One week of Guestbooks and a lizard named Rodolfo

 I'll say one thing about the Tanzanian people, they really like their guest books. I have been distributing books in Liwale, Nachingwea and Rwanga for the past week and I must have signed at least a dozen guestbooks. They seem so fascinated with our names and our signatures that every office we went into whether it was a school or an education office or sometimes a random local government office we had been ferried into, we would eventually be handed a leather bound books and asked to write our name, address and the organisation we worked for.

 It gets very repetitive after the first dozen or so.

Other than that, this has been fairly uneventful; we have been visiting schools around the regions,distributing books and doing activities with the students in an attempt to get them to talk to us about life as a Tanzanian student and to ask questions about life in the UK. There were a few confident students (who tended to want to be politicians or footballers when they grew up) but for the most part students either smiled shyly at us or looked blank and refused to speak. Some schools were better than others; most were incredibly grateful for the books READ had donated and a few were so moved they were almost in tears. One or two did not seem that interested or welcoming of us but overall the response to us being in Lindi has for the most part been extremely positive.

 In other news, we have been staying in the different areas for the past few days in hostels of varying quality. The Liwale guest house was nice with the hilariously named 'Mr Chipichipi' restaurant and bigish self-contained (i.e. ensuite) rooms.The Rwanga guest house we stayed in was horrendous, with dirty sheets in a room that smells like urine, a crazy strung out looking woman running the place and a massive hole in the ground outside my room in which rubbish was thrown. The Nachinqwea guest house was the nicest and even had a working television in my room on which I watched the greatest TV show- ever! Called Mi Pecado, it was hard to tell what was more funny; the acting or the dubbing.

However, in its honour I decided to name the lizard who was staying in my room whilst I was there, Rodolfo after the character in the show with the most ridiculous name imaginable.

Why can't we have over the top shows like that in th UK?

Next week, instead of visiting schools I'm going to work on the library renovation project with the Emilys at Lindi Day Secondary School to get it opened for its grand opening next week.