Welcome to Mgongo - Karibu Sana

10th July


Camp Neighbours

When Charlie 2 arrived in the rural village of Mgongo our title of 'Team Majanga' was fully earned - we had the wrong tent poles, a missing tent, an hour walk to water, broken water filters, no shower and a collapsing long drop! For those of you who aren't aware of what a long drop is, we had to dig a hole in the ground for our toilet for ten weeks... It was certainly an interesting experience and a few team members admitted to dropping some items down to the depths! We were all very hot and tired after our day of finding an appropriate site and setting up camp, but battled through the majangas and kept smiling :) When the sun set over the barren landscape we thought the amazing view made it all worth the effort. The night sky was incredible too - I've never seen so many stars in my life!



The Sunset

Our Shower

Putting Up Our Tent

Now our camp feels like home, even though we are all squashed up into one tent! The water situation became a huge problem, so luckily now we have Emanuel who delivers it on a bike twice a day from a pump in a nearby village. We have also built a tarpaulin shower, looking out into the middle of Africa, pretty amazing! Unfortunately there's not much positive to say about the long drop....

Since our team of thirteen have been in Mgongo we have been really involved with the community in order to launch our water and sanitation project. First of all we conducted baseline surveys about water access, health issues and sanitation with our local project partner SEMA. This involved interviewing houesholds within the local community and looking at their latrines (if they even have one). It has been quite shocking, as most toilets are a dirty tiny pit or a slit between two planks of wood, with only a metre high wall to protect it. No door, no roof and no hand washing facilities. We also asked about access to water, finding that most households spend over four hours each day collecting water from the boreholes in the dry river bed, usally with the assistance of a cattle-drawn cart. It has definitely made us appreciate a lot here and realise how much Raleigh and ICS have the potential to help.


Mgongo Primary School Toilets

I am really excited about seeing some visible progress in Mgongo now. After we have compiled our survey results we are going to discuss which area in the community needs the most help, which will probably be latrines in the local primary school. Currently they have 8 drop holes for 600 students, which are poorly built and already falling down. They don't have enough water to drink so washing hands is not a priority for them currently. The school children seem to be amazed by seeing 'mzungu' (white people) for the first time! They often come to the camp and just watch what we are doing or play football with the guys. Our team have are currently planning activities such as sports days with the schools to meet all the children properly before we do health and hygiene workshops with them. We also have plans to set up a women's group which will be the first one of its kind in this area.

It is only early days but I feel like we are already making progress and cannot wait to get fully stuck in with the community. So for now,  kwa heri!

Emma ..x

Settling in to Life in Africa

Mambo!

Morogoro

It is the start of our third week in Tanzania and time has definitely flown by! We all got here safe and sound after a not so pleasant flight - I barely slept and couldn't eat or even watch a film as I had reacted badly to the cholera vaccination. But everyone on my flight was really nice and made sure I was alright. We stayed in a small 'hotel' in Dar Es Salaam for the first night due to the different arrival times, which I was really grateful for and seemed like luxury when I was ill!

The next day we had an early start with a four hour bus journey to the training centre in Morogoro. This is where we completed our training week alongside the Tanzanian volunteers too. Along the way it was good to finally see true African life - mud huts, fruit stalls, and bold printed clothing!

The Training Centre, Woko

When we arrived at the training center (Woko) we were greeted with a big African welcome - dancing and singing "we are one - one big family!" in  a circle, where we joined in to integrate with our new Tanzanian friends! We stayed at Woko for a week, so there was lots of training on cultural awareness, interviewing techniques, camp life, first aid and team building. We had to start practicing some Raleigh traditions - firstly the three bowl system for washing dishes to avoid illness, also "longs o'clock"  where you must wear long trousers and shirt to protect from malaria after 6pm and tucking a mosquito net around your mattress at night. The Tanzanians enjoyed laughing at Alicia and I trying to wash our clothes in buckets outside, which was an interesting experience! We also had to get used to cold bucket showers, purifying drinking water and the African wildlife appearing in our rooms.

Our New Washing Machine

For my training team I was in Tango 4 with the team leaders Andy and Elisha. They were going to be running the Charlie 4 project in the North of Tanzania, working with the last remaining hunter gatherer tribe in Africa. We were all so excited about the prospect of living amongst this community, hence I was really sad to leave Tango 4. It would have been a unique experience and our team had grown so much throughout training. However on our fifth day at Woko we were allocated into our Charlie teams, which would be our project groups for the next ten weeks. I was moved into Charlie 2, aka Team Majanga (disaster!) with team leaders Mary and TJ. I settled really well into camp life with my new team and have been so happy to be able to work with so many schools and children for our project.

Charlie 2

After our training week I felt like I had started to get used to African life. We met so many new people, both from the UK and Tanzania, so it was really interesting hearing about such diverse lifestyles, cultures and stories. I learnt a lot by sharing a room with Happy, a Tanzanian girl who studies Law at University. It definitely helped me to adjust to living in Tanzania, especially for communication and cultural expectations. Most of the Tanzanians were a bit shy with their English to start with too, but couldn't stop chatting and asking us questions by the end of the week! The British volunteers were taught the basics to surviving in Tanzania: Speaking Swahili, making the best chappattis and how to dance like Africans!


African Life