Week 3: The hardest week and the final push

Officially the hardest week of the project and in the running for the hardest week of my life thus far! We all worked as hard as we could  and I at least learnt that I could power through when you think you've hit bottom. But we knew we were working to finish something brilliant and beautiful, and we wanted it to be the best we could muster!

Monday was spent mainly on the remaining book sorting, cataloguing and referencing with some finishing touches to the painting of inside. Tuesday saw us starting to sand down and varnish any shelves that the fundi's had completed, and I finally finished books! 3785 in total, and that is excluding the book-by-book ones and the ones the school already owned :S Lets hope there are enough shelves!

Steff and I were lucky enough to go back to Lindi on Wednesday to print bits and buy even more solvent! (Going through it like water!) While we were gone the girls were working so hard! Came back to find the blackboard repainted, the other outside wall was being painted and the fundi rangi (painter) was half way through the library rules on the wall. This was such an upbeat day, because I started to think that this impossible task was doable by Saturday!

We had had to change the date of the opening ceremony from the Friday to the Saturday because of Form 2 mock exams. This meant we lost a day of travelling but realistically it meant we could spend longer and involve all of the students, which was the whole point of us being there.

Thursday and Friday saw us working harder than before as the days to opening ceremony grew closer and closer. The metal grids on the windows were FINALLY being removed by the fundis, and the mesh going on, so we needed to paint the grids the pale dutch blue of the bars. After that every chair had to be sanded down and varnished with two coats, which was a laborious job and one that was made even harder when we ran out of varnish!! 

By the end of the late night, we had almost finished all of the furniture, all of the painting and moved all of the boxes of books over from the ICT store room to our semi-complete library space. Our guest house -host, kaka Doula, was kind enough to make us all chips or chipsi mayai for lunch and transport them up to the school, because we couldn't stop to eat. Unfortunately a 2nd member of our 7 had to go to the hospital today as she had malaria, so we were two down and desperately under-staffed, but somehow managed to cope. The floor was 'cleaned' of dust and dirt, although white spirit and soapy water did not remove the paint and varnish splodges on the floor :( Even still, we had just over 24 hours to go and it was really taking shape. 

Dinner tonight was a bowl of rice krispies with powdered milk; I was too tired to make yet another vegetable omelette. 

The final day had arrived and it was yet another rushed breakfast and early start. Today we actually put the first books on the finished shelves in their pride of place. I thought this would be the relatively easy part...oh how wrong I was! The neatly arranged sections of general science, biology, physics, chemistry and maths had to be taken down and moved more times than I can count, to  make way for stray books and better organisation. It was such a pain to have a nice finished section of Form 2/3 Maths books squeezing brilliantly onto one shelf, to then find 5 Form 1 books and have to move everything along and across. Science and maths are no longer in my top 5 subjects of all time haha.

When all books were on, we moved the 'finished' desks and chairs into the space and sorted the comfy corner. It was surreal to think it was 4pm and everything was more or less finished! We decorated the library with bunting and balloons, put a blue ribbon around the door, and made posters detailing the library floorplan and explaining the colours and coding system.

Dinner tonight was yet another bowl of cereal, then packing and an early night was in order. It was strange to think that 21 days had passed in Phaisha Guesthouse so quickly!

Weekend 3

Saturday saw us working in the library again. We had a slight lay in and met at 10am, where we had breakfast and figured out our day plan. Books were to be done, and bits of paperwork like the library guides and the design of library information posters. It was a reasonably stress-free day and the school was very quiet. For dinner we went into Mtama town to the little restaurant and ordered without the help of Grace and Ema! Most people got what they ordered, chipsi mayai and kuku (chicken). I, however, did not get my kuku, and just had a portion of ugali, spinach, tomatoes and maharagwe (beans). This is the second time now I have ordered chicken and been bitterly disappointed! Oh well. Konyagi o’clock it was, with Mary and I sharing a bottle. I still have no idea what is in it, except for Konyagi. That obviously doesn’t help one little bit, although it does smell like gin.

