Busy Weekend!

We’ve had plenty to do this past weekend, and it’s all catching up to us – we’re exhausted! It all started with a ‘Pizza Night’ in a restaurant called Dragonaires just outside of mjini town on Friday night. Our pizzas took forever to come and we were in a rush to get to town in a teksi, and had to ask the kitchen to hurry up! We went to town and met friends who accompanied us to the mziki disco as we were told it was an experience not to miss. It sounds pretty dodgy but was perfectly fine, and we went to one often frequented by our Auzzie friends at the International School. It was funny as most of the time people were just sitting staring at the moving lights, exclaiming WOW! We did a bit of dancing to the songs we know (we’re getting familiar with quite a few Bongo Flava songs) and had a good time. A taxi driver we knew came to take us home and we didn’t sleep until 2am, which is way past our bedtime, seeing as most people sleep when it gets dark here! It was quite a night for us! Saturday night we went to the school to have a sleepover with the Form One girls. We can’t describe how excited they were! We ate rice and beans for dinner, and then popped an entire bucket of popcorn (two kilos) and poured salt all over it! Just as we were about to set up the movies, a huge truck arrived at the school. Typical of Tanzania, it arrived at 9pm, when it was pitch black. It turned out to be the new furniture for next year’s non-formal class in the new building. There were thirty mattresses, hundreds of plastic chairs and some extremely excited girls who were squealing and so anxious to see all their new furniture! Mattresses were being thrown on people’s heads and carried into a classroom and we all climbed into the back of the truck and started dancing. We’ve never seen such excitement!! It was perfect for our plans though, as we took a couple of the mattresses, spread them out on the floor of the classroom, covered them with kangas and kitenges, and all lay down on them! Yustina, one of the girls, described our haphazard laying down as the same as the saba saba (a second hand clothing market) because the vendors ‘don’t arrange them’! The level of excitement was so high that it was impossible to sit still or calmly on the mattresses, everyone was jumping around, lying on top of each other, and bouncing up and down. We had brought two bags of sweets with us and threw them out at the girls, like at a concert, and they scrambled and jumped for the candy, laughing! Once we had all settled down somewhat, we set up the movie ’17 Again’ with Zac Efron to show the girls what it looks like in America. The girls had enough English to understand the basic plot line but what they enjoyed the most was the scenery and little actions the characters did. What made us laugh was Babu Jona’s interest in the movie – we couldn’t comprehend how Zac Efron kept a Maasai guard enthralled for two whole hours, as he doesn’t speak English! By the time we’d finished the movie, it was late and some of the bouncing had turned into sleeping, but they didn’t want to stop! We ended up watching Pirates of the Caribbean until saa saba (one am) then retired to the dorm. The girls all pair up in bed because they enjoy the company, so there were plenty of empty beds, and Elena slept in Martha’s. Camilla shared a bed with Lucy, a girl sponsored by the Hunnewell Book group, who had made her promise to share the bed because she was so excited to learn that she lived on Hunnewell Ave.! The next morning was Fran’s birthday, and we had some delicious birthday chapati to celebrate! In the afternoon we met with Rehema and Jesca for them to take us to the saba saba to look for clothes! It was utter chaos, with thousands of people grabbing at you, cheap clothes strewn everywhere, and shouts of MIA TANO, ELFU MOJA (FIVE HUNDRED, ONE THOUSAND)! We managed to find a few bargains and bought the girls a couple of tops each, which they were so thankful for! In the evening we took Fran out to Hotel Oasis to have some Indian food (YAY CHICKEN TIKKA MASALA) which we had been craving forever!

            Today we had a really interesting day at school – one of the VSO volunteers, Renee, works in Dodoma at a school for the deaf, and came to stay with us for the night tonight. We asked her to come to the school with us and do a presentation about deaf culture in Tanzania for the non-formal girls. The girls absorbed it so quickly, and were fascinated by the Kiswahili sign language and culture! They were all so attentive and involved, asking hundreds of questions. At one point, Sharifa came up to us and signed in Kiswahili sign language “Can I go to the bathroom?” It was incredible! Also it was so cool for us to learn Kiswahili sign – it’s awesome and beautiful to watch. We had many additions and subtractions to our household this week! We gained a few mirrors, which was shocking, as we hadn’t seen our reflections in over a month. We lost a few mice, due to rat poison, which we feel very bad about, but they were eating our favorite clothes! We also have a new member of our household, an adorable three week old puppy, which we named Kahawa (coffee in Kiswahili, due to his color.) He technically belongs to the landlord, but we take care of him, and he spends all his time in our house! This Friday we are off to Zanzibar and are really looking forward to it!

