Uganda Lodge May - June 2014

The kids enjoying their playground

Rich and Edd testing out their swingball

 We’ve been at Uganda Lodge for a month now.  Work and play continues.

Rich and Edd have been working like troupers and their playground keeps getting bigger and better.  The kids are loving what they’ve created and Kim and I painted a plaque for their Playground so they have marked their territory.

Kim and I made a volleyball court and net.  The boys were laughing at us saying we could never dig a hole.  Well we did – but it was the kids at playtime that came out and did a lot of the digging! They seem to love getting involved in the hardwork – we are happy to let them! 

 

We used some rope and string to get the outline and then some banana bark fibers braided in order to get the strength down the middle of the net.  Now we are awaiting some volleyballs from volunteers arriving this week.

There is always something to do and you can go to classes if you want, and I spent a day or two in the classroom and have made some timetable suggestions to the headmaster which has now placed PE on the timetable as it should have been! This has meant that more volunteers can get involved in the PE classes and helping out here which is a bit more enjoyable than sitting in the back of the classroom. This mean the students can now enjoy our completed volleyball court:

I also intend to so some phonetics teaching before I leave, as this is not in the program and it should be.  Otherwise, it’s been little jobs here and there, like making coat hangers out of waterbottle tops for the classrooms, milking cows and making posters.  I taught a small group how to play kickball this week too which was fun.  Then we turned into into kickdodge ball!  I've also written a list of games that can be played on our height adjustable volleyball/tennis net and court.

A common game here played at breaktime is a form of dodgeball.  The ball is made of plastic bags tied tightly together to make the ball, and then a set of stones on the floor.  The aim is to pick up the stones and hold in your skirt as the ball is thrown end to end with the aim of hitting you! If you pick up all the stones without being hit, you win! It’s really good fun, but these kids are brilliant at it and I felt like a fool!!!

Tuesday this week was a  public holiday and Jordan (volunteer coordinator), Maria (long term volunteer from Spain) and Rose (coordinator) put together a treasure hunt which was a bit of fun, and as Maria is from spain, we fired up the pizza oven and I made her Spanish Tortilla which was delicious.  With the oven still hot, we made flapjacks too!.

Uganda Lodge, May 24th

View from the School

So we've been at Uganda Lodge now for 3 weeks and have been working at small jobs like getting teacher resources ready, however, Rich has taken on a challenge of building a playground for the children.  This weeks task, A swing:

Rich, Ed and Will lifting up their creation.
 Next job, digging holes and cementing into the ground.

At the moment, this see-saw is two planks of wood which are not nailed or anything, they play on this with pure balance! OHS would have a field day here!!

 I busied myself with finishing off the Mural, although I can only take credit for the Title and the green at the bottom.  A previous volunteer did the rest, based on pupils drawings.

During this week, we had a lodglypics - which involved various fun games in 3 teams, in fancy dress.  For once, this was NOT inspired by Petch and I, but some other volunteers.  Needless to say - we were in our element! We played musical chairs, relay races and protect the egg to drop off a high water tank!!

The Big 5 - winning team

 
Afternoon teas have been interesting.  The other day we ate grasshoppers:

 

They actually tasted a bit like fried shrimp!

We also took an outing to a students grandparents place.  They run a pork joint.  Eating out is always very interesting.  We ordered 4 kg of pork on arrival which was served deep fried and with some Matoke - a form of Banana that is served at every meal! It is not too bad and tastes like mashed potato - with butter and salt added!! Otherwise, it's a little bland!

chopping up the pork with his machete

deep frying the pork

kitchen area for preparing the sauce

The School has now been back a week, and I haven't yet done any teaching, although, the whole purpose of Uganda Lodge is to let the Ugandan Teachers be the ones that run the show.  There is a new Headmaster this term and he has asked me to sit in on the interview panel for some new teachers which will be interesting.  There are about 250 children that have enrolled this term, and they are hoping for more, but a lot of it comes down to money of course!

The day is quite long for the children.  They start at 7.30, have porridge at 10.30 and wash their cups

Then at lunch time, they get Posho, (or Ugali as it is known in other parts of africa) with beans.  They finish their school day at 5.30pm.  

