Shopping

This morning I have been to town to pay the bond and first month's rent on my apartment. I had another look it.  I think it will suit me nzuri sana! 

I did some shopping.  I came home with a mobile hot-spot modem, an electric kettle and three bananas.  The bananas have been my lunch along with a pot of coffee I can make for myself now I have a kettle.  The coffee is Kilimanjaro arabica and very nice.  the modem is 4G - a luxury that will allow me to see short videos of my grand-daughter Sophie as she develops rapidly towards walking!

The bus I took from town decided to terminate at Tengeru, a settlement about 5 km short of Usa River.  My conductor delivered me to another bus to continue my journey.  This second bus took the scenic route through the busy Tengeru market. This was the market where we had done our sokoni practice on Wednesday as part of our studies.

Tengeru market is the biggest second-hand clothes and shoes market in Arusha district.  On Wednesday I'm sure I saw enough goods to clothe and shoe all of Africa!  There was bale upon bale of t-shirts, jumpers, dresses and jeans!  They were mostly of the kind that the opportunity shops in Australia reject. It made me a bit ashamed of our throw away society and our patronising attitude to the African people. These and the shoes would come mainly from Europe and North America though I think there are Australian goods too - I saw a road worker wearing a Kangaroos beanie!

The clothes and shoes are laid out on low tables and tarpaulins for the customers to pick over. There is so much that some is left in plastic rubbish bags.  These goods would all have been donations to charity in their country of origin and now are being used by entrepreneurs to turn a profit but also provide cheap goods for the customers.  Win-win you might think but these secondhand goods have just about destroyed the local textile industry and have made making a living problematic for small business tailors and dressmakers.

Some of the merchants are mobile. In the picture below plastic thongs - thousands of pairs! - are being sold out of the back of a ute.

My kiswahili classes are going well though Friday afternoon Mwalimu Fidelis said my sentence construction was doing his head in!  I think we were all a bit tired.  I have homework for the weekend which I should get on to so I can have a day off tomorrow.
Next Saturday I will move into my apartment so my next post should be from Sunpark Apartments.

KiSwahili Language School Week 1

It's been a while since I spoke any serious swahili - it's over two years since my 10 day flying visit and nearly 3 years since we returned from our year in Bukoba - so this three weeks of language training was always seriously going to stretch my brain! Because I have some language skills I was put in the intermediate class. Argh!

My language class has only 4 students so plenty of individual attention and no hiding down the back of the room. Two of the other students are also AVIs who have spent time in Tanzania and the fourth class member is a German woman who has been living in Denmark and whose husband is employed at TCDC. Poor Catrin is having to translate in multiple languages in her head as well as contend with the j/y and w/v pronunciation issues of the germanic tongues!

KiSwahili is in some ways simpler than English and in some ways far more complicated.
Every letter in swahili makes the same sound every time, and every letter is pronounced, so it is easy to read aloud even without knowing the meaning. In English how do we explain to learners of our language cough, drought, ought, though and enough? We learned them as children and just have to remember because there is no fixed pattern!

In English we only have one noun class and adjectives don't change with gender (as they do in French) or when nouns are pluralised. Adverbs also only have one form. In kiswahili there are seven classes of nouns and each has its own prefixes for adjectives, possessives and relatives, and these are different for singular and plural nouns! Counting numbers can also be classed as adjectives so two could be mbili, wawili, mapili or one of several other versions depending on what is being counted! The picture below shows the chart for noun class prefixes and infixes that is in my work book. I have to check it every time so sentence construction is very slow! Conversations are currently chock full of errors! The handwritten page was part of Thursday night's homework.

On Thursday we spent an hour having conversation - kuzungumza - with a native speaker. I talked with Rukia, a member of the TCDC dance troupe. We talked about our children, travel and daily routine. On Friday I had to read my report to the class - it must have sounded as if I'd interrogated poor Rukia! Still, I was happy with the end product and I'm sure Australian taxpayers can see I'm working hard. This weekend I have still more homework to do to try to consolidate what I have learned before the next onslaught of kiswahili grammar!

Today I caught another glimpse of the tip of Mt Meru though it vanished behind the cloud again very quickly. I was walking in to Usa River township to do some shopping. I found a duka that sold kitchen stuff so I now have plates, bowls, cups, glasses and cutlery - two of each - and a pillow. I stopped at a little supermarket and bought a mossie net, some clothes pegs and toilet paper.  Now I'm set to move into my apartment in a fortnight!

Wildlife

The gardens here at TCDC are full of life.  I hear lots of birds though cannot always see them - and there are too many people about to be wandering around with binoculars!
Last night there was a little Bushbaby in the tree outside my door. They look so like our possums.

I like the insects - they stay still to be photographed. This lovely creature was about 5 cm from nose to tip.

And here are some Colobus monkeys - noisy critters but relaxing in the late afternoon.

With baby on its knee.

The language course has started well. A lot of what I used to know is coming back. I love the rules and the patterns of the grammar. I had to buy a dictionary though because I am useless at 'vocabularies'!

The meals here are excellent. I'm often not sure what exactly I'm eating but the dishes are varied and very tasty.

More about language school later in the week.

Kazi njema, Jenny.

MS-TCDC

Today we have reported for swahili language training at MS-TCDC at Usa River just outside Arusha.

The centre was originally set up by the Danish government and runs many courses to aid development in southern and East Africa. There are courses on issues such as governance, grant application and management, political accountability and child rights as well as language courses and academic courses.

