We love Tanzania!

This weekend we have so many plans – a sign that we’re really settling in! Today we went to the sokoni and bought some animal print material for our Halloween costumes. We plan on sewing some skirts and headbands and showing them off at the Halloween Party on Saturday. We have also bought three boxes of jelly to take to the girls on the 31^st to celebrate Halloween, which none of them have ever heard of.  The thirty-first is also election day here although it is pretty much guaranteed that the CCM Party will win due to corruption. People around here are going election-crazy though, and are wearing bright yellow and green kangas, headscarves and banners to represent CCM. The president at the moment is Kikwete, and everyday there are articles in the newspapers about his questionable campaigning (they found a huge box full of CCM ballots already filled out in Arusha!) On a side note, talking about newspapers, we also read that Fiji had lost its declaration of independence and had to ask England for a photocopy (we laughed for about half an hour with Peter, the school driver). Imagine!

            We’ve been cooking up a storm here as we’re tiring slightly of the daily ugali, beans, and rice. We made jam sandwiches and dipped them in batter to make doughnuts, we’ve attempted chapati, and we made a tuna and mosquito quiche (a delicacy in Tanzania…just kidding!)  As we were sprinkling cheese on it we accidentally hit one of the many mosquitoes buzzing around, and it fell and sunk beneath the egg, but we ate it anyway. We were introduced to Mrs Fusi, our landlords wife and made the mistake of telling her that we liked to eat samahaki (fish) because we do – when its already prepared. We knew it was a big mistake as soon as we said it, and sure enough, the next day she brought us an entire frozen fish which we now have to thaw, gut, and de-eye. Ew.

            We had a really good day yesterday with the girls and were helping them to write letters. Their English is coming along, but we always get some good laughs helping them to correct their writing. Our funniest yesterday was “I know school is liberation in my wife”. We had to explain the difference between ‘wife’ and ‘life’.  We also got really cute messages like “I promise to always work hard in my studies.” There’s no doubt that these girls are dedicated to their futures and it is so rewarding to teach students who work so hard, and love to learn. ALSO big news: we both got a 96% on our Kiswahili exams! Yay! The girls were very proud of our studying!

            Times have also been scary. For Camilla – the weekly spider eradication of our house, for Elena, the neighbours dog which sometimes gets locked in our garden and was rumoured to have attacked Mustafa. For both of us – the appearance of a meter and a half long (possible Cobra) snake at the school. Sytote, the Maasai guard, killed it with his special Maasai stick (which Elena loves) and brought it up to us to show. First, the girls poured kerosene on it which made it wriggle and seem alive (we don’t know how that works) and we could also see the mice it had eaten as lumps in it’s body! We then picked it up and held it by it’s tail before Babu Yona started chasing the shrieking girls around with it, turning it into a game. 

Recent pictures

Pendo shaking her butt!

Us and Moodini at the top of the waterfall

Do the Dew (African style)

On our way to Morningside Camp

Nyumba yangu, Tanzania

It’s been a busy, busy couple of weeks for us, and we’re exhausted! We’ve done two long hikes since we last posted, both in the Uluguru Mountains which loom over Morogoro. The first one was a trip up to the village of Choma where Mustafa lives with a lot of his family. We enjoyed a refreshing swim in the local waterfalls and decided to climb up the rock face behind the waterfalls for a photoshoot with Mustafa and Moodini, who are obsessed with digital cameras!  We then carried on up-mountain to Mustafa’s strawberry farm – a tucked away paradise near the peak of the mountain – and were allowed to taste mulberries, strawberries and raspberries! We had such a good time with Mustafa and Moodini despite the large language barrier (filled with interesting noises like Wooooow, and Shure!), and a week later decided to do another hike! This time, our ambitions were higher, and we planned to take a hema (tent), way up onto a misty peak and camp at an old German hut called Morningside, or Moningi seiti as Mustafa pronounces it! We packed our bags to the brim with warm clothes and some cabbage and homemade berry pie (made with Mustafa’s berries which we were very proud of) and set off on the dalla dalla bus. Due to our lack of Kiswahili (improving as we speak!) and their general lack of English, we found it difficult to decipher through our communication of weird noises what exactly we were getting ourselves into. We were slightly shocked when Mustafa met us in town with nothing. No food, no bag, and no tent. We found however, that the tents and floor mats were waiting for us further up the mountain with Moodini, and Mustafa only brought a toothbrush. We bought some ugali  on the way up, and hiked for five hours until we finally spotted Morningside, and Moodini took the mattresses off his head and wanted a picture with it. We set up our tents in front of an old historical German hut inhabited by a Tanzanian named Saloom. As soon as we had finished piecing together the falling apart old Scout Jamboree tents, it started to rain. The first rain in Morogoro in several months, what good planning! And it wasn’t just spitting, it was pouring. Luckily, we were offered a cement room in the ruins which we could spend the night. We woke up at 5am the next day and hiked back down to Kihonda in time to teach our midday classes.

