Kizzi Keast, a Year 12 student at Treviglas Community College in Newquay, Cornwall, did work experience with us at Emau Hill for two weeks this Summer along with two of her fellow pupils. She has this to say about her visit:

One thing I can say for definite is that two weeks is just not a long enough time to really get to know people. It's just about long enough to start thinking that Emau is your new home. I only had that long, so I just had to make the best of it and make those two weeks the best I have ever experienced.

The journey from Cornwall to Kipepeo was a long one. Overall it was a full twenty-three hours before finally sinking into a chair by the beach with a glass of the most fabulous fruit juice. The beach was enough to make me forget the travelling, just forget and get used to the idea that I was actually in Tanzania.

A few days at the beach and it was soon time to get back on the road and begin the journey to Emau. That was certainly an experience. Never before have I been on a coach that gives you a bottle of drink and a packet of biscuits halfway along the route. Or that stops for a toilet break in the bush!

The first few days at Emau were a real eye-opener but it didn't take long to get settled, to get used to the idea of the 'long drop' and we even got the chance to go and fetch water from the river. Everyone made such an effort to make me feel so welcome and at ease, it was amazing. Something I'll never forget.

Of course the thing I enjoyed most, and will remember the clearest, are the children at school. I only spent three days actually teaching at Msasa IBC with classes that alternated between standard II alone and then standards II - V all together. Of course the larger class was much harder to teach than the smaller one but both were equally fun.

It took just one day to understand what the children liked to do and what they didn't like to do. They all liked to sing, and they all liked to play. Standard II loved dressing up and throwing a ball around the room. The other class liked playing the toy musical instruments I took in.

One event that will stick in my mind was the young boy in my standard II class on my first day who spent the first half of the lesson with his head on the desk, or curled up on the bench. Later in the lesson he came up to me and told me something I just could not understand and then left. Leaving me to try and work out what he had said, but with very little understanding of Kiswahili I eventually resigned myself to the fact I would never be sure. He didn't come to school on the second day but he was back on our third and final day looking much brighter and happier.

Now as I look back at my trip I realise even more than I did while I was in Tanzania that I really did enjoy teaching, I really did enjoy helping these people, and two weeks really wasn't enough.

Time to start planning a return trip!