To Tanga - East Coast

Some were swimming and the water was nice and warm
The 'beach' in Tanga



The last 30 minutes I stretched out and my parents rang, very concerned about amoeba and further testing so I talked for a while like this.

At Ohio for the crazy variety show

It is basically unheard of here for men to dress as women, yet it's a huge hit at Ohio
Especially the kiss!!!

This guy was new and he ate fire... he had 3 horns
The 'clowns'... glad I never looked like that

Sick and Homesick

This time, tonsilitus, and it has me depressed. I keep dreaming and thinking of home, even though I just had great week away on Pemba island (a very strange and disorganised holiday) but now all I can think about is that home is far away and so is the job that I love. I enjoy the job here, but it's been a lot of fighting and hard work (I guess it was the same back home) but it really makes a huge difference not having the same class all day, it's hard to develop love and respect with 700 children at once for only 40 minutes each week.
I shouldn't really whinge to everybody but I miss home and wonder if I can do another year afterall. It's only just hit me and I'm wondering why. Up until now all has been great and I've been motivated to stay another year but right now, I think if I could go back next week I might. Logically, I know that once back in Canberra, I would probably regret the early return but it's easy to ignore logic.
In my strange, low thoughts I feel the same as I was feeling just before I left Australia... when I was sad and didn't really want to go but had already sold everything and packed! Life is strange sometimes and I tend to jump right into it and then wonder why.
A more cheery blog is bound to be on the way with photos of our recent trip.
Miss you all

At home, sick

The open door to our room.
The communal tap we share... no water today.
Our bathroom complex... 2 toilets on the left and one room for bucket showers. They get cleaned with disinfectant every morning. We are all on a roster to clean them for a week... except for the men who live there... men don't have to clean anything. When it was our turn to clean, Simon helped me and even did it twice without me!
Not the best toilet to have when experiencing an amoeba infection.

My Favourite Neighbour - Freddy

While I was at home resting and recovering from amoeba, Freddy kept me company.
Now he's quite happy to come into our room and touch EVERYTHING!


I gave him some Ribena... the only thing I could drink while sick

Culture Day Concert

The drivers, cooks and askari watching the concert too
The invited orphanage, SOS singing their traditional songs
More Maasai clothes

Pictures taken with my camera... not by me

Kinder and Prep watching the concert
The special workshop group watching how it's done
Maasai costumes
The professional drummers... the one on the right is Beda, my teacher... he is excellent!
Kinder and Prep dancing

Traditions

Maasai dancing
Traditional poetry (which is a lot like rap)


This is the traditional bao game... I have no idea how to play it though

More Culture Day Pics... I'm so proud!

The professional dancers giving their lesson to the most musical children that I chose
Tea break after hard work dancing

Culture Day

About 4 months ago, one of the office staff here was complaining that the timetable didn't work out for the end of term 2 because of the public holiday on the 8th of the 8th. We had an extra day after all exams would be finished and Gemma had said only one Funday per year instead of the usual each term. So, off hand I said, "lets have a music festival day!" She said ok but ask Gemma. Gemma said, ok if you want to organise it then whatever. I said ok.
Over that first week I had so many ideas and thought and rethought through the whole thing and decided that to get all 700 children and all teachers involved it would have to be more than just music. So it became Culture Day... celebrating East African culture in many ways. I was asked to explain it at the very next staff meeting and there were so many questions, doubts, misunderstandings and disinterest.
I nearly gave up then.
So, since then I have been organising everyone for this big day. I assigned at least one Tanzanian teacher to each group and then us foreigners as assistants.
The activities the teachers chose to teacher were a great variety:
Chapatti cooking
Masai Beading
Weaving
Pottery
Traditional Poetry
Dancing
Singing
Drumming
Bao game
Drafts
Instrument making
Cultural Costume wearing

My plan was to split all the children up into different age groups and mix classes etc for a better experience... it was also my plan to have the children choose the activity they were to be in (giving them limited options of course). Everyone thought both of those ideas were terrible. Both ideas worked well however ( there were a few problems when the homeroom teachers of the youngest classes did not tell their children where to go and I had to escort many individually).
I asked each teacher to tell me their requirements for their activity and then tried to get permission to purchase or find it all.
I also wanted to invite a professional African dance and drumming group to school to perform to end the Culture Day afternoon... I found the group, went to hear them and got them for half price. An orphanage/school contacted me and wanted to come and perform and join in... they came, sang a song about HIV (the reason for most of the orphans) and joined in too.
I hardly slept the night before, I was recalling all the doubts and negative comments for Gemma and other teachers and the complete lack of faith they all had in me to be able to organise anything.
I spent the day running around the school making sure everything ran smoothly.
I had chosen 44 of the most musical, rhythmic children in the school to join the professionals for a special workshop and they were fantastic!

EVERYTHING WAS A SUCCESS!!!

The groups that taught something that could be performed had their moment on stage and then the professionals gave us an awesome show at the end, with the last 5 minutes inviting the teachers to dance up on stage!
I was completely exhausted as everything/everyone had relied on me for everything. I think I even surprised myself (I definitely surprised Gemma)!