On Sunday Mary, Viki and I took a trip to Lindi to buy provisions, while Eseelle and Steph worked at school on the library. On the way to Lindi we passed three bad crashes in the space of 15 minutes along the same stretch of road. Thankfully they were all empty cargo trucks rather than full dala dala’s although it didn’t exactly settle our nerves! We had a successful day buying 5 ltrs of white spirit, blackboard paint, fruit and veg, kangas and chocolate, and even had a small amount of time to sit on the beach and get our white legs out. I need to excitedly mention that for lunch I had a whole red snapper (with head attached!), roasted/fried vegetables and a separate plate of rice, and it was INCREDIBLE. The fish was meaty and great, with a few bones. None of this struggling to get meat off the bone malarky with chicken.

The dala dala home was fairly quick… until it broke down in Ningaya (sp), a small village 5km away from Mtama Secondary School. We sat on the bus with everyone else for an hour before I got off to make conversation. Everyone was ignoring my attempts at Swahili and all the local children were following us around or laughing through the window. Eventually another bus came past, but it was far too over-packed, with people sitting on others and standing on people, and it drove away with three-deep men bowed out of the door clinging on. We were left us three, and a handful of other Tanzanians, one of whom spoke a little English and was also heading to Mtama. The bus driver tried to put us on ‘bajajis’ except they were actually boda bodas – basically motorbikes where you clutch hold of the driver and don’t wear a helmet. We ruled that out straight away, because we were told another bus was coming. Finally it did, although it was the same bus as before just turned around, and the people on there were angry that it was picking more people up, and moaning about mzungu mzungu. I was getting a little bored of it now. I can hardly help a bus that is broken down! 

Home safely though, and bed was well needed when we got in.

The Reno: Week 2

This week we cracked on with filling the holes in the wall and sanding them back, sanding down the rusty metal bars and painting the library; white and blue walls inside, white outside with blue border. We also had the carpentry fundi's working in the library making the shelves for us, which was exciting to watch. It was slightly frustrating having to work around them, trying to paint walls while they sawed wood, but we didn't have a choice and made it work. First problem arose when the ‘sky blue’ paint we had bought turned out to be rather greyer and more expired than we had hoped, but eventually got a nice blue that we mixed with some white paint. The rollers had to have branches attached to them to reach the top bits, and Steff stood on tables to reach the edges! Nice and safe.

By Friday all of the second coat of blue and the third and final coats of white had been completed and we made a start on painting the metal bars blue, which we had already painted with an anti-rust paint. As the fundis refused to take the outside metal grid off, we painted through it carefully with a toothbrush dipped in the oil paint. That was very fiddly work. Finally we painted around the frames with thick white to cover any blue drips. We left at 6.10pm as the sun was setting and were very, very tired!

Monday 12th – Friday 16th August. More Books!

Book referencing time! Or what I like to call the fun stuff. The general plan was to sort all the books in their subjects, catalogue them onto an excel sheet (title, author, level, publisher and quantity) and then attach coloured tabs to the spines to distinguish their subject when on the shelves. Sounds quick, but first you had to organise every book into piles where there were duplicates, of which there were hundreds. That involved lifting lots of books into a different place. Then the counting and cataloguing, before attaching the colour paper tab with sticky tape and boxing them back up. It was long work, but fun, because I like to sort and sift and organise :) The perfect job? I also like to paint haha.

It was a long week of sorting books and running out of sellotape! By Friday we had three extra rolls, and all of Fiction, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geography, Business and Economics were catalogued onto the excel spreadsheet and labelled. Just general science, English and reference books left, phew!

Our system is quite simple to make the use of the library easier – each subject has a colour, like red for science, blue for English, purple for fiction and so forth, and is then split into levels by the writing on the coloured tab. All of the fiction books have the first three letters of the authors surname written on the spine, with an added circle for plays and a cross for poetry. Maths books suitable for Form 1 have an M 1 on the yellow spine label, and just an M if it’s a general book for all levels. Simples?

