Hello and Dubai
We touched down in Dar es Salaam at 1430 local time. It's about 34°C. We've heard it's snowing in London. The cold already seems a long way behind us.

The flights so far have been as good as long haul flights can be - but the waiting to get through customs was a pain. It seems Nida's guitar is still in Dubai and we'll have to try and get it picked up from Kilimanjaro tomorrow. Mr Clarke slept all the way, Ms Clancy beat everyone at Multiplayer Battleship. It all seems a little surreal.

Greg: "Russ, do you watch snooker on TV?"
Russ: "You're going to tell me I look like the Cue Ball, aren't you...."

We leave Dar for Kilimanjaro around 1800... looking forward to proper food and a bed tonight.

Update: 2326 at Kilimanjaro Lodge
Had a weird drive from Kilimanjaro Airport to the lodge. Saw several Pool Tables out in the middle of nowhere with small groups of young men playing.

Feels like we have arrived.

Posted by RWe.
Permalink | Comments (2)

Lake Manyara National Park and the Maasai Retreat
When Eli and I went to wake Greg this morning we were surprised to find out he had not used his mosquito net. He had bites all over his arm. When questioned about this he replied that the net seemed liked decoration and that he thought he had been booked into the bridal suite. We laughed so much we nearly cried.

We left Kilimanjaro for Arusha, passing the large UN complex where the Trials for the Rwandan genocide of 1994 are currently taking place. It was a sobering reminder of how fragile the stability of East Africa can be. After stopping at a supermarket we drove on to Lake Manyara National Park.

The rest of the day was spent leaning out of the roofs of Toyota Landcruisers spotting Wildlife. Best not to ask what Eddie filmed the Baboons doing.

Having been brought up on BBC Nature documentaries, seeing an Elephant close up in the wild felt quite familiar. Being close enough to smell them, hearing their deep growl and watching them stroll majestically past the windscreen was of course impressive. But perhaps not as surprising as the landscape - the grandeur of which seems to translate less well to film. The sheer scale of which was mind blowing.

After leaving Manyara we drove to our Lodge at the E Unoto Retreat. The drive took us down endless dirt tracks, passed lots of small Maasai settlements. The roads were filled with Maasai in their brightly coloured Red and Purple clothes... all waving cheerfully as we passed.

Later that evening there was a massive storm. Sheets of lightning lit up the sky, illuminating the imposing escarpment of the Great Rift Valley. This brought an unusual array of animals into our huts. It seemed that the day's safari was to continue into the evening. Large spiders, a giant caterpillar, families of lizards, all came to take shelter from the rain. Eli swears a Rattle Snake was outside the door... although I suspect it may have been Matt with a pair of Maracas.

Listen to today's podcast

Suscribe to the Tanzania 2007 Podcast in iTunes

Posted by RWe.
Permalink | Comments (1)

The Massai Village
This morning, Phyl, Nida, Marine, Andrea and I decided to cycle down the valley to a local Massai Village. It was a very hot and a difficult ride after last night rain. Shortly after arriving at the circle of small huts, Andrea felt faint. Whilst she sat down with her head between her legs, the rest of us were invited into a small hut to talk to the chief. A few minutes later we suddenly became aware of a crowd outside and I immediately jumped to the conclusion that Andrea had passed out. Phyl was closest to the door - and quickly got outside to be with Andrea. As Phyl's eyes got accustomed to the sunlight, she discovered Andrea smiling from ear to ear. The women of the village had dressed her in their necklaces and were teaching her how to dance. By the time I was outside, Andrea was jumping up and down alongside a group of Massai. Priceless.

The children of the village were very excited to see us. We took photographs of them - and to their delight - were then able to display the images on the LCD panels on the back of the cameras. Children and adults alike, were fascinated to see themselves. They were amazed when we explained that our friends and family might be able to see these pictures on the Internet later that day.

Listen to today's podcast

Suscribe to the Tanzania 2007 Podcast in iTunes

Posted by RWe.
Permalink | Comments (1)

Tarangire to Arusha
Last night, several of us sat with the drivers to watch the football. Broadcast live from the UK, it appears that Tanzanian's are as enthusiastic about the Premiership as those who live in the UK. Particularly where African players are concerned. They all have their affiliations with various English teams and the usual banter between supporters of opposing clubs was hilarious. Eli - the sole Tottenham supporter came off quite badly. Miles from anywhere - in the middle of Tarangire National Reserve - Staff, Students and Tanzanian guides - shared the same language.