The school kitchen.  Very similar to our lodge kitchen too

Posho cooking for lunch

Beans cooking for lunch

We have taken a weekend away to a lake nearby for 2 nights with other volunteers and so far swimming and eating nice food and having 3G has been a blessing!

Ruhanga Development Centre, Uganda

It has taken an hour long trip in the back of a pick-up truck next to freshly slaughtered pigs to get to an internet cafe! We really are in rural Uganda at our new project... there was a power cut in town so I couldn't access an internet cafe! To get 3G we have to walk up a hill - and it's sooo slow! Anyway...

After a long and tiresome trip from Zanzibar, and a 7 hour bus journey from Kampala, we arrived at Ruhanga Development Centre, situated between Mbarara and Ntungamo, the main to Rwanda.

The centre was opened approximately 5 years ago by an English woman and a Uganda man, Denis, and they started by placing 20 taps around Denis’s home village.  They then surveyed the village to find out what else was needed, and a school was decided.

We live in a beautiful valley and regularly take a walk up the hills. I feel like we are surrounded by the Malvern Hills covered in banana plantations.  It is very green, lush and the people are very friendly with a reasonable command of English.  We do, however, want to keep speaking Swahili out of habit as we’d got so used to speaking bits each day.  We will slowly learn Runyankole, but teaching is all instructed in English, so it may not be needed

The school currently has classes from nursery to P6, although the ages in class vary and can be as high as 16 years.  The school has been very well resourced by donations and fundraising continues.  A medical clinic has just been finished, and volunteer doctors have been giving family planning advice and nutrition advice.  New classrooms and a library have been built and the next project in construction is a boarding section and a sports field, as well as more volunteer accommodation.

On our first day, we took the hour trip to the larger town to get sorted with phone and stock up on extra food (as meals here are very basic and mostly vegetarian, much to Rich’s disappointment!)  The Matutu ride home, however, took over 2 hours!

Our first day of work involved moving desks to new classrooms, removing irrelevant posters, washing down desks.  Rich busied himself mending broken shelves, and I worked on the sports equipment inventory (much like my normal job of cleaning out the sports storeroom!!).   We have also whittled signs out of wood for each classroom.

             

                                 

At the start of the second week, we had 3 days of teacher training.  This was fantastic and run by two primary school teachers from the UK.  They taught the teachers here how to make their classes more interactive, rather than the traditional way of teaching that they are used.  This has lead to us being very busy and we have spent the rest of the week making learning charts and interactive games and activities from old sacks, cardboard, water bottles, beans, bottle tops.

 

Most evenings we sit in an open room with a fire and a pool table.  There is a small bar available for all types of drink purchases, which turns into a dance floor on Friday nights! When you sip 100ml of gin or vodka from plastic sachets, these nights can get messy!

School begins again on Monday 19^th May and then we will become very busy after our Gorilla Trek!

Hostel Hoff and Moshi comes to an end

The first 3 months of our trip, staying at Hostel Hoff, Moshi, Tanzania and working at Jipe Moyo, Majengo is almost up.

It has been a very insightful time with lots of achievements:

• Happy and Brenda start Boarding School on April 22nd at KEA Open School.

 Taking the girls shopping for their clothes and items for school was such a rewarding day.  We took them first for lunch (burgers), before we headed to the second hand market just out of town.  They were so excited trying on shoes, t-shirts, kanga's, under-garments, choosing bedding, towels, and combs. When we put them onto the dula dula and sent them home with massive grins, I was a little overcome with emotion.  These girls would rarely eat out in a restaurant, let alone be taken shopping just for them - and at that - SO many items. The Memorial Market is a place to get all second hand items that have been donated to Dar es Salaam and then brought to Moshi.  You could get some real bargains there and some good quality items too.  What I love about shopping here though is that there are no skinny mannequins for displaying clothes, but a wire rack, rounded around the bottom to celebrate the larger bottom of the woman!

