What do I actually DO?

I realise I’ve been promising (promises is piecrust: see Worzel Gummidge for details) some details about what I actually do for ages, other than poncing around at the beach and hob-nobbing with the other ex pats here.
As briefly as I ever manage to say anything, it’s this:

School

Some teaching – English to the oldest class and a conversation class for teachers. And I fell in love with the nursery class at the beginning, so I sneak back there sometimes to coo over them, give them exciting glittery stickers sent out by the lovely Ms Fowler, and to be adored. Seeing everyone’s faces light up when I walk in a room is most emphatically not something I had grown accustomed to as a consultant.

Fundraising – getting to know the school, and working with the teachers to decide what it needs, as opposed to just what I think would be a super idea. Now shamelessly trying to get my claws into anyone who might listen and help us.

Administration - trying to pin down the school budget and sorting out a filing system. Arranging that the headteacher and the director (she who loves Jizzus and thinks He is very aspiring) actually talk to each other once a week.

School improvement - agreeing a school improvement plan with the head and the director. This includes some quite basic things like a remedial reading programme, picking up litter (thanks to my mother, who noticed what I had become utterly blind to) and stopping the prefects hitting the children in assembly.

Umivita – this is an organisation for adult deaf people in Dar, who have asked for some management consultancy support. I find this much less rewarding than the school, as they are not really at a level where they need consultancy: there are more basic needs before that. However, I am going to bash through some basic project management with them and get them to agree a plan and roles and responsibilities. I am sighing even as I type that, because frankly it’s much too much like the English hard work I was trying to escape, and also because Kariakoo, where they are based, is a truly repellent place. I am literally the only white person there. It is stunningly hot, breezeless, filthy and smells of rotting meat.

The Lonely Planet describes it as vibrant, earthy and bustling. They speak with forked tongue and I hate them.

What I am getting to is that I am going to try to keep a diary for a week to show what I actually do. Starting from yesterday.

Here we go.

Saturday November 10: I slum it at the beach again

Got up at 7am – very exciting lie-in and managed to blank out the Evil Cockerel. Had pineapple and a pancake for breakfast. I don’t have any good photos of Saturday, but here’s one of my desk, with fresh frangipani. Apparently frangipani is known as the graveyard tree, because it’s so strongly scented that it hides the stench of decay.

Trotted off to choir practice, which was great. I love choir. First, I genuinely love the singing, and I stand next to my new friend Lucille, which is great. Second, I very much enjoy a secret chortle about some of it. For example, there is a woman ( who is very nice, I am SUCH a cow) who is excellent at sight-reading and has a good range. So she can sing most of the parts without needing to know in advance which one is needed. Jolly handy for a small choir, and most selfless of her. However, I have observed that it is very important that we all know this. So every song begins with something like “Shall I sing soprano in this? Or tenor? Really, I’m a mezzo soprano, you know. Or shall I do the special bat-squeak part? Or the whale-song? Or the dog-whistle?”. Grr. After some rousing choruses of Jingle Bell Rock (Jingle bell jingle bell jingle bell ROCK, Jingle bell SWING and Jingle bell RING) and some sweating, rehearsal was over and Lucille and I bravely leapt into a daladala. She was heading off home and my next stop is going to the beach with my friend Janet and her daughter Leila. Hurrah. Only slightly daunted by getting a daladala going the wrong way and suddenly realising from the direction of the shadows that we are going North, not South, I finally made it to Janet’s and we headed off for the ferry port.

The beaches are very near but over a narrow stretch of water.Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a huge queue. We waited and waited and waited. I am better at waiting these days and it also gave me a chance to show off my Swahili by engaging in light and swanky banter with the passing hawkers. I also sweated some more. I have virtually dispensed with the need to go to the loo, as however much I drink, it all comes out through my pores rather than Anywhere Else. But the beach was gorgeous! I read Pride and Prejudice, fell asleep, woke up, looked at the sea, marvelled at blueness, went in it and floated around a bit, had some tea, and looked at the shell shop. The shell shop is a table of beautiful, beautiful huge shells for about a fiver each. I want one very badly. But I am sure I have read that harvesting them destroys the eco-system, or hurts the thingy inside the shell, or something. I was just about to say sod it, and buy one, when Janet’s friend Ros started explaining how bad it would be. I do not take her opinion that seriously, as just a few seconds before she had just been explaining how much she “loved getting out into the villages and really communicating with people”, even though in four months she’s learned almost no Swahili “you don’t need words, you know”. But I felt it was A Sign.

In the car on the way back we had to play games because Leila was bored. I introduced them to the Category Game, where you have to guess the link between a series of things/words/etc. They did nice ones like “fruits” and “things with stings”. I was horrid and did things like “words with four letters” and “first words of Christmas Carol titles”.