After the rain this morning, the track back across Tarangire park from Sopa Lodge was treacherous. Paris-Dakar now looks easy. Soon after leaving one of the Toyotas got stuck. Despite changing to lower gear ratios, attempts to rock the car out of the rut only entrenched it axle deep in mud. With all hands on the bull bars it was eventually pushed, levered and towed back on to dryer ground. On freeing the vehicle that was axle deep in mud - Emanuel was lambasted for "driving the car like Arsenal play football..." Everyone laughed. It seems berating the supporter of another football team is an universal form of humor.

The ride was really exciting - a spectacular feat of off-road driving. Two hours later, having steered across fast flowing rivers, deeply rutted gullies, careered down impossible steep slopes and powered the 4WD through corners using more under steer that Tiff Nidel... it was clear that our Guide did indeed drive a car like Thierry Henry plays football.

Eli on skin and football

Posted by RWe.
Permalink | Comments (2)

The Satellite Dish goes up
When we arrived at Mwereni Primary School this morning, the Engineer (Fredrico) from Dar es Salaam had already arrived with the satellite disk and all the components. Although this is the date we had arranged, I can't quite believe it all came together. A series of long distance calls, emails to the Head Master at Mwereni, every ISP in Tanzania, signing of contracts, a money transfer, etc... I thought there was too much that could go wrong.

The machines were in a better state than I thought. They're quite old IBM's but all run Windows 2000 quite happily. We convinced the Head that the room needed to be completely re-arranged. While Fredrico aligned the satellite - with interested onlookers, we moved and re assembled the 20 machines that make up the Computer Lab. A trench was dug, holes were drilled, cables were pulled and machines re-configured. Tomorrow we'll be able to bring it all up online.

It's difficult to countenance the investment in an internet connection when the school has so many needs. I watched children drinking what looked like pond water from a huge trough and thought how ridiculous the investment in Technology might appear to others. However, the Head maintains a clear and determined strategy. He knows there is significant funding to be had - he has been successful at raising capital for building projects, grants and a small army of voluntary staff. He wants a school that is progressive and ambitious and knows that this is also what Governments, Businesses and Charities invest in. I hope this opens the door for them.

Well, I was really nervous at first today, but it went really well. I think the highlight was when me and Alex were repairing desks and all the little kids literally mobbed us and were helping us like crazy. One guy called Bruno was a beast with the hammer, he was a one man army lol. We also had to dig a big trench for water or something, and I could hardly keep going, it’s so hot out here but its fun nonetheless. Hope you lot aren’t partying too hard without us,

Much Love,
Eddy

My most memorable moment of the day happened during after school activities. I was working with the visually impaired children, and most of them were running around, playing games. But, in the corner there was a small sullen looking child, sitting on his own. His name was Isaac and he was totally blind. I decided to talk to him, and try and involve him in the games. He had a plastic bottle in his hand, and he started tapping an incredibly complex beat with it. I was amazed at the rhythm the child had. I started to clap along, but could not keep up with him. I will never forget it.

Nida

We all arrived at the school extremely nervous looking at the day ahead of us. Having waited a couple minutes for the paint to arrive, Mr Clarke took Daria and I by the arm and flung us in the middle of an English class. Feeling unprepared and surprised we turned to face the class of 40 children looking straight at us, singing a welcome song. Our faces at that moment? Priceless! The first couple minutes of the class were quite uncomfortable and difficult, but the children’s eagerness and constant smiling directly set us up in the right direction. With everyone excited and enthusiastic, we managed to go through the five senses and colours! A truly unforgettable experience.

Marine

Today was our first day working at the School in Tanzania. I can truly say that the experience was very different from what I expected. My main job today was teaching Standard 6, 12-13 year olds, I taught English and Math. I was very happy with the way the students accepted my lessons, and although I was nervous in the beginning I settled down and was able to teach the kids about words, nouns and verbs in English and negative numbers in math. My favourite part of the day was teaching math to 6B class. It was very difficult to explain my thoughts so I tried to teach with Swahili words. (I COULDN’T SPEAK SWAHILI FOR £1,000,000) So obviously all the kids began to laugh and joke about my accent and pronunciation of words, I also joined in making jokes with them. All in all I think that the students understood my lessons and I was excited to see them enjoying themselves in school. It truly was a great experience and I’m looking forward to the rest of the week.

Matt B.

