New additions for a new year.

A  new school year has well and truly started.  My first few weeks has been full of useful new purchases which will hopefully bring lots of extra excitement and adventure.

My first purchase was a juicer machine, well not really a machine more of a hand driven gadget. Not very exciting you may say, but when you can always get cheap pineapples, mangoes, oranges and passion fruit it makes a fun change to water!  Suzie and I have discovered that pineapples and oranges can create a lot of mess. Our first attempt at juicing left our kitchen very sticky which the ants enjoyed, but it did make us some delicious very fresh pineapple and orange juice. We have nearly perfected the art of non-messy juicing now! We are looking forward to juicing some good mocktails.

Asda! Only 30p a pint.
There are some cows behind there somewhere.
 I couldn't get very close!

The next ‘new’ is not really a purchase more of a discovery. Most days last year I would arrive at school  and be greeted with the delightful aroma of cows. I would occasionally hear the odd moo! from my classroom but I didn’t really think of them as being useful. This year the wonderful smells and sounds coming from the cow shed don’t seem so bad as they now mean that I don’t to drink disgusting UHT milk anymore. I now take some bottles to school, hand them over to the eskari (security guard) with the greeting of ‘maziwa’ (milk) and a smile. At the end of the day there is a bottle of milk waiting in the fridge for me. Now that is what I call shopping locally! My lessons are now sometimes interrupted by the eskari coming to tell me that ‘the cow is empty today!’. After a bit of home pasteurisation it tastes delicious on my cereal in the mornings.

As you can see it is just the small things that bring a little bit of excitement to life in Mwanza. The next ‘new’, Gary, is slightly more significant and will hopefully bring lots of fun and adventure to my next year. He has already given me lots of funny and awkward moments and caused lots of havoc in only a week. Gary the Gari (car in Swahili) was purchased just over a week ago. I thought buying a car in England was daunting enough but buying a car here bought with it all kind of interesting experiences.

 The fun of buying a car started with the test drives. I always thought that there were some bad drivers in England but Tanzanians seem to drive with no rules and basically where they like.  Driving in Leeds was certainly good training for test driving automatic cars in Mwanza. I had to avoid crazy Tanzanian drivers, goats, and very large pot holes.

After driving 5 different cars Gary was chosen because of his smaller size, good handling of pot holes and price! I did have to sit in some very strange and dodgy looking offices in the back streets but it was worth it to be able to drive to the shops rather than sweat buckets walking back with bags full of shopping.

 However, this did not last very long as the next morning he was not in my good books...... he didn’t start! Luckily we have a very friendly taxi driver who had helped us to buy the car who fixed us up with a mechanic who sorted the problem out. I thought that the teething problems were over but no!  The next day a flat tyre. After changing the tyre (yes I did have help!) we went to a very dark ally where they fixed the hole in the tyre for just 3000 shillings (£1.50). I was worried that it would be flat the next day but it is still going strong!

I was getting worried that buying a car had not been a good idea but people have reassured me that things like this always happen when you buy cars here. So hopefully Gary will behave himself now and take me to lots of new exciting places.

I have been back in Mwanza for 5 weeks now and I haven’t been on holiday! I have enjoyed getting to know my new class who are all lovely with a few cheeky characters to keep me on my toes!  The monkey have been enjoying my lessons from inside the classroom too!

 I hope you enjoyed the very exciting photos :).

Thing I haven't done for a whole year!

There is only 1 more sleep left until I start my second year at Isamilo. I can’t believe it was a year ago that I was sitting in my flat not knowing what the first day with my new class in a new school would hold. Now I’m writing this not worried about tomorrow at all!

I have had a brilliant 2 months spending time with family and friends. It was wonderful to see everybody and there were far to many highlights, laughs and funny stories that I can't tell you about them all. I spent the last part of my holiday in Tanzania with Emily, Graham and Nikki. We had an amazing time which included a lot of ‘firsts’ for them so here is my summer of  ‘things I haven’t done for a whole year!’.

(Don’t be offended if you don’t appear it is probably because I didn’t have my camera handy!)

I travelled on lots of  trains and even went through some tunnels.
 Some trains were full size, others Mum and I found out,
 were a struggle to get in and out of. Zoe had no problem!

Went on lots of Durrant picnics.
Surprisingly in good picnic spots and not in the rain!

   

Lots of tickles, cuddles, wheel barrow
and helicopter building and of course lots of  'Hammer time'!

The closest game of catch (throwing balls at Emma!)
 I have ever played!

I became Cinderella!

I  was soaked by a 5 year old while wearing my clothes!
 I did get Charlie wet too but it didn't really have
 the same effect as she was wearing a swimming costume.
 I did also swim in a very cold sea in the correct clothing.

Ate lots of delicious ice cream, not like the ice cream that tastes like foam that I can get in Mwanza.

I enjoyed lots of  English sunny weather which meant lots of fun picnics with lots of wonderful people.

A very close encounter with an elephant. I was not in a van when I took this photo! Unfortunately the path to get down was by his trunk. When he had moved slightly we decided it would be safe to pass behind him to get down the path. The elephant did not agree....... we were trumpeted at very loudly as we passed and we discovered that elephants cover a lot of ground as he followed us down the path.

Hunted with Bushman.  We tried to follow them through very thorny bush land but each time we managed to catch up with them they had already caught something. The bush baby was cooked on a fire ,started with just sticks, and eaten for their breakfast not mine!

 I Discovered that there are even more kinds of banana than I thought....
the red ones were much easier to identify than all the varieties of green ones.

Canoed on a lake with hippo in it. 

Saw the top of Kilimanjaro from a plane and a canoe.

Enjoyed the beautiful white beaches on Zanzibar and
 swam in the warm Indian Ocean with people
that had never done it before. 

As I said this is only a very small part of my jam packed Summer which was full of wonderful people that I miss lots and lots.  It was sad to say all my goodbyes again but I am very happy to be back in Mwanza for another year of adventures.