The very best Tanzanian quotes so far (Joe)

Fr Innocent: “Oh sorry, I did not see it” – after driving the car into a large hole in the floor and nearly killing Gaz.
Fr Innocent: “Do not worry, it is Africa!”
Gaz: “No mate, yer in a grave!”

Brother Kevin: “Planking’s old news. You wanna go owling.”
“erm...?”
“Aye, it’s when you go behind something and you do this” – (does an owl impression)

Children in primary school on seeing Dan: “Harry Potter! Potter! Potter! Potter!”

Child in primary school while talking about music that’s popular in Tanzania “do you know Rihanna? Can you get me her number?”

Nurse to Sara: “do you know what a cervix is?”

Dave: “you should juggle in class, Dan.”
Dan: “I would but I don’t have the balls”

Children in primary school, waiting for Dan – “when is Harry Potter coming?”

Joe, while Dave is stuck, naked, behind two locked doors:
“Dave, you there?”
 “Yeah, Joe?!”
 “Yeah, Dave can you get my belt”
“I’m stuck in my room, can you help me out?”
“What? I can’t tell what you’re sayin’, Dave”
“Joe, I’m stuck in my room!”
“Right Dave, don’t worry about it, I’m just gonna go cause I can’t tell what you’re on about. Laters” – and Dave was stuck in his room for another ten minutes. And it wasn’t the only time it happened.

Lou: “Do you have any pets?”
Kids:“Yeah, course, I’ve got an elephant, some lions and a tiger!”

Deputy head of primary school to Rob: “English people fat, Tanzanian people slim. Me, thin. You, fat.”

Kevin: “In England, we have metaphors like ‘raining cats and dogs’- do you have any of these in Tanzania?”
Secondary school child, after a lot of thinking by the class: “Yes, we have ‘mama na jiko’”
Kevin: “What does that mean literally?”
Child: “Wife”
Kevin: “And what do you take that to mean?”
Child: “Kitchen”

- classic sexist quote.

Passing grinning woman, swinging a live chicken in one hand and waving her phone in the other to Jonny: “Eh, number?”

Dave (while taking questions on preventing the spread of diseases ): “No, class, excessive masturbation does NOT cause AIDS.”

--         - Joe

Secondary School (Dave)

We visited the Secondary School on day 4 and had a quick tour, so we sort of had an idea of what to expect on our first day- it was characterized by a lot  of sitting around. We arrived and had to wait outside the office to be called in, so we used this time to discuss how we’re going to try to affect African culture. We’ve got a bet on- whoever can bring a piece of Bolton slang into common Tanzanian usage first is the winner; we’re expecting to hear ‘be reet’, ‘mingin’, ‘dry as’ and ‘sick lad’ around the corridors by the time we leave.

We  were called in by a severe looking man (who I assumed was the headmaster, but later learnt was head of discipline) who took down what lessons we want to teach- me English and maths, Danny maths and physics and Jonny physics and English. In the first week, I’m taking English, Dan maths and Jonny physics and so we all split up to talk to our respective subject teachers. The English teacher was off on maternity leave, so me and Dan saw the maths teacher together and spent the rest of the day sitting around some more and working out what to teach in maths for the next three weeks.

Something the Tanzanian secondary school has that Thornleigh doesn’t, that surely needs to be introduced- a scheduled twenty minute tea break every day. I got a very funny look from the maths teacher when I asked if there was any coffee.

The next day we turned up just before first period to teach our first lessons. I was teaching English for the first two lessons, so I stopped off in the staffroom to find the English teacher to find out what I should be teaching.
‘The English teacher is off ill, she wants you to teach debating. Your lesson is now. GO GO GO.’

The passing nun who had given me these instructions then disappeared, leaving me and Kevin in a state of bewilderment. With no lesson plan and very very little experience teaching English it was a challenge trying to think of how to approach the lesson, but Kevin came up with an idea- a debate comparing life in England to life in Tanzania. We split the class into two groups and each team constructed an argument for Tanzania or England.

We’re teaching form 1, the equivalent of English year 7, which is split into three classes- 1a, 1b and 1c (all boys), so we teach each lesson three times, and so we had the debate three times, which meant we got to see a lot of the perspective the students had on both countries.

