Mambo Vipi S&P Bloggers!
It has been three months since our last post, but we very much enjoyed our time off in the States with our families for the holidays. It’s hard to believe, but it has been over a year since our fist blog on Mumbai! It’s incredible how time flies. We’re now in Africa, in Tanzania specifically, and have begun our last leg of S&P’s Excellent Adventure! I hope you all enjoy the next four month’s posts as much as we enjoy living them.
After a 21-hour flight from New York (with two connections), we landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport with no dollars. Big, huge - rookie mistake. Customs only take American dollars for visas (shows you how corrupt the government is). Things did not look good, but thankfully this baller Indian guy gave us $200 and told us to pay him back in TZS (Tanzanian schillings). We were met at the airport by Victoria, our mother hen at Give a Heart to Africa (GHTA henceforth), and our friendly chauffeur, Kasanda. They brought us to the nearest ATM (30 minute drive) while the Indian man waited for a flight connection, and all worked out well in the end. Very lucky. It wasn’t a great start, however, especially since our bags did not join us on our flight from Nairobi. Exhausted, we made it back to our “new home” and passed out immediately after eating some rice and beans (we eat a lot of rice and beans, as in many places around the world). We didn’t sleep long, however, as all the volunteers were meeting on that Saturday to go over each person’s role with the group business assignments currently taking place at GHTA. There were four groups in all; each assigned a job-for-profit around town, our town being Moshi, an hour’s drive from the airport. Barely awake and definitely not listening, we were each paired with a group to observe and report on. Shauna’s group was singing at a church, where donations from the congregation would be there profit. Everyone in our house went, which meant waking up rather early on Sunday, about 18 hours after we landed. Everything went well enough, but the heat of the country punched us right in the face on the walk home at noon. It’s actually not bad, due to the altitude, out of the sun. In the sun, however, and there was no shade on this particular walk home, it’s brutal. Anyway, the following day, our first Monday (which is usually taken up by class), the other three groups performed their tasks. Pat was assigned group 2A, and they cleaned a local restaurant for a pre-agreed amount (about 75 cents a person, since there were 10 in the group). They cleaned the place very well, but we still won’t be eating there the entire time we’re here. No need to go into the specifics, but it was gross. We then proceeded to work a regular workweek combined with “Internet Day” that Friday and Saturday (which was actually amazing; most of the students had never seen it, and setting up email accounts and watching their faces after showing them the power of Google was priceless). The point is that we didn’t get a day to sleep until ten days after arriving, and on that second Sunday we made like God and rested.
Now that we’ve caught everyone up on our arrival, let us properly introduce you all to Give a Heart to Africa, the NGO we’re volunteering for until the end of March. A lovely Czech-Canadian woman named Monika, who we met in Toronto over Christmas while visiting Pat’s sister, started GHTA in 2009. The goal of the non-profit is to educate extremely poor women for whom secondary education is completely out of reach. Most people in Tanzania go to school through the government until Standard 7, or 7th grade. Most simply stop after that, and try to carve out a life however they can. Women are especially handicapped by the system, as many of the jobs are just not open to them. With much of the money given by volunteers and through other donations, GHTA tries to take some of the most needy and provide them with solid English, business, and computer skills. Each class lasts six months, broken up into two three-month semesters. The demand is incredible. From simply posting fliers around town, last year there were two hundred applicants for the forty available slots. There is an interview process that apparently takes up an entire weekend. We’ll be a part of this for the next class (who we won’t teach) later next month. The students (ages anywhere from twenty to fifty) consist of thirty-two women and eight men. Apparently even GHTA had to fill some sort of “man quota”. Life for our students is hard. It’s very hard. Many live in tiny rooms or mud huts without any running water, electricity, or any kind of proper sanitation. Some travel as far as two hours to make it to class by 9am (8am if they need or want extra help). Sickness and death is all around. Several of our students have malaria, Tanzania’s (and most of Africa’s) number one killer. At least one student (i.e. that we know about) has AIDS. Another’s brother just died of pneumonia. Life is just different, yet each and every one of them is so grateful for the opportunity GHTA provides them. They are so friendly and upbeat, at least when they’re around us. It is safe to say we’re learning more about the world from them than the business/computer skills they are learning from us. There are many things to talk about when it comes to life and our students and the opportunities GHTA provides, but let us leave that for a later blog.
