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