for us that's an achievement in itself, trust.
It wasn't in our original plan to come to Tanzania, but then again what was? However, as the Kenyan elections were going ahead, and there was no guarantee that the uproar they caused last time would not be repeated, Camps International sent all there volunteers to Tanga camp for a few weeks until everything died down.
At first this caused a little stress with changing flights booked with STA etc., but aren't we glad about it now!! It's always great to tick another country off the bucket list and exciting to see the differences as we drove across the border and into Kenya.
After the four flights(!!) it took to get us to Kilimanjaro, surprisingly (due to our awful luck at the best of times), a smiling Camps representative 'Sammy' was there to greet us and drive to our campsite. Nothing to worry about! Our journey was amazing. It was just unbelievably cool to drive past every tiny village with millions of kids trying to get you to wave back at them, and jumping for joy when you do and millions of adults just sat in the shade, staring out at the world.
When arriving at the camp, we saw our soon-to-be friends for the next month hard at work and COVERED head to toe in mud.
Our accommodation for the next week was a reasonable enough looking tent. That was until the great storm hit!!! Our sponge mattresses soaked up what they could of the lake that surrounded us, the odd sock, passport or camera floating where we lay. We screamed for help but our constant 'guys?...guys?' was no help. In the morning however, we discovered the rest of our camp-mates had been giggling at our calls outside together, wondering why on earth we didn't just LEAVE the tent! hahaha
For our project work here, we were finishing building a school for the local village. It was great to be working right in the middle of the community to see who our work was benefiting as well as to be jumped upon constantly by the village kids shouting 'mzungu mzungu' (which means 'white person' by the way...fairly close in sound to 'mzunga' which means penis..hmm) at you and acting like your biggest fan. In the afternoons, we took in turns to teach the locals (students aging from 6 to 55) computers and English - and we learnt a little Kiswahili too. The others who were already in Tanga had been seaweed farming and de-worming the animals - so I'd thoroughly recommend staying for longer than the 1 month we did at Camps.
Next up...Muhakka!
Much love from somewhere that's not Jersey these days
Meg + Jod
No comments:
Post a Comment