Maasai Boma

We just returned from an incredible weekend that for us has fit the definition of what most people assume is Africa. We left early Friday morning to drive North past Dodoma to a small Maasai boma in the Maasai Steppe.We drove for about two hours on a cement road then for another five hours along a dust path that led us directly into the African bush. We passed a few small villages and ended up off the path in a small clearing. We were visiting Noah, the brother of the SEGA Maasai guard Sytote, and his village consisted of five round stick huts with mud roofs and fifteen Maasai, clad in the traditional dress of ananka which are the sheets they wear. All of the women wear mostly blue and a ton of white beaded jewelry and they stretch their earlobes out and adorn them with huge earrings which tinkle as they walk. They strap adorable babies to their backs and there were maybe ten children in the village. They also burn circles onto their faces as a tradition, and have so many other interesting traditions it’s difficult to describe them all! For instance, if one man is away from the village and another man comes to visit the village, he can sleep with the first man’s wife! Another tradition we were worried about was the donation of an animal to the visitors, which they then have to kill and eat. We were given a chicken, but luckily managed to escape the killing and got Moudy, the driver, to do it! Phew! There were tons of baby animals around – goats, chickens, donkeys and puppies – it was really cute! The language of the Maasai is Kimaasai, which we obviously don’t speak (well, now we know a little!). They speak a little Kiswahili, and so do we, so that was the mode of communication between us. After a dinner of beans and rice the first night we had a moment where everything just seemed completely unreal. Elena and I were sitting on a log by a small fire with three of the Maasai men in the pitch black under a blanket of stars (you can only imagine how many there were!) We were having a conversation with them in Kiswahili about how many lions each of them had killed. It felt totally normal at the time, but looking back on it, we were so lucky to have an opportunity like that! The answers by the way were simba saba (seven lions), mbili (two), and sana (loads!) We were lucky that night to have Noah guarding over our tents as we slept to scare off any animals! No lions came, but some hyenas visited us last night! We woke up a couple of hours after retiring to bed to singing in the background, which seemed far away. We sat listening for a while then thought “What are we DOING?” – we had to be there, not missing out! We went and asked Noah what was going on and he explained that it was a church service, unaitaka kuenda? You’d like to go? So, we went, and came across a fire behind one of the huts with the whole village sitting around, and the children singing a Kimaasai hymn and dancing around the fire. It was incredible to see, and we really enjoyed it! After half an hour we heard singing coming closer and it was another boma, coming to join! When we tried to leave because we were exhausted, they stopped us, and one of the men came out in a burlap sack with twigs and animal hides and was pretending to be a ghost, scaring all the little kids! That was the highlight of our trip. If you ever get a chance to go to a Maasai boma, take it!!!

Mama Leia and Baraka

Hanging out under the tree - the only shade around!

The Boma!

The Maasai children around the fire at night

Uh Oh!

So we have been a little lackadaisical in our water treatment recently, and both managed to catch some weird disease that makes us look like this!!

Haha! Just kidding! We were bored one night and so decided to take some weird pictures - there's not a whole lot to do at night in Morogoro! We have a new housemate though! She's a VSO volunteer called Fran, and she's awesome! (Check her blog out - http://franbruty.blogspot.com .We're having a great time with her, and she even brought movies that she's letting us watch! We had a real treat a couple of nights ago - popcorn, Sprite and a movie! Yay! We've been doing more and more work at the school and are having so much fun. Below is a picture of our recorder lesson! They are sitting in the new canteen that is still being built ( I think we annoy the builders somewhat) and in the background is the kitchen and composting buckets! Notice in the picture how they're all holding the recorders the right way around! Such progress! Today we mastered Hot Cross Buns, and were singing very, very enthusiastically. We also tried a round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat, which still needs some practice ;) One of the girls, Sharifa has a particular talent of blowing the recorder through her nose. We hope it's just a joke, as we haven't seen her play it any other way! We're also very excited as we're having dresses made for us as we speak! We bought some kitenge material and took it to the tailor and asked (mostly in Kiswahili) for what we wanted! We'll see how it turns out! Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we're leaving for the Maasai village ( a ten hour drive) with Polly, Martha, and Malaki, a tiny little Maasai who's coming with us. There's only four huts in the middle of nowhere apparently (we're imagining the village from the Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton)! We'll let you know how it goes!

  

Saraphina, Salome, Adolphina and Mwanaisha playing the recorders!

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!