Reunion

It was fabulous to see everyone again on Saturday. The best thing was we were ‘never before seen’ clean and tidy: some might even say glam!

The long arm of the law

I wish this story wasn’t true but…

…yesterday one of the girls was in a taxi when it got pulled over by the police. The problem? The policeman was thirsty and wanted the mzungu to buy him a soda. Considering they carry semi automatics she obliged – well what would you do?

Maasai

So did some more Maasai teaching this week and was looking after the beginners which seemed a relatively easy task – teaching weather and so on. Never have I spent such an exhausting 45 minutes! Not that there was anything wrong with my pupils they were perfectly charming but I hadn’t really appreciated that both the guys I was teaching didn’t know how to read or write AT ALL let alone in English.

There is something very strange about teaching two fully grown men (who have spears, knives and the occasional bow and arrow – and one of whom is a medicine man) s-u-n and r-a-i-n.

Luckily I think it went okay but we’ll have to see if they can remember yesterday’s lesson today…

Teaching and learning

I have finished my Swahili lessons which is something of a relief as the archaic teaching methods for two hours every day was doing my head in. Having said that I have learnt some Swahili. I’m not hugely proficient and would probably struggle to engage in a fully-fledged conversation but I can at least ask for things, order food and drinks and make the ladies I teach laugh (I like to think they are laughing with me, I suspect they may be laughing at me). It is quite amusing to try to speak Swahili to the people here as they really don’t expect it so it sort of sends them into a temporary shock which has the effect of everything going just that bit more polepole – not what is needed on most occasions.

My ladies’ English is improving and there are days when I think they’ve really made a breakthrough (these are known as hurrah moments). Then at other times they totally lose the plot (these are known as argh moments). We are currently running at about 2 argh moments for every hurrah moment but considering the ratio was about 5 to 1 a couple of weeks ago, we are moving in the right direction.

Modal verbs floored them this week so I’m going to have to try and find a less tricky way of explaining them (modal verbs are can, could, should, ought, must etc in case you were wondering). They have also told me they want to learn a song so I am frantically going through my ipod to find something suitable. A show tune or hymn would be ideal but I don’t have many of those (surprisingly I do have a few) so I’m hoping the Beatles or Abba will provide a solution. Also two of my better students want to have a debate about whether money is more important than education – phew! I am going to have to do some serious work with the rest this week to even grasp the whole debate concept.

I am really enjoying teaching although it is a real challenge and sometimes if you or one of the students is having a tough day the whole mood of the class goes downhill very quickly. I think I’ll be going back to PR quite quickly, it’s much easier!

I could be Madonna…

well apart from being able to sing, being massively rich and having excessive muscle tone.

The two girls I actually arrived in Tanzania with were so organised before their trip that they brought all sorts of brilliant things to share with the people here (see football blog earlier). They also fundraised back home and both have managed to build two new classrooms for the schools they were working for here, in fact two classrooms is a school so it could safely be said they’ve made a massive difference. Anyway, one of the girls’ aunts got together with chums and knitted loads of blankets and teddy bears and earlier this week we went to an orphanage to deliver them.

It was really kind of the girls to share this moment with me and two other volunteers because the orphanage was such a special place. I wish I could work out the whole uploading pictures thing because you would be able to see what I mean.

The orphanage was very well run and not at all depressing which is a good thing. The fact there are so many orphans or small children whose family can’t look after them, is a bad thing. The main reason most of the children were there is because their mothers died during childbirth which is highly depressing because in most cases that really doesn’t need to happen (this is a bee in my bonnet which I think I may have to pursue when I get back home).

Anyway, we met the nun who runs the orphanage who was a very nice woman and then we were allowed to meet the children (presumably we passed the test that we weren’t going to steal any of them – little did she know what was going through my head…). Put six girls (yes, I am using artistic licence to call myself a girl) together with 30 odd children under five and what do you get? Absolute chaos. Introduce some teddy bears and blankets and you get total absolute chaos!

