Post 4

First day at project vs. days at Uni

Got some good news again! I shared my blog on Twitter and the people of Travel Active (the Dutch organization that helped me book this trip) liked it so much they asked me to write a blog for them! Such a compliment, asante sana! Some other news is that I booked another trip today. Or actually my parents did.. Anyway, I’m probably going to Egypt this Christmas! And I find it pretty weird that’s actually the same continent as Tanzania. Already tried to convince my parents to just go a bitttt more to the south, something like Tanga – just to mention a random city.. – but no. Still very excited though! J

Ok, back to this blog. This is what I wrote about my sixth day in Tanzania:

First day at project
Time: 20:41
Date: 7-7-2014

Jesus, can I go to bed yet?? I’m so tired! This first day was really tough and it wasn’t even very hot yet! This morning I woke up because of the rain and wind that was blowing that same rain directly through the tent into my face. On the other hand, the rain made work at project a little bit easier because it kept the temperature relatively low.

First we had to walk the 20 minutes to the school again, but this time with an extra challenge: we had to carry our filled water bottles and our tools all the way over! So I felt more like one of the seven dwarfs instead of the queen when we were walking through the village. With my pickaxe and my cement thing. When we arrived at project we started directly with hoeing and shoveling a big pile of rubble in front of the main entrance of the school. Sadly, the Africans weren’t really efficient. At first they forgot which pile of shit had to be moved and which one had to stay. And of course we started with the wrong pile! NICE. So when we were done moving a few wheelbarrows full of sand and stones, they finally figured it would have been a good idea to explain their plans BEFORE we started doing the fucking wrong thing.. But ok, when we finally started doing the right thing it still didn’t go all too well. It was very heavy: never have I ever… been this damn sweaty before in my life. Luckily we had Harry, our pickaxe master. A strong guy from England who seemed to be the only one to be able to hoe more than once every minute.

Working hard was actually pretty nice when I thought of the kids we were making a bit happier (and the thought of getting skinny and tanned – bringing sexy back!). Btw, we started around 9 and around half one we finally had a lunch break. Our lunch was rice with some kind of red sauce with three tiny pieces of onion and a lot of nothing. The good old healthy stuff.

Funfact: going to the toilet is a real experience here. Like wow, it smelled só bad. And of course I’m a lucky woman because it’s that time of the month again! So I could spent even more time in there. Yay! (A few months later, I can actually still smell this when I think about it typing this blog).

After lunch we had to do a different task: plastering the walls. The only thing I’ll say about this is that I found out this is nót my biggest talent. But I liked doing it (also because we were in the shadow), so I guess that’s ok. I had to do this until around half past three and when we were done we RAN all the way back. We didn’t want to walk all the way back so yeah.. we ran. After this run I was even sweatier and smellier (can you even say that?) than I was before. The showers were way to popular so I decided to go to the sea with Ewa, Eva, Elle Cindy and ok too many people to mention. We had to walk through the village again so we were followed by a lot of children and guys. So when we were done chillin’ in the water (swimming is not really possible, way too shallow), they were all waiting for us to come out. On the way back I had to protect my sunglasses, towel and even my hair band thingy with my life, this time for a little girl, Huma. With her one hand she was holding me, with the other a little crab she tried to push into my face – loved it.

Ohhh another funfact: this guy came by on a bike at project today and he had a turtle in a bucket. And I could hold it for a few minutes. The turtle, not the guy.

I’m writing this in the tent of our neighbors btw and they decided it’s time to go to bed, so I should stop writing! I already wrote down the most important things any way. Lala Salama!

My god, I remember this day so good! Really felt so nasty and tired after all the hard work, but god it was good! Really wish that I was still in such a good shape as after all the wheel barrowing and hoeing but nooo. I went to the gym yesterday (seriously have been too busy to go more often) and I decided to join the kick box class. The fuck, I nearly died when we had run and jump and punch for like an hour in a row. Could have done that easily just after Tanzania.. So sad. Ah! I just remember that I got my last vaccination against hepatitis A/B this week, interesting right. I’m protected for 25 years now! So if I decide to go back when I’m like over 40.. I can. That’s cool I guess!

Another interesting activity I did this week is doing a presentation to promote Theater-, Film- and Television studies (now called Media and Culture studies.. L) in front of 200 hundred new students per shift. I was pretty nervous the first time on Friday morning when I thought of the fact that so many people would make their study choice based on my presentation, but it went better and better. So instead of helping kids by building their school, I helped students by talking and trying to be funny about University. Both so different but both pretty cool to do!