As the title suggests this week has been incredibly busy. I am in the group which is organising the next social. In the next village (Mikindani) there is a hotel called the Old Boma. It is an old converted German colonial fort. The hotel is very pleasant, has an incredible swimming pool and is certainly set up to accommodate westerners. So we have decided on here as the location for Saturday's social. Obviously a risk assessment is needed... so Sam, Albany, Saraa and I took it on ourselves to go on a investigative field trip on Wednesday afternoon. This was my first trip on a public bus in Tanzania (all the other buses have been private). It really is amazing how many people you can squeeze in, and even when there is no room more people will get on and just sit on top of you. Been gentleman Sam and I let the girls sit in the front with the driver. However, we did manage to bag ourselves what we thought were some fairly good seats... however, we ended up having a little girl fall asleep on our knees and then slip down the gap between our legs. The mother really didn't seem bothered or impressed when I tried to inform her that her daughter was asleep and about to fall... Hey ho that aside we made it to Mikindani. The risk assessment continued we tried out some mocktails at the hotel, negotiated some lunch at a good price for next Saturday and went and splashed out on some Calamari for lunch. All in all a successful trip out.
The following day was Thursday and the turn of Mtwara's career fair. Thankfully this time there wasn't a 4am start only a 6am start. The fair went fairly well however the students in Mtwara didn't quite seem as enthusiastic as in Lindi. Something we need to feed back to VETA to try and discover why.
This weekend was our MPR (Mid Phase Review). For this we travelled to Lindi and stayed in the luxury of a hotel which had, running water, hot water and AC (crazy I know!!). We also got the added luxury of our own rooms! Sam and I had volunteered a while a go to be the chairman and Secretary of the weekend, without realising how much we were meant to do. This quickly became apparent in Lindi when our project officer told us the weekend was now ours and every question was been fired at us. This was despite there been another 8 people on the MPR team. However we managed to convince everyone we knew what we were doing. The sessions went well, we looked at our own personal development and progress of the project. Both topics bought out some great ideas and interesting thoughts. Including one person who described me as charming and down to earth. Maybe I should move to Tanzania I'd that's people's perception me!? After the sessions we had some great food and 2 nights of great party's followed. Much Gin was consumed and much singing and dancing happened.
We spent this morning nursing our hangovers on a beautiful beach. Our Tanzanian volunteers then arrived by Bjaji still singing and dancing as they had been the night before.
The pArty really
No comments:
Post a Comment