I have been working!

 

Three weeks to go and time is evaporating rapidly.  This post is a reminder that I am actually here working!

First staff meeting back after the safari with Liz and Sophie the head of the centre said she’d like the carpentry and masonry trainers to visit Arusha Technical College to see how they do things there.  Easily done, I thought!  You’d think by now I’d know better.  Emails to ATC went unanswered.  Three visits to the public relations office eventually gave the ruling that only the Rector could give permission. I really didn’t think he’d want to be bothered with what I considered a trivial request, he runs a residential college for 4,500 students, but I was WRONG.  I finally had an interview with the Rector three weeks later and he professed himself delighted to meet with me and insisted on going out to the carpark to meet Steve who was waiting patiently in the car.  We have since had the visit by the acting head of our centre and the two trainers and I’m hoping the relationship will continue as I think it is beneficial to both organisations.

I really liked this art work on a wall at ATC!

I’ve been chasing materials in Swahili about sexual and reproductive health for months and have been passed (by email) from one organisation to the next, to the next, until I was in despair of ever finding what I wanted.  Finally, on the same day as the ATC breakthrough, I met with the team from EngenderHealth who gave me fistfuls of brochures and posters on all the things I needed - enough for us at OCPH and the Olkokola RC Clinic as well!  I also picked up the brochures about the centre that I’d renewed with up to date information and had printed AND visited ECHO East Africa to organise some training for our AgriVet trainees in tree grafting.  Four successes in one day was nearly too much to bear!  And the lesson is this, it is only by actually visiting in person that you’re likely to have success!

When I was working at Baimbridge College I spent wasted energy lamenting teaching and learning time lost to excursions (other people’s!) and events but here the last month has been chockers with such disruptions.

Concentrating hard on her question

Comfy Care 12 is a local social enterprise organisation that has benefitted from Australian Volunteers’ support - grants and in-country and remote volunteer assignments.  Their team came to talk to our girls and women about sexual and reproductive health and menstrual hygiene.  This is such an important discussion to have openly - taboos around talking about it are a big problem - as girls are missing out so much on education, sometimes a week every month and often leave school early.  I hope ComfyCare12’s enterprise is a huge success!  Our girls were certainly happy with the information and discussion.

Lots of notes being taken

Then the next week it was Inherit Your Rights who came to visit.  Their Director, Winnie Manyanga, is such an impressive speaker - she had the trainees spellbound!  Inheritance is another area of life where women miss out in Tanzania.  Inherit Your Rights is doing wonderful work in this field.

Me with the team from Inherit Your Rights

Marilyn Hokororo from Afrika Wear and Design

Then we had International Women’s Day and another really impressive woman, Marilyn Hokororo, who kept the trainees entranced with her story.  We had some visitors from a local women’s cooperative who have a chicken raising enterprise.  They were really interested to hear what Marilyn had to say about the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurship as a widowed supporting parent and I think another mutually beneficial relationship has started!

The cake was especially good!

We had a special morning tea with cake and sodas and that made everyone happy.

In the week just finished the masonry, carpentry and agrivet trainees and trainers had a visit to Twende, another local social enterprise with a connection to Australian Volunteers.  The trainees learned about innovation and appropriate technology and will have a chance to do some innovating and invention themselves if they wish.

The Twende workshop at Nane Nane

Our trainers were by now wondering when they’d ever get a chance to do some training and so was I but the visit by Connects Autism Tanzania was scheduled for Friday and it was a whole day event.  This time the focus was on life skills and entrepreneurship and there was lively discussion and lots of questions.  This is another connection with the NGO community and one that I hope will continue.

Talk on financial record keeping - very important

And then we’ve had all the visitors to the centre! Showing people around and spruiking about our program has somehow found its way into my job description.  We had a group of Tropical Medicine experts come to visit on Tuesday.  Their tour was interrupted by a wonderful shower of rain - the first we’ve had in weeks! - and I couldn’t wish it away.  But it meant we were stranded in the masonry classroom during the heaviest of it and again teaching was interrupted!

Such a lovely gift!

On Friday as well as Connects Autism we had a visit from a delightful (just turned) 18 year old who wanted to share her birthday and her cake with others less fortunate than she is.  She and her family arrived not just with cake but also many of the staple foods we rely on - oil, rice, flour and beans - and some luxuries - biscuits and juice boxes.  Such a lovely gesture especially as she was sharing her precious time at home with us before returning to her studies in the United States.

