Health and Safety

Apologies for the new font. The change-font button has disappeared and it is beyond me to work out where it's gone...

Anyway. Normally, I think of H&S as a total pain in the arse, meaning that we can’t have kettles and toasters at work in case we forget how to use them between leaving the house and getting to work and burn ourselves. But now, as with so many of my previous opinions, I have a reluctant respect for it. This week, we took the pre-schoolers to a Book Day in the centre of Dar. A friend of Cath (her again) works for the Tanzanian Book Council and they were putting on a Reading Week, with different publishers in tents showing their books, wall charts etc. It sounds absolutely deathly dull. But a) there was a promise of free T-shirts and b) the children at the school hardly ever go on trips (more about this in a future posting) and so I am simultaneously sad and happy to say that they were dying with excitement through the whole day.
But how to get nine very young deaf children safely to and from an event in an open, public place? They can’t speak – so if they run off, they won’t be able to ask for help or say where they live. And there is no school minibus and the daladalas (local fate-tempting, early-death-beckoning buses) are always packed. The former didn’t seem to bother the teachers at all. They thought I was bonkers when I made all the children labels saying their name, “I am deaf” and “my teacher’s cell phone number is ….” and then safety-pinned them all on. Here are two of them proudly sporting said crazy-foreigner signs.

And then the headteacher said there’d be plenty of room in the school truck. I thought “aha, there must be one I haven’t seen yet, because it can’t possibly be the crappy old pick-up!”. But she did actually mean the crappy old pick-up. So on the most dangerous roads I’ve ever been on – the driving here is appalling (and I should know, after all) – we put nine fragile little bodies with only the open back of a truck to protect them if there was a crash. And my considerably larger body too – yes, I went in the back with them. It was not as stylish as the rather dashing figure I normally cut on my bike, especially the scramble in, but it was so sweet to see how happy they were to escape the classroom. I should have been tougher and insisted on getting several taxis, but if I tried to apply normal H&S rules here the children would just be too hopelessly restricted.

You’ll note in the photo that I am wearing a sarong thingy - called a kanga here. I am not just being a big suck-up and going native. Absolutely all the women wear them, so if you don’t, people think you look really boring. Normally no-one ever, ever says I look nice here – too thin (!), clothes too beige - but the day I first wore a kanga, several people told me I looked lovely. And they are surprisingly practical. They stop your clothes getting covered with dust. They keep you clean if you sit on things. They are picnic rugs. They are board rubbers. In the evenings, you wrap your feet in them to protect you from the killer mosweets. And, I am ashamed to say, they are an excellent cover-up if you have to do a bush wee on a long car journey and don’t quite manage to get all your lovely long wide trousis out of the way. Ahem and whoops.

On the journey I saw a man on a bicycle with over forty huge watermelons. Actually, they were probably normal size, but watermelons are pretty big. He had a huge back basket and two side baskets, both packed full. He could barely move the bike but was just about making progress. I didn’t take a photo, because it seemed a bit mean, but I am honestly not fibbing for blog glory. I can’t believe I used to moan about how hard it was to get my lovely luxury Dulwich deli items home.

At the Book Day, we walked round looking at pictures in books. Every time there was a picture of a white person – man, woman, child, whatever – the children banged their chests and pointed at me. I am the universal Mzungu. They charmed everyone because they are so quiet, so small and smile so much. They also say thank you with a hand-motion and a bow, which is quite chokey even to me still and left most of the publishers wiping away a little tear (bless) and handing out free books and posters (much more useful). They also gave the children promotional sun-visors, which caused disproportionate joy. Unfortunately Calvin of Look at him! He is MNENE! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! fame’s head is so big that he broke visor after visor without ever once seeming to wonder why it was only him with this problem. In the end I put one on for him, very gently, but I couldn’t defeat physics and Hooke’s Law (is it Hooke?) and this too broke. Poor Calvin.

These photos are Favourite Amina in her sun visor, and the class spelling out vowels with their hands in front of a wallchart.

Here we all are in our free T-shirts after our picnic – jam sandwiches, water, and fruit juice as a special treat. I gave my T-shirt away to another teacher when I got back to the school, because it was simply not stylish enough. Bet I regret that in a few months, when I have worn every item of my limited wardrobe to death.

The children are quite small, because most of them are poor – and the T-shirts were a couple of sizes bigger than pre-schoolers would normally wear. So they look like dresses. I thought this was touching. They thought it was ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Nearly as funny as when one of the teachers fell over this morning, which induced still greater paroxysms of laughter. And finally – I still feel a bit blubby when I look at this one.

I only wish they had books to read and that they were taught to read for pleasure. This is on my list of Things To Do. Oh yes.

I note that I can now put a poll on my blog! So exciting. Do you think I look really pretty, or very pretty? etc etc. Coming soon!