Tanzania – Take 2!

Almost 24 hours after leaving Hong Kong I flopped down onto my bed in my hotel room in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Having very little sleep the night before the flight had been a bad idea. I’d hoped I would crash out on the plane, but I just couldn't get comfortable so I had a very restless night, followed by a long-ish stopover in Dubai and then more discomfort on the second leg when my seat wouldn't recline. I was feeling quite spaced out by the time I finally arrived in Dar!

But it was great to be back! I’d forgotten how warm and gregarious the Tanzanian people are... and this stood out even more after my experiences in China! The visa on arrival “process” was so slow and disorganised that it was almost comical, but the staff were so jovial that I couldn't possibly have got annoyed with them. Everyone makes you feel so genuinely welcome here, and that is a really nice feeling.

Of course I’d come back to Tanzania to do some voluntary work at Mambo Viewpoint, so after an early dinner and an early night I was up at 4:45am to take the bus up into the Usambara Mountains. It was a six-hour journey to Lushoto and from there Herman kindly sent a driver to bring me the final two hours to Mambo.

Along the way I gazed out of the window as the scenery became increasingly spectacular. The local people – working in the fields or walking along the dusty roads – stopped what they were doing to give a wave or a nod or even the occasional thumbs up. And of course the children were as sweet and funny as ever – calling out and waving and then squealing and jumping up and down with excitement when I waved back! I really do think this is one of the most beautiful places I have visited… both physically and on the inside too!

If I felt happy to be back in Tanzania, I was delighted to be back at Mambo Viewpoint. As the car turned up the final steep slope and the familiar buildings came into sight I felt a rush of contentment. It was great to see Herman, Marion and Ndege again… and this time we greeted each other as friends.

I was taken back to the same tent I'd stayed in during my visit in the summer, perched on the edge of the cliff, with a beautiful view over the valley below. After a nice hot "shower" (bucket of water thrown over head), I returned to the main lodge for dinner with the owners, staff and guests. Everything felt familiar and natural… just like coming home!

My little home above the clouds

Spacious and comfortable

Over dinner I met two other volunteers: Julian, an Aussie who now spends the majority of each year herding cows in the Swiss Alps; and Niek, a Dutchman who has been coming to Tanzania for over 30 years and is making plans to resettle here and work in ecoagriculture, growing bitter oranges (for their oil). He also told me about his interest in alternative buildings, such as cave dwellings! That's one of the things I really love about this place - the chance to meet interesting people with whom I would never usually cross paths!

My main focus during my 3-week stay will be helping to set up the Community Learning Centre. This will be a place where the locals can go to use computers and the internet, do printing and scanning, read newspapers etc. Since most of the people here have never seen a computer before, they will need to have lessons before this will work and that’s where I come in. One of the local guys, Henrish, will be the new computer teacher and I will be working with him to get a basic computer course up and running.

The project is actually sponsored by UNICEF and the Worldbank and they will be donating two laptops, but since they’re a bit slow-moving Herman has already purchased four notebooks so that we can get started sooner. So my first job was installing Windows 7, MS office and various other programs on each of these.

On my second day, I was working on my laptop in the main lodge area when a Landrover pulled up with 19 young novice nuns jammed inside! They had come for a day out at Mambo to celebrate their imminent inauguration. At one point they were milling around in the main lodge area, when someone turned the radio up and they suddenly all lined up and started dancing in unison to "bongo" music (a kind of Tanzanian hip hop!)! No matter which new song came on, they seemed to know a routine for it. It was so much fun and I stood and watched them for ages. Many of the staff were joining in and even Marion came to watch… I thought perhaps this sort of thing happens all the time here but apparently not!

Nuns dancing to hip hop - not something you see every day!

Later that day I went with Henrish and Niek to visit the site of the new Learning Centre. UNICEF will eventually fund the building of a completely new unit but until that happens a temporary space has been found in one of the local primary schools... the catch being that the school doesn't have electricity! So, our first job was to install solar panels. Of course I was never going to be much help with this, but I went along to observe and to offer some helpful direction where needed! 

We quickly identified our first problem: we’d forgotten to bring a ladder. But you don’t let things like that get in the way here! The school children fetched some old planks of wood and Henrish and Niek started to screw them together to make a ladder! An audience of little boys intently watched their every move. 

How to fit solar panels to a roof. Step 1: build a ladder

Although Tanzania reminds me of India in many ways, the children here looked a lot poorer (or at least less well looked-after than those at Joe Homan). Most of them were in really threadbare clothing: woolly jumpers with gaping holes and sleeves which had frayed so much that there was little more than string remaining. Many of them were wearing shoes several sizes too big, which were literally tied on to their feet. One was wearing what looked like workmen’s boots and several had hard plastic sandals with pieces missing from the soles. It was quite heart-breaking. A lot of clothing here comes from second-hand markets which must originate in charity shops overseas so you often spot people wearing clothes which are far too big for them. 

Note the first boy's sleeves and the second boy's boots!

