It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...........

Even though it’s over 25 degrees outside it is beginning to feel a bit Christmassy in Mwanza.

I have spent this half term practising for our Christmas Production, ‘A little Bird Told Me’. It was about a Robin who wanted to fly south to much warmer climates to find the  special baby who had been born. She met the usual suspects on the way to Bethlehem including a flock of birds.......all the children now think that there are Robins and birds in the Christmas story. I have done my best to convince them they were special additions to our story but it didn't help that the version of the Christmas story I read today had a bird sitting on the rafters in the stable!

 During the last couple of weeks our flat has looked a bit like a Blue Peter studio as it has been covered in camel hats, bird beaks and crowns for wisemen. 

Just testing out my creation. The actual camels had a hump
in the shape of a cushion on their backs in the style of how they
carry babies on their backs here.

 We performed it last week and all the children were amazing. The camel even managed to run on stage in time for his line after needing his hump adjusting!

Yes we used the tea towels on the head trick here too!
Backdrop drawn by me.......and painted 3 times thanks to rubbish
Tanzanian paint that changed colour in the tin over night and made
it all go patchy.......grrrrrr!

If only Mary and Joseph were like this in class!

This  weekend was Christmas Day at the flats.  Sweat was dripping as we tucked in to our chicken roast dinner but with the Christmas tunes blaring and the mince pies for pudding we were soon in a festive mood.

Gingerbread men clothes and tree decorating
were my jobs.

The great unveiling of the Gingerbread house from under our washing bowl was a highlight (it is amazing what you have to do to stop ants!).

 

With only 2 school days left to go we just have got a non-stop cricket tournament and Christmas parties to go :) 

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas. I will thinking of you all. Stories of my Christmas adventures in Zambia and South Africa to come very soon.

Never thought I would be going for the sunglasses and Santa hat look!
Merry Christmas xxx

Half term treats.

 I thought as I have now been back in Mwanza for nearly 7 weeks I deserved a holiday!

 The only other highlight from the end of term was the teacher team victory against the 6th formers at netball.  When I put on the Goal shooter vest I was slightly worried as it had been 18 years since I had last scored a netball goal but to my surprise I scored 7 goals from the winning 9-6 score line.  My legs did not enjoy the fact that I had played netball the next day!

I decided to have a fairly chilled half term but as normal there was some excitement. I spent the first half of my week off school around Mwanza  and making the most of having Gary to carry  heavy shopping and visit some places just outside Mwanza which normally involve a taxi ride or scrounging a lift from someone else.

On Wednesday, Suzie and I set off for Dar. Our holiday aims were to eat as much delicious food as we could and do as many things we can’t do in Mwanza. Here’s how we did.......

Day 1:  The day began by hiring a tuktuk and driver to take us around Dar.  We really enjoyed dodging in and out of the traffic but as you can see it did leave us with very special tuktuk hair styles as it was a bit breezy.

Our first stop was to a cafe called the Black Tomato for Raspberry Smoothie and  Mozzarella and Prosciutto ham Sandwiches made with ciabatta bread for lunch.

This was followed by a trip to a proper supermarket to stock up on supplies. (Sorry no photos from the supermarket as people already thought we were very strange as were getting very excited at very normal things!)

Our day of fun continued with a trip to the cinema to see a film in 3D!

  We finished off the evening with an Italian tasting pizza before we retired to our executive suite hotel room.  This is not where we had thought we were sleeping but after complaining that we had booked a twin not a double room and that we had found a full ash tray in our room, the manager upgraded us.

Day 2: It started at a workshop that has trained disabled local men and women to make some beautiful things from recycled metal, wood and glass. They are called the Wonder welders.

Next stop another little cafe for another smoothie and a brie sandwich (are you noticing the cheese theme!).

Yum! Chocolate fudge cake with ice cream to
finish off my main of pork chops.

After an afternoon of seeing many local crafts and paintings we ended the day by enjoying traditional English food in the English pub George and Dragon. We even got to enjoy dessert which just doesn’t happen as Tanzanian just don’t do puddings!

We had a very strange bag to pack for the journey back to Mwanza. Thank goodness we didn’t get our bags searched as explaining a bag full of cheese, custard creams, Robinsons apple and blackcurrant squash and herbal essence shampoo would have been interesting!

There is now only 1 day until I go back to school. We are already thinking about the Christmas production so I am feeling the next 7 weeks are going to go very quickly.

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.

Another smooth trip!

