November

It is now a month since we left Hamilton and such a lot has happened!  In Victoria no new cases of covid19 and the beginnings of opening up to the rest of the country.  Now we could possibly visit Tasmania we are on the wrong continent!

At Olkokola there are 38 new students with a wide range of disabilities and educational experiences.  The only common thing is no English! So I am being stretched and having to relearn quickly all the Kiswahili I’ve forgotten in seven months lack of use.  The younger students in particular talk to me in rapid Swahili and are nonplussed that I do not understand.  For staff meetings I rely on google translate and prepare what I need to say.  Usually we are able to communicate well.  But in the classrooms sometimes I just have to hope for the best! It seems to work.

All the students have done a mathematics diagnostic test - 16 questions in 20 minutes ranging from counting to applied problem solving involving fractions - and those who are capable introduced to the program of individualised learning.  They are also able to use the library to read and borrow books. We are away for the next three weeks and the students will be going home for Christmas just as we get back.  Small group classes on specific topics will start in January.

We had a quick trip to Kenya to Amboseli NP last weekend.  That meant crossing the border at Namanga where the Corner Hotel is to be found. (Photographed for our David who worked at its namesake in Richmond.)  

The park has an extensive wetland system and is home to many birds both dryland and water birds including migrants from the northern hemisphere that travel to Africa for the winter. We had a lovely time - very relaxing and we* saw 16o species of bird.  Also many hippos, antelopes and elephants.  No giraffes were seen though they are supposed to be there.  Luckily we saw them along the road up to Namanga so I was happy.

Next week we travel south to Iringa, Ruaha NP and Mikumi NP among other places.  Steve has written a full report on the Kenya trip and will do the same for the trip south.  You’ll find it here.

More soon, love from Jenny

* well, Steve did and told me about them!

Back in Tz

We are back in Arusha and busy making plans for the next 9 - 12 months.  It will be a mix of work, less than before, and travelling - there is such a lot of East Africa we are still to see and many places we want to revisit.

Our Australian Volunteer Program assignments were terminated in April and final reports on those have been done.  Now we are free agents and not committed to nine to five, five days a week.  I do intend to continue working at Olkokola Centre for the Physically Handicapped at least a couple of days each week and have been thinking about what I can achieve there.

Task one will be getting to know the new students and teachers.  We have a new teacher in Masonry and a new teaching assistant in Tailoring.  I will really miss the ones who have gone, they had been such a support to me.

 

We have 38 new students.  One of them I know I have met.  I talked with her first in her village - a remote and isolated place up near the Kenya border.  She had become paralysed below the waist as well as developing a fistula as a result of the protracted birth of her second daughter. Either condition is tragic, to have both is catastrophic.  She is lucky to have a family who have supported her and looked after her.  Together with the local Catholic priest we were able to get a wheelchair for her and organise surgery to repair her fistula - this was in August last year - and now she is learning tailoring on a hand operated sewing machine.  Her family is looking after her daughters while she is at OCPH.

This was taken August last year  - it is the 'road' to her village.

There will be another 37 stories to learn about and 37 bright and optimistic people to get to know.

Task 2 will be updating the website, here if you’ve not seen it.  I need some pictures of our new students and teachers. I’ll want pictures of them in my education resource room reading the books and practising their mathematics skills.  I’ll want pictures of them proud of the skills they are learning and the independence they are gaining.

Tasks 3 to infinity are yet to be determined.  A lot of conversations need to be had to work out what is possible and what is desirable.  There will be the inevitable confusion, frustration and misunderstanding - that goes with the territory - but fun and laughter will be had, relationships will be strengthened and small, sustainable steps will be made in the right direction.

I look forward to sharing it all with you through this blog, and I leave you with some giraffes just because I can!

Love from Jenny

The world has changed since my last post.

We are back in Hamilton having left Tanzania Monday March 23 - now three weeks ago.  The aeroplane tickets saga is a post on its own but suffice to say I’m on first name terms with Judy from Ethiopian Airways.

I had started packing.