            In other news, teaching is going really well, and we are about to give the non-formal girls each a coloured plastic recorder, which they scream about everytime we mention it. They are really interested in music, and we have written out countless American pop music lyrics for them, ranging from Westlife to Justin Bieber to Shakira. We taught the girls how to make brownies, which they really enjoyed, and in return we got a Kiswahili exam!! We’re still waiting on the results for that, we’ll let you know! We also met other volunteers at the International School of Morogoro Quiz Night (which we failed), who have invited us with Polly and Martha to a Halloween Party next Saturday night. We’re starting to really settle in here now, and love Tanzanian life. Sorry parents, we aren’t coming home!!

Our house, Tanzania!

After our stressful day, things seemed to perk up a bit, and we had a good time teaching on Thursday. We made name tags with the non formals and they really enjoyed drawing on them and putting stickers all over the paper. One of them even wrote "Love Camilla and Elena", which was really cute, and surprising as most think that our names are Helen and Camera. We've had some pretty funny teaching moments - during one nutrition lesson, when trying to explain the meaning of healthy, the girls got confused and we ended up with sentences like "Malaria is healthy" and when we tried to correct it, we got "Carrots is ^not healthy!"
 On Friday, the girls put together a fashion show for us which lasted a long time and had many different styles of clothing including office wear, khangas and kitangas (traditional African clothing) along with punjabs, special occasion clothing, and casual wear. One of the most interesting categories was the religious clothing - there were Christian dresses, and Muslim dresses along with burqas and headscarves.
We spent the weekend at the school, hanging out with the girls and spending a lot of time cooking. We managed to make a delicious banana bread loaf even though we had no measuring utensils, an oven without temperature markings, and only a bowl instead of a pan. It was so delicious, and to top it off we frosted it with some of the Nutella we brought with us! We never would have expected to be eating Banana bread on a Saturday morning in Tanzania! When we went to the school on Saturday, we brought an Ipod with us, and danced to Western songs with the girls, which they loved! They tried to emulate our style of dancing, while we desperately attempted their butt-shaking - something we now know we will never be able to do! We also had a lesson of how to carry buckets of water on our heads, which we couldn't do on Saturday, but after some practice, and a day's rest, we managed to carry a 10L bucket of water balanced on our head, with no hands! Granted, it was a little wobbly, but we were so proud of ourselves! The girls found it funny though, as they can carry a 20L bucket and then another 10L bucket stacked on top of it, while dancing around underneath it all!

Balancing the buckets, its harder than it looks!

Sunday was 10/10/10, and there is an organisation called 350 that promotes environmental awareness by organising activities on that day. The SEGA school decided to promote awareness of bush fires, as there had been one last week that burned their compost, so we gathered facts on the topic to make the posters later in the week. We also dug eighty five holes with the girls' hoes, which we were to plant sixty passionfruit trees in. The girls found it very easy, and took a short time to do it, but we were less than experienced and weren't much of a help. We're looking forward to watching the seedlings grow, and were invited by the gardener, Mustafa, to visit his strawberry farm in the mountains, which we plan to do next weekend!

Digging holes for the passionfruit trees

Mama Ntilie - one of our favourite songs!

Pictures!

Some of the girls looking at our photos!

The view from our new house!

Josephine teaching us Kiswahili

Kihonda, Morogoro, Tanzania!