Thurs 15th August

Today we split book cataloguing and painting the room between us as a group. I helped to paint the blue walls which was messy fun. More so because our rollers are attached to branches so we can reach the top sections! We also stand on tables to do the edges neatly near the roof... not sure if that complies with the health and safety but it is quick and effective! The blue is such a lovely sky blue and it really brightens the room up. 

We went for dinner in Mtama town, but unfortunately the chicken I ordered didn’t actually have any chicken on, just bones. Sad times. But I had some good ugali, beans and vegetables so that kind of made up for it. I had a quick shopping browse for sellotape, as we ran out, and as I didn’t know the word I ripped a piece of tape off a box and waved it around, with no luck surprisingly! After dinner we went to the street sellers for mendazi. These little bundles of love were being sold by local women who sat in a line with a bucket each with various snacks in, lit by an oil lamp in each bucket. It was really quite pretty, a line of candles. I wish I could have taken a photo, but I don’t think that is allowed.

Wed 14th August

We’ve been getting a few power cuts this week, obviously meaning no lights, sockets or ceiling fan. Tonight the power decided to go off just as I was taking a shower… so I lit the room candle, put it in the bathroom and showered by candlelight! A cold shower by candlelight in a bathroom where you have to be so careful to not fall down the toilet is definitely an experience! Maybe not one I'd like to do often...

Netball!

So today we had a netball match of teachers vs students netball, which was hilarious in its self because many of us hadn’t played it since primary school! I was a sub, then wing defence, then goal defence. Safe to say I didn’t make much difference or score any goals but it was fun! We were drawing 5-5 at half time, and finished on what I counted as 9-6 to us. But the students were adamant that it was an 8-8 drawer! Oh well, it was all a bit of fun :)

We played with two teachers and the headmistress, who bought Salha along as our mascot. 

Salha was really good at catching and throwing!

Lindi at Eiid

I got my first call from home today! As it cost my home phone a whopping £20 I doubt we’ll be doing that again… but it was nice J Could hear them making a cup of tea in the background which made me very jealous!

The moon had come out on the Thursday night, meaning that Friday was Eiid, and we were going to Lindi Town to celebrate and go ‘clubbing’. Apparently. Tensions were still ripe after the acid attack on the two British female travellers in Zanzibar, so we weren't sure if we wanted to go and get smashed in a place that was predominantly Muslim!

We spent the first bit of the day wandering around doing shopping. Seeing as there is barely anything ‘Western’ in Mtama we were stocking up on luxuries like shampoo and conditioner, roll on deodorant and so forth. I even bought a kettle (less than £7!) to make waiting for my morning tea a little more bearable. Extravagant you may think, but I'm pretty sure it’ll not only come in very handy but be used at least once a day!
We had a big lunch in this beach club hotel restaurant, although they only thing they were cooking on their 3 page luxury menu were pasta, rice, meat or vegetables. Seeing as we seem to always eat rice and vegetables most of us opted for a nice spaghetti dish, which actually made a nice change! Tea was 5,000shillings, but it was the best cup I've had in Tanzania, so I can’t really complain!

This would be the first proper night I had gone out since my trip had started almost a month ago; it was actually quite nice to slap on a bit of make-up and ‘hit the town’. We had found an awesome shop earlier in the day which had sold little bottles of spirits for ridiculous prices. My 180ml bottle of 37.5% apple-flavoured vodka was the equivalent of £1. ONE POUND. Screw you British alcohol tax. It went down very well with my bottle of sprite before we found the bar. Being Africa, the ‘bar’ was actually a load of tables outside, with a projector playing old 70’s music, Abba, Lionel Richie, and ‘Daddie Cool’. The best thing was the chipsi mayai that I had. I'm surprised it hasn't caught on in the UK but it’s essentially a thick, chip omelette, and it is DELICIOUS. I left before people went into the club thing, which incidently had no people in it whatsoever and wanted to charge us all £2 entry. Bed sounded like a better deal so Avitus, our PC, walked me back to where we were staying.

Which, I forgot to mention, had WESTERN TOILETS. Hello sitting down to pee for the first time in a week.