Our typical week looks like this: Monday through Thursday we’re teaching two classes a day from 9am-12pm. Shauna teaches business (with Victoria, who runs GHTA while Monika is in Canada saving money) while Pat teaches computer. Two other volunteers, Alex from NJ/NC and Tina from London, teach English. Each class has a Tanzanian translator as well. They are all former students, and they are both indispensable and our friends. Shauna works with Herman, and Pat with Rahim. On Monday and Thursday we have a daycare for the student’s and neighborhood children. Pat doesn’t really partake in this; Shauna and Alex (who is female) fight over who can play more with the kids. Shauna is especially fond of Messe (pronounced like the soccer star), an adorable five-year-old who lives around the corner. On Tuesday and Wednesday we provide extra help after class. We also provide an hour of extra help each morning if requested. On Friday we conduct usually two home visits to our student’s homes. These are important, as they’re the only way to get to know each student on a more personal level. These encounters are enlightening for both teacher and student, but we will go into more depth in a later blog.
As I mentioned earlier, we live in Moshi, Tanzania. Moshi sits directly below Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest point and the world’s tallest “free standing” mountain, whatever that means. It is basically a huge-ass extinct volcano, and it’s pretty sweet to wake up to each morning. We’re in the north of the country, close to the border of Kenya. We’re in the middle of the country, being eight hours east of Africa’s biggest lake (Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile River), which is the border for Uganda, and five hours west of the Indian Ocean coast. Being so close to “Kili”, we are higher in elevation than a lot of the country, and that helps with the heat and humidity. We’re not far from the equator, and you can guess what that means for temperature. It is still horrible when the sun is hitting you directly, but in the shade it is pleasant, and sleeping is not a problem (thank God). Because Moshi is the jumping off point for any climb up Kili, it sees its fair share of wazungu (white people). It works out well for us, since there are a few decent places to eat and some nice hotels where we can pay a small fee and use their pools all afternoon. Downtown is lively and pleasantly surprising. There is even a new “supermarket” that has filtered ice and air conditioning! We spend quite a bit of time “shopping” (i.e. walking around aimlessly). Our house (which is also where the school is) is luxurious, we now realize, compared to most places around town. We have running water (half the time, but we think that will change now that the rainy season is coming) and electricity. That means we have flushing toilets and showers, we have ceiling fans and a refrigerator, and we have light at night. Our rooms are nice and we have our own (in bunk beds, unfortunately – Pat took the top due to Shauna’s tiny bladder), and we even have our own bathroom! We get dinner cooked for us each night by Margaret, a very nice Tanzanian who gives rather generous portions, thereby giving us lunch many afternoons the following day. All of this is included in the money we gave up front, so it is plausible for us to live on next to nothing (side trips aside) until our time is up here. Rounding out the regular characters in our lives are Mama Joff, who cleans the house and school, Nabana, the night watchman who just had a baby girl named Anna, and Kasanda, the husband of one of our students who owns a taxi and brings us wherever we need to go around town (if we don’t walk, of course). There is also another volunteer, Anna from Sweden, who lives in Moshi with her partner (and is going to have a baby in five months) and helps teach computers with Pat about half the time. Thankfully we get along just fine with everyone in the house. Victoria has been an American expat for about twenty years, splitting time between Paris and Madrid before quitting her job and taking over GHTA in Monika’s absence. Tiny is the sixty-six-year-old retired mother of two who has come to due her bit for two months. She’s a spark plug and quite a laugh, as many a Brit are. Alex is the baby at twenty-four. She recently conquered the LSAT and is now applying to schools while giving six months to GHTA. Pat is the lone male in the house, but he is fairly used to this role from living with only his sisters and mother for a few years. There are times when the estrogen levels are high and he has to plug his ears or simply walk away, but mostly everyone is cool and it’s of little concern.
After that lengthy explanation of our lives over the past two weeks, we digress. Our vacation to the Indian Ocean and the islands of Zanzibar will be up next. You didn’t think it would be all work and no play, did you?!
Much love,
S&P
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