BETINA IN AFRICA

21 October 2016

Friday evening on the tracks at the now disused Moshi railway station… no trains run in Tanzania any longer so the station and the tracks have been turned into a place to grab a drink and meet with friends.

As I am sitting there, with a warm wind blowing in my face, sharing stories with newfound friends, a cold beer in my hand, hearing the goats behind me and looking up at the stars and Saturn, I am feeling the happiest I have been for quite a while.

I have truly put the stress of London behind me and am enjoying every moment and every experience.

Although I have never set foot in Tanzania before, I have felt a strange sense of familiarity with the place since I arrived. I feel comfortable, relaxed and untroubled, which is such a relief!

Following the beers on the railway tracks we had a nice dinner at a local Indian restaurant with great (ahem) conversation about ‘the law of potato’ (the rules about sharing different potato products) and whose life we’d want to take over for a week…a difficult choice but I went for Sir David Attenborough.

We eventually made it to the ‘Local Bar’ – yes that was the name of the bar – where we tried a pouch of the local spirit Konyagi. Quite nice drinking it neat from the pouch but also great with a Sprite chaser.

A really great evening and just goes to show that proper ‘hygge’ can also be found in Africa 😊 – because it’s all about the people and the atmosphere not about specific things.

Finally have a bit of time to write about where I am staying and who I’m here with!

Our project house is on the outskirts of Moshi town in an area called Msaranga on Umoja Street. (try to Google map it! 😊) It’s set back from the main road so is very quiet – apart from:

• the loud crickets
• the roosters waking us up around 5am
• a mad dog barking in the middle of the night
• the strong winds which seems to ‘arrive’ every night around 7-8pm

In spite of that, it’s totally amazing! We are staying in a lovely building, with some great outdoor space for eating, relaxing, prepping for school and socialising.

I started here at the same time as two other volunteers – Kate from New Zealand and Andy from England (pic below) – and luckily we get on really well. And this weekend we are off on safari together – cannot wait!

The team here at the project are so great as well. The company is called African Impact and they have many projects around Africa – the setup here in Moshi is really great and professional. More about them in a later post – mainly because I really want to share their pictures and I don’t have any of them yet 😀

Quite a few people have asked about the food here and I can absolutely say that it’s been great so far! But I do think we are quite privileged to have a couple of talented chefs working here at the volunteer house.

They make breakfast, lunch and dinner for us every day – for those of you who know what my diet has been like for the last 6 months, you will not be surprised to hear that this is the best I have eaten in a long time! And the most regular eating habits as well – having a routine is doing me good, although the expectation of losing weight whilst here is potentially being spoilt by this! ☺️

The meals are mainly vegetarian and a lot is inspired from Indian food it seems. Tomorrow we are going for a very traditional Tanzanian meal, though, but will post about that separately.

Here are some of the lunches and dinners we’ve had…lots of beans, lentils, chickpeas, rice, vegetables and occasionally a potato as well!

For breakfast we have something warm every day mainly egg-based or pancakes along with fruit.

The most traditional breakfast we’ve had is ‘maandazi’ – locals would eat it with a cup of chai (tea) but I have decided to eat them like Danish ‘æbleskiver’ – they are very good – proper comfort food, taste a little donut-y.

And just one quick word re. beverage as well, now that food has been covered.

There’s NO Diet Coke in this country. Shock horror! Actually I didn’t expect there to be any fizzy drinks as such, so am quite happy with a Coke Zero or Diet Pepsi now and then…even had a full fat Coke on the weekend! Otherwise we drink a lot of water…to save the plastic bottles, the chefs boil water for us each day for our water bottles.

And when we have enjoyed a beer or two (no alcohol allowed at the volunteer house) in one of the local bars, we have chosen Kilomanjaro beer. It’s excellent! 🍺

This is my last post about my hike on Saturday. After the waterfall and banana beer experiences we hiked to a little village within the Chaka tribe and visited a family for lunch and a coffee making lesson.

They were incredibly welcoming and the lunch was amazing (as is all the food here actually, but more about that later)…and I was totally charmed by the little girl in the family – so gorgeous!

As we were enjoying our meal, the father came to apologise that we were not able to sit in the normal spot because there was a big family discussion/meeting about killing a goat…we don’t have enough of those meetings!!

After lunch it was coffee making time – and for every process there was a different song / chant to encourage the person carrying out the task. It was a lot of fun – so many steps to have a cup of coffee…which I of course didn’t like anyway but I tried it at least!

Those two guys above were the guides! One called Innocence and the other name I have forgotten – which will not be a surprise to any of you!!

Oh and here’s a video of one of the chants – was hilarious, and everyone got involved. 😀

More from yesterday’s hike…

Before this video, we had hiked down for about 35 minutes. We met a chameleon (check out my Instagram pics) and learnt more about different plants – this time we found one which had leaves like sandpaper, so they are used to sand the wood etc. I took a couple back with me thinking that my feet could really do with a bit of a ‘polish’ but didn’t seem to work, so they are still rough as!!

Managed to get in the water – and ‘oh my!’ (just for Dustin!) it was freeeeeezing, but it was so much fun.

