I like work more than holidays

Well, the Cup of Nations is well underway and I am under no illusions about my poor second placing to this in the eyes of Hot-Date-Turned-Warm-Boyfriend. Hugh for short. I have tried a couple of times to compromise by getting into it, but can’t quite understand the need to sit in a hot dark hooker-filled bar looking at huge screens when you could sit and gaze at lovely me adoringly, and just get the occasional update from the BBC website on my BlackBerry. Does anyone have any ideas?

The nuns are also loving the action. They shriek “Goaleeeeeeeeeeeee” and run round the room and do the bottom-shaking dance when someone scores. NB this is “goali” like “socksi” “chipsi” and “sixi” not mocking the other side’s unfortunate keeper. I asked Mountainous Nun who she was supporting the other night, out of Nigeria and Benin. She said, very seriously, that she liked Benin because Nigeria were “wachawi”. Eh? “Wizards”, she said. I explained very carefully that wizards have special powers and are only in children’s stories. Then I realised later that I am a fool and obviously she meant witchcraft, juju etc but was trying to be accurate about gender. You’d think a NUN might find better reasons to support the other team.

School is so brilliant at the moment. I actually feel more confident this week that I am making changes and that they might last. Here are some match highlights.

• After being mean and scary and patrolling the school writing names down of teachers who weren’t in their classroom, they have finally realised that we are serious about this and they are much more present. I’ve persuaded the head to do patrols too, so that it’s not just the mzungu and my eventual leaving doesn’t become the trigger for large scale cat’s-away teacher truancy.
  
• We appointed one of the teachers deputy head to help with projects and with getting teachers to agree to them. He has been amazing! I always thought he was sweet but not very impressive (why we appointed him is a long painful story) but I was wrong. In one day he’s given really good insight into how we can persuade the teachers to do things (like actually use the lovely new library), got pupils to clean out the disgusting cobwebby loos and unblock them, and used similar free pupil labour to remodel the flowerbeds at the front of the school. I realise this last isn’t exactly an educational priority but I didn’t want to curtail his enthusiasm. It was most amusing to see children in uniform hacking down vegetation with pangas (machetes).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I presented to another Rotary Club and they’ve come to visit and are going to fix the broken pipes and fittings, so that we will have water throughout the school again, not just one tap. YIPPEE. It was quite fun preparing for their visit, except for my horror at seeing what a state the dormitory bathrooms were in (one shower working, loos with no doors or running water…) and my rage that they hadn't been fixed after two years. “oh you know, no money, couldn’t get the fundi to come back, etc etc”. Basically it’s easier and more traditional here to suffer than to get things sorted out. For a woman with several sub-divided and colour coded To Do lists, this is almost unbearable to watch. Anyway, Matilda and I had to estimate the water needs and water capacity of the school. I always like a sum, as you probably know, and particularly enjoyed filling a 20-litre bucket of water from the well and timing it and then working out the volume of water available in an hour, a whole day and a night. It is SO much better than being a real consultant.
  
  
• And finally, finally, the school seems to be verging on being litter-free. There’s so much litter in Tanzania that I didn’t even realise how dirty the school was until my nice clean mother pointed it out. I have joined in litter pick-up twice this week – at 7am. It sounds awful but is actually a real laugh and nice to spend time with the children. They like being thanked so much that as soon as they’ve handed something over to my litter bag they beetle off again to find more, like enthusiastic dogs after a nice stick. Then we had a special assembly about litter, but I think the thing that really makes a difference will be, er, putting bins back in every classroom. I hadn’t really noticed that there weren’t any, but it doesn’t take much brains (luckily) to realise that eight-year-olds aren’t going to walk 200m to the litter pit to dispose of one piece of paper. So we bought 20 buckets today. We will make holes in them so that they can’t be stolen to be used as water buckets (!) and paint Taka Taka on the side, which means rubbish. And then I will prowl the school hoping to catch wrongdoers. The children are so amazingly obedient: they never complain about doing awful jobs like cleaning the disgusting loos, and if I point at a piece of litter with narrowed eyes, they scurry over and pick it up. I will never be able to deal with UK children after this.
  
  

Like the pain of childbirth (apparently) I have forgotten how traumatic it was doing the Christmas decorations and am ready to start again with embroidered items from the lovely sewing class. They have a new teacher who can hear, so it might be a bit less agonising. They really do make the most beautiful things. I am inevitably impressed because I can’t sew and when I try everything ends up spattered with blood, but I took some samples to my Women’s Group Coffee Morning (ahem) and held a mini-focus group and the feedback was surprisingly positive. So please assess your linen needs and prepare for being approached again…

My lovely new friends here Robert and Tori are sponsoring five children for a year. We’ve chosen five of the poorest boarders, who are either orphans or rejected by their parents. They are so excited about getting some attention and some second-hand clothes that I am a bit choked. Here they are:

On Saturday I am going to meet Royalty! After the excitement of sucking up to Mrs Blair, I can’t believe I get another go. Hurrah. Lovely Kasia (British High Commissioner’s wife) has invited me to a reception for the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, who are here on a visit and want to meet “interesting people working in Dar”. Heh heh. Best make sure I am not too lashed before my introduction. Must also remember not to refer to the children as “deafs”.


I have re-read Bridget Jones’s Diary this week. I’d forgotten how marvellously funny it is. I was actually laughing out loud on my own in my little cell in the convent. Blurrygoofun.