Nai's first quiche

And I’ve still been doing some training of my own.  Our new cook at the mission main house is an expert in local cooking but not so au fait with the foods that westerners are used to so together she and I have been working on that.  Nai is so keen and such a quick learner.  We started with bread, which she is now making weekly, then carrot cake and pizza.  We have done salad, quiche, cauliflower au gratin and zucchini slice and next week we tackle pumpkin pie.  It has been such fun! 

We put pineapple on pizza here!

We also had a trip to Tarangire NP last weekend, our first and only for this block of time in Tz.  Look at Steve’s blog for lovely pics and lists of what we saw.

I’ll just put this one pic in - taken with my phone - of lions resting in the trees after a successful night of hunting.

My next post should be the last from here before we travel to Britain, thanks always for your interest and encouragement,

Love from Jenny

January

January has been a month of real highs and lows!

Having Liz and Sophie here was wonderful.  I have told them that when I am in my dotage (some days that doesn’t feel too far off!) that I will depend upon them to talk with me about ‘my’ Africa.  They will know what I mean when I say ‘school’ or ‘shop’ or ‘terrible road’!  It’s always a wonderful thing to watch someone’s reaction when they see their first giraffe in the wild and the girls were suitably impressed seeing these beautiful creatures.  

Liz and Sophie saw the Big 5 and did really well on big cats and antelope.  But more importantly they saw the reality of daily life for people here - the poverty and vulnerability but also the joy.  I’m sure the sights, sounds and smells of east Africa will stay with them and they will treasure the experience.  Liz did get a marriage proposal too - from my fruit and veg man - but she thought him too young!  They leave Zanzibar today tired and ready to be home.  It’s such a long journey and east Africa is way out of most people’s comfort zone.  Sophie was a wonderful traveller and she will have so much to tell anyone with the patience to listen.

There’s more on Liz and Sophie’s trip including excellent photos on Steve’s Blog as well as the trip to Kenya earlier in January in case you missed it.

 The situation at the Flying Medical Service is still difficult.  FMS was grounded in April last year and since then the director has tried all avenues to get back in the air so that the isolated people of Arusha and Manyara regions will once again have access to maternal and child health services, immunisation and emergency transport for medical care.  The situation is disheartening as the reality is that people who may have lived are dying because they cannot get to advanced medical care, and disease outbreaks such as measles among the young are being made worse because children are not vaccinated.  

This photo is from the FMS website.

Another more personal tragedy was the death on 18 January of Castissima, the much loved housekeeper and cook at Olkokola Catholic Mission.  She has worked here for over 30 years and her children from their infancy have all been part of the OCM family, particularly Richard who is one of the pilots.  Casti is so sorely missed.  I will remember her as one of the most wise, compassionate, kind and generous people I have ever known.  Castissima helped me with my translations of documents into respectful swahili - something Google Translate doesn’t always achieve - and that I will miss along with her excellent chapatis and pumpkin pies.  Her family will miss her in much more profound ways.  She still has children in primary and secondary school and has always encouraged them to high achievement in education which she saw as so important to their futures.  I hope their love and respect for the values she held will keep them on the path she wanted for them.   

Castissima William

Steve loves the end of January - with the last weekend comes the finals of the Australian Open and the return of AFL news.  He has that to look forward to as he plans our trip to Britain when we leave here in April.  In this I may have to intervene so it is not solely a tour of RSPB sites!   

More soon as our time in Tz enters its last 9 weeks.  Steve will try to get out a few  more times with local birder mates.  here is an example of what we saw yesterday on the Maasai Steppe near Simanjiro.

Nearly as big as a bird!

Love from Jenny 

Half way

 

Now I really am half way through my assignment and we’re trying to figure out how we’ll fit all the things we wanted to achieve into the remaining 13 weeks.  We won’t get to do the Mt Kili climb!  I will use up all my “annual leave” with the trip to Kenya and then Serengeti with Liz and Sophie so we’ll be restricted to weekends.  There are no public holidays I can take advantage of and we fly to London on Easter Monday.

Kenya was a very successful excursion - spectacular scenery and interesting animals.  Steve’s Blog will tell you all about it.  It was great to be able to walk in the forest at Castle Forest though we did have to keep an eye out for elephants!  The waterfall was pretty.  And wherever the British go in the highlands of East Africa they leave hydrangeas and fuchsias behind!   

Ashnil Lodge Samburu at Buffalo Springs NR was very nice though it reinforced the thing I dislike most about travelling in Africa - the tipping culture.  I never know how much is too much and how much is not enough.  I always feel as if I’m disappointing someone!  I saw all my favourite mammals and most of my favourite birds.

