We had breakfast...porridge (which i did not like and tasted like Sick....though many did like it Katie agreed with me and heaved when she tried it) followed by yummy papaya fruit and mango and then omlet, toast and peanut butter.
We split into groups again with some people painting classrooms, some painting windows and the other (which included me) gave painting a miss today and began work on the VolleyBall pitch. I got online (just) via the 3G dongle and at 600bps managed to find the dimensions of a volleyball pitch. Since this was a bit big for the area we had we went for 12mx6m which is about 2/3 normal size. We marked the area our using Jan's tent pegs reverting to basic pythagorus theory to get the angles and draw out the pitch. We dug two 3ft holes in which the volleyball posts would go and dug out a trench in which we placed planks of wood marking out the court. We had great fun playing in the hole after we had built in, pretending we were little people....Jan alomost looked normal height!!
In preparation for this we had to move around 3 tonn of sand and really felt it by the evening....i struggled to grip a cup of coffee by 7pm as my hands were knackered from holding a pick axe and shovel all day. In order to get the height of the net, we used our worthy leader Jan as a bench mark, getting the children to jump up high to see if they could pat Jan on the head....he is so tall (at virtually 2m) we are thinking of starting a new measurment system after him....so our court was 6Jans long by 3 Jans wide!!
Lunch was AMAZING today...we had a meat and vegetable pasty with chilli sauce. The food here is just so good!
In the afternoon, we were able to give some of the gifts that we had brought out with us to the children. We split the gifts (the pens, pencils, Kaleidos post-it notes and marbles) and went into each classroom (5 in all) and gave a small speech and then handed out the gifts. It was amazing to see how excited the children were to receive such simple gifts. Harry started the gift giving excercise off by letting off rocket balloons as we entered the classroom...they kids went mad for it...and loved it. One class got really scared and ran away when the ballon was released...so funny...
At the end of the day our final task was the flag pole. We dug (with the help of the local charity helpers) a 3ft hole and errected the flag pole which Katie painted in the colours of the Tanzania flag (which by the way Matt Beynon, is pronounced Tanzain..ia as Lauren said...i hate admitting you are right Laura!!!). Tomorrow we are going to buy a flag (as the school were going to get it next year when they had some money!!). On the base of the flag pole we will all write our names!
Jan and I went "up stairs" to take a photo of the flagpole. We got surrounded by children who just wanted to thank us for their gifts. After taking some photos the two of us begun playing clapping games and pat-a-cake and then they wanted to play hockey cokey again. We started to play but then they taught us a game where you all stand in a circle, one of them is "IT" and then they run round the circle until they "tag" some one...that person then joins the other run and they run round the circle. The game continues until only one person is left in the "circle". That person is then IT and has to chase everyone else until they catch someone. That person is then IT for the next round. The games really wore us out...they have so much energy and we were just running round with them for about an hour.
We stopped work about 6 and had showers....girls first of course so they get the best of the daylight hours. The solar showers that me and Nikki bought are great. We pour hot / boiled water into them and use them in the shower "room" - so much better than the bucket showers!
It was dark as we finished the last batch of showers and Nikki kindly put some army issue glow sticks into the shower block so the boys could see as we showered and washed the dirt, dust, mud and sweat off.
As we prepared for dinner at around 7:30 the rain started (early). It started as a normal rain shower but got heavier and heavier. It was real monsoon style rain and within minutes we had floods around the site. Many of the tents did not survive with Freddy's being hit the hardest and flooding most of her things. Most of the other tents were letting varying degrees of water in - I was lucky, so was Katie, Harry, Paul, Tom and Simon. After about an hour and a half the rain eased for a bit so we checked out damage to the tends. Raymond and Elvis helped Freddie and Nikki to move there stuff from the drenched tent into one of the classrooms and they set up more tents for them. They were to spend the night in the dry of one of the classrooms. We were told that if the rain persisted tomorrow, we would all need to pack our stuff and move our tents into the dry of the now almost completed classrooms.
The sense of "community" amoungst us was amazing...it felt in many ways like we had been rescued from an overseas disaster and were refugees. To me, it really does feel like we are one big family here. Everyone is so considerate towards each other and the 13 of us are now really close and everyone is just there for each other.
Once the rain stopped for the final time at around 10:00 many of us too the opportinity to return to our tents and try to get some sleep hoping the rain would hold off and we'd start to dry out... This will be an ever increasing threat now as Tanzania approaches the start of the rainy season....
Night night - dont let the bed bugs bite :-)
glad your all ok and sound like you are doing great job jan xx
ReplyDeleteHaha I absolutely love the picture of Jan in the hole! You guys are doing an amazing job! Hope you manage to stay dry. Look forward to your next update. Rachael (Jan's Mrs!) xxx
ReplyDelete