Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Well, the main event of my last two weeks has been an earthquake!!!! It turns out that Yamba and MIlingano are on a fault line. On Tuesday evening as myself and Jen were sat having our post dinner cup of tea, we felt and heard the ground shaking. Initially I thought the mountain was falling down, or something was falling down the mountain. We looked at each other with some fear, I recalled my study of earthquakes in year 8 and sugested we get under the table. Jen felt this was not the best course of action, and that outside would be best. As these moments of indecision passed, there was a second rumble, this one was more prolonged. We ventured outside with our lamp, possibly screaming slighty, to seek the opinion of our watchman. He found the whole scenario most amusing as we tried to ask what was going on. 'Finish, finish' he said, which was reassuring, although I did wonder what scientific device he had to know this for sure. We carried out some research over the next few days to try and discover if these were common events. This research mostly involved a mini game of charades where we would shake with our arms out say 'jumanne' (Tuesday), then say 'Teacher Jenny, Teacher Emma very scared' accompanied by some scared faces. Generally the response was that of bemusement and amusement. We have discovered that these episodes are quite common events which don't seem to cause any concern to the locals.
Earthquake aside, the last two weeks I have continued to get involved in village life in Milingano. The week before last was an interesting one. There was a local election taking place for the village chairman. This required the teachers of Milingano primary school to do some sort of data collection and speak to the villagers. As a result none of the teachers were in school for the whole week. The headteacher however still came to school so that Jen and I could teach. He had various people coming to his office and a big sign with an arrow pointing in. This suggested to me that this was where the voting was taking place. However we only saw about 2 people actually go in. On the Wednesday of last week the headteacher had to go to Lushoto, to take some information to do with the election, so school was closed. The head was due to return to school on the Thursday but when we arrived there were children but no teachers, so we took it upon ourselves to get the day started and got them singing their morning songs. The head and another teacher did later arrive and we taught our normal lessons.
This week was again a 3 day teaching week as Wednesday was a national holiday, they have a lot of them in Tanzania. It was Nyerere day, the anniversary of President Nyerere's death. He was Tanzania's first president and is very much respected and seems to have done a great deal to ensure Tanzania the well-being of Tanzania compared to some of its neighbours.
School this week has almost seemed like a school, most teachers are in and some have even done some teaching. The standard 1 teacher for the past couple of weeks has always been in and seems to have taught some really good lessons, particularly impressive as he has over 100 children in there!! The first 2 days of the week the staff were tryng to get there heads round the timetable which is now on the blackboard in the staff room. Jen and I are unsure whether to say that the English lessons we teach are not at the same time as the ones on the timetable they've just done!
Last weekend, we headed up to Yamba on the Thursday after school, we got a lift in the 4x4 when it came through on the way back from a trip to Lushoto. Friday we did a walk around the mountain to a viewpoint of Kenya. The view was stunning, you could see for miles, we sat and looked out across the plains for nearly 2 hours. Saturday was our first day of rain, which was quite exciting! It was wet most of the day. The rain is much needed in this area, as there have been a number of failed harvests. Apparently there are some more big rains heading this way which will be really good for the villagers. Sunday we went back down to Milingano. It was a really nice weekend and good to catch up with the other volunteers in Yamba. Unfortunately Jen was struck down by the dreaded worms, and didn't quite enjoy the weekend as much as me! I'm glad that she has now fully embraced the African life too!!
Jen is the other teaching volunteer with me in Milingano, we recently noted that over the last 6 weeks we have spent every day together!! I know a lot of people must think how awful that must be for her, but she is coping with it admirably!!
- comments