I found it interesting to look for similarities and differences between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.  One that stood out to me was the number of churches in Kenya.  The Roman Catholics and the Anglicans have mainstream religion sown up though the Methodists have a bit of a stronghold in northern Kenya. The RC and ACK churches and cathedrals were obscenely huge and ostentatious when compared with the very modest homes and schools around them.  Both seem to be in the midst of an ambitious building program.  The number and variety of pentecostal and evangelical churches was astonishing.  Most were a combination of Full Gospel, Deliverance, Healing and Transformation with a bit of Grace and Redemption thrown in and were clearly of the prosperity theology persuasion.  Huge tents for many of the pentecostal groups made me (uncharitably) think it was probably a circus inside!  The “Jesus Winner Ministry” was quite widespread but Glory Christian Church in Nanyuki was perhaps my favourite - who wouldn’t want to belong to a place for winners below the slaughterhouse and next to the prison farm.  I was also taken by a tiny corrugated iron shed that called itself the “Mega Church International” and another that was a “Faith Impartation Centre” rather than a boring tabernacle or cathedral or Kingdom Hall (yes, there are JWs as well as SDAs). The religion industry is doing very well in Kenya!  There were fewer mosques than we were used to and the Lutherans were nowhere to be seen but no-one was going to miss out on the chance to worship on any day of the week.

The only disappointment was on the last day when we were exploited (robbed!) because of the colour of our skin.  The caretaker of the public toilets near the bus station in Nairobi charged us Ksh100 ($1.20) each to use the facilities when I know the going rate is Ksh10.  And the taxi driver who brought us home from the bus station in Arusha charged Tsh50,000 ($30) when the Tsh20,000 we usually pay is generous!  The irritation this causes me is silly - we can afford to pay - but the attitude that we’re fair game for milking doesn’t sit well.

For me it’s back to work tomorrow.  I have 3 months to encourage / cajole the teachers to have their curriculum and assessment documents up to date and accessible on the centre’s computer and to have the Business Management lessons and resources squared away.  Other tasks will no doubt crop up but the  ones I need to get finalised are the ones on the assignment plan so everyone can be satisfied it was a ‘successful’ assignment.

The short rains have been poor in many areas around Arusha and my organisation is helping several hundred families with money to buy food.  Any crops that have had sufficient rain to grow won’t be ready to harvest for at least two months so the need is ongoing.  I have been able to help with the administration of the program - using Mail Merge to make labels for envelopes.  I have to type the Maasai names letter for letter as they are beyond my experience.  Here is a sample!

I am also working on a request for a possible AVI remote vol placement to help a hospital near the Ngorongoro Crater improve its fundraising capacity.  There is just not enough government money to satisfy the need and Endulen Hospital has been particularly badly hit.  So if you think accessing international philanthropic organisations could be your thing let me know!

We are so excited to have Liz and Sophie visit next week!  It should be the subject of my next blog.

Belated best wishes to everyone for the New Year,

Love from Jenny 

Two months in

Last week we ticked over the two month mark which is one third of my assignment, though it feels in some ways like half way as I’ve put in 9 weeks at work and will have only a further 10 weeks working next year.  I have one more week of this term before the Christmas break but I can feel things winding down. 

Making liquid soap involves a lot of stirring!

We do continue to be busy. Friday just over a week ago we had an unplanned and un-forewarned visit from a Lutheran Church team to teach the making of liquid soap as a possible entrepreneurial activity.  That took up most of the morning and unfortunately coincided with a (planned) visit by some Canadian occupational therapy trainees who had arranged to do a tour of the centre.  Oh well, we have to be flexible and chaos is the default.

Lunch at Four Points Sheraton

Monday last week was International Volunteer Day.  We had lunch out with the local Australian Volunteer staff and representatives from partner organisations.  The AV staff came for a visit to Olkokola as well to see the library and gym that AV grants have funded.  It was their first time to see the library even though it has been in operation for a few years as covid regulations have restricted their work related movements.  I’m pretty sure they liked what they saw!

Visiting the Gym

My tasks for this AVP assignment are well in train.  The agriculture leader has taken on the Business Management Training enthusiastically using the resources I’ve prepared and the trainees are enjoying the lessons, some with great success and some not so much!  They will all have 6 months next year to continue working on the program so I’m hoping they’ll all be well prepared for the challenges of running a successful business when they graduate.  The focus is mostly on money and record keeping 

Learning basic accounting

I have just added a lesson on ‘Quality Control’ to the syllabus.  A Tanzanian friend, half joking, told me there is no Swahili for that!  I could use this ruler to show that it can be a problem in many businesses but some would not be able to see the issue.  The tailoring group have been making more menstrual pads to a changed design which I hope we’ll be able to successfully market.  It meant a trip to town to find fabric and the tailoring assistant and I eventually found something that will do the job at the second-hand market behind the main shopping strip.  Between her directions (she doesn’t drive) and the horrendous midday traffic in the CBD I was forced into several illegal acts in completing the journey!  I still say it’s the traffic that will kill me - it won’t be the electricity as we rarely have any these days.