Today was our first day working at Mwereni Primary School. There was heavy anticipation to the event and the results certainly did not disappoint. Today, myself and the group experienced new situations and original scenarios. From the beginning, each and every student at the school was friendly and welcoming. Each individual child would always approach me and the rest of the group, eager to give us high fives and say hello. Although I was looking forward to working with the students and teaching, I had to wait until the afternoon to get a chance. From the morning until lunch, I was busy helping to dig a ditch and paint classrooms, both enjoyable but tiring events. After lunch I got the chance to teach a math class to the students of the school with Marine and Daria. All of the students made the task incredibly easy by welcoming us as friends and eagerly participating in the lesson. In the end, it was an incredibly rewarding experience to be able to successfully communicate with the students and know that, at the end of the lesson, we had genuinely taught them something. Although the end of this class marked the end of the school day, our work was not finished. After the math class, I helped to organize a soccer (football) game for the students which was inevitably a lot of fun, despite the heat and masses of people on the field. In conclusion, it has been a fantastic first few days to the trip and I am certainly looking forward to its continuation tomorrow. Besides the above, other highlights of the trip have been the safari and receiving the news that Chelsea won while Liverpool and Tottenham both lost. What a weekend! Shout to my boy Manny K -- Happy 17th Birthday! Hope everyone is well in London and we'll be in touch soon!

Asante Sana!

Greg

Posted by RWe.
Permalink | Comments (1)

Day 2 at Mwereni
Several rooms painted, many desks made, a lot of lessons taught.

Heavy rains this morning wrecked the muddy roads around the school and it took us an hour to get the bus onto the main road. With the rain came yet another power outage which fused the sockets in the Computer Lab. An electrician came promptly and we were back up and running by midday. The power cut gave us an excuse for a trip to Kilimanjaro town to buy more cable and a switch for the network. It also gave me an excuse to visit the Kilimanjaro Coffee House to try the Arabica beans grown on the side of the mountain.

After school, word got around that we had Internet access in the computer lab and the room soon filled up with excited staff eager to surf the net. For most this was the first time they had used the Internet.

Meanwhile, the teaching rota kept everyone busy in the classroom. Maths, English, Gymnastics went on until 1600. After work, everyone went for a swim at the Impala Hotel. Afterwards we had guests for Dinner. Our drivers from the Safari, the engineer who installed our Sat Dish, Silvanas and Isaac, all came back to Kili Lodge. After the meal we sat around and Nida played the guitar and sang. It's been a long day.

Click the picture for a bigger version

Posted by RWe.
Permalink | Comments (2)

Miss Clancy Writes...

Trenches, Maths, PE and configuring computers – that was yesterday and a mixture of delight and exhaustion as the computers were all up and running as Russ and I left at 7:30pm to catch up with the group for dinner. Rain fell for an hour yesterday and turned the whole school into a mud bath - the only advantage was that the trenches were easier to dig. After the rain, Eli and Russ needed to go down to pick up extra cables, but the bus that was taking them was stuck in the mud and they ended up pushing the bus halfway to town (but they need to build some muscles)!

There have been massive improvements at Mwereni with the electricity now all installed in the boarding block, and a special indoor play area that has tinted glass in order to provide protection for the albino children and others that have sensitive skin. The computer block is impressive with a small room for the visually impaired with special equipment and programmes on the computer. One of the teachers (who is also visually impaired) told me how delighted he was to be connected to the Internet, as he is studying for a degree and now says that he can study online.

The excitement is palpable and there have already been many visits from local dignitaries who have heard that "Mwereni is online”. The toilet blocks are being renovated and I am sure this will be completed within the next two months.
The students have done a great job teaching in the classroom and Matt B already has his favourite sixth grade. I met two of the boys to whom Matt had given football boots – they had them close to their chests and I would not be surprised if they slept with them this evening. Andrea has fallen in love with some of her visually impaired students and I will have to check her luggage to make sure that there are no stowaways.

There is always something so refreshing about working here and you cannot help but fall in love with the place and I think the students have felt this. I have been very impressed with their performances in the classroom, but I have to admit that digging trenches is not their forte! We will return with this journey always in our mind's eye – not a bad vision to have!

Students sing U We Ma (Lutheran Acapella in Swahili)

Suscribe to the Tanzania 2007 Podcast in iTunes

I never thought that only 3 days at Mwereni could have taught me so much. The staff, but mostly the kids have taught me that besides life being tough, drinking muddy water, having few clothes, not knowing whether you will see family again, being blind or partially sighted, having skin cancer, constantly being in the sun for 8 hours a day, there could still be some sort of joy to live by. The kids have a sense of friendship not only towards each other, but towards visitors that are so unfamiliar to them. The smiles are always there, and the constant need of attention, which at times can be difficult for us, but in the end for them it makes the day, and the laughs that makes us feel like we’ve accomplished something. I will never forget this experience and hope to come back and relive it many more times.