The finished ladder wasn't the sturdiest of structures but it did the job! Niek and Henrish then built a frame to hold the solar panels together and hauled them on to the roof and attached them. Meanwhile I entertained the children by taking their photos. It was just like being in India, where they were SO eager and excited to have their photos taken and then laughed uproariously when they saw the pictures!

The solar panels go up

Beautiful boys

On the way home we passed some little boys playing football with a wad of plastic bags bound tightly together with string. You don't let a minor detail like the lack of a real football get in the way of the beautiful game!

The home-made football

The next day we went back to the school with Herman, whose background is in electrical engineering. With the solar panels now on the roof the next part was to wire everything up. I soon discovered that Herman wasn't content to let me just play around with the kids and actually expected me to get my hands dirty! So I screwed and hammered some things into the wall, did a bit of wire-cutting and connected wires up to the terminals of some huge batteries… with only one short circuit and minor explosion. Any of the others could have wired it up ten times quicker than me but it felt good to actually contribute something, however minor! Finally it was all installed and with a flick of a switch the lights came on in the school for the very first time in its history, to the delight of the children who were peering in through the window. It was a momentous occasion!

Well, I did have time to take SOME photos of the kids

Herman checking my work (I wired up those batteries!)

The following day I went to have a look at a well-drilling project which Niek had been overseeing, in the nearby village of Tema. Again, I was reminded that you can't take anything for granted here. Not only do very few places have electricity, they also don't have easy access to clean water. These villagers were having to walk 3km to the water pump in Mambo…. or else drink from a filthy pit in a farmer’s field. Again I was lucky to be there for the big moment: the well had been dug, water had been found and tested and as I watched they fitted the pump and one of the men started pumping fresh water out of the well for the first time! Again it was amazing to see a project with such an immediate, life-changing impact.

The first bucket of water is pumped up from the well

As we drove to the well we passed hundreds of children walking the other way, with bags of sand and buckets of water on their heads. We recognised many of them as children from Sunga Primary School, where we’d spent the previous two days. The secondary school in Sunga is getting a new laboratory and the children had been sent out to collect the building materials. This would have been about a two-hour walk, round-trip, in the sun, with a huge weight on their heads and next to nothing on their feet. Still they were smiling and waving at us as we drove past. I'm not sure what happened to the lessons that day!

A long line of children climbing the hill back to Sunga

Smiling faces peer into the car

Love the little boy who decided to carry his trainers on his head!

The irony is that the building of the laboratory has been mandated by the government, but the secondary school doesn't even have a science teacher, so it’s a complete waste of money which could have been better invested elsewhere! It’s difficult to entice young qualified teachers to come and teach up in these poor, remote areas. That said, science is one of the compulsory exams in Form 2 (around the age of 14) but since there is no science teacher, all of the children here fail. And any children who fail their Form 2 exams are not allowed to progress to Form 3. Rather than repeat the year the vast majority drop out, so at the secondary school there are roughly 100 children in Forms 1 and 2 and then 8 in Form 3. However this is only one part of the problem. Even after primary school, only 40% of the children can go on to secondary (as few can afford the school fees). And as I mentioned last time, there are over 120 children in each class at Mambo primary school, and they can only attend in either the morning or the afternoon due to the sheer volume of children and lack of teachers. It's easy to see why there's still such a large uneducated and even illiterate population here.

Some of the problems seem so overwhelming, it's hard to know how it can ever get better. Out of 5000 people in Mambo, 2000 are at the primary school, i.e they are under 12 years old. So the population is only going to get bigger. Women are having a LOT of children, but basic needs like food, water, healthcare and education are not being met. (There's only one doctor per 25,000 people in this region). Fortunately at least the young people seem to know that things have to change and are aware that they should have fewer children. But then education is critical so that they know how to stop that from happening!

After visiting the pump, Henrish invited Niek and I to have lunch at his home in the village. His wife had had a baby girl 10 days earlier. She was 3 weeks premature and light as a feather! Henrish’s wife was still in bed (having had a caesarean) and the bed was in the kitchen: a tiny dark room absolutely filled with smoke from the fire they were cooking on. Not sure it was the best place for a premature baby but what can you do?!

Tiny Baby Esther

At the primary school that week I'd met Moddy, a young guy from the village who is an incredibly talented artist. It’s brilliant to meet people like this who just have such a natural raw talent. He has received no formal training and had no real encouragement until Mambo Viewpoint started up and, recognising his talent, started employing him to paint murals to brighten up the school, cartoons to teach the locals farmers about caring for their cows etc. He’s also the recipient of a scholarship to allow him to complete his secondary education. It's great to see. As a guy of many talents, he is also offering acrobatics lessons at the weekends to some of the village kids. On Sunday afternoon I went along and watched them tearing around on unicycles whilst juggling at the same time! He has a natural energy and patience which really brings out the best in them.

So lots of inspiration in week one!

She makes it look so easy!

Juggling whilst riding a unicycle - no big deal

Nick gives the kids some new ideas