Time out in Tanzania

Things I'll miss:

Colourful fashion: Kitengas, Kengas, Kikoy, Masaai 'tartan'
Masaai sandals : the original "Havaianas
Hand-painted signs
Tanzanian family life
Fab food...just call me the 'chapatti queen'
Hair-mazing hairdos

My last day at Nelito Orphanage school is bittersweet.

I arrive to find Calvin (a mischievous but lovely eight year old) being severely beaten by a woman who is neither his mother or a staff member. Corporal punishment is common in schools and homes throughout Tanzania but this is my first encounter with it at the orphanage.
Calvin's 'crime' I'm told by one of the 'teachers' is that he doesn't like coming to school!!!?!!? I find this a little hard to understand since most kids worldwide have issue with attending school at some time or other, and secondly Calvin is currently AT school!!!

By now, Calvin is screaming and the other staff members are simply laughing at the situation. Unable to take anymore of this little boy's screams, I grab the stick from the woman's hand and throw it away! I then stomp into a classroom taking Calvin with me; much to the amusement of the other teachers!!

Friday is "sports day" but this seems laughable when the only sports equipment we have for 104 kids is: 2 skipping ropes, 1 football (3 have already burst in the past 4 weeks) 1 cricket bat, and 3 tennis balls!! It's 8.30am, already nearly 35 degrees c and I have no intention of running around for 4 hours!! So I set up an 'Art Station' in one of the classroom and give the kids free rein to come in and paint, draw or make beaded necklaces!! My trusty paper plates also make a reappearance in the form of paper hats...I'm considering a book entitled "101 things to do with paper plates"!!!

After morning porridge, I buy the biggest bunch of bananas I can carry and cut them up to give out to the children. I've forgotten to buy sweets for my last day as planned but I figured with most of the kids already having severely damaged teeth from a combination of the local water (and possibly sugar cane), I would not be adding to their dental woes!! Anyway, the bananas went down a storm...

Saying my goodbyes was sad but made slightly easier by the realisation that most of the kids had no idea where England is, so when I tried to explain my departure, they didn't seem too phased!

I will certainly miss the kids and some of the staff but I won't miss the system - or lack of it! I know that people Rukia, the school's founder are trying their best for the children but more needs to be done to give them a better education and a better future. I wish I had more time to help put in place a real syllabus that could be followed to allow these kids to progress but I hope if volunteer continue to assist projects like this then maybe things will improve more quickly.

It's been a wonderfully, frustrating, educational, humbling, heart-warming, stomach-churning, toe-curling, belly-laughing experience and I would encourage anyone to give it a try...

Tanzanian cuisine definitely has a Carribean flavour (but then again Africa IS the mother country) with Indian influences. Stewed peas/beans, dhal, spinach stew served with chapatti, pilau rice with curried goat meat were just a few of my favourites!

For those with a more adventurous palate (and possibly sturdier digestive systems) there are a multitude of street foods to sample from freshly roasted peanuts and corn-on-the-cob, to fried chicken feet (complete with unmanicured toenails) to fried chicken kidneys, which I have on good advise are great with homemade chilli sauce?!

Despite the abundance of vegetables grown in Tanzania, green veg is not often served with meals however fresh fruit is plentiful. Thankfully fast food has yet to infiltrate Arusha on a large scale. The nearest thing to a burger could be purchased at McMoody's, home of the curiously named McWhopper!??

One of the things that amazed me about Arusha was the abundance and diversity of traffic. Aside from the usual cars and lorries, Arusha has it's own unique forms of transport including motorbike taxis or "boda-boda", often ridden by stoned or slightly tipsy riders. Since walking can often be a hazardous exercise e.g. being hassled into submissive purchases by souvenir hawkers or narrowly avoiding being run over by a man pushing a cart full of pineapples, one is left with little choice than to resort to the local transport system.

My favourite means of transport has to be the public bus or 'dala-dala'. This is basically a large people carrier where the aim is to accommodate as many passengers as possible. Most dala-dala are 9-12 seaters but it was normal practice to have at least 6 additional passengers standing (or in most cases bent at 90 degree angles with their faces or rear-ends intimately close to that of another passenger)!
Despite frequent random police traffic stops (during which cash was usually exchanged for a blind-eye), the road-worthiness of the dala-dala is always questionable. Most have cracked windscreens, ripped or broken seats at the very least. On one occasion a small fire broke out under the seat in front of me, but was swiftly extinguished with little or no comment from the other passengers. On another occasion the dala-dala ran out of petrol in busy rush hour traffic. Whilst the driver ran to the nearest gas station, the conductor hastily shut the doors to prevent angry passengers who were late for work from escaping. Some even tried to get out of the windows! Further comedy ensued when the conductor found that he could not re-open the dilapidated door to get back in!!!

By far the best thing about the dala-dalas were their unusual (often hand-painted) names. Premiership football teams were very popular, as were the players! "Wayne Rooney", Manchester United", "Liverpool" were fairly common but some of the more creative names often made me giggle: "Black Ideas", "White Brothers", "Ars Express", "Fear Not", "Fort Jesus", "The undertaker", "Prison Break", " Brian" and the hilarious "you hit us, we hit you"???

Realising that my class are growing weary of maths, spelling and English grammar, I hit upon the idea of teaching them how to tell the time!

After a raid on the local supermarket for more paper plates, I set about making 'clocks' for each child (complete with moveable hands!), with the help of my room mate, Emily.

The Tanzanians have a unique historical system of telling time whereby 1pm becomes 7pm, 2 becomes 8, etc. It is a system that is generally employed by the older generation but younger people do use it too and I am concerned that my lesson may prove too confusing for the kids!

Amazingly, my fears are totally unfounded and the kids seem to love their homemade 'clocks'!!!!??!! Even the most challenging kids manage to get the hang of telling the time and they all seem genuinely excited when I tell them that they can take their clocks home!

Those hours spent watching 'Blue Peter' and 'Why Don't You' may not have been totally pointless after all...