Although the whole orphanage concept is very sad (believe me almost all of us wanted to cry when we saw a two week old baby), we had the most wonderful time and the children loved having new people to play with. I was very tempted to try to smuggle one of the children out in my handbag but think I probably ought to leave such actions to the mega rich and famous who aren’t scared of a policeman chasing them!

Football

So I’ve been and done something even more frustrating than writing with slow internet speed ie visiting the cashpoint (yes, still only one working in the whole town) and in the mean time, things seem to have speeded up considerably – hurrah!

So went to a football match on Wednesday. This was largely down to the lovely Anne Marie who had persuaded her brothers to part with their old football shirts and she brought them over to give to one of the projects here. So we all went down to see them train and play and I have discovered a way of increasing female interest in the game…Basically because the team don’t have a strip of their own they play one team with shirts on and one team with shirts off! It’s a fabulous idea, well it’s a fabulous idea with lots of fit young men, possibly not such a great idea with Sunday league beer bellies etc.

Beds

My current bed is the most uncomfy thing in the world. It is basically two lumps of foam on top of one another that are both well past their sell by date. This morning I actually had to climb upwards to get out of the dent in the middle!

Needless to say I am looking forward to getting back to my more comfortable bed on Friday although that will mean all my friends have left and I will be sad.

Do you want to be famous?

Given the current obsession with being famous (as opposed to being well-known for being talented), might I suggest that any “wannabe famous” people give east Africa a try for a while. You will soon tire of having to say “hello” to everyone, constantly having to be happy and smiley and constantly being shouted out. Okay, I admit if you’re famous they probably shout your name rather than “mzungu” so it may be a little better, but probably not much!

The general consensus amongst my fellow volunteers (bearing in mind most of them are cool young things) is that if that’s what it’s like to be famous you can stick it! 

I don’t like chauvinists

Okay so Tanzania is a male-dominated society and women barely register in terms of social status but I am not in the mood to allow male ignorance continue!

Oh dear, I’ve got a bee in my bonnet! The reason is on Saturday I had to queue for half an hour to use the cashpoint (only one in the entire town was working). It was boiling hot and I was not in the mood. Anyway two guys tried to push in the queue in front of me. I understood enough Swahili to know that they were saying something along the lines of “let’s go in here, the mzungu won’t say anything” – how wrong they were! So in broken Swahili and English (I knew at least one of them spoke English because he’d been talking in English on his mobile a bit earlier) I pointed out the niceties of queuing and that it was totally unacceptable to push in.

Their response was that – as men – they were far more important than me and their time was much more precious! BIG MISTAKE! I pointed out that there was very rude and disrespectful and I would like them to explain to me exactly how come hey were more important than me. By this time there was a fairly interested crowd gathering. Anyway they eventually gave up trying to push in front of me and tried to push in behind me, the lady behind me told them where to get off, as did the woman behind her, the man behind her etc. A victory for manners I think!

Pub Alberto

So we went to the hot spot in Moshi last night for a bit of clubbing Tanzania-stylee.

As soon as any of us hit the dance floor (in groups for safety of course) we were descended upon like bees round a honey pot or similar analogy (my brain is not fully working today – too much Konyagi last night). For some reason most of the women in the club weren’t dancing (I suspect because almost all of them were prostitutes – it’s got a bit of a reputation you see) so when we turned up not only did we have the advantage of being mzungus en masse, we were also willing to get on the dance floor!

Now I don’t know how many of you have seen a Tanzanian man dance but basically most of the action happens below the waist area which is a tad disconcerting. This totally freaked out a couple of the girls who retired to the relative safety of the bar which meant that there were even less girls for the men to dance with so every girl that was dancing had about three or four men trying to get rather too up close and personal than was entirely comfortable. Apparently though my bumping and grinding was the talk of all the other volunteers!

Somehow I managed to part with my email address a couple of times which is a tad worrying but haven’t opened my in box to a mass of Tanzanian greetings this morning which makes me think that they’ve probably lost them – phew!