The England teams, which I was overseeing, came up with some really insightful points that taught me a lot about Tanzanian culture- some of them had a real interest in Tanzanian politics, and could go into great detail about political parties and the level of corruption there (although Kevin made the point that we have more politicians in jail than they do). Team England made some strong points about English education, technology, economy and politics, making arguments against Tanzanian corruption and electrical failures.

The Tanzanian team, however, tended to be a lot more convincing and got a few laughs from the crowd also-
'Good afternoon, I am Benjamin, aka, Benji'
‘In England, they spend millions on a wedding. In Tanzania, it takes us an hour and then we go home’.
'In England, it is so cold, every day, they wear TEN SWEATERS'

Tanzania scored points on weather, friendliness of its people, national parks, natural resources and wildlife. In the end, the Tanzania teams won all three.

The next few lessons I spent teaching about debating and writing techniques, some of which I suspect may have gone over their heads, but Kevin was helping me to get the class to understand, leading to this conversation:

‘In England, we have metaphors like raining cats and dogs- it doesn’t make any sense to us, but we use it to mean it’s raining heavily. In Swahili, do you have any phrases like this?’
(silence from the class)
‘You’re not going for lunch until someone thinks of one!’
(a lot of thinking, then someone puts their hand up)
‘Yes?’
‘We have ‘mama na jiko’
‘What does that mean literally?’
‘Wife’
‘And what do you use that to mean?’
‘Kitchen’

After finally meeting the English teacher and getting a copy of the syllabus, I found I was going to be teaching ‘Expressing state of health’- this sounded like a nightmare, but most of the kids gave me a lot of feedback and again taught me a lot about Tanzanian life, like different ways of preventing malaria, symptoms of different diseases and how to treat them. However there was some misinformation:

‘How can we prevent the spread of AIDS?’
One student put his hand up:
‘Avoid excessive masturbation!’
I then found myself in the awkward situation of having to say:
 ‘No, class, excessive masturbation does not cause the spread of AIDS.’

I then had them write a conversation between a doctor and a patient, trying to use as many of the keywords we’d brainstormed as possible, which led to some fantastic stories, my favorite about a man who is diagnosed with AIDS, but demands the doctor takes the test again:
‘Oh, sorry. I was mistaken. You do not have AIDS.’

The next lesson I had to teach was about ‘Expressing feelings’. This sounded difficult to me- getting a load of year 7s to express their feelings? How was that going to work? Me and Jonny asked the class to think of feelings, then use them in a sentence as an example. Again, the class got far more involved than we’d hoped for; we learnt quite a lot about the different love interests of the class (for ‘love’, one said ‘I love Catherine!’ I managed to get a laugh out of the class here by pretending to explode- ‘CATHERINE IS MY SISTER’S NAME’) and also that there is one teacher here nicknamed ‘Shadow’, because his skin is just that dark and he has a tendency to suddenly appear when the class are ‘misbehaving’. Jonny was thrilled with one of the responses ‘I feel confident when Jonny teaches me physics’ N’aww.

The discipline system is quite strict here. One morning we saw some students on their knees in the front yard, and later found out they had to kneel there as a punishment for a whole period. Kevin intervened in a fight one morning, pulling apart what he thought was two fighting students, but later found out it was a teacher and a pupil fighting. And during one of my lessons, two of the teachers came through the door without warning and pulled out six or seven students into the hallway. I asked the class what was going on, and they told me they were being caned for forgetting their ties.

 Kevin told me he was asked by a teacher how, if not through physical punishment, we discipline students in England? Kevin replied that we detain them and take away their time. The teacher said that wouldn’t work here because in Tanzania, time is not as valuable. That’s definitely true- everyone here is much less busy, and things are more flexible. When a Tanzanian says they’ll be there in an hour, it seems they can mean any time in the next week or so I think I prefer Tanzanian time to English time. I think I was running on it already.

-Dave

(More to come on the Secondary school from Jonny and Dan!)

Day 9: Kilimanjaro- 'Dave brought a book, Dan some juggling balls and Kie and Brad each brought their Gameboys' (Joe)

Kilimanjaro day!

For a trek to the base camp of the highest mountain in Africa, we’d obviously packed our bags and come well prepared: Dave brought a book, Dan some juggling balls and Kie and Brad each brought their Gameboys with them (with Pokemon Emerald and Mario Kart, respectively)

Climbers should be fit (and have a sore throat)

We got picked up, late – aka on time, Africa style – by our guides and headed towards the entrance of Kili, where we had to sign in and proceeded to be ripped off for various popular chocolate brands (90p for a KitKat!) and buy some particularly boring postcards with Kilimanjaro in them – I was disappointed as I wanted something bordering on fun for my postcard, but apparently they don’t want to advertise anything else. Cue posing for photos in the cold Tanzanian morning (it’s hot during the day and pretty nippy during the night and early morning) and after checking we were physically fit, over the age of 10 and not suffering from any illnesses, we set off. It was about 8km to base camp, then another kilometre to the Maundi Crater.

