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.