Steff and I slept in later than the others and had breakfast back at the beach club hotel thing. It was an incredible breakfast! Fruit and juice, unlimited tea (served in a wooden box!?), eggs, sausages and bread with honey and jam. Oh man. That was the best breakfast I’d had since Zanzibar. I could easily have sat there all day. But instead we went to the beach! The beach was gorgeous; we went at low tide and the sand just went on for ever. The water that had pooled on the sand was bath warm! Made me miss my bath at home.

We found a little market to get some fruit in, and started packing up to head home. We sat on the dala dala for over 30 mins before it left. They don’t seem to move until they are full. The journey isn’t too bad, taking somewhere between 1 hour and 2 hours depending how many times they stop. Unfortunately for us it was 6pm before it actually set off, so by the time we got to our stop outside Phaisha Guest House it was very dark. There’s not a light inside the dala dala, and it was so full, that getting off proved to be quite a problem. No one would move for us, instead trying to climb over us to get our seats. Eventually Mary got out and we I had to pass my shopping bags through the back windows, before shoving my way through the passengers to get out. Hmmm. Did not enjoy that part!

'Daddy cool' being projected onto a screen in the bar

Lindi beach

Tide out!

Tide out for miles!

On my walk to the waters edge

Tide coming back in carving channels in the uneven sand. 

Avitus and I on the beach.

Steff and Emanuela 

9th August

Every day we have breakfast and lunch at the school. We bring our bread, jam, tea and coffee and they boil us water. Usually we buy 1.5 kilo of rice and 1 kilo of beans to feed the 7 of us at lunch, and the school kindly cook it for us.

Today, however, we had been invited to lunch at Madam Mataka's house, the Headmistress. She lives behind the school with her children and husband. Salha is only 3 and is SUPER adorable. Her eldest son is at boarding school in Lindi. Madam Mataka is so lovely and for lunch cooked us pilau, vegetables and beef stew. What they call pilau is similar to the pilau in the UK except they add more spices so it is a brown colour, not the white with occasional brown specs we get at the takeaway, and it's really lovely!

We're going to have to pick the brains of Emanuela and Grace for recipes for mendazi, pilau and chapati to take back to the UK!

The Headmistress and her toddler and I.

Fetching water

7^th August.
Today I helped fetch water! The school was donated a water pump in 2010 by a charity/organisiation and it is used by students, staff and surrounding villagers. These buckets fill 10 litres of water, but unlike the kids we can’t carry that on our heads! Unskilled muzungus :( 

You can't have a library without any BOOKS :D

Our books arrived from the containers in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday 6th, a lot earlier than expected. Unfortunately I was ill that day and so didn't get to help unload the truck into the ICT room with the school children and other volunteers :( But we have so many books! 75 boxes of about 30 books in each. We have 5 boxes of mixed fiction and plays but the majorities are science and maths.

We have to stamp the inside cover of every donated book, as well as sorting them into subject type. As we only had two READ stamps this took a long time; large chunks of Tue – Fri were taken up by 2 people at any time stamping. 

On Friday the group and I sorted all of the books into subjects, stacking all the same books together as best as we could. It’s my job to create a spreadsheet list of every book that is going into the library next week, and I need to do it as quick as possible! Thankfully I have help from my deputy and the rest of the team, although I’m pretty sure week 2 will be a busy one.

Me in full stamping swing.

Stage One! The busy week…

Sunday 4^th August saw the start of a very busy week for renovation. The fundi came in, decided we needed a new floor (rather than filling in the deep pot holes) and started smashing up the concrete. On Monday 5^th he was clearing out the rubble and preparing the cracks in the wall for filling. By Tuesday he had started laying the cement! This meant we had to start on other aspects like getting quotes for the different materials and carpenters, and starting on stamping the READ logo in the back covers of the donated books.

4/8/13 Fundi removing the concrete top 

5/8/13 Fundi preparing floor for concrete

5/8/13 Crack filling

Concrete done!