• Eliza will finally, at the 10 years of age, go to a proper governement school,  financed by me as her parents have disappeared and Grandma can't afford the $30 year for her to go locally

                                    

• The women's group, Jipe Moyo, have made soap, coconut bangles, coconut dishes, coconut oil ( and given as a gift to me), necklaces and futsies (thanks to Jobede's donation).  These creations have been sold at the Hostel and must have raised close to 200,000 shillings for their group ($150 + AUD).  They are now selling their products in Fifi's Coffee Shop, a local hang-out for Wazungu!  The aim now is for them to not only continue with their creations in my absence, but also to find somewhere in town to sell to tourists.  This is the difficult part!

I am so going to miss being run up to every morning by the children shouting - 'teacher, teacher teacher' followed by lots of hugs!

Marion has finished building her 11 houses in Shimbwe, where Rich was working in his first few weeks here and we went to the opening ceremony there a few weeks ago.  This was an amazing day.  Marion has since received further money to build more houses for those who are in need.

The families include; 

• A woman with HIV. A man who is now paralysed after falling from a tree, whose wife then left him because he can no longer earn money, therefore his 10 year old son attends to him 24/7. 
• A family with a daughter with cerebral palsy, the father of which died a year ago when clearing trees to build a new mud home. 
• A family with special needs triplets, who need constant care. 
• An elderly women who has lost the use of her legs and the opening ceremony was the first time she had been outside in ten years.
• And other families in equally tragic circumstances. 

The leftover money is now being spent buying glasses for children and taking them to hospital.

We've had some great trip, Safari in the Serengeti and Ngorogoro Crater, as well as visits to Shimbwe Waterfall, a coffee tour and a visit to the hotsprings.

Life at the hostel has also been fun.  It has been hard to say goodbye to some people that we get to know and love.  Volleyball tournaments and Cocktail parties have been on the agenda, as well as a farewell Fancy Dress Party!!!

Moshi, Tanzania. One Month On.

So, Petch and I have been living at Hostel Hoff for a month now and are enjoying it very much.

After returning from Kili, we spent the weekend doing nothing.  I went to Honey Badger (a local resort with a pool) with a few girls from the Hostel.  Rich nursed a hangover after staying out with the porters and guides for a little longer on the Saturday night after our return.

We both had pretty nasty colds on the mountain that continued to bother us for a few days.  Rich took the Monday off work.  I went school, but felt pretty rubbish.  By the Wednesday, I had a slight fever so spent the day sleeping.  By Thursday, we were both right as rain again.

In Rich’s absence, the 11 houses in Shimbwe were finished.  All except the doors and the windows, and we really would like to thank those who donated to this cause.  We are still in need of a little more money for the windows and doors, and fundraising is continuing.  We will visit Shimbwe next weekend to see the finished houses and visit the local waterfall.

Rich was offered a place at Kili Kids orphanage for his next project, where he would have been helping in the garden and with some of the children.  However, I asked him to come with me for a day and help me out at Jipe Moyo.  He did and 2 weeks later we are still working together with the help of another volunteer, Michelle from Canada.

We walk to school, approximately 30 mins, and occasionally we have the amazing view of the mountain, when the clouds are not around it:

The Nursery School is pretty full on for one person.  There are about 15 children in total – when they all show up – a very small classroom, and no desks.  The children are ages 3 – 14.  This means that we have approximately 6 children that cannot write, 4 or 5 that can, but they are all at different levels.  And then Brenda and Happy who are 12 and 14.  Happy failed her entrance to secondary school exam and therefore cannot go to school, as her family cannot afford private school fees for her.  With a Tanzanian volunteer, Dennis, to help us with some translation, and he can teach them Kiswahili and some Maths, and the 3 of us, we are able to split up the abilities and teach them for the 2 hours.  Nelson is another volunteer teacher, however, he decides to appear when he wants to , if at all.  Both of their English is not that good, but better than none at all I suppose.

With help of Dianne, a retired primary head teacher from Canada, we have learnt about Jolly Phonics for English and learning to read.  She's also has helped us with teaching counting.  She has given us tips on how to work our environment and things have been working out well.  We begin all together and do some sounds and repetition.  Then Rich takes the older children away and they work on English and Maths.

