So here ends or first week in Lindi, the project is firmly underway, distribution has begun and we have been introduced to the joys of Tanzanian bureaucracy.
After arriving on Thursday 6th August, we had to go around on Friday meeting the officials that were going to help us because READ operates with the assistance of the Tanzanian Ministry of Education. We meet the Regional Education Officer in the morning after having texted the night before (apparently this is an accepted practice for officials in Tanzania) though he claimed he never received it.
It is quite clear that the REO does not want us in his region and is only helping us very grudgingly because his boss told him too. Miraculously our books arrived in the truck two days after we did and the REO therefore used it as his opportunity to ship us out of his region as fast as humanly possible. He created a timetable where we were being ferried from region to region, staying the night in all sorts of strange places (including over the weekend ) and basically not coming back to Lindi town where the Emilys are working on a library renovation project. We had to explain to him that the group couldn't be separated for that long and although he was obstinate at first as soon as Ali mentioned that we immediately backed down and created a new plan where we would distribute books over the course of three weeks and always return to Lindi town for the weekend. We are going to Liwale tomorrow and we have to stay the night as well as next week we'll have to visit two districts at once and be away for 4 days and 3 nights.
However, considering that Lindi is the size of the Republic of Ireland this is probably understandable.
The REO is a strange character though. The way he talks, stands and his whole demeanour is almost...lethargic in a way and the way he responds to everything in a very slow, controlled sort of way that you know if he was angry he wouldn't yell but he would still be terrifying. He also wears a massive ring on the knuckle of his little finger so it sometimes looks like he's wearing a knuckle duster.
This of course, has lead me to the conclusion that he is in fact the head of the Lindi mafia and that the reason he wants us out of Lindi so quickly is because he's secretly running an organised crime syndicate through the DEOs (District Education Officers) and wants us out of the way so he can't be exposed.
If it wasn't for us pesky kids...
But that is probably just my imagination running away with me.
We had a little bit of drama with the books though because READ sent them off in the van midday on Friday and then we had to ring the REO to tell him the books were arriving on a Saturday and then they didn't arrive till Saturday evening so we had to call the REO again to come to where the books were going to be stored on a Sunday.
We then had to shift 247 heavy boxes of textbooks in at least 25C heat. What was worse was that there were a group of about 7 or 8 men sitting around watching the five pathetic little white girls carry boxes. Eventually after about an hour, we had to give in and pay 20,000 shillings for four men to help us. After that we got them out of the lorry pretty quickly but then had to sort them into each district so we had to lug boxes across the room.
I would also like to point I couldn't lift the boxes because I'm just weak; not because I'm a girl and I will not take any sexist allusions to the contrary.
For the rest of this week we have been doing predistribution round the schools in Lindi town and the surrondings rural area without incident. Some of the schools were so grateful; one school showed his four physics books and a couple of magazines and said that was all the books they had. It was so extraordinary when I think about how I was given textbooks at school to take home for the year. I guess they weren't kidding during training about being shocked at sparse resources in these schools really are.
In other news, we have settled pretty well into Lindi and have taken up residence at the Adela Guest House which is very....basic,shall we say with bucket showers, communal long drop toilets and the odd spider or rat about the place but for the equivalent of $1 a night I don't care.
We have also found an amazing restaurant around the corner called Jafferty's which serves African and Indian food with an actual menu so they can't double the prices of everything as soon as they see us. The owner and his daughter are very friendly and speak excellent english; we have tried going to other places but we either get overcharged for everything or can't get served food because they either laugh at our Swahili or have no food left.
I have also discovered a lizard that has taken up residence in my room and called him Rodolpho, which despite what people say, I think is a very good name for a lizard.
Saturday 28 August 2010
Thursday 26 August 2010
Famous Last Words.
'I'm pretty sure the road has been finished'.
That's what they told us when we book our bus tickets from Dar to Lindi. Estimated it would be about 6 hours on a paved road.
They were wrong.
We left at six in the morning and arrive just after 3.30pm in the afternoon and only 3-4 hours of it was on a paved or even flat road; the rest was on a bumpy dirt road. I was lucky enough to be towards the middle of the bus so the bumpiness wasn't so bad for me but poor Alex and Emily H were ordered onto the back row by the very angry bus conductor that seemed to want people to sit on a certain seat according to his chart.
I have no idea whether people had booked certain seats or he was just on an OCD power trip.
They said every time the bus would go over a mound of dirt that because of the momentum at the back they would be thrown upwards about 2 feet higher than everyone else and there was nothing to brace themselves on.
