Getting Down and Dirty - July 8

It is good to have the group here and we start the day with breakfast at the convent. We are having both breakfast and dinner here, which makes it easy for us to move as a group and it is great having meals all together. We are all excited as we having eggs as a special treat, outside of the normal toast and juice. The group is busy and eager to get going so we head over to the school to be there by 8:30. As we soon find out, a few of the older students proudly meet us each morning for our walk – greeting us the sign of “hibari” (how are you?) and smiles from ear to ear. They are thrilled to have us here and escort us through the local village.

Despite the size of our group, we have a tremendous amount to accomplish with the main focus being the dorm. The students are on holiday until Sunday evening, when we will need to have at least one floor completed for them to sleep. In addition to the paining, it needs a massive cleaning – bathrooms, windows, floors, furniture, etc followed by all the beds getting organized with new mattresses put on the beds. We get to work, coordinating small teams to tackle the different painting that needs to get done – dividing up by colors. We paint like mad people through the morning until tea time and despite feeling like you have done a lot of work, in reality we have just made a dent. We stop for tea at 11am, which will be every morning – a break that we all look forward to for hot tea and Tanzanian V – a doughnut like cake that is not too sweet, hard boiled eggs and fruit. After the break, we aim to get through at least the first coat across the top floor. Luckily we do.

Lunch is at 2pm, where Mamaoshi, the cook who is like our big mama has been cooking for all of us over the course of the morning. I find her out back with a vat of rice and sorting through spinach. Lunch is very similar every day but always tasty and it is great to sit down. Luckily the weather has been relatively cool which is good for us. We get through the rest of the first coat after the lunch and we are dirty, paint covered and exhausted by the time we finish at 4:30pm. We have another sign lesson and a few of us head back ahead of the others.

I sneak off to the internet café close to the convent. The café is a line of 6 monitors that as I soon find out work sometimes and sometimes don’t. The funniest bit is despite that the lines don’t work always, “Facebook” comes up first and works regardless of the connection. The two young adults who there are feverishly typing away on their homepage. After several attempts, I give up and head back to the convent for a shower and dinner.

A few of us split a beer and head to dinner. Another great dinner, although a bit of surprise it is all vegetables, we suspect it is because they need a bit more money for more supplies – meat and eggs. The vegetables are delicious, as they are everyday – convinced it is the lack of pesticides and chemicals on the fruits and vegetables – everything is delicious. They cook with natural ingredients for example potatoes cooked in coconut milk, fresh tomatoes and onions – simple and delicious. I am completely exhausted so I head to bed early and am asleep by 9pm. Listening to the sounds of Dar – city sounds, some music and a far off DJ. The city has a certain pulse that calms a bit at night but has a certain undertone that is quite exciting.