Our departure from Arusha was rather rushed in the end.  We woke on Monday Mar 23, still just half packed up, to the news that our Emirates flights, organised by AVI and scheduled for that evening after a flight with Ethiopian via Addis Ababa to Dubai, had been cancelled over night.  I emailed the AVI travel agent and we planned for staying in Arusha.  I rang my brother Cam for his birthday and told him we wouldn’t be leaving after all.  Five minutes later the agent ordered us straight to the airport and promised tickets for the Qatar flight.  So suitcases were untidily finalised, keys left with a neighbour to empty the fridge and hurried and most unsatisfactory goodbyes said to guards and housekeepers - no hugs and no language to explain why not! We flew via Dar es Salaam and Doha to Perth and then by Qantas to Melbourne Reagan’s boys arrived with our car and we drove straight home.

Curios that made it home, there are more still in our house in Arusha!

It’s strange to be home.  We survived our 14 days quarantine with the help of Toby as well as several friends who shopped for us and dropped off meals. (Everyone has wanted to be helpful!)  My first trip to the supermarket showed the reality of what we’d read about in the newspapers.  No toilet paper, no rice, no pasta, no flour. People were shopping like automatons - just looking straight ahead - no smiles, no greeting.  It was very unsettling.  But now we’re into the new rhythm of life and planning for when we’ll be able to return to Tanzania.  Our assignments with the Australian Volunteers Program have been officially terminated and I have submitted my final report.

Library monitor Maria made sure all books were returned

We tried to tie up loose ends before we left Arusha.  It was very difficult as so much was in a state of disruption.  A decision was made by the centre where I worked to send the trainees home early for Easter.  All the books were returned to the library.  I knew I would be returning to Australia before the decision was made to close the centre so all the self education resources are prepared and ready for use.

We had bought a laptop computer to replace Steve’s MacBook that died after a whisky-related accident and we have left it to be used by staff at the centre.  It has all the documents I was working from so trainers will be able to update and/or repurpose whatever they’d like, and reprint the most useful worksheets.  My laminator and several hundred pouches are there to be used as well.  As with our departure from our home in Sakina, leaving the centre was for me so difficult as there could be no hugs, and explanations were too difficult.  The trainees had been evacuated swiftly - before I arrived on the Friday so I missed saying goodbye to most of them - but the ones who still remained enjoyed the lollies I’d brought to be shared into pockets for their journey.  The Flying Medical Service pilots were all out on various duties too, and the Dispensary staff run off their feet as is typical on a Friday so it was a rather dismal farewell.

We will return to Arusha when we can - we still have a house and car there, and a granddaughter who has been promised a safari in Tanzania.  Whether it will be later this year or not until next year, or even the year after, remains to be seen.

My quarantine task was painting the deck that had just been finished before we left Hamilton in March last year.  It's all ready now for future parties.

Love from Jenny

Progress

The seasons just don’t know what they’re doing.  The ‘Long Wet’ seems to have started after a very short and wet ‘Short dry’.  Heavy rain over night one day last week translated to snow on Mt Meru that was there until lunchtime.  Mt Meru is in our ‘backyard’ though it is often shrouded in cloud and we don’t see it for days at a time.

I have spent February and March working on my Community Service Grant project funded by The Planet Wheeler Foundation (The family that started Lonly Planet Guides) through AVI.  It has the glorious title Olkokola Centre for the Physically Handicapped Self-Education Resource Centre.  The people here call it Maktaba (the library)!  And it is a library with the book borrowing going well and (so far) only one book having gone missing.  The student monitor in charge of borrowing is very strict!

I use it it as a small classroom.  I love my small maths classes - I feel like I’m doing something totally practical.  The masonry boys are doing calculatons on how many bricks are needed to build various size walls and houses; the carpentry boys are problem solving on how many pieces of timber of can be cut from various lengths of wood; agrivet are doing seed and fertiliser rate calculations; and tailoring are learning “fractions for inches and decimals for centimetres!”  Everyone is learning about time and money.  Over the next few months I will need to work out how I can make the learning more student initiated with the new group that start in August - we’ll be down to our last few months here by then.

I’m also getting all the resources I ‘ve been making sorted and packaged so they can be used independently.  They  love playing with the 'money'. 

