Day 4: Half day then off to Arusha

After a smaller downpour during the night, another yummy breakfast the same as day 2 welcomed us. Today we only had half a day of work so lots to be done as we were travelling off to Arusha (the main town in Tanzania) this afternoon staying in a proper hotel where we get to have proper showers, lights and air con.....amazing!!!


I felt a bit run down this morning....speaking to the others I was not the only one - Katie felt coldy and head achy and Harry also had a bit of sore throat....Some of the other guys had..."toilet trouble" also so we were all looking forward to a night of "luxury" tonight.

So...we cracked on with the work splitting into 3 teams. The girls worked on the top two classrooms finishing these off - painting new blackboards and painting the blue borders round the bottom of the walls in the classrooms. Meanwhile one of the boy teams worked to finish off the old tea/kitchen room with the top coats of white gloss and finishing off the windows frames whilst my team began prepping another two classrooms. These were both big rooms and were SO SO dusty as the builders onsite had just finished rendering the walls ready for us to paint. It took Paul, Simon, Tom, Kerry and I nearly an hour to dust the room down and sweep the floor clean(ish) of dust and dirt. We managed to get a coat of primer onto both rooms so they are now ready for us tomorrow....

We stopped just after 12:00 noon and had babywipe showers (they might not sound like much but it does get some of the dirt off)! Lunch was chicken and rice with these shredded vegetables (which tasted like the inside of a spring roll you get in a chinese restaurant) followed by yummy fruit.

After lunch, we packed up our rucksacks and headed off in the minibus to Arusha stopping briefly at Moshi Town to drop off Elvis who was going to spend tonight at home with his family - a much needed rest as he has not stopped since we arrived at camp. After a long bumpy and very dusty ride along the half-made up roads to Arusha we arrived at our hotel - the Impala Hotel. This is so much luxury compared to what we have been used to....

Once checked in we rushed to our rooms to shower in hot fast running water....I dont think I'll ever appreciate a shower and hot free running water as much as I did as i stepped out of the shower in the hotel room...its so amazing the things we take for granted at home an dafter just 4 days at camp i had almost forgotten just how good a shower can make you feel...

We met in the pool and had a swim/splash around for about an hour which was great- the water felt so fresh on our skin and we felt really clean for the first time since we arrived in Tanzania. Later, we met in the hotel bar at 8pm (after another amazing shower) and had a couple of drinks before heading into Arusha town to a restaurant that Raymond knew. We had a couple of beers and a few drinking games (well, why not) before being served dinner which was chicken, liver, grilled bananna, chips and vegetables...after a few more rounds of drinks we headed in-doors and played more drinking games (which I think Harry started) - we managed to make Drink Why You Think last for 2 hrs somehow....after a few more games including arm wrestling we retired around 2am back to the hotel and to bed...tonight actually felt like we were on holiday and the rest made us feel great (minus the almost certain hangovers in the morning).

Play time.......in Arusha

Tomorrow..Arusha for lunch and then exploring the markets before heading back to camp.