Although 8km isn’t far, we were about 3,000m up, and so the constant uphill was tiring, and by the time we got to Base Camp I was ready for a sit down and a surprisingly good packed lunch. Base camp’s where most people stop overnight to let their bodies get used to the altitude in an effort to prevent sickness, but obviously we weren’t going to the top so we headed back down after an hour of taking in the surroundings and locating a toilet that wasn’t the rainforest or a hole in the floor.

We didn’t see any animals on the way up (bar thousands of ants), but on the way down our guide proved he had an amazing eye for spotting wildlife; the highlight was ending up metres away from a baby monkey eating up part of the dense forest that surrounded the majority of our journey. It was a relief to get to the bottom with no more than a twisted ankle, with it being quite tricky going constantly downhill.

Our guide told us he ‘went to the top once or twice a month.’ As if that wasn’t impressive enough, we saw people carrying huge tents on their heads up Kilimanjaro – it was unbelievable. Although I enjoyed it, I don’t think I’ll ever be doing it with a packed up tent and several metal bars on my head. Having said that, I’m hoping that one day I might just get to the top.

-Joe

Day 4: 'a mob of children who thought Dan was Harry Potter' (Jonny and David)

( Geordie accent optional) 

Beginning to settle in to our half built castle and form some kind of routine thanks to Wallerdog’s obsession with systems and lists. The game of “will I let you charge your camera or not” is played by the mains electricity to everyone’s annoyance.  This makes no difference to me and Kie as none of our 4 plug sockets work.  The cold showers are a nuisance but at the same time refreshing and really wake you up.

We stopped at the spirit father’s house for breakfast and were taken around both schools and the hospital. I felt like a celebrity as we entered the primary school with the children fighting to get a look at us “Mzungi” (white men) with our hairy arms and pasty white skin.  As we toured the various parts we took pictures, high fived everyone, and were followed by a mob of children who thought Dan was Harry Potter. Little did they know that it is in fact Rob who controls the Elder Wand (or so he claims). From there we went to the secondary school which had a slightly more hostile atmosphere, which was to be expected. Once they destroy us at football I’m sure they’ll come around. The Hospital was bigger than expected with lots of different departments. However, I really wouldn’t want to spend the next two weeks there. Teaching seems a much more appealing, rewarding and enjoyable career path than Medicine – but that’s just my opinion.          

-Jonny

  

Tanzania is obviously a massive change from the English way of living in so many ways, but it’s surprising how familiar it feels. I think all the months of preparation had built up a picture in my head of how things would be, but in some ways it doesn’t feel all that different. I think the main thing that’s noticeably different is the people- all the Salesian Brothers and people around the complex are amazingly friendly and forward, everyone waves as we walk past (some of them shout ‘mzungu’ as we pass, but it never seems to be in an aggressive way) and the children are amazing, they crowd around anyone new and especially love cameras. Unlike Rob. He’s developing a nervous tic every time he hears my camera’s shutter goes off after a few sliiiiiiiiiightly unflattering pictures of him were taken... Hopefully I’ll make it out of Africa before he can delete them, but until then I’m sleeping with one eye open.

We went into the town of Moshi today, and despite being warned by Father Waller repeatedly NOT to interact with the street vendors, I started talking to a painter about his pictures and he managed to talk me into looking at all his oil paintings. I asked how much they were, and he said ’55 shillings!’

Having only changed my pounds into Tanzanian shillings minutes before, I still had barely any understanding of how Tanzanian currency works. I tried to explain this to him, and tell him I had no idea how much this was in English money, and that I wasn’t going to buy anything until we were leaving in three weeks anyway, but it became clear I’d made a mistake even looking at his pictures- he became very insistent. He said, looking me right in the eyes, ‘I’m very angry.’ Well, actually, I realised later he was actually saying ‘I’m very hungry’- which in some ways is even more unnerving- but it was enough to freeze me to the spot. I really had no idea how much he was trying to get me to pay.

