Back to skool

Before I move into my normal heart-wrenching portraits of the small deafs, leavened with the customary carefully judged and sensitively phrased humour, I thought you might like a little update on my nasty stomach bug (see previous blog, below). My friend Cath retrospectively diagnosed it as giardia, which I immediately spent several hours looking up online and feeling sorry for myself all over again. The appallingly sulphurous wind was NOT MY FAULT, although I do now understand a little bit more how Tori and Robert felt moved to say that there were several moments during that car journey that they had found less than fragrant.

 

Here is a giardia organism (not necessarily one that was inside me, but who knows? the little buggers get around) 

So, 5.30am on the Tuesday after Easter (yes! on holiday!) and I staggered out of bed in Cynthia's mansion to go back to skool. Not with dragging Molesworthy feet, but with an enormous list of Things to Do and a horrible pair of health sandals. Featuring high up this list was Tell People Off About Things Not Done. Second was Develop New Relationship With New Chair of Tanzanian NGO. Roughly third was Cuddle Children and Have More Fun. And I am really delighted to say that there was much less telling off needed than I thought! And actually, any telling off should have been at least half directed at me. Volunteering as an adult should be about making changes stick after you've gone, not just about floating around being special and saintly and different-looking for a year. 

And I should very swiftly point out, too, that the school now has so much interest from other people: volunteers, UK donors, the new Chair - the days when I could take sole credit for improvements are long gone. And I think that's good. My own awareness of my profound selfishness makes me aware that when the last child who knows me has graduated, I will probably want to move on to somewhere new to be loved. So it's best that they don't need me for ever, unless they lock Amina in. 

Good things

The cows were healthy and actually producing milk.

(NB note fraudulent just-for-the-photo feeding activity: like I even know which end it should be!)  

The school was clean. The classrooms were clean and the children seemed to be having fun and learning, and not having to pick their way through broken glass and piles of old tat that hadn't been thrown away. 

I saw the sweetest playtime, with balls and skipping ropes and the children quite obviously having tremendous japes with the teachers. I even joined in a bit of skipping, but was too tall to do the thing where two of them turn the rope and you jump between them. I only realised this I was whacked in the neck by the rope.   You could have someone's eye out, you know. 

The band still rocked, and they have done a few gigs since I've been gone! 

 A lovely Tanzanian mama comes in three times a week to do the books, rather than Matilda sweating over them with her tongue poking out and getting all the sums wrong. The vegetable garden is growing. Hamish the Volunteer created an art-room, and the children absolutely love it:

And still in need of fixing....

A few things not so good: the hens look very healthy and happy, but are actually evil vampire hens, sucking the life out of the school. They cost more in food than they make in eggs. How can this happen? How can a healthy hen, with lots of room to strut its stuff, not lay eggs? It's not like there's a winter in Tanzania! Are they all stuffed up inside still, like egg-constipation? Here they are. Look at their horrible little red eyes, just like Dracula. 

And as I said a couple of weeks ago, the playground looks a bit sad: I think I have to accept this as one of my failures. The contractor was utterly immune to all my threats, stroppy phone calls, emails and general raging. I suppose I should also acknowledge that he couldn't predict thirty children on the roundabout rather than six. One of the things that makes me sad about is that the children and the ayahs were so unused to the idea of a playground, and fun, that they just didn't know how to use it or supervise it. However, lots of the equipment had resisted the combined power of 240 little demons. 

Children I have scared

Children were still frightened of me. How familiar this posture has become: "African child hides behind bigger African child to escape the witch Albino woman". 

Grumpy against all the odds

I still got bad-tempered about some things. The World Service has not improved its "wise sayings" section. Even at 5.45am, my critical faculties are sharpened enough to resent the 10 seconds I'll never get back while listening to "The wise man waits before he acts, while the fool is impatient". And although I'd intended to spend lots of time cuddling and playing with the children, I realise that actually my patience only lasts about ten minutes (hem hem maybe only one minute) before I can't understand why they don't line up nicely and quietly when they want to look at photos on my camera. 

Sneef

But seeing a maths class with my beloved nursery children from last year, smelling spicy apples in the air, hearing people shout Looss, yet again having a total stranger hand over a miniature pupil to me to finish off the walk to school just because I am a trustable-looking white person was all wonderful. And also made me slightly sad, that I'd let my London life slip back again into merely waking up desperate to go back to sleep, going to work, going out, coming home, moaning about being too busy, and staggering to bed too late. I needed a few glasses of warm South African white wine to help me get over it. Luckily there were plenty of them to be found, and as the new non-volunteer me is now stupendously rich by Tanzanian standards, I didn't hold back. I also went riding.. I think you'll find that I look remarkably like Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. There was another picture, but my hand position was all wrong and Aunty Lynn and Sarah and Lisa Booth, riding supremos, would have noticed. 

