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