We (I did the hike with an American girl called Vynessa) then decided it would be fun trying to get sort of behind the fall – difficult to get there, so many slippery rocks and little cave like passages and when just in a bikini it was a little awkward, I must say! But found a large stick (felt a little like Gandalf) and the guides helped us out! It was as if they could not feel the pain of the rocks!

But it was worth some natural ‘foot massage’ – a truly amazing experience!

So many things to tell about today…but let me start with alcohol, it is Saturday after all.

On the hike today we came across a local ‘bar’ which served banana beer… and the wonderfully friendly people invited us to sit with them for a taste.

How can I describe it? Well, it definitely had a banana taste but not so much a beer taste. It’s not nasty, but it’s warm and a little lumpy which makes it difficult to drink a lot of.

Although that didn’t stop these guys – a couple of them a little worse for wear [read: plastered] at midday!

So, instead of champagne Saturday it became banana beer Saturday – and not a bad substitution, but probably not one I’ll repeat! 😉 Cheers!! 🍌🍺

14th October 2016

Today is a national holiday in Tanzania – a celebration of the first president of the country after independence. Therefore, no project work and instead an opportunity to scope out the local area through a walking tour this morning.

We learnt about a variety of medicinal / useful plants – some used to cure malaria and illness in cows, some used to make rope and ladies wigs – apparently 70% of women here use wigs if they want to have long hair – and some to use for making toothpaste and using as a tooth brush!

We also tried to play the local drums – can say with certainty that I am not a natural!!

I came away with a lot of wonderful photos, which I still have to work out how to get from my camera onto my iPad – as well as a red face, a flower for my hair and dirty, dirty feet!!

For the rest of today I’ll be doing lesson plan prep for next week – was supposed to have been done yesterday but I was a little slow – especially as I am planning a brand new course for us to teach after the first community class for those people who want to learn about career planning, writing CVs and cover letters etc. Am so pleased that I can contribute with something new.

And tonight we’re heading into Moshi town centre for a bit of shopping, exploring and dinner.

The weekend is also full of great plans – more about that later…

 

 

12th October 2016

Over the past couple of days, we’ve been lucky to receive some Swahili lessons from one of the guys working here – his name is Prosper, a softly spoken young man who has the patience of an angel!

The title of this blog means ‘good evening’ and the majority of the words we have learnt so far are greeting words – it’s a big deal here! Seems you have to ask how people are doing in many different ways – also dependent on the age of the person you’re greeting!

It has been sooooo long since I last learnt a new language. I keep getting all sorts of French words into my head for whatever random reason – it’s not at all similar!! And my French is pretty crappy, so cannot understand where it’s coming from!

So in short, am not finding it easy and although Swahili is quite a simple language, I am still struggling to get the right words for ‘my name is’.

But I have nailed ‘kaa chini’ [sit down] – essential for the ‘babies’ class!

And now it’s almost bedtime – we are 2 hrs ahead of London and 1 hr ahead of Denmark here…and it seems like I just need more rest here…no ‘stress adrenaline’ to keep me going, I guess.

The working day is actually quite short – and I wouldn’t really call it work either – it’s 3 hrs in the morning and 2 hrs in the afternoon! But the energy spent on getting to know new people, new language, new skills, new culture is draining…should get easier next week though.

So ‘usiku mwema, lala salama’ [goodnight, sleep well] – and until the next time!

 

 

11th October 2016

Explaining my first couple of days here in Tanzania succinctly is impossible. Too many impressions, experiences and thoughts. So first let me tell you a bit about what I’m doing here.

Today was the first full day of ‘teaching’ – and I use that term loosely as this week I’m just supporting the real teacher. We started the day with a community class for English language skills, a class of students of any age and different circumstances. Some adults wanting to improve their English and some teenagers who might not have passed their school level and waiting for the next test or perhaps their parents are not able to pay for their higher education…but what they all have in common is that they just want to learn. The topic this week is culture – so tomorrow I am sharing a little about Danish culture as well – I think bacon, Lurpak & Lego should cover it! 😉

After that it was the ‘baby’ class which consists of fifteen-ish 3-4 year olds! Yes, I know what you’re thinking…me too! And it is utter chaos… but the kids are totally adorable, instantly attaching themselves to my leg shouting ‘teacher, teacher, teacher’. They are so lucky to have the opportunity to start learning English this early… Apparently it is a big issue in Tanzania that the primary school curriculum is all in Swahili and secondary school is all in English, so their English is therefore often not good enough for the kids to pass each level and they drop out of education.

And finally, this afternoon we were @ the tourism college. Some of these guys & girls are studying hotel management – so hoping that I might be able to support them with some of my knowledge over the next three weeks.

Oh and…Got my first mosquito bite and my feet are already doomed to be permanently red from the soil, it seems! More on that, my accommodation and the people later.

Before I get into some of the ‘bigger’ thoughts, I just wanted to share a few pics from my leaving party (thanks for the collage, Elin)! Thank you to all who came to give me such a great send off – I had the most wonderful evening catching up, dancing and generally just having a lot of fun!

And also a HUGE thanks to everyone who helped me get ready – whether it was packing up the house, moving the contents of the house into storage (pics below) or listening to all my stress and concerns – I’m so sorry! 🙂

And finally (this is like a bloody Oscars speech!!), thank you for all the lovely messages before I left and on my arrival here. Means so much when travelling alone!