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Volunteering week 2 and 3 - 11th June to 30th June
Camp life
A typical day in camp sees one of us (Tim) get up around 6:45 to start the charcoal fire for breakfast and coffee so we can be ready for work by 8am. It's handy having the work site so close because you can pop back and forth as you please. We normally take a break for a fresh orange at 10.30 and then back to work until lunch time. Sometimes we go back to work after lunch until 4 if there's enough work for us however sometimes there's only enough work for the fundi's (technicians). We start preparing dinner around 4:30/5pm so we can eat around 7pm and we're not cooking in the dark (sun sets around 6:45). Some of us walk up to the kiosk to get Kilimanjaro beer (made from corn so I can drink it, Yay!!) or Kiboko - the locally made banana wine that's horrible (although Tim likes it) but ridiculously cheap. On Fridays we have Friday night party night where we kill, pluck and cook chickens after which we have a bonfire and relax with our brews after a long working week. On Saturday's we get picked up by HAPA around midday to head into Singida our one day of hot showers, television and Internet access before doing our weekly grocery and goody shop (pringles, chocolate and gin are in high demand) then heading back to camp. Originally when we stayed in the hotel we found it more like hostel standards, it's amazing how your standards of luxury reduce after staying in camp! Camp life is great, very relaxing and peaceful but it's nice to have a cup of tea without having to build a fire and wait 20 mins for the water to boil or order chicken and rice and have it brought to you instead of killing, plucking and cooking it which takes about 4 hours. On his second day, Tim actually killed a rooster for dinner. The first night we stayed in camp he woke us at 4:30am so he didn't last very long, the rooster that is not Tim. Not an enjoyable experience to kill a chicken so I'm told, I can't even watch so I just hide out in the "kitchen".
Food
We've actually been eating really well, once we got used to cooking on charcoal stoves and using different ingredients available to us we started making lots of things like Irish Stew, Veg curry and chilli beans. Lunch is generally leftovers or some pilau rice and chapati bought from Mama D the local take away / woman with a bucket of food to sell. On the second week we discovered tinfoil in Singida town which was a God send and allowed us to make baked potatoes on the charcoal stove. In the second week Tim and Darren built a brick and clay oven by hand (barechested of course..man make oven). They weren't too happy when the locals came to help with the chimney and steal their glory at the end, nevertheless it meant we could roast chicken and veg and even attempt (yes attempt) baking scones and bread for gluten intolerant me! Cooking itself is an arduous process, from sifting through rice (bought loose) for dirt, stones and bugs to stoking the fires half way through cooking as the charcoal dies off after about an hour. I worried about the food situation before I left particularly because of my gluten intolerance but rice and beans are a big staple here and you're just buying and cooking for yourself so it's no problem to cook something descent and for a busy body like me it's quite enjoyable and fills the evenings.
Work
When we arrived there was already an outside shell of the medical dispensary built with home cooked clay bricks. The villagers started the building 6 years previous working with whatever funds and time they had. They are desperate for the dispensary to be built as the nearest doctor is currently at least 50km away. With no means of transport except walking and very little money for extravagances such as a doctor's visit, it's very difficult for them to seek medical advice let alone try to help someone in an emergency. After applying for their help HAPA came in and took over the building work using a mixture of local Fundi's (technician in Swahili), local villagers who volunteer and take shifts to come help and of course the mzungo volunteers (us). The work is very basic and manual, we're laboring for the 6 fundi's and the HAPA boss man Mr. Brown. Issa our guard also works with us everyday and is the hardest worker on site. The work is:
- Manually pickaxing a 6ftx8ft hole that's already 5ft deep. The locals make it look easy but its not! This will eventually be turned into a long drop toilet for the medical dispensary and needs to be 12ft deep by the time we're finished.
- Lifting the dirt out of the hole using buckets to make a pile. As there's no wheelbarrow, we then fill and carry the buckets for about 20m to the building where the dirt is used to fill in the floor. Over and back, over and back with our buckets. Tim can carry more in one run than me and Polly combined. The guns need some work!
- Carrying bricks from where they have been delivered by the cow cart (brought by cart from down the field where they're baked) to various locations on the site where the fundi's will need them or passing the bricks up the ladder to the fundi's on scaffolding. The locals are able to just throw the bricks up to the person on the ladder, one guy can even throw it from the ground up to the fundi's on the scaffold (pickaxe man). The scaffold is a number of triangles of wood wedged against the wall using tree bows with planks laid across the top. Safety first!
- Mixing cement by hand or concrete which is much harder. Start out by carrying a 48 kilo bag of cement from the store in the school 200m away on your back (This is my job..NOT!). Draw buckets of water from the site well which is filled daily from the river by local farmers on the cow cart. Add a load of buckets of sand (and stones for concrete) and get your mix on - just using a shovel of course. Back breaking work. As you can tell buckets are like gold dust on site! Once mixed the good old buckets return so we can pass the cement up to the fundi's. We quickly started creating lines for passing as its much easier than taking a bucket by yourself.
- We've also been sent off down the fields with a couple of the local boys to cut down 15 trees with a machete, then remove the branches and carry the bow back to site to be used for the ever safe scaffolding. The guys rarely wear hard hats and wear flip flops to walk across the top of the building watering fresh concrete. Safety standards are amazing. A lot of the local men are quite small, probably due to malnutrition but they work so hard and have so much endurance.
Local life
The locals are very friendly and have a visiting culture so people come to visit us daily at camp sometimes just to say good morning. Although the school beside us is on holidays, many of the kids come around to play with the airobe (a fancy frisbie) and balls we brought once they got over the shock of seeing mzungos. The sight of their happy little faces when they saw the balls and airobe for the first time was priceless. Normally they play with a ball made from tied up plastic bags that's actually not too bad. They're so polite and grateful, it's hard to see some with no shoes or decent clothes but they're so happy and smiley and kind to each other. They're much older than you'd think as well because they're so small and we see so many young girls carrying tiny babies on their back - looking after their little sister or niece, it's crazy. As we'd brought a soccer ball with us (they're obsessed with soccer), some of the local boys we're friendly with challenged us to a match. We had it at the school pitch (a field full of thorns) against some local young boys, some of the older boys and even Issa and the fundi's got involved. Mzungus Vs Milade! An awesome game of two halves where in the end Milade prevailed.
Our new local friends also invited us to a local pre-wedding party called a kitchen party which is held to raise money to throw the wedding, everyone in attendance donates a little money. We were escorted by Jasama thankfully as he looked out for us through the whole affair. When we arrived we were met by loads of colourfully dressed and yodelling locals dancing energetically in a large circle. Before I knew what was happening some man (who turned out to be the bride's brother) had approached me and pulled me into the circle. I spent the next couple of mins trying to dance and smile politely. I felt better when I looked around and saw the rest of the mzungos were in a similar position. I soon slinked off to the side to watch the festivities and play with the children. Local dishes (beans and maize mixture) and drinks (kind of a light porridge ) were served for everyone to share which we also politely tried - that was interesting! We then met the father of the bride who brought us to his house to have chicken in a broth. We were quite honored by this as meat is only eaten by the rich in this region or on very special occassions.
Towards the end of the 3rd week, three new volunteers joined us - Brett and Terry from Hong Kong and Maria from America so we geared up to show them the ropes and continue with our new camp life.
- comments
David McDonnell Thanks Anne ..... great insight into village life. Amazing you have experienced this first hand. very humbling when you see how much we have in our worlds... Love to you both Dave and Darienne