It's particularly impressive that I look so great because earlier in the ride, the evil horse (probably quite closely related to the evil hens) THREW ME OFF! It was properly scary. I was just tootling along, idly wondering whether my holiday insurance covered riding, when zut alors! she slipped on some mud and I was inelegantly tumbling to the ground. Poor Cynthia turned round to see me curled up, immobile, and the horse looking very worried. I had sustained only one tiny scratch, and was just being sensible in case the horse stepped on my head, but it looked much more serious. However, I was straight back on: Britain didn't build an Empire by breeding jessies that go squinnying back to the stables, and I'd already paid. 

Here is evidence of my muddy bottom and torn (on barbed wire! that could have been my lovely face!) T-shirt 

Nature walk fans - check out what a real cashew nut looks like in the wild, pre-capture! The brown thing on top turns into a kind of pear thingy. Apparently. Personally, I prefer them in the rather nicer roasted salted phase, so that I can force-feed myself like a foie-gras goose.

Obligatory ludicrous outfit

Although there are no poo stories this time, there are a couple of comedy outfits. But not a German in sight: both modelled by me. I got given the white one as a present and had to put it on to show my appreciation. It is meant for everyday business-casual wear, but will in fact make super pyjamas only, despite the strangely low crotch that makes me look like a Tanzanian MC Hammer.

 The other was just very unfortunate: I quite literally got dressed in the dark, as there were power-cuts most mornings. I don't think dirndl is a good look for me. My shame is great. 

Anyway, I could go on like this for ever, but I must reluctantly acknowledge that as now I'm basically just saying What I Did In My Luxury Holidays rather than How I Overcame Adversity And Did Good Things, your appetite for my prose may be slightly diminished. So let me herald the end with a) a mildly comedy story b) Focus on Amina and c) why it still matters that you care. 

Mild comedy

One of the teachers came into the office with a big rolled up poster. Oh, I said, how lovely. Is that a charmingly artisanal piece of art made by a small deaf? He unrolled it with a huge grin and bellowed "OVARIES", presenting me with a delightful diagram of ladies' bits. It was a teaching aid for the biology class. It's good to keep learning, though.

Focus on Amina!

Amina is still wonderful. She has moved out of nursery and now has a proper blue uniform. You can see her here, second from right, in a maths lesson (note they are doing sums with the blue water-bottle tops, because the school can't afford proper wooden number things):

and very proudly showing me all the ticks for her sums:

Why it still matters

Tissues out. Here is Violet, whose father hit her so hard that she went deaf, ecstatic at receiving the sewing machine from my mum.  This cost £65 and will change her life. 

And this is little Jackson. He doesn't have parents, and when he goes home to his village, he just sleeps on the floor with any family who will have him. My friend Sharon's sister sent a parcel of clothes last year, and I made sure that he got the Brazil football shirt and a fleece. He lit up with excitement, and wore them non-stop despite the heat. The close-up is of his hands. I don't know if you can see the open sores properly, but the fungus was all over him. The ayahs are lovely, but they are too busy to notice things like this immediately. It only cost £5 to get the right cream. He's only eight, and what makes me want to weep is that he wasn't complaining at all - he doesn't expect anyone to see, or help. 

So all the donations you've giving make such a huge difference - to the medicine fund, to the £50-a-month wages of the care staff and just for the children having some fun sometimes.  As always, thank you so very much  - and in Swahili, Amina says thank you too. 

Pole sana, Mzungu

Matilda-who-loves-Jizzus looks at me reflectively. “Ah, Lucy, you have grown fat”. I nod appreciatively, knowing it’s just not worth explaining again that this isn’t quite the look I am aiming for. She pauses and comments knowingly. “It is because there is so much chocolate in the UK”. I cannot deny this, having just given her a one kilogram bar of Cadbury’s chocolate emblazoned with a big UK flag. And a bag of extremely sexy bras donated by Claire and Tatiana at a clothes swap night. Surely an ideal gift for any woman?

