The working week ends on Wednesday. Well the last two days supposedly consist of planning and team meetings, but personally I see them as a chance to catch up with the others. In any other context this is a scenario of dreams, four days a week saved to immerse yourself in the culture and see some of Tanzania. HA.
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| Often we would bump into big groups of excitable children whilst in town for meetings, and most of the time we were more than happy to have a break from all the stress and have a play and photoshoot with them |
Very quickly we are realizing just how restricted we are in terms of how we spend our free time. This is definitely the biggest negative which I think must come exclusively with volunteering with VSO-ICS. First they encourage socials to involve everyone, and I promise making decisions that sixteen people from two very different cultures is near on impossible. I mean, I get that we should be inclusive blah blah but obviously some things that us English tourists will find interesting is old news to the locals... Furthermore most of the things we have managed to agree on won't pass "risk assessment". We are in Africa and trying to risk assess to an English standard. Don't even get me started.
Aside from this our second day at Katoma B was significantly more successful. Rhoda and Frank turned the hours of sitting around into Swahili lessons for me, and by the time we left at 15:00 we had been given a list about three pages long of teaching aids the teachers had specifically requested.
We also made our first trip to our second school, Kemondo. This is the biggest school with over 1000 pupils, despite still only have 30 teachers. It's quite a trek to get there, but my goodness the views over Lake Victoria are amazing!
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| The kids at Kemondo are the most well behaved delightful people I have ever come across |
In other news today was Adam's birthday, so naturally I asked Rhoda, who in turn asked Mama Ester, who seemed to then recruit someone else to make a cake. Unfortunately this means I didn't really get to help with the process but I did get to watch and it was simply amazing! I'm still in shock about what can be done in a charcoal powered kitchen...
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| Charcoal oven... The pot is heated from both that top and bottom to create an oven inside where the cakes are |
