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.

Return to Tz

After 17 months at home we will return to Arusha on October 8.  I will be back at Olkokola Catholic Mission as a volunteer with the Australian Volunteer Program funded by the Australian government.  Steve will be a man of leisure.

I will endeavour to post regularly to keep you up to date with our adventures.

Jenny xx

This is me with Sinyati in 2019. We'll be working together again. 

And that's Oldonya Lengai in the background.