31/01/04
Things have been exciting this week - school and kindergarten have been great - they all call me Sister Katie - instant Nun status because we are based in the church - perhaps I will get to heaven after all!! Their English is so funny. The school children at IBC are beautiful – heart-breakingly so - they wear uniforms that don’t fit and so many of them have to sit on the floor as there are no desks so they are covered in mud and dust all the time - one thing that no photo will ever tell you is about the smell - the kids stink!! They only have one uniform and it is part of their schooling that they wash it themselves - so in this heat you can imagine the stench - you get used to it though!

15/02/04
During the week school has been going fantastically well, the students are so eager to learn and so funny, I just hope that I am improving their English - they imitate everything so as you can imagine they all say ‘amazing’ rather a lot! They also say ‘yes’ to imitate me, Caroline says it’s the absolute spit of how I talk! The walk to school is rather hot right now but I’m getting very good at scamming lifts up the hill - in cars, on mopeds, even on bicycles! I’ve had a few lessons added to my timetable and I’m now doing 4 lessons with the kindergarten and 13 lessons at school, looks like I’ve been roped in to helping with the sports lessons as well - they have a general study lesson where they learn to play sport - but they don’t do any practical lessons - they even learn swimming from the book by theory although I’m not sure what would happen if you threw any of them into the sea! We had a staff photo taken the other day and each week the staff present me with a gift of fruit - either pineapple or bananas normally.

21/02/04
School is still fantastic - I’ve had a riot this week - teaching all 500 students the hokey cokey (in groups of 100 at a time!). After they learnt the words we went out into the yard and carried out the actions - 100 African children and one mad white woman dancing the hokey cokey in the afternoon sun certainly raised a smile from the villagers!

The following day I taught a sports lesson - they normally learn all their sports from a book by theory only so they were thrilled that we were going to practical work - only an English teacher would contemplate teaching running and racing starts in the heat - however I battled on! There is no playing field so we used the village green and the main road through it as the race track, (I say main road but it’s just a red mud dirt track), the children all took off their shoes and we split into three teams each with a captain, the sprint went well and the relay was okay - they just have a problem stopping – there are 4 to a team and as I know in the relay each child should run once but here they just keep taking it in turns until you are almost dizzy!

For a bit of fun I tried the three legged race and tied up three sets of children, one from each team, with a neckerchief, I blew the whistle and away they all went, as fast as they could but with no awareness that they were attached, cried with laughter as one after another they all ended up face down in the dirt! They soon got the hang of it and thought it was just another thing that the crazy lady had taught them from the strange country over the sea! As we were in the village centre we raised quite an audience and the applause was great - like a proper mini sports day - they loved it!

Aside from school life has been pretty quiet, the nun who was working with me at the kindergarten has been sent to Lushoto so I’m running the class of 15 3-6 year olds on my own with little command of the language – this makes it very amusing - rather like trying to recoil 15 springs!

27/02/04
Yvonne and Tony (very kindly - thank you) sent me some cress and I’ve been growing it with standard 7. Before I started the project I discussed it with the teacher and he asked to see how it worked, so I got my wet sheet of kitchen roll and sprinkled the seed on - his face was a picture and soon all the other teachers gathered around looking at this strange white girl who was trying to grow seeds without soil. “So when do we plant it in the ground?” “We don’t”. “So when do we transplant it?” “We don’t.” “So this paper is our garden?” “Yes, that’s right.” “And in England do you grow many things on pieces of paper?” I laughed so much - with a mental image of fields and fields of paper with all the vegetables in England growing away! They are absolutely astounded by the speed of the growth and can’t wait to try it - although I fear that they might be bitterly disappointed as it doesn’t really taste of much does it?!

Sports lessons are still as humorous as ever - I was asked to teach basketball the other day – well, I’m game for most things so despite the fact that there is no court, no hoops, no ball and I’ve never played before myself. I took the whistle (the only relevant piece of equipment) and the 21 students and set off to the dust road in the middle of the village where between us we created African Basketball. It was a kind of semi contact sport played on a very long but narrow ‘pitch’ with the point being scored for bouncing the ball in a chalk circle at either end of the road! Very inventive I thought - Theron the butterfly farmer came along in the middle of the game and I assume from the strange looks that he was giving that it did actually look as strange as it sounds Standard 4 are doing gymnastics which is fun in the muddy dust - the guys at Emau can’t believe how dirty I get - however anyone who knows me at all will know that I don’t find it that hard even without doing forward rolls and head stands in a dusty yard so gymnastics with this class ensures a really dirty ‘uniform’ at the end of the day - the other teachers find it hysterical! I have discovered that each and every child is unbelievably good at headstands though - I think it’s something to do with carrying buckets on their heads all the time!

The teachers at school have decided that I need to try all the local cuisine which is far from tasty! There aren’t many local dishes to the area but I have had Uji which is a millet porridge, Ugali which is a maize porridge that somewhat resembles eating playdough, and goat and banana stew - don’t even ask! It would be more manageable if they allowed me to have a normal size portion but they don’t know the meaning of the word and give me a dinner plate full at every lunch time! I’ve told them that I’ll make them lunch on Tuesday and I’m going to the supermarket to get some canned hot dog sausages with buns to make for them - might even splash out and buy some ketchup and onions! We’re having a shopping day tomorrow at Kariakoo market and then on to the Slip Way for another civilised meal! Sunday I’m getting my beach fix at Bongoyo Island which we reach by a boat form the Slip Way. Sounds quite idyllic in the guide book - however we’ll see!

After school I’ve started helping with a craft co-operative. They’re making African dolls which are great fun and the clothes and knickers are great - like proper African women. We’re going to try and work out how to make them flip flops too!

5/03/04
School has as usual been great - I’m so in love with each and every child now - I presented the teachers with some solar powered calculators which were kindly sent by Tiffany. Well, the confusion that caused - even though they live in perpetual sunshine they could not fathom how things worked from the sun - they accepted gratefully but suspiciously. Later in the afternoon I sneaked looks at them and they were trying to make the things switch off by covering up the panels with bits of paper - further confusion ensued when I explained that they could store power as well so they wouldn’t just switch off when you covered them up. A little later I heard a shriek of surprise from Hassani, the standard 4 teacher, he had put a sum in the calculator and the machine had worked it out correctly - he could hardly believe it - well the suspicion disappeared there and then!