The centre where Steve works is just down the road from my work so I took our Agri-Vet students on an excursion there last week.  ECHO is a resource we need to make more use of.  All our students could learn so much about the high nutrition plants ECHO is promoting, and it's information that would be so useful when they return to their villages.

 Our centre is very agricultural - this was the view out of the library window on Friday.

Our students, when they leave, take with them the tools of their trade.  In February 28 brand new sewing machines and stands arrived and had to be unpacked and assembled.  Then they were disassembled and repacked.  Carpentry and masonry hand tools have been bought as well and the container is chockers with the gear that students will take home.  The carpentry boys are busy making the wooden chests that each student will have to hold their equipment.  Everyone is so excited!  Though ‘Graduation’ isn’t until June they can see the end in sight. 

 Today is International Womens Day.  On Thursday I put up a little poster saying (in Swahili) “Women hold up half the sky”.  This is a quote from Mao Zedong. One of the boys protested.  He told me “No teacher, men hold up half the sky!” Hmm.  More work on fractions needed!

I couldn't resist this one

We’ll be back in Australia (we hope!) in the two weeks around Easter.  The coronavirus could be an issue if the PM and his government are still looking for distractions from their increasingly brazen transgressions - no point going home for two weeks self-isolation, justified or not!

Maybe see you for Easter, otherwise Karibuni you’re all welcome here in Arusha! 

Love from Jenny

Back at work

It’s been three weeks now since we returned from Serengeti (and we went back to work!  We’re not just here to safari) and two weeks since we farewelled our friends Lou and Rob back to Australia. If you’d like to read the tale of our safari — long version with excellent pictures — go to Steve’s blog where the story is there in 3 instalments.  Suffice for me to say we had a lovely time (you can’t see too many giraffes and flamingos) and it was great to relax after a stressful and tiring 8 months of work though safariing can be stressful and tiring in its own way. (Again, see Steve’s blog!)

The trainees at Olkokola have been back for 4 weeks and have been very busy.  The carpentry boys have been making the furniture for the new education room.  Last year were awarded a grant by the Wheeler Foundation to set up a self education room / library and I have been working on that.  All the self education resources I have been developing will be housed there and our trainees can work at their own pace in their own time on literacy, numeracy and other skills.  The carpentry boys were also working on a cupboard for The Plaster House which they were rightly very proud of.

The masonry boys have been working on water diversion infrastructure — drains and channels — which is getting a workout currently as the ‘short wet’ goes on and on.  It doesn’t look like we are going to get a ‘dry’ before the ‘long wet’ starts.  The boys also helped the carpentry trainees on renovations to the education room which has a new ceiling, new power points and light and is freshly painted.

The tailors have been busy making school uniforms as the new school year began but have also made the first hundred washable pads for the 4AllFoundation and another 120 that female students and teachers have been given.  We are in the process of setting up the enterprise with proper book keeping and inventory management as an example of how a business should be run,  Everyone should be able to see that minimising waste increases profit — an economic, environmental and social win!

I haven’t forgotten the Agro-Vet trainees.  I discovered a Kenyan public television series called Shamba Shape Up.  It gives good advice on all aspects of farming and livestock management in upbeat 30 minute episodes.  I have downloaded the swahili language versions of all 9 series (nearly 90GB!) and they are on the centre’s laptop computer.  I also indexed the 168 episodes so they could easily find the relevant ones to the topic being studied. 

I have started working on a website for the centre.  Have a look at it if you have a chance and send me feedback.  Here is a link. It is still a work in progress so ideas to progress it will be gratefully received.  You could challenge yourself with the Swahili version!

Sometimes I feel useful at work, sometimes I don’t, but being part of this community is fun and uplifting and the welcome I receive every morning makes my day!

And it's not all work - Australia Day BBQ Sunday last, welcome home to the landlord party Tuesday night and on Thursday night the inaugural Rotary Club of Arusha West Trivia Night at which our team - the NIDA Needers (a story for another day!) - came 3rd out of 23 teams

We'll be home in Australia for 2 weeks around Easter, maybe we'll see you then! Love from Jenny.