Gap Year 2010-2011: Saturday, 22nd January, 2011

We've had a crazy week filled to the brim with trips to town, classes at SEGA, and planning for India. It has been very productive to say the least! We have managed to come up with a basic itinerary for India and booked some of the longer train tickets to alleviate some of the stress that goes along with traveling. We have planned for some amazing adventures including a week up to the Pakistan border, a relaxing beach holiday in Goa and a three week ramble in Rajasthan. It's all very exciting! We will be very sad, however, to leave our girls in Morogoro and are looking forward to one great last week with them! This Wednesday saw the arrival of the new non-formal class, and after some very nervous introductions, each girl was taken by the hand by a Form One student and given a tour of the school. Smiles were abundant and everyone had a good time taking pictures and getting to know their new sisters. As they toured, we were busy reading A Cat In A Hat by Dr. Seuss to the Form Twos and discussing the importance of communication. This new school year has brought on a whole new level of focus for most of the students, and everyone seems to be motivated to learn and study hard. Later that day we went out to town with Fran to celebrate her daughter Gemma's birthday but when we arrived at Ricky's cafe, it had just shut! Instead we headed to Oasis to have a cocktail but were informed that we couldn't have cocktails until after 7pm! We settled instead for chocolate milkshakes and a cold Tusker beer.
On Thursday we had a lovely day with the Form Ones singing a song they had made up about the New Year to send to the girl scout group Global Girls Unite in Pennsylvania. We then gathered all of the girls into the new cafeteria and taught recorders. The new students took to the recorders very quickly and we managed to play Hot Cross Buns all together and sing it! Mary Had A Little Lamb is coming along, but we still find it hard to get the girls to understand and remember the line "whose fleece was white as snow"!
Friday was spent in town - we finally managed to get to Ricky's cafe to have real ice cream and a lovely lunch of "tomato, cheese and onion melt" which turned out to be every vegetable imaginable wrapped up in an omelette - not quite what we had imagined but good nonetheless! We managed to post our letters and also made a trip to the sokoni to stock up on fruit and veg. We also managed to find a CD shop that had Tanzanian music - so we bought some to take home with us! We arrived back home at around 4pm and found that we had no power. Again. It seems to be a new pattern of the power going off mid-afternoon and coming back on for breakfast. This means we spend most nights cooking or reading by candlelight and without much to do. Yesterday we'd had enough - we had to do something! We decided to head down to the bar down the road and have a cold beer. We had walked past there at night earlier in the week and had noticed that they had installed a projector and speakers to play Bongo Flava music videos. We each ordered a Safari baridi and waited for the videos to start up. Soon after our arrival, we were joined by the bar man who had decided we needed company, and spoke not a word of English. It took us a lot of smiling and nodding before we managed to get him to speak pole pole (slowly) and we could actually grasp some of what he was saying. It turns out he is a DJ for one of the clubs in town and was responsible for the video projector. We managed to get him to turn on our favourite music and he even lent us one of his CDs of local music that you can't get anywhere! We came home, ecstatic with our new music acquisitions and spent a good time dancing around and eating popcorn!
We have spent some time today in town and are now relaxing before going to SEGA with Polly to have a sleepover with the girls. We are bringing a lot of things to do - movies, music, arts and crafts, and a lot of popcorn for our movie marathon. We can't wait to see the girls!