Day 8: Visit to Odangeni School then down the local pub

Was up a little late this morning as the persistent heavy rain, made getting up and scrambling out of the tent in the rain the last thing i wanted to do....so I waited until the rain stopped which was about 7:45 before getting up...it was so so muddy....will be nice on Friday night when we get another night in the hotel ahead of the safari....

It seems we still have a lot to do...with only one and a half days of work to go before the opening ceremony and party on Friday. We have a half day today since we are going to visit another school in Moshi called Odangeni School which is a school in a far far worse state than Uwa school at which we are currently working. This is a school which has recently applied for funding/help from ChildReach International...so if we manage to secure more work here though our work or hopefully with the help of RM in the future, we may return to help this school one day....

Today, we concentrated hard on completing a number of more "fun" tasks which really make the classrooms look like learning spaces rather than just rooms....this included more drawings on the walls, murials, painting the outside of the school, cleaning the windows and just making them look like school classrooms...the teachers are so so impressed with what we have done and everytime we see a teacher or community member, they just say thank you - thank you and want to hold your hand/shake your hand and show their gratitute.

After lunch, we showered and whilst people were getting ready the others continued to work until we'd all showered (which was nice as it was still daylight so I could actually see what I was washing...and the amount of dirt that seemed to be coming off me)!

We all piled in the back of the van at around 4:30 and set off to Odangeni school....the journey was cut short (after about 30 seconds) as we could not get up the muddy hill....this meant bailing out about half the people and trying again...getting a good run up this time....We eventually got underway but it was quite a hairy journey...bumpy, slidey and just a little snippit of fearing for your life as the van struggled to climb up the muddy hills to the school.

Upon arriving at the school, we were greeting with an influx of children (who had been doing exams today) who surrounded the van as we approached the school.We had some balloons and ticker tape with us which we threw at the children as we came in and they went absolutley mad for it...they loved it and kept chasing the balloons and getting us to blow them up again.

The head teacher gave us a speech and thanked us for the work we had been doing at Uwa School and then gave us a tour of the school....naturally we were followed by the pupils who seemed to just we worshipping us...it was so overwealming and at times i felt myselt welling up as the emotion was just so increadible.

The school is basically a Primary and Secondary school in one, (two main buildings but one school). The head had such amazing pride in what the school had already accompanished which was incredible seeing how run down it was - it really did have no or little facilities. In particular, the kitchen which is an old shack with a hole in the ground for a stove [PIC], toilets are just bits of tin wrapped around a make shift door and non-sanitised hole in the ground - very smelly and no real drainage. We were also shown an old store room which is now being used to teach up to 35 pupils per class. Many of the classrooms had incomplete roofs, there were holes in the walls and they looked more like disused garages than facilities in which teaching and learning could ever take place.

This is actually a classroom teaching 35 children!

This is the toilet block for all 350 children and 6 staff! (non sanitised and no proper sewerage)

After the tour, we got to spend 30-40 minutes with the children, teaching them the same games and songs that we had taught the children in Uwa...this included up playing "whats the time Mr. Wolf", "Heads Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and "Hokey Cokey". It was even more overwealming than at Uwa to be honest since the children here had not been used to visitors - you have to remenber that Uwa school is at the last stage of its Transformation so have been used to seeing volunteers around. Most of us were a bit tearful (with joy, sadness and excitment)...We all discussed that when we get back to the UK we all want to try to get RM to help support this charity officially if possible and will be making our case of getting ChildReach as an RM supported charity if we can....

On the way back from the school, we visited a local pub in Moshi and had a nice few drinks in the bar with the locals before heading back to Uwa school for dinner and drinks.