It still gives me a straight line I suppose

Friday on the drive to Olkokola Steve noted how quiet the roads were and the absence of school children anywhere.  We arrived at the centre where there was a definite festive atmosphere - I’d forgotten the public holiday for Independence Day so no work for me!  It turned out a bonus as we did the shopping on Friday and spent yesterday in Lake Manyara NP.  It was a lovely safari though with the lake so high at the moment some of our favourite spots are under water.  The Hippo Pool is gone.  The highlight yesterday was this beautiful Maasai Giraffe.  The patches are more incised than usual and really do look like snow flakes.

Beautiful!

Speaking of snow, we again saw Mt Meru with a decent dusting last week.  It doesn’t mean it was cold here (it hasn’t been!) and we also have not had the rain we desperately need.  Many families are in dire circumstances and the Olkokola Mission where I work is giving food aid to about 150 local families.  Even if the rain comes this week the maize and bean crops won’t be harvested for three months so the situation is ongoing.  At least the tourist industry is back in full swing so some families are experiencing better times.   

We've seen this a few times now

Today I am relaxing.  I need at least one day a week to sleep in and recharge my battery.  Like all rechargeable it is failing with age and doesn’t hold its charge as long!  I think this will be my last full-time work placement.  Much as I enjoy the work, the physical demands are a challenge.  

One week until the holidays start then full on planning for the Kenya trip and Liz and Sophie’s visit.

Happy Christmas to you all and very best wishes for the coming year.

Love from Jenny 

Getting sorted at work

 

I’ve had a month at work now and it’s going well. There are things happening on the curriculum front and more plans in the pipeline.  This new group of trainees are getting to know me and my ‘Mzungu’ ways. They were thrilled to know that I also am Maasai.  All sorts of other possibilities are opening up too so life is exciting.

My primary task in this assignment - apart from the never ending task of being less task oriented and more people oriented!! - is reviewing the curricula documented when I was here in 2020/21 and updating it.  Trainers are already coming to me with changes they want so that is going well.  They are not running a mile when they see me heading in their direction with notebook in hand!  Plans for Business Management training are also underway.

The carpentry boys have been busy making furniture for The Plaster House, a rehabilitation centre for Maasai children who have come to Arusha for surgery and need time in a safe place to heal with less risk of infection.  Here they are with 40 wooden stools completed a week ago.

The tailoring students have been assembling the new sewing machines they will be taking home when they have finished the course.  That was cause for celebration with smiles all round.  They have also started making the washable reusable menstrual pads that are so important to help women of limited financial means manage menstrual hygiene.  It should have happened months ago - note: When a man is in charge things important to women can get lost!  We have provided the materials needed to make the pads and each female trainee will get 5 to keep for herself.  Some that the trainees make will be donated to organisations that support women and there is also the possibility of collaborating with an organisation where an Australian Volunteers Program volunteer has been working over the last few months.  Some also will be sold from the centre's 'shop' to fund buying more materials.  We do have to have a sustainable business focus.   

In 2021 the Australian Volunteers Program gave a grant to the Olkokola Centre to enable the creation of an exercise room with gymnasium and physiotherapy equipment.  I have made this video for AVP and DFAT public diplomacy.  I was very happy with it and Sereya’s smile always makes me smile too!

Currently we have a visitor from The Netherlands staying at Olkokola Catholic Mission.  Anna is a pilot with KLM holidaying here to rest and recuperate after a difficult 2 years but also to visit a primary school in Tengeru she set up and funds.  On Friday I showed her a set of The Kagera Reading Program we have in the centre library.  It is a set of 60 laminated reading cards each with a story in English and comprehension questions.  It is like the SRA reading cards we used at school in the 60s (and something similar is still being used at Baimbridge now!)

Anyway Anna’s teachers were very excited and now I have to make three sets for her.  I’m sure the creator David Jackson will be very pleased when I tell him! 

On visa news, my visa application has been approved but I’m still waiting for my ‘Alien Card’ and passport stamp.  Steve will need to pop across the border in January to get a further 3 months tourist visa.

We have 4 weeks until the Christmas break.  Expect an update in early December by which time I hope we’ll have our holiday and visa renewal plans for Steve sorted.

Love from Jenny 

And we're here

 This blogpost will be about life here; it’s strange coming back to somewhere that has been ‘home’.  So much is different but so much is very much the same!

