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Nimeamka, hai, huru, nitayari!
Entry 7 of 12 | show all | print this entry |
Hi all,
It's been another eventful couple of weeks since my last update...
A few days after my last entry, I found out that my new partner will be Jacob - one of the new volunteers from Iringa town. We'd been getting on well during our stay in the training centre, and even better since then. We left for village on March 13th to work for a week before everything shut down for Easter.
This time we noticed that the Ulanzi (local alcohol) problem is far worse than we'd imagined, as when we arrived at the teacher's house that we were staying with, we found her one year old daughter there, being looked after by a primary school child at around 6pm. They had been there since morning, and the mother had forgotten about them because she'd been drinking all day. It seems that noone in the village drinks any water at all - it's just a cup of tea upon waking, then Ulanzi from mid-morning until bedtime! Our work has also been held up by the fact that the village leaders couldn't stop drinking for half an hour and meet with us and the secondary school teachers.
Things did get better as the week went on though- we began teaching in primary school. We have to teach six lessons in primary school on Mondays and Thursdays, and three lessons in secondary school on Tuesdays and Wednesday, but at the moment we only have half the lessons we should have in the secondary school. Although we've still only taught the same lesson six times to different classes in primary, and it's been incredible - the kids are so enthusiastic and happy to have us there, because our lessons are so much more interactive and fun than their other classes. Jacob is such a natural in the classroom too, he definitely has a way with the children - and thankfully not in the same way Godson did! I definitely feel like he can be trusted and that we'll do some great work over the next 6 months.
On Good Friday, I got to Mbeya for Easter break with many of the other volunteers, to try to get to Matema Beach on Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) for the following day. It's was an interesting trip down there - at the bus station in Iringa we found a guy that was driving from Dar-es-Salaam to Zambia (a trip that should be done over two or three days) to deliver a car, so he was going to pass through Mbeya and wanted some extra cash to take us down there. It was roughly the same cost as the bus, and much more comfortable so we jumped in. At the time, we didn't know he'd been driving all night from Dar (an 8-10 hour trip) and it was another 6 hours to Mbeya so he kept on stopping to wash his face, and as we approached Mbeya he was really beginning to flake - the car was all over the road, but we just about made it - though I'm not sure if he ever made it the rest of the way to Zambia. Poor guy had to pay three police bribes on the road from Iringa to Mbeya too!
After another dodgy four hours with twenty of us on a minibus, we got to Matema Beach - a truly beautiful place on the northern tip of Lake Nyasa. The Easter weekend was spent relaxing on the beach, swimming, snorkelling, and playing beach volleyball. Also, since it was the last time for a while that all the volunteers would seee each other, we celebrated four birthdays on the beach - mine and Jasmine's (both on 31st March), Marko's (earlier that week) and Jessica's (1st April), it was a lovely surprise to all be presented with cake on the beach, and equally amazing that the German lady who runs the accomodation was able to find all the ingredients to bake a cake in such a small village with such scarce resources!
I'm now back in Iringa for a morning, after a gruelling 17 hour trip yesterday. My phone was stolen on the bus, so I don't know how I'm going to find Jacob to get to village today! I now have a new number, but he doesn't have a phone and he was going to call the old one. I guess I'll just go to the bus station and try to find him there.
My new TZ number is +255783286416
Sorry no pictures this time - there are some amazing ones from the lake, but hopefully my new USB adaptor will arrive soon so I can upload next time I'm online.
love,
dipak
Where I stayed:
Ukumbi Village, Mbeya, Matema Beach and Iringa!
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