Que Sera Sera

I have spent a great deal of time of late watching ants. Not a particularly favourite pastime of mine, I have to admit, but it seems that the slow pace of life out here in the wilds of Tanzania eventually rubs off on you and time in the wilderness lends itself to an appreciation of nature. Being a lifelong fan of David Attenborough and pals, I always longed for a chance to spend days exploring the wilds of Africa; seeing giraffe silently roam the plains whilst lions lie in the long grasses, stalking their prey. Sadly the extortionate price of an average safari in Tanzania and the lack of many exotic animals wandering the nearby fields in Usa River means I’ve been reduced to nature watching of a slightly smaller kind. Immersed in a wilderness of green fields, bushes and creeks, there is an abundance of wildlife here. The view as I step out my room shows just how wild nature-tastic my current habitat is.

From snakes to spiders to birds to chameleons, every day brings with it different sightings of Tanzanian’s finest mini-creatures. I fall asleep each night to a cacophony of chirps, cheeps, warbles, croaks and barks from those nocturnal fellows sharing these surrounding fields. And I wake each morning to the sound (when the annoying dogs down the lane have stopped fighting and howling) of little birds (mainly wagtails) chirruping on the doorstep and bobbing their tails (hence the name).

And then came the ants. They moved in about two weeks ago. At first I had just a couple of pals sharing my bathroom; friendly chaps who would often nip down the walls when I was in the shower to have a drink of water. A few days later, they invited in their mates who were a bit more rowdy. Wandering in and out of the bedroom and bathroom at any time of day or night without knocking, they would hang out in the sink, in my tea cup, on my shampoo bottle, even in my toothbrush bristles. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy flat sharing but I also would hope that anyone I lived with would respect my privacy. Sadly, these little chaps obviously don’t know the unwritten rules of how to live harmoniously with other folk. I have been watching them closely of late to see what the heck it is they want from me. At first they seemed to be eating the grouting in the shower and sipping the water, then (when I found them all over my table in the bedroom) I thought they wanted to munch the newspaper I’d bought and maybe learn about the latest happenings in the Arusha Times.

Having seen their antics outside in the garden and on the concrete near the house, I’ve often marvelled at how swift and brutal they are in finding other dead insects lying around, surrounding them in vast swathes and carrying them off en-mass to devour elsewhere. I rescued (in the worst sense) a struggling beetle the other day from being eaten alive by an anty mob. Devoid of one leg and stuck head-down in a little crack in the floor, he’d got himself into a real pickle; and the little brown army had already moved in to carry away his body, nibbling at his wobbling legs. I decided the best thing to do was to put an end to his life and send him on his way to better things. Or an ant banquet as it were. Assuming that the little brown army sharing my living quarters are not moving in waiting for me to cash in my chips so they can carry my body off into the fields, I’ve come to the conclusion that they just want to hang out. All over the ceiling, running up and down the walls, some even venturing into my bed.

Hmm, so, what to do? Now I know Mr Attenborough is a friend to all creatures and would allow them to just chill out and be happy; Bear Grylls, on the other hand, would pop them into his mouth for a cordon-bleu ant-fest. Me, I’m hoping that the locals speak the truth when they tell me the big rains (which have recently started) will scare all ants away. When I asked why, I was told that these little brown beasties run off and hide for a few months (hoorah!) but are sadly replaced by their big cousins – the biters. Not sure I like the sound of them, but I’m hoping that once this first army are evicted by the storms, I can ant-proof my room enough to keep the next throng out. Operation Anti-Ant begins.

Talking of storms, the big rains have indeed been rumbling, and Tuesday night saw the most ferocious storm I have ever experienced. I awoke around two a.m. to the sound of rain lashing down on the tin roof. A beautiful sound, when you’re snug and dry in your bed. Then came the force from above – lightening strikes to illuminate a small city and thunder bolts reminiscent of bombs being hurled from the sky. I have to admit that I’ve never before appreciated the true meaning of the term ‘thunder bolt’. My experience of the sound of a storm has always been rumbles – the sound of furniture being moved around, the low growl of something on the horizon. Yet this was like no other storm I’ve experienced – each time it struck, the thunder sounded like the house had been hit by a mortar. On the first crack, I sat up and screamed (wimp, I know, but it was blinking scary!); whilst the second, third and fourth cracks found me hiding under my sheets, heart racing. Pathetic I know, but it was really loud and right on top of the house. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good storm and readily get up to watch the beauty of a night sky being white-washed with forks of lightening, but there was no way in hell I was venturing outside that night to risk being electrocuted. Instead I shivered in dread under my thin shield of my little cotton sheet, hoping that I’d make it to morning! Can’t wait for the fact that these daily big rains last a couple of months...

It’s been another good week here in Usa, as I’ve been working once again with the Form 5 students, doing what I love - teaching. Sitting here, on a Sunday morning writing this blog, I am greeted with the sounds of seven hundred harmonious voices floating on the breeze. For the St Jude students, Sunday morning is church time and they sing out their praise with such beauty.

I have really got to know the students this week – having spent the majority of each of the last ten days with them, I’ve learned their strengths and weaknesses; found out about the hardships of their lives and their hopes for the future. I’ve seen them struggle to tackle some of the challenges I’ve set them and seen them victorious in their accomplishments.

The ‘Wobble-Get World Championships’, held on Thursday afternoon, saw the year group coming together to battle it out for the illusive title. Having spent a couple of the P.E sessions this week trialling out their four newly created sports, it was agreed (through a unanimous vote) that Wobble-Get was their out and out favourite game and would be the sport they’d all compete in during our final P.E. session for the ultimate title of World Champions.

Another hilarious afternoon; another chance for Musson to don her sporting prowess (and whistle) and pretend to teach sport, and another great few hours watching the students enjoy themselves.