Wednesday called for a big clean of the outside front wall and after lunch we started painting the outside wall white! :D The transformation begins! The donated paint came in a 20lt bag which needed watering down, although the suggested paint to water ratio made the mixture really quite thin. We had to paint the outside wall with two coats, which was difficult as it was a bobbly cement wall. We had the fundi paint some of the top as we couldn’t reach and didn’t have a ladder, and we felt he was better off standing on the tables to get to the top!

 By Friday the inside had been cleaned and the first two coats had gone on. Almost time to add the splashes of READ blue!

Differences in culture

It’s all very different out in rural Tanzania to the main cities, and even more different to Western culture. Greetings are very formal and must be adhered to properly to avoid sounding rude. For example, you say Hujambo/Mambo/Shikamoo to a person (child/similar age or lower class/elder or important figure) which all roughly mean “hello, how are you?” and have to respond to them accordingly. You follow up Mambo with Poa, Shikamoo with Marahaba and Habari (another “How are you today?) with Nzuri… unless of course you are not fine.

The word for thank you, Ahsante, is used frequently but please is not. Not even amongst the Tanzania volunteers (although this may be the translation from Swahili to English)

Generally here the sun rises at 6.30am and sets at 6.30pm. And unlike in the UK, when it sets it SETS. The sky doesn’t stay a light grey blue for an hour or two after, it drops. It’s literally a dark, inky blue within 15 minutes of the sun going down. You have to plan your time to get home otherwise be prepared with a torch in your bag, or risk walking home down the road in complete darkness. It leaves the sky ready for the stars to come out straight away, which is good for me because I get to gaze at the Southern Cross again :)

The writers of the guide books don’t describe time here as ‘African Time’ for nothing. You have to put your food order into a place at least an hour and a half before you want it, and even then you wait around. People work on the whole “pole pole” (chill/ take your time/ gently) system of doing things, which generally means they take their sweet time. This is something I have had to SERIOUSLY adjust to, for everything. Asking for a spoon may take 15 minutes, asking to meet someone at a specific time means to generally add 2 hours. Everything here is so relaxed that no one seems to have any sense of urgency. This is great, although I worry how we will cope with only 3 weeks to create a whole new library space!

Mtama Secondary School 2

Students cleaning the school

Assembly day! We met at the school at 7am, for assembly to start at 7.20am. This was an experience, as we arrived to the children cleaning the school or collecting water. Then they had to stand in their year groups (forms) and do some military-style marching before singing their national anthem and raising the Tanzanian flag. Then they deposited the wood that they had all bought (donations from the families) in a pile before announcements began. The head mistress addressed the school, and then we went up to speak about READ and the library project. It’s safe to say that they didn’t really understand us, and were very quiet. But they did seem on board to help us with the drawing and poetry competitions.

Every morning they lay out cups and plates for us in the staff room, and boil water for us to have tea and coffee. I’d prefer to buy a kettle and do it myself, rather than waste their wood for boiling us water! Maybe that’s something I’ll have to look into. We also have bread and butter but we are planning on getting some honey, peanut butter and jam to liven things up!

The students lining up for the national anthem and the raising of the flag.

Masasi 4/8/13

On Sunday 4^th August we visited Masasi, a bigger town 90km from Mtama. We needed to meet a Fundi here (Fundi is what they call the workmen/ handymen) who had worked on a previous school project. The previous library project that we saw was really good – they had painted the outside blue and we could just about see through the windows what had been done on the inside. Unfortunately our Project Coordinator Avitus could not get a key for us to go inside. They had used plastic chairs in their library to save money.

We were pretty hungry after the 2 hour dala dala journey so went to a pub to eat. Here I had goat for the first time! It was delicious; I’m not going to lie. We had it with rice and vegetables and it was better than anything in Mtama.

We stocked up on apples, oranges and bought a couple of bananas – I also went a bit crazy and bought 40 rolls of toilet paper for 15,000 shillings (£6) to share with the group. Got my teabags also, and some AfriCafe coffee for Steff. All in all a good days shop. We all secretly wished we had a town like Masasi at the end of the road, as it had so much more in it, but for a 4 hour round trip it’s not something we were going to do all the time!

Avitus at his library in Masasi

The busyness of the dala dala! Eeek. Hectic.