Well, we're all moved in! We just got home after a quite stressful day ending in a good dancing session with all the girls! They are preparing a fashion show for us on Friday, and somehow the rehearsals always end with the inevitable butt-shaking! This morning we went to the International School with the non-formal girls to teach them to swim. It was complete and utter chaos, but fun nonetheless. Just as Polly was about to explain the basic rules of swimming - not diving in the shallow end, and no running - the girls eagerly dived in (the shallow end) and proceeded to jump around and almost-drown. When we managed to regain control, we tried to teach doggy paddle, resulting in thirty girls basically running on the bottom of the pool and yelling "Look Madam!"
After swimming, we went with Loveness, Polly's housekeeper, into Morogoro town to learn how to use the dalla dalla bus and then to go to the huge fruit and vegetable market in the centre of town. Haphazardly strewn burlap sacks and tin roofing make up the roof of the busy market, and are sometimes so low, you have to duck to pass through. Around the narrow pathways are huge sacks of beans, rice and flour to make the Tanzanian specialty ugali. The prices astounded us - for a kilo of sugar and a kilo of flour it was only two thousand Tsh - about one dollar. As we made our way through the piles of tomatoes, bananas, and pineapples, children followed us around, harassing us to buy a plastic bag from them. Once we had finished shopping, we were picked up by Peter, the school driver, and squished into the small car with the matron of the school, a Maasai warrior, Peter, and Loveness. What a strange situation to be in! We were expected to be at the school at half past one for our computer lesson with the girls, but either it was lost in translation (Swahili time is different) or they just didn't care (time is not of essence in Tanzanian culture!) Therefore, we got to the school ten minutes before the end of our lesson, and were just told nonchalantly to take over the next lesson.
We are now exhausted, but at least we get to come back to our beautiful home. We now have to boil water for drinking and teeth cleaning, and make our dinner of rice and raw vegetables as we forgot to buy oil and other essentials when at the market. Plus, we don't yet know 'oil' in Kiswahili! Kwaheri (goodbye)!

Africa

                                                        Our Swahili lesson the girls gave us

Morogoro, Tanzania

We've arrived! These past two days have been a blur of Swahili, dust roads and meeting new people. We woke up on the airplane Friday morning to stunning views of the sunrise over Nairobi, Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro. When we arrived in Dar es Salaam, the immigration process went smoothly and we found ourselves whisked away from the airport by Polly's driver, Abbas. Looking out the window, we saw the morning chaos of the city: bikes carrying huge stacks of egg cartons and bundles of grass, cars swerving into the oncoming lane, men waiting on the side of the street for the Dala Dala bus, and women wearing colorful kangas carrying huge buckets of water on their heads. We drifted in and out sleep as we passed through many small villages with tiny mud buildings and makeshift markets. In Mikumi national park, we awoke to the sight of a couple of baboons or Nyani lounging by the side of the highway. Morogoro is larger than we expected and has one main cement road going through the center, connecting a maze of smaller red dust roads. It is the dry season, so the dust manages to spread everywhere and everything- houses, plants, people- is covered in a layer of rust colored dust. When we went to the Sega Girl's School, we were greeted with a heartwarming welcome dance and were immediately surrounded by eager girls wanting to talk to us. We got a tour of the school, then spent a while getting to know some of the formal girls, who live at the school and speak English well. The non-formal girls are day students, wear red skirts and don't speak as much English. We sat in on a religion class, which is split into two- Muslim and Christian- as the school is 50 percent each. It was very different from any class we've ever been to because both the teachers and students were very passionate and kept chanting Amen! Later, we met with the staff of the school, who gave us our schedule, it looks they're planning on keeping us very busy! Our classes involve life skills, swimming, English, nutrition, music, drama and debate. Lol. It will definitely be a challenge, because we are not experienced teachers and we will be working mostly with the non-english speaking students, but we are ready to face it! Today we went back to the school and showed the girls many photos of our families and friends. They loved it, and many of them wanted to keep the photos, even though they don't know anybody in them! We're not sure what they are planning to do with them, but the girls seemed ecstatic to have them. They also gave us lessons in Swahili, which they plan to do every week and today's focus was body parts. We also learned a Swahili song, with a beautiful melody and these lyrics: "Wito wetu niukombozi, Elimutuipatayo itukomboe." This translated means "our motto is liberation, the education we get should liberate us."