Water project complete

On Thursday I went to see the school having completed the water project for Muguli school.  Here are some pictures of the children using the water tanks and new wash stands.  They were delighted with them.  Now each class has one each and they have enough cups for the children to get a drink when they like.  Well done St Beghs! and a big thank you to you from Muguli School.

Using a wash stand

Innocent - the Head Teacher and child

Getting a drink!

Using one of the new wash stands

Problem resolved! hopefully. I'm back!

Thought I had better let you all know that my dad has had his triple heart bypass operation and is now on the mend.

Back to work this week and it has been hectic. Whilst at home St Beghs Catholic Primary School in Cumbria sent me a letter and asked if they could do anything to help.  They raised £350 and are supplying one school Muguli with clean drinking water for the pupils as a result.

These are the water facilities at the school now.  Water for cleaning is collected from the roof of the school into the large tank.  The cleaner then goes to the local tap about 500metres away and collects jerry cans of water to fill up two of the black small water tanks you can see below.  The water still needs to have sterilizing fluids added to make it safe to drink.

 

This is where the pupils wash their hands before going into school in the morning.  I will post more pictures of the resources the school has provided once we have finished this project.

Temporary problem!

Dear all

If you are wondering why I haven't made a blog posting for a few weeks now, it's because just over three weeks ago my dad had a heart attack and he is currently awaiting a triple heart bypass operation in LGI which is scheduled for next Thursday.  I came back home on 12th Feb for a short period to enable me to help out my mum with his care.  I am hoping to be back at work in the not too distant future as long as all goes well with the op! 

Will be back to blogging again once the drama is all over and he is on the mend.

Gorillas

An amazing experience.  Trekked through potato and permethrin (chemical used on mozzie nets) fields (flowers like white daisies) and over the boundary wall into the national park. 

Then it got muddier and muddier and more like rain forest all the time. 

Trekked through bamboo forest to a clearing. 

We were led by a man with a machete who cleared the way.  Eventually came to a clearing and saw the trackers with their rifles there and could hear rustling in the branches behind us.  Then, as if on queue, the gorillas marched into the clearing and sat down for their photo call.  We were there for an hour photographing them and managed to get to within two yards of them.  It was amazing.  We saw the Bwenge group. 
There was one silverback

5 females

Twins who were about 2 years old

and one baby about 1 year old. 

We had a great guide called Francois who has worked in the national park for 31 years.  He showed us how they peel the bark off the trees to get water from the stems and told us all about the trees and flowers that the gorrillas ate.

Zanzibar

How to sum up the place.  Spices, hot, lovely people, good fish, dirty streets, pretty stonetown, bargains shopping, nice coffee, lovely beaches.

Went on a tour of a government run spice area with Lynne and Darryl.  It was not regimental growth as expected but a random covering of all sorts of exotic spices.  You could smell the spices in the air when you entered Zanzibar.  Whilst going round the tour George was weaving us some gifts – head dresses, rings, a tie for Darrys and nicklaces of frogs made from banana leaves. 

At the end of the tour we were offered every kind of fruit you can imagine including, pineabpple, jack fruit, banana, golden mango, Zanzibar apple, grapefruit etc.  Then a man went shinning up the nearest coconut tree to cut down some coconut for us to drink.  No harness or safety rope just shinned up.  He then proceeded to cut the outer edge of the coconut away – made us some spoons, cut the top off and asked us to drink the contents, then to eat the nut inside which was slimy and soft quite unlike coconut I have previously had.   After the spices we visited a cave (Coral Cave) where they used to keep slaves once slavery had been banned by the British.

Prison Island

Friday took a boat to Prison Island to see the Tortoises which are very large and not indigenous but smelly!  There are lots of them.  We got a motor boat over to the island (about 20 mins) then had to wade to the shore.  Paradise Island used to be a sanctuary for people with different illnesses and it was used to quarantine those travelling to Tanzania by boat who were seriously ill before they reached the mainland.  Went to Africa House in the evening to watch the sunset.  Lots of blue jelly fish which bite but are apparently not poisonous.

Stonetown – Night market

Went into Stonetown one night for the night market.  This is loads of stalls all set up selling the days catch on BBQ or in omelettes or pancakes etc.  They had all manner of things to eat which were warmed up on the grill before being given to you.  A very novel experience.

Stonetown during the day was a bit disappointing for me it is a labyrinth of small passages and alleyways down which are numerous shops all selling similar wares where you can barter the prices down to more or less 1/3 of the starting price.  There are lots of elaborately carved front doors in the town which add to the charm.  The Zanzibar coffee house sells lovely coffee and is worth a visit as are many of the old colonial style hotels in the centre.

Christmas day

Pongwe – a lovely deserted beach where we spent a day at the Queen of Sheba hotel.

Swimming with Dolphins – boxing day – quite unconventional but good fun and amazing to see so many dolphins in one place.

New Year’s Eve – bought three different types of cheeses in Kigali (a rare and expensive treat and not one we do often without a fridge!) and a bottle of wine (another rare treat at £10 per bottle) and played charades, chatted and made our own fireworks with paper bags and watched the countdown Rwandan time before singing and dancing around the room singing Auld Langsyne.

Rwandan Wedding

Spent most of Saturday restoring an old apple ipad, that someone had donated to the disability group, to its former glory and getting all the programmes on it working for them. 

Set off to the wedding at 2pm in Mishinana (traditional dress) on the
back of a motorbike. Not much fun!

Worried about the dress getting caught in the wheels or blowing off etc.  Here is Nassa (Roisin's sister) Mike (Nassa's partner) Me Roisin and Stephen (Roisin's brother)

Anyway once the moto driver found the church - he went wrong a few times but eventually we ended up at the church. It turned out there were two weddings going on at the same time. Very strange and totally unrelated. The wedding I was attending had a military band (as the groom is obviously in the army.

Nadine looked very nice.

The service was about 2 hours long and the singing was beautiful. Then went by taxi to the reception.  Some traditions - bride offers groom a fanta!, groom reciprocates, then they do the same with the cake. Everyone who takes a present up to give to the newly weds has to make a speech.
The cake had a firework in the top of it which was quite unusual. 

The inthore dancers made several appearances which livened things up a bit.

We sneaked out at around 9pm thinking it was nearly over - only to be told that a bus was coming to take everyone to their house to continue the party - we bowed out at that stage.

A nice occasion and nice to be invited.

Work

Finally finished the training and all went well.  This week I have been working with two Head teachers trying to set up a template for them to use to timetable their staff in their schools without proper timetabling software – using Excel.  Not as easy as it sounds due to double shifting and the fact that they have very large schools, with large numbers of teachers and 12 periods in 1 day!  I have to prepare a presentation to the head teachers for Friday so busy doing that. 

During the last three weeks that we ran our training I also asked the head teachers to complete a ‘Needs Analysis’ for me with what training they needed outlined so I have the returns to analyse too. 

Nothing much has happened here, except I won the bid for the desks! Yippee.  I have been with the head teacher to the joiners to pay them half of the money to get the work started which gave me a real buzz.  They should be finished by 5^th January ready for the new term.  I hope I am as successful with the bid for the orphanage. 

It doesn’t feel like the 5^th December here as the days are still warm and sunny – very strange – but very nice.  I understand it’s snowing at home today.  Glad I’m not there!

Saw this little lad with his home made kite running down the road yesterday - lovely.