a lot of odd jobs that Graham left us with before he went back to the UK such as delivering tap heads for water tanks, cement mix,  taking Babu into hospital to treat his Elephantitus, and adjusting guttering on houses so that they work properly to make sure rainwater definitely goes into the water tanks. Helena and Fi also finally got our goat (and named her Clive) to go in the goat shed and attached the final piece of corrugated iron to complete the Goat Shed while the rest of us did work on the pit latrine on Wednesday. Thursday was more carpentry work for the latrine and whilst the rest of the team planned their teaching for Bunda Girls School, I went off to the 6 month team’s pit latrine who are further on than us to help mix the concrete and cut the steel supports for the lintels which will be the foundation of their latrine. Cutting steel with a hacksaw is ridiculously hard work but Phillipo who is employed by Go MAD as a professional carpenter made it look easy and put us all to shame considering  how much slower we were at doing it than him. Friday was Bunda for the rest of the team and so I spent the day working on the veranda for Boki and Moshi’s house with some of the other 6 month team which is now nearly finished after we mixed an awful lot of concrete with the help of Fabian and Nickols, two of the German missionaries who we play football with on a Sunday. Saturday was vet day which meant that we went round the Rafiki group (which is basically all of the subsistence agriculturalists in this area) where the vet checked all the goats health and gave them medicine to stop worms and other parasites. We also had to record all the goats tag numbers and if they were pregnant or had recently had kids, who they belonged to and if any of the owners had problems with their sheds. All this information is really useful for Go MAD, so we can fix any problems with the sheds and stop interbreeding of goats as well as making sure that the goats are healthy and producing milk. We did this in Mkiringo, Nyanbeshi, and Nyankanga and all of the Rakfiki group were so grateful to see us and were so welcoming which was really encouraging.

I shall try and upload some more pictures of projects and stuff its just last time it took about 40 minutes to upload 4 pictures so they may have to be a very select few!

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.

Fundraising

I now have 100% of the fundraising target for Tearfund. Huge thankyou to everyone who has donated, never dreamed I would get this much support! Any donations going forward will go direct to Tearfund's partner charity Go MAD whom I will be working with directly. From the outset Go MAD asked for a minimum direct donation of £300 but because I never thought I'd raise all of the Tearfund £2700 target, I haven't mentioned this previously!

Finished!