survived 2 weeks
19 01 08 - 19:06 Hello!We've moved out to the new school at Usa river now & our room is starting to look a bit more like home.
The boys moved into the boarding house on wednesday, and it was amazing to be part of. For many of them it was the first time they'd had a shower, or their own bed, they were noisey as all boys are, but so grateful to be there.
Three kids were ill on the first night with over-excitement!
The boarding "masters" are mostly young teachers, still in university, but they are a very capable bunch, a couple of them have done similar work in orphanages in the area.
I'm commuting daily on the school minibuses now between the new & old campuses leaving the IT job at 2pm in order to get back for the kids coming out of school at 3, with very little time off from either job, I'm tired, but very happy.
Our role in the boarding house is mostly to be a "presence" in case the staff have problems & need help, as well as to be on hand in case of emergency. First aid is not widely taught over here, so our rudimentary skills, while we hope are never required, might come in handy.
The electricity supply issues mean that the school has provided old-fashioned kerosene storm lanterns in case of a long outage at night (quite common). Those of you that know me well will know that level of technology has a special appeal :) in fact so much of the infrastructure/technology here is from the 60's that it's a bit like an odd time-warp.
We've just been in to Arusha town for dinner at "Jambo coffe shop" which doesn't look much from the outside, but the food was excellent & the place was quirkily laid out with lots of local artwork on the walls (for sale!)
Arusha is a very strange place. On one hand you have people who have almost nothing, and live in roughly built shacks, and not 200 yards away, will be someone flying down the road in a 2008 Range Rover Sport, (saw that on thursday) it doesn't make any sense.
I had a chat with a local bloke yesterday, who thought that English people lived for free in houses built by the government! It took a lot of explaining, but when I told him what the average house price was in the UK, he couldn't wrap his mind around it.
250,000 pounds (apparently the current "average") works out at about 500,000,000 (yes 5 hundred million) tanzanian shillings. To give you an idea, a good job in an office here might make you 2-3 million shillings a year, and a I saw a 10 year old landrover defender for sale for 13 million...
That's as close to politics as I want to get! It's warm, the countryside is beautiful and the Tanzanians are justifiably proud of their country.
Ohh, you should see the rain here! it's only the "small" rainy season at the moment, but I've got a video clip that I'll upload soon, of the rain coming down so hard that the playground was under 3 inches of water in the space of 20 minutes!
We may need someone to post us a rubber duck! (or wellies!)
right, getting sleepy now, speak to you all again soon :)
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