Masimbwe life
Trip Start
Jan 10, 2008
1
7
18
Trip End
Sep 05, 2008
Iringa,
Tanzania
Friday, March 21, 2008
Food sounds as good as any seen as my tummy is rumbling now. Wierd as it seems I have put on weight, Me and Inno have been cooking up feasts every day and we have even got ourselves a few specialities. Check out this, pancakes with honey and little sweet bannas with hot sweet milk in the morning, Oh yeah, now that is what dreams are made of. We have however had a few nightmares as well, one where we attempted chips mayai (chip omelette), it bassically ended up being boiled potatoes, scrambled eggs and lots and lots of oil, yum yum. In fact we have been eating so much that we were struggling to sleep the huge sleeps that you get in village, so we have both decided that we have to force each other to work out before we got to bed, I'm not sure what methods the forcing is going to take on yet but it seems like a good plan.
Village life is very poley poley, something that im struggling to adapt to, every time we have had a meeting or seminar people have been at least two hours late, hakuna matana. We have been pushing to get into a Secoundary School because we really think kids that age are in a real need of getting Sex education and peer advice, so we set off for this one meeting an hour and half a walk away, where
we were told we could speak to the head master of the school. The WEO (Ward Excutive Officer) told us to wait outside when we got there and speak after the meeting. We ended up waiting 3 hours and when the meeting finished the guy wasn't even in there. One of the reasons for this which we have now worked out how to get over it, is that elders look at me and Inno to lads under 20 and they dont feel that they should listen to what we should say. We are now just very foreward now and get the info we need then get out of there. Another example of poley poley is our school which is so so bad, the first 3 days were cancelled because all teachers wanted to visit the educational office when only one was required to go. Worse so the teachers get the kids, during lesson times, to work on their own farms. I have not seen one teacher teach all I've seen them do is constantly punish them, everyone of them carries a stick around. The kids however are great and are loving our lessons, Im not sure they have ever had a teacher do anything but write out exercises on the board and then leave. Another difficulty we faced was rumours that people wanted to move us out our house, which is a very good house. So with an idea that we wanted to set up our IRC (Info Resource Centre) / Library there. We collected the shelves from the old place along with benchs and moved them into our main room, we put up posters, layed out the books, got the log book ready and put a big sign on the door and then after seeing it and seeing how busy it was with kids and youth there was no way we were going to be chucked out. The place is running so well we constantly have kids in there and we are soon to set up a councelling room as well. On top of all that we managed, after meeting him in the nearby town, to get the Ludewa District MP to officially open our IRC, together with a Ngoma (traditional dance group) playing outside, it was sweet as a nut. The house is also a brilliant place to hold our CAG (Community Action Group) meetings who we are teaching everything to, there are now nearly 11 members and although they arrive late and usually only half tun up, they are learning fast and have started asking lots of q's, which is a very good sign. We even got them to help run our first seminar, which although only 20 ppl it went real smooth.
Yeah so things are plodding along nicely, although I still feel there are so many hours in the day to fill that we could just keep on cramming in more. We are currently also trying to set up a vaccination programme for chickens, which I heard off another NGO, which if it goes ahead will double the no. of chickens in the village and hopefully gain us a lot of respect. Despite all these positives, life there peaceful as it is, is not good, people drink copious amounts of Ulansi (the dreaded local brew) and look terrible from it. It actually reminds me of an English Friday night, people crawl from one Ulansi bar to the next, throwing up imbetween, nice! When they are not drinking Ulansi they are drinking unboiled water, which doesnt do much good to their bodies. Not only that but pologamy is every where and HIV is a huge huge problem, in a neighbouring village, population 4000, out of those who have been tested (probably half) 300 ppl are HIV+. We also attended a school kids funeral on 3rd day in village, he was about 11.
Through it all mine and Inno realtionships, although we get dips in energy we are really close and the most important thing is that we can just take the piss and have a laugh when things dont work out. We are constantly singing away when we are cooking and shaking our wowowo's(hips), its class crack.
So thats our first couple of weeks and Im now sitting ready to get off on an adventure to secluded dream of beach on the shore of Lake Nyasa with 20 happy volunteers fo Easter break. Oh Yeah!