I am back in Tanzania, to see the children at the school and check up on some projects that so many lovely readers have paid for. I am sitting in MWLJ's house. It still has the same bible quotes on the walls and reminders that God is watching me. She looks fabulous. She had looked utterly exhausted when she visited the UK, and I had been fearing what I thought was an inevitable conversation about her having to retire. But she has a cool new head wrap and is full of beans (probably quite literally, this being a staple diet). We have tea and hot doughnuts, despite the fact that I am already oozing sweat, still wearing my plane Primark tracksuit, knee-length, black nylon compression socks and hiking boots that wouldn’t fit in my case.

I was not excited at all about arriving. I was scared that the school would have slipped back to how it was without a bossy girl jackbooting round giving orders, and that my year away would have proved to have been a pointless conceit. Convinced of disaster, I am surprised when Immigration let me through with my old residency visa without wondering where I’ve been for nine months. I am also surprised when my suitcase turns up, apparently still full. A few hints of problems: Dar es Salaam airport is still called Julius Nyerere International rather than Loosss. There is no statue of me like the one of Christ looking over Rio de Janeiro. The taxi journey to the school, straight from the airport, is spent half angsting and half gazing at the things I’d forgotten, like the astonishingly clashing colours (haven’t these people heard of beige?) and the women walking wonky-hipped but still more gracefully than I ever will. But it was wonderful to screech up in my taxi. The children mobbed me in a pleasingly enthusiastic and paparazzi fashion, squawking noisily, and all the teachers also seemed gratifyingly pleased that I am back, rather than reluctantly downing Cokes, sighing, and drifting slowly off to the classrooms.

I did a quick tour of the school, still scared. The playground is terribly forlorn. Broken swings, broken roundabout, general lack of small deafs trying to kill each other. I’ll need to give the contractor some “feedback” later, which will no doubt have about as much effect as the first time, a year ago, ie zero. But there is no litter. Calvin has not left any chods lying around. The classrooms are clean, and not full of piles of dusty crap and broken glass. There is actually an art lesson going on, with children staring hard at an arrangement of calla lily leaves. Extraordinary. And excellent. I am beginning to feel like Uber-Volunteer again. I deserve my halo, yes I do. In fact, the school is beautiful and it’s wonderful to be back. The frangipani is in nearly-full bloom, and smells nicer than I remember. No wonder it’s said to be planted in graveyards. The grounds are green and manicured. And Amina is here. Amina! Tanzania’s most perfect child. Matilda takes me to her classroom. I have been so excited about seeing her for nine months. When I’ve visualised this meeting, there have been various cinematic effects applied by L Carter’s subconscious, like slow motion, soft-focus, and flashbacks to each of us gazing moodily out of the window, missing the other. What actually happens is not entirely different to this, but departing from the script slightly in that a) I don’t recognise her and b) she looks quite pleased, but largely underwhelmed to see me. But the most important thing is that she has graduated from the nursery class and is now in a proper blue grown-up girl’s uniform, supplied by Val Carter. I am sure that during the next week, she’ll remember that she adores me.

You may be wondering where the normal heart-wrenching photos are. I was just TOO HOT to dig deep down in my bag for my camera, and too busy being emotional, except for this rubbishly unfocused but sweet one in Matilda’s office. It shows the “Thank You display” and I was very touched that she’d kept it going, and that she couldn’t quite remember how much the International Money Fund gave this year, and just wrote “Huge donation”. (Actually $9000, so ta very much indeed IMF).

I will be back in the school soon and will take loads more snip-snaps, with your favourite characters.

In the meantime, here’s a few from my Easter weekend, in the NE mountains, where it was much cooler. I picked up a vile stomach bug on the second morning, and spent most of a seven-hour car journey having to get Tori and Robert to stop the car so that I could be colourfully and loudly sick or fertilise the bush in other ways. No photos of that, but there was a lovely moment when I was just recovering from a long and vigorous vomit and these children from across the hillside shouted “pole, mzungu” (Poor you, white person) and were very pleased when I thanked them.

Other highlights were:

a child only slightly frightened of me....

handing a out new football like a royal visitor....

making friends with a goat....

and a baby wearing the traditional woolly hat, during a short chilly spell (30 C).

In a few days' time, I'll write a fuller post with updates on all your favourite characters and no doubt some temper tantrums from me. In the meantime, thanks as always to everyone who gives so generously - I am so delighted to say that the school still seems to be an honest and loving place where your money is safely spent. Until then, heigh ho for the open road in an open dalla-dalla.