Me NOT buying curios

We are back living in Oliver’s Compound in Kiranyi village, Arusha.  A week before we left last year we had moved from Bamboo Cottage to The Loft and it is to The Loft we have returned.  It’s a big open space with an adequate kitchen and a bathroom down a treacherous staircase.  It has the wonder of hot water in the kitchen!  There is no functioning oven so Steve made us frying pan pizzas.

Our car has returned to us in excellent condition and now after two weeks is as filthy as it’s ever been with the dust.  The short rains - usually October and November - which allow two harvests a year have so far failed to arrive and people are starting to worry about food security.  If rain doesn’t come soon it will be a disaster far bigger than a dusty car (ndiyo, chafu sana as I said to the small girl who scrawled gari in the dust on the back window) and my choked sinuses.

I am not yet able to work - my visa has not been finalised - but I can visit the Olkokola Centre and talk to staff and students.  My friend Sr Jacinta at the Archdiocese is on the job and is insisting to the immigration office that I am here to do God’s work so why should they stop me! I hope it will be sorted soon so I can do more than ‘visit’.  I did go with the centre staff and trainees to Sanaa, a social enterprise organisation that makes beautiful things and where people living with disabilities have the dignity of work and earning a living.  More about Sanaa here and pics of our visit here.  

Things both beautiful and interesting!

What is abundantly clear is that I need to work on my Swahili.  All conversations in the workplace are in swahili and although there is plenty of goodwill and patience there is also an element of frustration.  I also need to work on my social media skills and make a small video about the exercise room that Australian Volunteers funded and is now up and running with a very competent Maasai physiotherapist Lengay who I finally met on Friday.  He had organised this volley ball game.

In the compound there has been a little change.  The staff is much the same and Gladness, the housekeeper, was pleased to have us back.  I don’t know that Rooney and Socksi, the dogs, remembered us but they’re used to us now.  Where there had been a huge clump of bamboo in front of our previous cottage there is now a frog pond and that adds to the variety of sounds.  We have the Evangelical Shouty Man at 5am followed by the more harmonious call to prayer from the mosque at 5.30.  The birds hit their peak at 6 am with Rüppell’s Robin-Chat most prominent.  During the day there is plenty of traffic in the newly named Bendera Street with evangelical shouting, particularly towards evening and on weekends, and regular calls to prayer. In the evening the frogs start at about 6.30 and they are LOUD.  Over night it is mostly quiet though occasionally various dogs in the area get excited and raise a ruckus.  We have squirrels which can be noisy on the roof.  Yesterday there was a wedding somewhere close with interesting musical choices.  We don’t come here for the peace and quiet.

We do come for the chance of wildlife watching.  Last Sunday we had a day in Arusha NP.  When I entered our names in the park register I was directly below the only other entrants for the morning - another Australian couple in a private vehicle!  This was quite weird.  So I spent as much time trying to spot them as I did giraffes and birds until we located them near Small Mondella and had a good chat.  They were a couple from Queensland, a bird watcher and her partner, holidaying in Tz for a month.

As I mentioned earlier, our street now has a name.  All the streets and lanes nearby have been named according to Apple Maps and the dry creek bed that runs the one and a half kilometres up to our place is Sakina Avenue! There are street signs going up everywhere and houses and shops are being numbered.  We are number 8.  I wouldn’t get too excited though - I don’t think home delivered post is going to happen and I doubt that if I told a boda rider I wanted to go to Bendera Street Kiranyi that he’d have any idea.  Still, I can put it on the official forms Australian Volunteers sends me as my residential address instead of the Farm Plot number I used to use.

Sakina Avenue

Those of you who see my fb posts know that Australian honey and Vegemite are freely available.  What is not available is muesli.  We used to buy a South African brand for about $6 for a 500g bag.  It was very nice.  It was in the big two supermarkets and a few of the smaller ones including two we go to regularly.  Now it is just not available.  The manager at Image Supermarket says they’ve tried but it’s not around.  Someone last night suggested that the increase in Safari traffic means the lodges have bought it all and the wholesalers haven’t caught up. Anyway, there is only Dorset brand (owned by King Charles’ Duchy of Cornwall) for 26,000/= (~$18) for a 400g box which is outrageous!  We did have a win with a 20,000/= toaster which works very well after jibbing at paying 160,000/= which is what Shoppers Supermarket wanted for a similar model.  I can make do with toast and jam for breakfast.

Pikelets for a treat on Saturday

I hope my next blog can be about work - that’s what I want to be here for - and you’ll all know soon how it goes; also keep watching for a blog from Steve with his perspective!

Love from Jenny 

ps Flying over UAE in the predawn I managed this shot through the plane window.