I have been so pleased with their progress over the course of the induction – they have been asked to take part in many activities that are alien to them. I ran a Leadership Day on Wednesday; teaching them how to use their own skills and strengths to work with others; we had a morning on Life skills, where I taught them some public speaking and confidence tips (using a collection of tongue twisters to get them all talking). We spent time discussing career options and their future aspirations (one boy proclaiming boldly that in ten year’s time, he would be living in the Vatican – sadly his dream should have been voiced a few days sooner, when the job was still up for grabs).

The kids have really come out of their shells this fortnight and have been exposed to skills and knowledge that they have not learned before. Although brief in its duration, I do feel my faith is restored in what I have just implemented, as I know (from their reactions and from their feedback surveys they filled in on Friday afternoon) that it was worth it and that they have all gained a great deal from the induction. I was also pleased that Revocatus came along to the entire week’s events. We’d sat and talked on Monday about his absence last week and, even though he gave no real reason for it, he did come along this week and seemed to finally understand the merit behind the (in his eyes) madness. Small steps.

So what now? Well, really the main work I’ve been doing here with the Sixth Form seems to now be over, with the end of the induction. I am meeting with Revo on Tuesday to talk through our original plans to develop the Sixth Form, and to see if he actually wants any of it to happen. I really don’t think he will (in light of all that has emerged here of late) and so suspect that my job with him is nearly over. The students, however, have requested that I spend more time working with them in the evenings and at weekends on some of these soft skills, as they are aware that they are not going to get them anywhere else, so I will be putting on more classes for them. It may be that a few boarding teachers come along and learn how to teach these skills so that they can continue in the future, but even if it is just a one-off for this year group, I feel confident in the ripple effect of what they will learn.

Mr Rasul, the Headmaster, has also asked me to deliver a shorter version of my Study Skills seminar to the entire secondary school, as he has finally cottoned on to the fact that the kids here are being asked to study for up to sixteen hours a day, but no one has ever taught them how. I’ve finally managed to persuade him that me lecturing seven hundred kids in one go is not the best way for me to teach these skills, so he has broken them down into groups and I’m teaching an hour a day for the next seven days. Not sure what the teachers will think about what I have to say about studying but hopefully the students will find it useful.

I plan to spend time soon volunteering in a nearby orphanage – Good Hope Children’s Home. An hour or so’s walk up the road, it is a desperately needy institution.

Run by a wonderful woman, Mama Flora, the orphanage is a run-down collection of buildings housing nearly seventy children from three to eighteen. Although the older kids help with the cooking, cleaning and day to day running of the place, she is finding herself having to teach a large number of the primary kids as only some of them have got a place in the nearby school; many of them needing lessons at home instead. 

There is so much I can see to help them with; from painting some of their sad and crumbling rooms, to working with her to create some sort of teaching materials to use in her ‘school’ each day, to spending time teaching some of the older children who are working towards their national exams, but also spending many hours a day working to help run the orphanage.

Once I know more about just what is left for me to do here at St Jude’s, I can establish just how much time I will be able to spend at the orphanage each week and visit Mama Flora to talk about just how I can help.

So after a busy week at school, the weekend is also proving chock-a-block. Yesterday was jam-packed: it was Science Day at the school, which is an open day at the secondary school, show-casing the scientific skills of the kids. Bear in mind that the majority of the schools in the country have science labs in their schools looking like this

you can see why St Jude’s feels the need to show off what they have got and how they are using it.

Over the past few years, donations from around the world have allowed the science labs here to be purpose built and fully equipped with materials to allow the students to learn about science by doing, rather than just reading about experiments (which is what the majority of kids in government schools across the country have to do). Hard to imagine just what you can understand about experimental science without doing or seeing any of it.

The day encourages students to showcase a “Science Project” to the rest of the school, to visiting children and teachers from other schools and to local businesses. Although the projects were incredibly basic (many of them projects that kids back home would do in primary school, such as mixing primary colours to form other colours; making volcanoes and learning how to bake a cake) it was really exciting to see how enthusiastic and energetic the kids here were. Now here is a time where they do finally get to be creative, to be expressive and to think (just a little bit) outside the box.

One of the boys in Form Three, Lisson, is a bit of a science whizz. Two years ago he built a mobile phone from scraps of old metal; this year he built a generator. Over the past few months, he has been borrowing bits of old wire and metal from various places in the school and in the local village; taking them back to his room each night to twiddle with. The finished result was a bizarrely incredible masterpiece of invention!

The school was given an investment from a large UK company a year ago to build two more science laboratories and these were officially opened yesterday.

I visited my Form 5 boys in their new Science lab and was taught how to make plastic out of milk – another exciting and innovative experiment.

All in all, it was a great day – the school was alive with enthusiasm and energy and the kids had lots to say and were just so full of life.

The afternoon and evening were spent enjoying the pleasures of an African themed party down at the primary school. Dressed in our finest Tanzanian garb, the volunteers from Usa headed across town to Arusha for an evening of dancing, eating and drinking with African flavours pervading throughout. Fun times.

I ended the week happy – my little brother phoned yesterday with news that I was to be an aunt at the end of the year (how exciting!), the induction fortnight proved a great success and I fell asleep (having climbed over a toad, a wind scorpion, two big spiders and a cockroach on my walk up to my room) to the sound of a small cricket who’d hopped into my bedroom and hidden under the bed, and was chirping his merry mating sounds into the night sky. A good week in Africa and a feeling within me that my time here has not been wasted, and my efforts have not been in vain. Who knows what next week will bring, but for now I am happy with what’s past and hopeful that what will be will be. Or, as they say here in Kiswahili, ‘Chochote Itakuwa Itakuwa’.