Arrival in Africa...

Well I never thought I’d be writing one of these but as I’m in Africa and internet access or electricty isn’t as quick or reliable as it is at home it seems this is the most effective and efficient way to keep everybody up-dated as to what is going on....
So I guess I should start from the beginning - I flew out from Dublin at 6am Tuesday the 9th of February destination Kilimanjaro Airport Tanzania, with one stop over in Amsterdam for just a couple of hours. Well I guess this is where we hit our first hiccup of the trip. Due to our distraction as a result of not sleeping the night before our departure myself and Miss Julie (my travel buddy for those of you who don’t know a crazy American,,,) didn’t calculate the time difference accurately and nearly missed our flight out of Amsterdam. This will probably not come as a surprise too many of you but it sure got our heart rates up as we sprinted from one end of the airport to the other, with our names being called for the final call over the airport intercom as they were closing the gate and the doors of the aeroplane. And let me tell you this is no Shannon Airport...
Following this unexpected start to our flight the rest of the 8 hour journey was pretty uneventful, I got in three movies and managed to eat pretty much every hour on the hour as the air hosts did they’re rounds. We did however get shafted by a sneaky French man who took advantage of our distracted state as we boarded the plane to swap our perfect window seats for mid row sits so he could get his family sitting together!!!
On arrival to Kilimanjaro I was a little nervous since i didn’t have a visa to get into the country but luckily the security were pretty easy going so I just walked out to arrivals where Denis (one of the founders of our hostel) had a piece of paper for me which seemed to suffice for me to get my passport stamped!!!
After picking up our rug sacks we then began our 40 min drive by taxi to Moshi, and hostel Hoff which is to be our home for the next 6 weeks at least. Ramona one of the other girls staying at the hostel showed us to our tent and around the hostel facilities. We made arrangements with Denis to meet the next morning for our guided tour around Moshi before trying to organise our mosquito nets and lay our first night in Africa to bed.
Day 1
Getting up the next morning it seemed almost everyone else had left the hostel before we made it down for some breakfast. We did have our first encounter with one of the more permanent members of the hostel, who is an American lady easily in her 60’s, a writer and photographer. A very cool lady but she kinda knows it! We also met the founder of the hostel, who came up to the tent to say hello and see what our thoughts were on what kind of projects we were interested in doing. Shortly thereafter Dennis arrived to show us around Moshi, and it wasn’t at all as intimidating as I was expecting it to be.
So we were showed all the hot spots around town, internet cafe, pass machine, coffee shops, where to get the good ice cream &the local market which was probable the craziest spot in town. All in all Moshi is a pretty small town, which is good because I wouldn’t like to be lot in a big city!!! All the locals were very friendly and Dennis started us on our Swahili lessons, how to say hello, how are you and respond with good, and how to say no thank you to the sellers on the street.

After a stroll round town getting some local currency and a new sim card we headed back to the hostel to meet some of the others. There was a good mixture of Americans, and Europeans from the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden and Germany as well as a couple of Australians. Everybody was pretty friendly and welcoming and enquired what we were doing and where we had come from. So 1st full day down and our first day of placement ahead of us we retired early to try and overcome the tiredness from travelling and the unaccustomed heat, despite a nap earlier in the day we were still tired and still hadn’t even unpacked.

Day 2 & 3

1st day at the KYGN – (Kilimanjaro Young Girls in Need)
Well we arrived at the school just to check it out, as we thought but as soon as we got there one of the teachers was asking us if we could teach English and we were a bit like eh – I guess... So we were given two of the weaker students in the class to do some one to one with them on their English and then after the break on their maths ... You are always better off to be thrown in the deep end I feel... So we pretty much spent the next two days at the school on the floor in the school office trying to teach Dorotea and Viveannie English and maths with the girls about 4 having more English than we had Swahili...
There was also a group of 3 Canadian ladies there those first two days doing medical checks on the girls and buying some supplies for the school like 2 new bicycles for 30 girls who didn’t know how to ride them... So we had a crazy hour after school one day in the mid day sun trying to make sure everybody got a turn and understood the circular movement required to work the bike - again with no Swahili!!!
They also brought fruit, water and biscuits for the girls which was a huge hit. The girls lined up very mannerly and waited for their treats to be handed out, it was really sweet.

Day 4

So our first weekend in Tanzania we joined some of the people from the hostel hired a dala dala for the day and headed for Lake Chala. This is a lake about an hour outside Moshi which lies on the border between Tanzania and Kenya. It was gorgeous and cool to be within walking distance of Kenya!!! However there was a bit of a steep climb down to the lake and Julie did slide her way down getting a little cut up on the way... And a couple from the hostel fell slightly behind the group and ended up getting lost for about 40mins which was a bit worrying... But thankfully we all made it home in one piece just about. A couple of the girls went swimming so I was on crocodile watch for a while which was a bit bizarre. The water was gorgeous to paddle around in though...

On Sunday we went out to visit a Maasai village. It was the family of one of the guy’s who works in the hostel and it was a fabulous day. The whole village was really welcoming and the kids were really funny. We had brought some balloons and clothes for them so there was a lot of excitement. The men of the village even did like a traditional jumping dance for us, and let me tell you those boys can jump... The camera’s also fuelled the excitement as everybody wanted to have a picture taken and then everybody wanted to take a picture also... It was definitely one of the highlights of my trip so far. What can I say I felt at home with the people who worship cows... Granny would be proud...

For the first full week in KYGN we started off the week in a dala dala and an hour long trip out to the school. So for those of you not familiar with dala dala, they are the local form of transport. They are Hi-ace vans which have been upgraded by putting in as many seats as possible. So usually you can fit about 25 people in plus about 6 large baskets of fruit, a couple of bags of fish, and maybe a live chicken if you’re lucky, and just when you think you can’t fit anything else in another 3 people and 2 big bags of rice or potatoes will be loaded in so in the end approximately 4 people will be standing with half their bodies hanging out the windows... So far this hasn’t been me but we will be making this trip a lot over the next few weeks. The trip back is even better though we generally go about an hour in the opposite direction and then wait for about 30mins for the dala dala to fill up again before heading back to town. On the upside though it is really cheap – like 50cent each way...The school was really good this week. We have our own classroom now and know what level the kids are working to or should be at so it’s a lot more structured for them. And then during the breaks we play with all the kids. Ring a ring a rosy is proving to be a big hit... We also tried to teach them Dum Dum Dada during PE which had varying amounts of success!!!

It rained a few times since we’ve been here but more like showers than proper rain, it does help to cool things down a bit though and gets the dust to settle...