Having been here a couple of weeks now, I must say I feel well intergrated into life here at Waamuzi school. I love my students. I must say they have very demanding days that can challenge that of any B.A student! The school have implemented a new English programme, which should work out to be pretty effective giving thestudents a chance to practice their English as well as public speaking.

I willl be helping them as much as i can as quite a few of them ( mainly the girls) speak barely any English!The first of the English presentation was by Nasra (17) who chose to talk about her tribe 'Haya' mainly hailing from Burundi, Lake Victoria and Uganda.

With the help of my Lonely Planet book featuring abit about my various Tanzanian tribes, it was a walk in the park....or so I thought.

Nasra asked one of the other students to help her do a 'Haya' dance but he refused as he was from the South African Ngozi tribe. Although I persuaded him it does not matter, he didnt want to and was probably more concerned with having to dance in front of the class.

The English presentation of Nasra's tribe then fuelled into a debate of as one girl challenged her by asking her 'why do people from Haya practice prostitution when they are so well educated?' O.k .....I wasn't that prepared for this part.....Guess thats what I get for asking any questions!

I was then asked by one of my students Michael what tribe I came from....'errrmmm...sorry Mike , don't have a clue'!

House Lady??

One of the things that I am usually against is having a house lady. I just feel like as black people have we not learnt from slavery?? However , having discussed this with some of my students they disagreed as said it was an opportunity for poorer people to work. I guess they have a point.

In England we manage to have families and still cook so why can;t everybody else??

Well, today we were introduced to Tegemea ( our new house lady) - which means to expect/reliable in Swahili.
She's only 19 , but it just makes me really just how lucky i was at that age, I didn't even have to think about preparing my own meal let alone anybody elses!!

She cooked us our favourite meal soo far...as we don't have gas, all cookings down outside. She made us chipsi mayai ( chips and eggs mixed together) I absolutely love it!! This kinda stuff is a treat!

As for the living conditions, so far, we have electricity 4 hours a day 7pm-11pm. the keys times we need it, me and Stacey rush to charge everything we have!! Phones, camcorder, mp3's u name it its in the socket!
We get water delivered from the water truck daily and collect it with a bucket and thats our shower for the day.
So there you go , no light switch to switch on or tap to run,but I quite like it this way.
The squatt toilet is a bit annoying but some things u just gotta deal with 'eh......this is what i signed up for..........

When we first arrived at the school, which is basically in the middle of nowhere just of Morogoro Road, 10km into a village. I felt like I was really in Africa, I was seeing mudhuts , people carrying buckets of water on their head, kids stopping and staring as they're seeing a new face.

Teaching is hard, I won't lie, thought it would be of a walk in the park, from the planning to the teaching itself, all abit stressful !! My lessons are 1.5 hours a time , just when I think the work I have prepared with suffice, I still have like 30 mins left...what to do ...?? Play hangman!!!! Plus kids love it. Some of the kids here in Tanzania, have really different names, one of my favourites so far is called Fortunatus, another is called Panicrass and another Godliving.

My first lesson was daunting, I walked in the class to see 40+ children , all with shaved heads staring back at me. Quite scary!! Got them to introduce themselves and write a paragraph about themselves to get a feel for their level of English. I can clearly see that they range from all different levels just in the first hour, as some can barely say their name. By the end of the lesson everything was cool and they even asked me to join them for lunch.

So far, food looks like this - ugali  ( maize floor and water - which just looks like a mass of cloud!!) with beans. This is all the kids eat every day also, not the most exciting, is it really!!!! If they wana switch it up we get makonde, which is again (maize and bean stew) -eeeek...but thats about as exciting as it gets!

Africa!!!

This is the one place I've been desperate to visit, since God knows when. My dream came true on January 25th 2010. Whilst travelling , I always believe in doing something productive rather than just backpacking. So I volunteered with Lattitude Global Voluntering to teach in Tanzania. My placement was in a boarding school not to far from Dar es Salaam. Judy, our in counttry rep met us out the airport.

I began to wonder whether coming to Africa was a mistake when we rocked up at the YMCA, where we would be staying and saw the state of it. OH MY WORD. And what was the one thing that I forgot - BED SHEETS. i wanted to scream. I was sharing a room with Rachael. A lovely girl from Birmingham , who was really chilled out and put me at ease, so it was cool.

We went on a mini orientation to Kariakoo market, which was absolutely hectic. Walking around by myself I probably would be able to fit in fairly well , but walking with 13 Caucasians I was just greeted with the sounds of ' MZUNGU' ( swahili for white person/foreigner).

During our orientation we were encouraged to buy kangas and kitenges ( materials of African print which usually read a message in Swahili). We were encouraged to wear these whilst teaching.

A few days after, our Host mother/Director of a school came to collect us from the YMCA. She greeted us with a lovely hug. For the next 5 months, I was going to be working alongside Stacey (21, Australia) and Simon (22,U.K) at Waamuzi Secondary school, Kongowe. May the journey begin....