 Luckily brother Kevin stepped in and saved me- instead of the 55 shillings (about 25 quid) he was selling it for, he said ’55? No no no, I’ll give you 7 (which is the equivalent of about £2.50)’ and then after the seller expressed what a ridiculous price he thought this was, pulled me away.

We thought this would be the end of it, but he followed me across the road and nearly into a cafe, knocking down the price every time, calling me by ‘my friend’ and asking to speak to me alone without Kevin. This continued all round Moshi until finally Gaz and Bradley heroically stepped between us and convinced him to leave us alone. He tried to force it on us by just thrusting it into our hands and walking away, but Kevin, in a stroke of comic genius, just left it on his shoe.

By the end of it, he was actually willing to sell it us for the 7 shillings brother Kevin had suggested as a ridiculous price before. I at this point was completely shaken- I’d just asked to see some paintings, and we’d been harassed through the whole of Moshi. I’ve learnt my lesson not to give the sellers here false hope.

-Dave

(Bit of a late update- just found the same painting in a souvenir shop down the road for 4 shillings. Don't feel quite so bad now...)

Day 3: ‘Do not worry! This is Africa!’ (Gaz and David)

The journey from Kenya to Tanzania was a well anticipated one and for all the wrong reasons. 8 hours of African bus, which clearly meant a small confined area where legs were usually wrapped around one’s neck. We boarded the bus to find 10 seats and our instant reaction was ‘we aren’t going to fit’. How wrong we were- 4 fold up chairs were ready.

Thinking they were clever, the 4 tallest boys ran for the back seats not realising chairs folded down in front of them. My knees were located around my ears for the best part of 2 hours and Bradley sat on my feet. The constant moan of “I have no knee cartilage” was becoming a dreary murmur. Not only the bad seats however- the most annoying self centred laborious girl we have ever met in our lives. We named her ‘The Sign Reader’ as this is where most of her knowledge came from.

Girl: “My boyfriend is Kenyan”

The coach, Amber just out of shot

Rob:”I bet he doesn’t speak English”

Safe to say the thought of stabbing her was a prominent thought, however her falling asleep saved us all. After the pit stop at the food station, we switched seats to mine and Bradley’s advantage. I got the extra leg room and the enlightening conversation of Mrs. Sparks and Bradley sneakily positioned himself next to ‘the hot girl’ Amber. We arrived at the border and after some dubious queues and a sneak peak of No Man’s Land, where we debated what nationality someone born there would be, we were in Tanzania.

Dan Martin was approached by a 92 year old Masai warrior with a child and Dan offered them a custard cream which they replied ‘I want money not a bloody biscuit.’*

We were back on the road again and Bradley was back on the pull with Amber. He enquired about every aspect of her life and quite cleverly got onto the topic of psychology where he continued to creep on her. However he failed and only came out with a first name, so no chance of any facebook stalking. Although she did say if he ever gets injured she would perform on him. No pun intended I hope. I did offer to throw a rock at his skull purely for Bradley’s benefit.

We departed the vehicle and we were astonished to find nuns had commandeered our house.

EASTENDERS MUSIC

*we’re guessing anyway

-Gaz

‘Commandeered’ might not be the word for it, but when we arrived at where we were supposed to be staying, it had been taken over by nuns. Luckily Father Innocent, the Holy Sprit priest Andrew has been in contact with planning the trip, was on hand to point us in the right direction to where we were actually staying.

The best I could get of the stars so far

‘It is a four storey hotel!’ he said. ‘Okay, it is a four storey hotel under construction’ he added. ‘Okay, it is a four storey hotel with only the first floor finished. And when I say finished, I mean finished in African terms.’ When we arrived we found that by ‘hotel’ he had actually meant ‘building site’, complete with builders, building equipment and dust everywhere, but nearly everyone has their own (nearly finished) en suite room with (mostly working) plug sockets, which is a big upgrade from what we were expecting and what the nuns were now enjoying. Father Innocent made us feel welcome by driving the van we were in directly into an open grave shaped ditch in the front yard.

 ‘Do not worry!’ he smiled, ‘It is Africa!’

Father Innocent (or Guilty as he’s known after the ditch incident) kindly took us out to a nearby food court to eat. ‘It’s chicken’, said Kevin, ‘but not as we know it.’ Kie attracted a local stray cat and they seemed to form a bond, but I think the cat was only in it for the chicken. ‘The cat probably has more meat on it than the chicken’ said Brother Kevin. Gareth eyed up the cat longingly. He’s not coping well with meat withdrawal.

