That's a wrap! First week in Tanzania includes lots of hard work, football and laughs

COUNTRY: Tanzania
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Building, renovation & conservation
WRITTEN BY: Tanzania Gappers 2014

Jambo from Tanzania!! Habari gani? (How are you?)

After 28 hours of travel we arrived at the Keys Hotel in Moshi which is where we spent our first night! When we arrived we met 13 people from around Europe who would be joining us for the next 2/3 months and greeted by Eliphas, our group leader!

On our second day we had a 8 hour bus trip to our camp in Tanga! The bus ride went pretty fast. During the journey we were stopped on the road due to road works and then bombarded by the locals who were trying to sell us oranges, drinks, and other fruits through the windows. One of our new friends Jonny tried to trade Eilish and I for a bag of oranges!

When we arrived at our camp we were greeted by our lovely camp manager Eustace. Our new home away from home is overlooking the beach, which is very relaxing! We are fortunate to have flushing toilets, but we have cold showers, which is (sometimes) very nice after working in the sun all day!

We have 3 lovely cooks who provide us with breakfast, lunch and dinner! We eat a lot of carbohydrates to provide us with a lot of energy! We eat rice/pasta/potatoes and lots of veggies (getting our 5 a day!) and different types of meats.

Friday to Sunday was orientation around the camp, town and village! We made a visit to the school we will be working at and was greeted with plenty of smiles and children who loved posing for photos! We had a tour around Tanga town, where we went grocery shopping and brought lots of snacks and chocolate. Sunday we had a relaxing day and had a tour around the village and the beaches.

Everyone was up early Monday and excited for our first day of working at the school. The school we are working at has 792 students and 16 teachers and 10 classrooms! The smallest class has around 50 students and some have up to 120 students. The most shocking part to us all I think, is that there is only 4 toilets for all the students to use! And the older kids are unable to use the toilets and have to go into the villages. The 16 teachers (male and female) also share one toilet.

We have begun 3 projects at the school; building a new toilet block, re-flooring a classroom and repairing desks. We spilt into 3 groups to get it done as fast as we could. Our first week of work was tiring, hot, sweaty and dirty! We all worked so hard as a team and put in a wonderful effort and surprised our leaders at how fast we can work, or maybe the just had lower expectations for us! In our first week we made around 30 desks, tore up the concrete and laid the foundation for the new cement and dug 7foot deep in a 10x20foot hole for the toilet block! Friday afternoon we finished a bit earlier as reward for our hard efforts and being so far ahead!

We also have 2 Swahili lessons a week and we are learning pretty fast! We try to impress the locals with our attempt to talk to them.

For those who are a fan of football(soccer) there was an opportunity for them to go into the village and watch the World Cup! In the village they had a small tube TV which was brought out on to the front porch and everyone from around the villages would come over and just sit around outside and watch it!

We got to experience the Tanzanian nightlife. We went to a place with a live band and lots of people who very friendly there was lots of dancing and maybe a drink or two! We didn't get home until after 3! (Only because the football was on at 1am)

Kwaheri! (Goodbye)
Lots of love, Madi, Eilish, Imogen, Emily, Ben, Leon and Nick!