It was sweltering because of the heat and as soon as they decided to open the windows, red dust from the road would fly up and cover our faces so we looked like we had suddenly developed a tan. They did provide food and drink free of charge but I have to question the wisdom of giving people fizzy drinks whilst they are going over large bumps in the road. I got a look Sprite down me as it fizzed up out of the glass bottle as soon it was opened- I highly doubt I'll bother taking that skirt back to the UK.
When we got to Lindi in the afternoon, we were trying to find the Adela Guest House but our temporary guide (i.e. the guy that latched onto us at the bus stop and wouldn't go away until we let him take us to our hotel) took us to the Adela Hotel which charged us 45,000 shillings per night. It was expensive but we decided we were too tired to find the other Adela right then and agreed to stay for one night. The rooms were actually very nice and I was luck enough to get my own room with the only toilet in out of the three that worked properly and it would be a while before I found other working Western toilet.
That's what they told us when we book our bus tickets from Dar to Lindi. Estimated it would be about 6 hours on a paved road.
They were wrong.
We left at six in the morning and arrive just after 3.30pm in the afternoon and only 3-4 hours of it was on a paved or even flat road; the rest was on a bumpy dirt road. I was lucky enough to be towards the middle of the bus so the bumpiness wasn't so bad for me but poor Alex and Emily H were ordered onto the back row by the very angry bus conductor that seemed to want people to sit on a certain seat according to his chart.
I have no idea whether people had booked certain seats or he was just on an OCD power trip.
They said every time the bus would go over a mound of dirt that because of the momentum at the back they would be thrown upwards about 2 feet higher than everyone else and there was nothing to brace themselves on.
It was sweltering because of the heat and as soon as they decided to open the windows, red dust from the road would fly up and cover our faces so we looked like we had suddenly developed a tan. They did provide food and drink free of charge but I have to question the wisdom of giving people fizzy drinks whilst they are going over large bumps in the road. I got a look Sprite down me as it fizzed up out of the glass bottle as soon it was opened- I highly doubt I'll bother taking that skirt back to the UK.
When we got to Lindi in the afternoon, we were trying to find the Adela Guest House but our temporary guide (i.e. the guy that latched onto us at the bus stop and wouldn't go away until we let him take us to our hotel) took us to the Adela Hotel which charged us 45,000 shillings per night. It was expensive but we decided we were too tired to find the other Adela right then and agreed to stay for one night. The rooms were actually very nice and I was luck enough to get my own room with the only toilet in out of the three that worked properly and it would be a while before I found other working Western toilet.
Our Day Out...
Note: I used the dollar sign instead of the pound sign because this is an American keyboard so it doesn't have it- all currency expressed that is not in Tanzanian shillings is in pounds.
So we're just arrived in Lindi after spending the past two days in Dar sightseeing and braving the local transport system. On Thursday morning Emily H. and Ali headed to the Simry Buses office with Stella, the Dar Es Salaam taxi driver that READ had befriended at some point before we arrived, to buy tickets for the bus journey. They were 18,000 Tanzanian shillings (or $9 approximately) which seemed reasonably cheap.
On the journey down we realised why.
Although Stella had reserved 11 tickets on the bus when she was booking for another group so all five of us an the six girls from Warwick could go together on the bus the next day, by the time Ali and Emily arrived to buy them, there were only 9 left. Stella had to argue with the bus company to allow us to buy two last minute tickets at the bus station the next morning.
After the initial crisis with the bus was over, we had the rest of the day to do tourist things in Dar. We went to the Museum of Tanzania first where we saw all sorts of different exhibits ranging from historical and to archaeological to cultural and scientific.
We saw a collection of documents and artefacts from the early modern and modern periods; around the time of the Portuguese superseding the Arabic traders along the Indian Ocean coastline through to the 19th century German conquest of Tanganyika (as mainland Tanzania was then called), the first world war, British rule and then independence in 1961 under Julius Nyerere as President and their union with Zanzibar in 1964.
Afterward we went to an archaeological exhibit about the footprints in northern Tanzania that are supposed to be the oldest example of human ancestors walking upright and how they are now threatened by erosion and the ugliest animal on this earth (google a picture of a mole rat if you don't believe me).
We also had a look at some wildlife displays about the game reserves here and despite the fact that I have always found taxidermy incredibly creepy (there was a stuffed lion on display that had been given to Julius Nyerere as a gift which really gave me the shivers) but I enjoyed it because it was so much more diverse than in Europe. Then we saw some cultural and social displays of what tribal life in Tanzania is like.
We then had a look around the grounds and found the first ATM in Tanzania on display in an alcove of a beautiful Arabesque building which was a little peculiar but still interesting. We were at the museum for about an hour and then we went to get lunch at an incredibly Western pizza restaurant where I had the strangest salad (who would normally put courgettes in a salad) and the others had pizza which they said was delicious.