Just as we’d finished eating the power went dead pitching us all into total darkness. We had our torches, so this wasn’t a problem, and all of a sudden we could see all the stars. I’d been told earlier to expect the night sky to be amazing in Africa, but seeing it for myself was something different entirely.

Back home we played many games of Blackjack until (again) the power went out. We couldn’t get the generator working until the appropriately named Samson came and used his super strength to reboot it. Its hum is a little annoying trying to get to sleep, but after a gruelling day smashing down a bumpy road in a van I dropped off instantly.

-David

Day 2: Nairobi (Dan)

Doha Airport, Qatar is fun. It feels like a major British airport, yet you can see houses built from sand and slums outside the windows. Half of us had just fallen asleep when Day 2 started with me, Joe, Louise and Andrew taking a 6am trip down to the cafeteria for a weirdly spicy breakfast. Afterwards we regrouped and set off for Kenya. The plan was to fly down to Nairobi, spend the night in a local Salesian house, and then take the bumpy six hour coach to Tanzania.

With no TV the flight was dull, except before we took off noxious-looking gas started to flow in through cracks in the ceiling. Qatarian air con? In Nairobi, we had a bus trip down to the Salesian house. Nairobi is a good city, so it felt like a tour! The weather was hot but not searing. Cars blare horns a lot more, which isn’t bad because you can do a lot of communicating that way. They speak Swahili in Kenya as well as Tanzania, but all the advertisements (often huge billboards) are in English. I want to go back sometime.

The Salesian place was a “Kenyan Savio House”, said Andrew. We stayed up through the night playing Mafia, a crazy game where some people are randomly selected to be the bad guys and the rest of us have to figure out who they are. By the night, a couple of us had only slept an hour since setting off on Friday, so we knocked off to bed.

-Dan

Day 1: 'Any yoghurt, sir?'



Joe's awful puns



So the time finally came to set off for Manchester airport and set off for Africa. We got through customs relatively easily for fourteen of us- apart from Rob spilling a whole crate of gluesticks at the desk (he's not got the hang of this drug smuggling thing yet) and Kie 'misplacing' his passport, but the same can't be said of the man behind us in the queue: 



'Any liquids, gels, pastes or sprays sir?'

'No.'

The woman on the customs desk looked him up and down and gave him a knowing look.

'Any yoghurt?'

'...oh...'

And then he turned back and started unpacking his bag, presumably for yoghurt reasons. I'm not sure what gave him away, he wasn't particularly yoghurty looking... Thinking about it, he was probably a spy. Probably.

-Dave

As we got onto the plane we realised we had a massive selection of TV programmes, films and music. I decided against listening to a very questionable 'Top 100 Singles of all time' and settled down to watch Spiderman 3, After a few hours we got our plane food, which consisted mainly of couscous and something described as chicken, but I'm not too sure myself. While serving the food, one of the stewardesses asked Dave where we were going, and it took him a good 10 seconds to come out with "well, erm... I should probably... Kenya". Well smooth, but not quite the East African country we're aiming to finish in.



Good grammar pls Doah



As we landed, Bradley got a text: "you up to anything tonight?" - at the moment it's 3am local time and we're sat in Doha airport (Qatar) attempting to get some sleep while a Chinese man (badly) plays guitar. And we're getting more and more excited that we're well on the way to Moshi, Tanzania

-Joe

The Night Before

Today is our final day in England before we set off for Tanzania for three and a half weeks. We're going to try and keep this blog updated as often as possible, but we have no idea how often we'll have internet access- it could be daily, it could be once a week, we'll have to see when we're out there!
If anyone wants to comment on the posts to pass a message on, let us know what's going on back home or hurl abuse while we can't get you back, please feel free.

I'm about to take my first malaria tablet, the possible side effects are not looking attractive- highlights of the list are 'loss of appetite' (probably not going to be a problem with what we've been told of Tanzanian food), 'strange dreams' (looking forward to these) and 'hair loss' (so we'll match Jonny and Rob with the skinhead look). Jonny's particular brand of malaria tablets give him mood swings. I hope he's not going to turn into The Hulk while we're out there. And Rob's got hallucinations listed on his, I'm looking forward to him spotting unicorns on safari.

I'd better go pack, see you all in three and a half weeks...

-David