Michelle takes the younger children who cannot write a letter away and they do colouring or trying to draw circles etc.  I work with the middle range children in reading, sounds, maths with number lines and simple addition.  On Fridays, I take my computer and pull up some youtube learning songs.  The younger children love it as they've never probably seen a laptop.  Here they are watching and singing a long to 'The Wheel's on the Bus"

Monday's and Thursday's we make house visits to the sick.  It's as if we are doctors and they expect us to be able to help them out.  These visits are a little annoying, but we understand that it also helps with their social and emotional wellbeing.  We take a bag of Maize Flour so they can have Ugali and some food if they are struggling to feed their family.

Tuesday's and Friday's the women's care group meet.  We have been continuing to work on ideas for their small businesses.  This week they have made some more soap.

I have taught them how to create coconut bangle pieces (as I learnt in Fiji many years ago) and also shown them my friend Jo Robert's Futsies (anklets that go over the foot and hook on the toe).  They are inspired by them and Jo is kindly sending some elastic and beads from Perth for us and we will continue to create coconut shapes and aim to use local products for their jewellery making.  Everything has been an experiment, but they seem happy with whatever I have shown them so far and taught them so far.  I hope that when we leave, they are able to sustain these ideas. Find a local place to sell their products to tourists and other volunteers.  They are unfortunately relying on the volunteers at Hostel Hoff only to sell their products and this is not sustainable.  We have explained that many volunteers - like us - don't actually have a lot of money to buy much and they should focus on the tourists coming in.

Rich, Michelle and I have also spent the last week visiting schools to try and get Happy into an affordable school as we are willing to sponsor her.  This has been very difficult.  She is not allowed to re-sir primary school and the only secondary schools that will take her are private - as she failed the government tests.  In primary school, students learn everything in Swahili.  They then take a test in Maths and English and have to get a certain percentage.  In Secondary school EVERYTHING is taught in english.  So if you are bad at it, you really struggle.  There would be 1000's of young 13/14 year olds in Tanzania who are not at school because they failed their tests.  Volunteer projects like Jipe Moyo at least give them an opportunity to learn.. Occasionally, volunteers will come a long and offer to sponsor a child. But it is not easy.

We have found an English Medium Primary School who is about to start an afternoon program for children who aren't in high school and they are going to allow Happy to go there and stay in the Hostel there.  She currently lives with Grandma and aunt, and her parents aren't in the picture.  So we are glad that there seems to be some plan that we can put in place, and between the 3 of us, it's been made affordable too.

After work, usually around 1pm we may walk back to the hostel or into town for lunch.  Sometimes, we may stop at the local hotel for a beer and a swim.  Though, now it's rainy season, the storms roll in late afternoon:

        

              

All in all though, the last month has been very enjoyable.  We have both learnt a lot and there is so much we take for granted in our lives.

Here's a list of things that Tanzanian life gives us:

• Children shouting 'Mzungu' as you pass.  This means 'Caucasian'. Imagine us shouting 'African' whenever we passed one in the street!
• Power cuts during storms or just at random = cold showers too
• Hand washing our undies
• Dalla Dalla's = 16 seated minibus's that pack in 30 people (the only way of public transport)
• Pint of beer for $2
• Filthy Dirty feet with a nice sandal mark after a day at work due to dust or mud.
• Passing a little shack and buying a banana for 6 cents, or an avocado for 40 cents.
• Not wearing make up - ever! (ok maybe some mascara on a friday night out!)
• No desks in the classroom
• Using dirt to get kids to draw/write
• Chicken and Rice at most meals (or chewy beef with lots of bone or chewy fish) 
• Buying a round at the local club of Konyagi (gin) and tonic for 6 people = $4
• Lots of new friends at the Hostel
• Learning Swahili very quickly - particularly classroom instructions.
• Eating lunch in a fill your plate buffet place for $2.50 (depending on how much meat you get! Yes even Petch can get his plate for under $3!)
• Finishing work at 1pm (ish).
• Bloody nursery rhymes or songs getting stuck in our heads for hours.

I will have to add more when I think of it, but it's pretty refreshing keeping life simple, slow and carefree at the moment!