In the afternoon, we went up to a market selling all sorts of souvenirs to Westerners and Africans. Everywhere we went, the traders kept calling us over (naturally relishing the opportunity to rip off ). We decided to wait to buy things till after we got back from Lindi but I bought a bag and a beaded elephant named Tembo (Swahili for elephant, as I had learnt earlier that day at the museum). Although I only spent about $7.50 I think I paid all more than a local would pay.
Oh well, its not like I can't afford it. I am also very happy that I got the lady selling Tembo down from 10,000 to 5,000 shillings.
Though I then did feel quite bad about paying with a 10,000 note.
We had got to the market by taxi but on the way back we braved a dalla-dalla or a city bus which was 250 shillings (which is about 12p). It was interesting experience and quite daunting at first, partly because it is always scary riding a public bus in an unknown, busy city but also because the concept of a bus being 'full' is clearly alien to the bus conductors. It was like a cross between a regular bus and the Tube at rush hour. We had luckily got seats because we were the first ones on but afterward the bus we start to fill up as the bus conductor would randomly open the doors whenever it stopped and shout the bus' direction to the people on the curb and invite them to hop on.
I had a woman sitting on my shoulder for about ten minutes.
When we got back, we went out to dinner with the people from the other groups in the evening to a Western style restaurant called City Garden. Everyone was amazed we dared to go on the dalla-dalla but they had least had the sense to go to the supermarket for supplies for the bus whilst we were being tourists. By the time we got back to the shop in the YMCA it was closed and we were leaving for Lindi at 5.00am the next day.
So we're just arrived in Lindi after spending the past two days in Dar sightseeing and braving the local transport system. On Thursday morning Emily H. and Ali headed to the Simry Buses office with Stella, the Dar Es Salaam taxi driver that READ had befriended at some point before we arrived, to buy tickets for the bus journey. They were 18,000 Tanzanian shillings (or $9 approximately) which seemed reasonably cheap.
On the journey down we realised why.
Although Stella had reserved 11 tickets on the bus when she was booking for another group so all five of us an the six girls from Warwick could go together on the bus the next day, by the time Ali and Emily arrived to buy them, there were only 9 left. Stella had to argue with the bus company to allow us to buy two last minute tickets at the bus station the next morning.
After the initial crisis with the bus was over, we had the rest of the day to do tourist things in Dar. We went to the Museum of Tanzania first where we saw all sorts of different exhibits ranging from historical and to archaeological to cultural and scientific.
We saw a collection of documents and artefacts from the early modern and modern periods; around the time of the Portuguese superseding the Arabic traders along the Indian Ocean coastline through to the 19th century German conquest of Tanganyika (as mainland Tanzania was then called), the first world war, British rule and then independence in 1961 under Julius Nyerere as President and their union with Zanzibar in 1964.
Afterward we went to an archaeological exhibit about the footprints in northern Tanzania that are supposed to be the oldest example of human ancestors walking upright and how they are now threatened by erosion and the ugliest animal on this earth (google a picture of a mole rat if you don't believe me).
We also had a look at some wildlife displays about the game reserves here and despite the fact that I have always found taxidermy incredibly creepy (there was a stuffed lion on display that had been given to Julius Nyerere as a gift which really gave me the shivers) but I enjoyed it because it was so much more diverse than in Europe. Then we saw some cultural and social displays of what tribal life in Tanzania is like.
We then had a look around the grounds and found the first ATM in Tanzania on display in an alcove of a beautiful Arabesque building which was a little peculiar but still interesting. We were at the museum for about an hour and then we went to get lunch at an incredibly Western pizza restaurant where I had the strangest salad (who would normally put courgettes in a salad) and the others had pizza which they said was delicious.
In the afternoon, we went up to a market selling all sorts of souvenirs to Westerners and Africans. Everywhere we went, the traders kept calling us over (naturally relishing the opportunity to rip off ). We decided to wait to buy things till after we got back from Lindi but I bought a bag and a beaded elephant named Tembo (Swahili for elephant, as I had learnt earlier that day at the museum). Although I only spent about $7.50 I think I paid all more than a local would pay.
Oh well, its not like I can't afford it. I am also very happy that I got the lady selling Tembo down from 10,000 to 5,000 shillings.
Though I then did feel quite bad about paying with a 10,000 note.
We had got to the market by taxi but on the way back we braved a dalla-dalla or a city bus which was 250 shillings (which is about 12p). It was interesting experience and quite daunting at first, partly because it is always scary riding a public bus in an unknown, busy city but also because the concept of a bus being 'full' is clearly alien to the bus conductors. It was like a cross between a regular bus and the Tube at rush hour. We had luckily got seats because we were the first ones on but afterward the bus we start to fill up as the bus conductor would randomly open the doors whenever it stopped and shout the bus' direction to the people on the curb and invite them to hop on.
