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!