Emails from Singida 5
Back in Singida so have time for another update…
We toured a fair few of the HAPA projects both yesterday and today – and spent the night at the Mghumbu camp – so strange to be in a camp with many things the same but others completely different! Mghumbu is greener and has a lot more trees and the camp is more secluded. However we have a much nicer view! They also get their water from a hand pump, wheras ours is delivered by hose (when there is diesel and no problem with the pipes).
The tour included schools, a water project and a dispensary – it was great to see them all up and running and actually working – and to get a good idea of what the dispensary we are building will look like when finished.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to interact with the community as much as possible – for example – teaching 45 minute English lessons in the morning, visting one of the teachers houses for breakfast (pancakes!) and lunch, visting a couple of other family homes and going to the party at the school.
The party was for a teacher who is leaving – I was asked to sit at the head table even though I didn’t even know him! Then everyone stood up and gave introductions – so I did so – and used most of the Swahili I know so sat down feeling quite pleased with myself – however – then they went round again giving more in depth speeches – the head teacher whispered to me that they’d like to hear more from me next! Oops should have saved something! Managed to cobble together another couple of sentences with the help of my phrase book! Then they wanted me to dance on my own for the first dance! I talked the English teacher into joining me though.
Anyway as you can see it is an amazing experience and I’m having great fun. Tomorrow we get a 5am bus to Katesh, Sunday we climb Hanang and Monday we return to Mvae for my last week. We should be painting the dispensary – I think that will be pretty satisfying. Then we will have a leaving festival and cook for some of the villagers. Then I plan to go to Arusha and go on Safari with Shane (Mvae) and Hughi (Mghumbu). I have a total of 3 weeks travelling/holiday in Tanzania after the project.