I am very glad to be writing this as I promised myself that I wouldn’t write my next post until the dreaded reports were done, even though there are more fun adventures tell you about. Writing reports when there is a beautiful 31 ° heat outside and a church blaring out a really out of tune guitar and choir has nearly driven me crazy but they are now practically finished , thank goodness! So now I can up date you on my latest adventures to the Serengeti.

We had 2 days off as our half term and we all decided we needed to get out of Mwanza so that we didn’t all go mad doing reports for 4 days. A trip to the Serengeti was planned and a car hired. How hard could it be to drive ourselves around the Serengeti, What could go wrong?

The man hiring us the car turned up early to drop the car of at the flats so we were all very excited to get on the road. Chloe and Emma went to fill up the car with petrol and discovered that the petrol just came flowing out the bottom of the car.  We phoned the car hire man and he said it would take a Tanzanian 20 minutes to fix…………. 11/2 hours later he turned up with a fixed car and promised that there would be no other problems with it. We all laughed and hoped this would be the only issues we had to deal with on our trip.

We all piled into the car and got on our way. Chloe was enjoying her first experience of driving in Tanzania and with in no time she was like a true Tanzanian driver beeping at random bikes, goats and cows in the middle of the road.  1 hour out of Mwanza the engine decided it didn’t want to go any further and just stopped on top of a speed bump in the middle of the road. Luckily we were just driving through a small town so we all pushed the car off the road and hoped someone would help us.

  

As you can imagine 6 white females with a broken down car attracted a lot of attention!

Fortunately one of the 30 people staring at us was a helpful mechanic who was our hero.  After lots of standing around and men shouting unhelpful instructions at him he found the problem ( we still have no idea what was the matter!). The mechanic sucked out some oil with his mouth,  plugged the tube back in and the car started. There was a lot of cheering and we paid him for his hard work with a piece of cake, a can of sprite and the equivalent of 2 quid!

We were very happy to be on our way but slightly wary that the car could just stop at anytime. The mechanic had obviously solved the problem as we got to the Serengeti gate without any issues.

We had a map of the routes through the Serengeti but were slightly worried that all the grassland was going to look the same. Anyway, we didn’t need to worry as we managed to get one of the park wardens at the gate to come with us for a free picnic lunch and 4 quid! He was very excited that he was going to spend the day with us rather than sitting around doing nothing.

He did a great job of finding us lots of Zebra, hundreds of hippos and some huge crocodiles to look all before lunch.

We ate our lunch in a small hut by the airstrip and shared it with a very brave red and yellow spotty bird.  

After lunch it was my turn to drive. Slightly nervous, as the car was massive and I haven’t driven for 10 months, I slowly maneuvered the car back on to the track and off we went.

After only a few minutes it was like I had driven yesterday and I was loving dodging the massive holes in the road.  The Warden decided we should drive down a track that had (no exaggeration)a metre high grass down each side and down the middle. It was like driving through a field of grass but the warden assured me there would be lions if we kept on driving. He forgot to tell me that there was a rocky path up to a amazing view point to drive up first! Anyway by then I was a pro so got us to the view point……. the warden had to be all macho and go out and check with his gun, that he had insisted on bringing with him, that there were no lions prowling with so we could get out and admire the view. 

I discovered that going down hill off road was a bit more scary than up hill. We got down safely and he decided we should follow a track that wasn’t really a track but a slight dent in the grass. Up ahead we could see some brown blobs in  tree so I slowly crept forwards until we were a couple of metres from 2 lionesses sleeping in the tree. After we had watched them for a few minutes a little furry head of a cub poked out from behind the trunk.

I have decided that I might have a career change as being a safari driver was great fun……. but I would need a quick mechanic course.

We stayed in a lodge just outside the Serengeti and the next day we went for a boat trip with the fishermen on Lake Victoria.  Although we didn’t have to paddle we did have to make sure we sat still otherwise there was a lot of rocking!

The trip also included a walk around the Sukoma tribe village on the shores of the lake and a visit to the school for the village children.  As soon as we got into the village we were accosted by some children who didn’t leave our sides!

 

Despite the dramas at the beginning and being quite used to nothing going quite how you think they will when you are in Tanzania, we all had a great time. Serengeti is never the same however many times you go and driving was a new and exciting way to explore it.

Well, it is now only 4 weeks tomorrow that I will be getting on a plane back to (I here very sunny!) England. I have got lots of fun things like swimming galas, cross country, book day, a trip to a beach on the lake and prize giving assemblies to fit in at school before I can get on that plane….. Oh! and a bit of teaching if I can squeeze it in!