I had a woman sitting on my shoulder for about ten minutes.
When we got back, we went out to dinner with the people from the other groups in the evening to a Western style restaurant called City Garden. Everyone was amazed we dared to go on the dalla-dalla but they had least had the sense to go to the supermarket for supplies for the bus whilst we were being tourists. By the time we got back to the shop in the YMCA it was closed and we were leaving for Lindi at 5.00am the next day.
Thursday 19 August 2010
The First Few Days...
So here I am in Dar Es Salaam and have survived the first few days, having spent most of them on the beach.
This volunteering business has obviously been so difficult.
We arrived in Dar Es Salaam at around 7.00am on a Sunday morning and were then taken to our accommodation on Kipepeo Beach just outside Dar. The intial ride from the airport to the YMCA hostel to pick up the other READ volunteers who had arrived early was very quickly, on the weekends the city seemed to be empty of cars but during the week its non-stop. However, we had to go to the ferry port to get to the beach resort where we staying and we got stuck in a traffic jam that made a normally ten minute journey last an hour.
In a metal car. With jet lag, no sleep and little water. Lots of fun you can imagine.
The beach resort is amazing, it has incredibly views and the little beach huts we are staying in are adorable despite the Lonely Planet guidebook describing the resort as awful. The food and accommodation here I probably a little more expensive than you could get elsewhere and I've been premenantly covered in sand but its worth it.
On the first day, we spent most of the day on the beach and intermittenly in the sea before having a Swahili lesson in the evening.
The next day training began and we were given information on how to get to the region, what schools we were going to go to and a brief overview of the history and culture of Tanzania.
The evening was fairly uneventful there was a quiz and later a 'vigourous' game of duck, duck, goose on the beach that I decided to sit out instead of risk injury.
On Wednesday we travelled back to Dar to stay in the YMCA and met with the READ volunteers from Tanzania to talk about the differences between education in the UK and in Tanzania but got rather sidetracked and began debating feminism, religion and homosexuality.
The culture is obviously very different here with the emphasis heavier on religious values being upheld but they also appear to be more upfront than the stereotypically uptight British; one had no problem asking a girl from another university whether her and her boyfriend were having sex.
This place has taking some getting used to, mainly in tern\ms of the new flying insects and birds (that burrow into the rooves are they were thatched at Kipepeo) that are around to terrify me but I love all the lizards.
I'm gradually coping with the birds being near me as long as they don't fly near my head. Of course, I could be a lot worse: some of the girls from another university beat a crab to death with a torch.
This volunteering business has obviously been so difficult.
We arrived in Dar Es Salaam at around 7.00am on a Sunday morning and were then taken to our accommodation on Kipepeo Beach just outside Dar. The intial ride from the airport to the YMCA hostel to pick up the other READ volunteers who had arrived early was very quickly, on the weekends the city seemed to be empty of cars but during the week its non-stop. However, we had to go to the ferry port to get to the beach resort where we staying and we got stuck in a traffic jam that made a normally ten minute journey last an hour.
In a metal car. With jet lag, no sleep and little water. Lots of fun you can imagine.
The beach resort is amazing, it has incredibly views and the little beach huts we are staying in are adorable despite the Lonely Planet guidebook describing the resort as awful. The food and accommodation here I probably a little more expensive than you could get elsewhere and I've been premenantly covered in sand but its worth it.
On the first day, we spent most of the day on the beach and intermittenly in the sea before having a Swahili lesson in the evening.
The next day training began and we were given information on how to get to the region, what schools we were going to go to and a brief overview of the history and culture of Tanzania.
The evening was fairly uneventful there was a quiz and later a 'vigourous' game of duck, duck, goose on the beach that I decided to sit out instead of risk injury.
On Wednesday we travelled back to Dar to stay in the YMCA and met with the READ volunteers from Tanzania to talk about the differences between education in the UK and in Tanzania but got rather sidetracked and began debating feminism, religion and homosexuality.
The culture is obviously very different here with the emphasis heavier on religious values being upheld but they also appear to be more upfront than the stereotypically uptight British; one had no problem asking a girl from another university whether her and her boyfriend were having sex.
This place has taking some getting used to, mainly in tern\ms of the new flying insects and birds (that burrow into the rooves are they were thatched at Kipepeo) that are around to terrify me but I love all the lizards.
I'm gradually coping with the birds being near me as long as they don't fly near my head. Of course, I could be a lot worse: some of the girls from another university beat a crab to death with a torch.
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