First week progress

Jenny's view on her walk to work

Lots of progress to report.  Jenny had a couple of days at work, met some of the teachers she will be working with and got hold of copies of the Standard 7 exams in Maths and Science.  These are for our equivalent of Grade 6 kids.  The exams were very interesting - mostly multiple choice and some questions covering material our kids wouldn't be expected to learn until year 9 or 10 high school.

We've made several trips to town, learning where everything is, buying food and household essentials (buckets, mops, cooking utensils etc).  Still heaps more to get but we can't do everything in one hit.  We've made significant progress on our post office box.  We have a number and a photo ID card that says we have one (PO Box 1951, Bukoba, Kagera, Tanzania).  Unfortunately we don't have a key for it yet.  Maybe later this week…

The annual Nane Nane festival has just been held.  This is the region's agricultural show and we went to see it on Friday.  Lots of good ideas to take back for Sheepvention.  Jenny bought 5 kangas (large colourful sheets of material used for clothes by women here) and we have curtains on most windows now to help keep the dust down.

So far we haven't had any rain.  One night there was a big noisy storm but no precipitation.  The weather is mostly sunny and warm - probably nudging 30 degrees most days.  It doesn't get cold overnight but the locals are often rugged up.  Many of the school kids wear jumpers all day.  I saw one chap in town wearing a thick fleecy-lined parka.  Babys on mother's backs are often swaddled in blankets and wooly caps.

On Saturday there was a picnic lunch organised by the local VSO volunteers.  Some travelled for a couple of hours on mini-buses to get here.  It was in a shady spot down by the lake and very pleasant.  A major highlight was meeting a chap who lives near us who told us that down our road was a small market area where we could buy many of our daily food needs.  We checked it out on Sunday and, although most stalls weren't open, it looks like we will at least halve the need for walks into town.

Today Jenny headed off for her first full week of work.  I walked down to town for some supplies (shampoo, toilet paper, birthday card for Toby etc.) and to use the internet.  Internet access here is limited to three places in town as far as we can tell.  All 40 minutes walk away.  The power goes off regularly in one of them and another had no connection when we tried it on Saturday.  I managed 30 minutes today.  We will investigate buying a USB 3G modem for our laptops but these are expensive and it will be interesting when we say we have Mac computers.  One of the volunteers has a modem she is willing to sell us assuming we can get it to work.

I think we are still a week or two away from getting a good routine going but I reckon we have made excellent progress in our first week.

 
Monday 9 August, Bukoba