Andrea

Three days ago I had a planned lesson to teach the children how to type, and use Microsoft Word with the intent of getting them to type a letter and send it to me on what would have been their new email accounts. However, nothing is stable, it took a whole day to set up their networks and rearrange the computers. The following day we had a long powercut but the satisfaction of getting the internet working just before was dizzying. Russ placed so much effort into the endeavor and downloaded most of the software we needed.

Nathan

The day started off with rain. When I say rain I do not mean the pathetic excuse for rain that we are used to in London: the skies opened up and tipped bathtub-sized raindrops onto the earth below. The plan was to pick up some computer supplies in the town nearest us, in Moshi. We receive a phone call just before we are due to leave. The bus is stuck in the mud. A small group of us walk up the road and find the bus on the side of the road, with the wheels spinning hopelessly in the thick, sludgy, gloopy mud. In good spirits, we line up behind the vehicle and start to push.
Forty minutes later we are told that we are pushing the wrong way. The nearest tarmac road is just a short way behind us. We spend the next twenty minutes getting ourselves caked in more mud, slipping and sliding all over the road. We make it to the tarmac and we are away to buy supplies.
But of course - we do not frown. We embrace the favorite Tanzanian saying, "Hakuna matata" - no worries. Any trip to Tanzania is not complete without getting stuck in the mud at least twice.
Hope you all are well,
Asante sana,
Joel

Today along with the rest of the trip has been a completely new and different experience. I started the week expecting to teach English and nothing else. As well as this I thought my lessons would go to plan but after only 5 minutes teaching I knew that I had to improvise. I also ended up teaching math completely unprepared but thankfully Matt had a lesson planned out which we did. Even so the children would take everything thing I said on board. Today was a perfect example of this and how the children want to learn and learn anything you give to them very quickly. All in all this trip has been very interesting and eye opening.

Peter

Posted by RWe.
Permalink | Comments (2)

Alex writes....

This trip has been truly amazing. I have enjoyed myself every single step of the way and I felt that the interaction between the students and I has been life altering. There are far too many great highlights to start listing, so I shall try and make this paragraph as brief and in depth as possible. Strangely, the most touching and unbelievable experience for me happened on the final day. Nida had previously taught me ‘Wonder Wall’ by Oasis on the guitar earlier during the trip. After the students of Mwereni Primary School made the extremely touching presentation, I was playing ‘Wonder Wall’ for the blind students. Amazingly, one of these students was able to rap along to the rhythm perfectly. I was honestly speechless for this young man had no sight whatsoever, but yet was able to create a perfect masterpiece of Swalihi rap verse with no pauses. It showed me just how talented some of these children truly are. Over all, this trip has been an entirely different and amazing experience. It will become a memory that will last a life time.

Posted by RWe.
Permalink | Comments (0)

Flight 0007 from Dubai Terminal 1 to London Heathrow... boarding at gate 27 now...

Miss Clancy writes...

Having returned safely I can now reflect on the trip and the things that were accomplished. Mwereni now have Internet access – a huge advantage and a massive teaching resource for a school that has so few resources at hand. Visually impaired children, at Mwereni, are now being able to access up to date material and having the chance to read novels through the use of their Supernova software. A chance for our students to continue with their contact and possibly having some collaborative units of work developed between the two schools.
None of these things would have been possible without the vision of Damas Kimoso, Head of Mwereni, the Southbank PTA for their financial support and belief in the project and Russ Webley whose technical knowledge and hard work was instrumental in getting the Internet up and running and making sure that it was as secure as possible before we left Mwereni.
There were many things that happened on the trip, some of which you have all read on the blog but I feel that the things that will stay with us are the human interactions that occurred and what made it so successful was that students and teachers worked as a team and when you visit Africa you are reminded of the important things in life and somehow leave western materialism behind.

I am sure that they learnt from us but I am equally sure that they taught us many things and we will always remember our time together.

Thank you to all that were involved – for Mwereni for opening their doors to us, Kileleafrica and Raymond and his team for taking such great care of us on the safari, Kilimanjaro Lodge and Mrs Munisi and the other ladies for their kindness and great food and finally the students who made this trip enjoyable by being committed to the project and co-operating throughout the ten days. Finally thanks to both Eli and Russ who were so enjoyable to be around and contributed enormously to the success of this trip.

Asante sana.

Posted by RWe.
Permalink | Comments (3)