On the way there from the Tulip I caught my first glimpse of the peak of Mt Meru. By the time I had my camera out it was back behind the cloud. I am still yet to see Mt Kilimanjaro but I have a year!

The MS-TCDC centre is set it in beautiful park-like grounds. The accommodation is on the campus here and all meals are provided. I will have been here a month before I have to cook for myself. The picture below shows my room - it is directly across the lawns from the bar and dining room.

I have been out with the binoculars but have only seen Maribou stork - and you don't need binoculars to see them. Maybe in the morning before breakfast I'll have more luck.

Visit to Umoja

I visited Umoja again today to start getting a feel for the place and what happens there - also to make sure I can find it on my own and get there by dala dala.

The dala dalas were still suffering from morning peak when I squeezed on to one heading for Njiro.  There is no such thing as a full minibus! I alighted at the correct spot and walked down the dirt path to the centre.  The askari on duty this morning is originally from Bukoba district so he and I had a chat about how lovely that part of the world is.

Umoja centre was bustling and cheerful. Some students were still finishing their morning porridge, others were waiting in classrooms for lessons to begin. One class was missing a teacher because other  duties had taken her away so I was asked would I like to step in and teach intermediate World Studies. Wow!  Of course I would!  What exactly is World Studies?  I was told the class had been learning about continents, and latitude and longitude. Ah, I reckoned I could handle that! The students were encouraging and quite enthusiastic so we made it through the hour long lesson and I think all of us learned something!

I walked back to the Njiro Complex, near to where I will be living.  The total walk was about 35 minutes including time to chat. This will be good! I'll save using dalas for rainy days, though I'll still have to slosh down the muddy paths at each end of the journey.

Back here at the Tulip the Ethiopian contingent had packed up and were waiting to head to the airport. We'll miss them, but we head to TCDC for three weeks kiSwahili language training on Sunday. Here is a photo of us all as we said "kwaherini" and "safari njema".

SEW

SEW - Supporting and Empowering Women - is an Arusha based organisation that helps HIV positive women support themselves and their families by providing employment. The women make bags of all sorts - shopping bags, smaller hand bags, passport covers and pencil cases - from recycled flour and rice bags, hessian and kitenge. The bags are exported for sale to Melbourne and other places around the world.

AVIs with Jackie, SEW's manager

Each bag comes with a note explaining the circumstances of the woman who sewed the bag. My bag was made by Albina, a 35 year old widow supporting a daughter. Employment at SEW allows her to pay her rent and take care of her family.

AVI Allison and Hadija

The organisation is seeking new contracts all the time - it is currently making prototypes of denim cushion covers from recycled denim for a Danish company.

SEW is one of many small NGOs that can really make a difference to disadvantaged women and children in Tanzania. The AVIs who visited the workshop today were really pleased to be able to support the women who work there by buying bags. 

Beginnings

It's wonderful to be back in East Africa! The contingent of AVI vols I'm with are a lovely mixed lot - a wide variety of ages, background and experience - and lovely to be with.  We're staying at the African Tulip in Arusha while we do our training then we'll disperse to our various placements. Some will be going to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, the rest will stay in Tanzania but I'm the only one staying on here in Arusha.

Our trip over was long and tiring.  A delay in Bangkok meant a longer layover than planned and sleep was difficult on the flight from Bangkok to Nairobi. Saturday we were all over travelling and grateful to be here in what is quite a luxurious hotel. We had our first briefing with Musa, the AVI country manager, then were free to explore Arusha.

Arusha is a delightful town, very like Mwanza but seems smaller and quieter. I'm seeing so much that is so familiar! The central commercial area around the clock tower had the usual array of touts wanting to sell something but they were polite and did not persist when told 'sitaki asante'.  I'm remembering kiswahili I'd forgotten I knew! The municipal gardens and road side plantings are just like Bukoba and Dar and Mwanza, as is the architecture and state of decay of many of the buildings. The museum had a dusty collection of stuffed fauna, some dioramas with rather unPC Australopithicus hominids and a beautiful collection of Swedish wildlife photographer Dick Persson's stunning photographs. It was like the natural history museum in Stonetown, Zanzibar, on a larger scale though without the dodo skeleton!

The African Tulip has a lovely garden with lots of birds - I've had the binoculars out and seen sunbirds, weavers and mousebirds. I'm not adept with the Birds of East Africa app on my phone so identification will have to wait until I get a copy of the book - there is one in the window of a secondhand book shop near the post office that I saw today and will buy tomorrow if I have time to nick into town during the lunch break.

Tomorrow I will remember to take my camera too and maybe "piga picha".

Packing

I have packed, unpacked and repacked. I will continue doing this up until Thursday, juggling what might be useful with what would be nice to have and staying under the 40 kg limit. On Friday I fly out of Tullamarine at 1415.

In many ways it is unknowable what will be useful, as Arusha and the placement will not reveal themselves until I get there. I won't know where I'll be living until I arrive so I'm packing for all different possibilities. 

I have packed backpacks and shoes for students at Umoja and whiteboard markers for the teachers. I have packed a cafetière and a jar of vegemite for me. Steve has 'ripped' a pile of films and tv series and they're installed on my backup hard drive. I'm still debating the Melbourne FC scarf - it's not so bad being a Demons' supporter just at the moment but the season has a long way to go!

Thanks to everyone for all the good wishes.

My next blog post should be from Arusha.

Jenny