www.clarabelle.info

Although over the last 18 months I have had a variety of adventures that fulfilled my cocktail drinking, late sleeping, world traveling ambitions, I have now settled back into the day job I have had since 2005. I look after children. I’m a nanny, possibly more along the lines of crazy aunt than Mary Poppins. I work long days covering parent’s commutes as well as their working hours. I finish up breakfast, soothe at nap time and start the bed time routine. They’re in their pyjamas at either end of the day and everything that comes in between is more or less in my hands.

If it sounds like a lot of responsibility, it is. I’ve always treated it as such and tried to find parents who are good communicators, who are thoughtful and have similar attitudes to me in raising children. I’ve been lucky enough to work for people who I respect a lot. I’ve also cared for some incredibly loveable kids.

Children have opinions on EVERYTHING. Even toddlers make their views felt with well timed screeches, but there’s a big difference between someone who’s just out of babyhood and a school age child with a strong personality who knows what they think about everything from Cauliflower Cheese to whether only a boy and a girl can get married.

I have my own opinions on these matters (Cauliflower Cheese is nice! WHAT!?). My conscience tells me to sew seeds of acceptance but I also feel that there’s a line I shouldn’t cross. If a topic hasn’t come up in discussion with parents, I don’t want to risk horrifying them with my views - however strongly I hold them. I am there to support a family, not derail someone’s life view and undermine their values in front of their kids. It’s up to me to judge whether I can do that happily - I would find it hard to accept a job for people who’s values I can’t support, and likewise, they don’t want a Nanny who doesn’t back them up. This is the kind of thing we should be dealing with in the interview stage. The wave of relief when one family asked me nervously, “You don’t read the D***y M**l, do you?” was immense.

Equality and inclusiveness are mandatory considerations in nursery, school and child care settings. Even at my Ofsted inspection I was asked to detail how I promoted diversity. On TV after school children see presenters from many different ethnic backgrounds and with physical differences such as CBeebies’ Cerrie, who caused controversy when she first appeared on screen as her arm ends below her elbow. Children tend to ask questions rather than pass judgment, though - you’re more likely to hear “Why doesn’t she have a hand?” than “All people should have two hands”. I think a lot of the parents who voiced their “concerns” about Cerrie were indeed projecting their own discomfort. A benign, smiling, pretty blonde lady is very unlikely to be the terrifying vision of the big bad world that the carers in question were imagining.

What do you do when the issues are more complex? At five years old, a gay couple with a child is an abstract concept until you meet a family with same sex parents. Princesses marry Princes, Mummy has Daddy and there’s Mr. & Mrs. Neighbour, too. Children often refuse to believe things they haven’t experienced directly. When you’re trying to figure out how the world fits together, identifying patterns and certainties makes you feel secure. If the reality is that everyone in a class appears to have heterosexual parents, a child’s perception of “normal” or “average” families will reflect that. If a child says “Only a boy and a girl can get married”, it could mean anything from “I’m going to grow up to be a raging homophobe” to “I see mostly Mummies and Daddies, but I’ll revisit this when I have a better understanding of how adults form romantic relationships”.

I think that’s the key - we simply don’t know what conclusions children will draw when they are older and can grasp more of the subtleties of interpersonal relationships. The best I can do is remain happy to answer questions without prejudice. If a parent has gay or queer friends, the reality is there that sometimes people who aren’t a strong male Prince and a pretty blonde Princess will fall in love and live together. Setting a good example, living the ideals that we describe, being welcoming to everyone - that answers more questions than a child is ever likely to ask.

-=-

Day to day you may find that you encounter mostly people in the same socioeconomic, cultural or other “group” as you - you might not work with anyone who doesn’t ID as straight, so how do you magic queer friends out of thin air?
What are your experiences?
Do you think there is a big problem with segregation in society, or is it people unconsciously forming tribes for security? Where is the line between comfort and exclusion?

I’ve moved back to the UK, as most of you probably know / guessed.

I’ve started a blog to document everything in my wardrobe, which is a lot of fun! I will sell or trade certain items, so have a look if you fancy cheap or free clothing. It’s so dumb, but I love it! Off the back of that I wrote my first piece for a magazine thanks to the wonder of Twitter. I’ll post it when it goes live. I’d like to do more writing but I have no idea how to make a name for myself and I don’t know if I could come up with enough of an angle to write a regular blog contribution. I’m fine with that, you know? Not everyone can be fascinating and opinionated all the time!

Waste Not Want That is slow because I’m not very organised at the moment and haven’t had the chance to do much hobby stuff.

I need to get sorted after moving house AGAIN next week - hopefully I will stay in one place this time. My housemates turned out to be violent and drunk a lot of the time, and I couldn’t take the noise. Feeling uncomfortable in your own home isn’t something I want to turn into a long term arrangement.

My new job, looking after 2 little girls, is going well. I think! I hope! They are cute as anything and I’m getting to know the area bit by bit.

I can’t be bothered to do any music at the moment - step by step I will put my life back together and I hope music will be part of it in the future but not right now. I simply don’t have time and want to enjoy things rather than overstretching. I still have the uke for entertaining myself when I feel like picking up something simple. Hurrah for ukuleles!

Oh… this is such a ME ME ME post, but I felt like I should write something here. I’m going to redesign the home page to link to a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing lately… so hopefully it’ll look all spanky and new within a few days!

PS - I lost my phone in Africa when it was damaged and I’m scared of the backup/restore process so if you want to get hold of me, just text - I’m not being quiet because I don’t care, it’s because I’m barely able to use the bothersome things and I am failing at retrieving everyone’s numbers. Mine is the same as it ever was.

They say pride comes before a fall. Saturday, I was pretty happy to find a cute quilted leather handbag in the market and did my usual haul of vintage shopping that comes to all of £10 for me. I rationalise as fair trade, I’m paying the market price and usually a little over, and when I get home the dresses that don’t fit perfectly or suit me I sell on ebay or at car boot sales. Pretty win/win, right? There’s something about the thrill of a bargain, especially when it’s something as silly as fake Balenciaga for £2. I suppose my tweets would have been described charitably as childishly excited, at worst gloating.

I had taken to using a slightly scruffy bag that slings across my body, a chest strap that can’t be wrenched off easily. Sunday, still pleased with my new toy, I took my handbag instead. I was walking home from an internet cafe and ran into two volunteers who live at the hostel, teenage Canadians. We were almost home and chatting about nonsense. I had a bag on each shoulder, automatically tucked in my armpits and clamped to the sides of my body. It being broad daylight in an area we’ve walked through countless times, we felt safe and confident but it took a split second for a sharp downward tug to snap the chains and before I knew what had happened I’d screamed. There’s an instant where everything is frozen while your brain processes what’s just happened and the thief is SO close that you automatically reach out to stop them. By that time I was yelling, “Stop! Stop! Thief!” as he leapt out of my range, but Sam was faster at chasing and both of them took off sprinting across to the river than runs behind the hostel. Although my instinct was to run after what was not an inconsiderable sum of money, an iPhone and a cheap local handset, I was already terrified of what would happen if he was caught by locals. I’ve seen men lying unconscious in the street before as mob justice is meted out daily here; in a country where everyone struggles to survive, stealing is the lowest of the low and a sound beating or even death is the accepted outcome. When the thief dropped my bag Taylor and I slowed for a moment, but there was no sign of Sam so we kept after him, yelling for him to come back. All I wanted at that moment was for the chase to end, the thief to run away and hide somewhere and that to be an end to it. None of us were that lucky.

The river is a busy part of Themi. Water is scarce and it’s used for laundry. It’s a beautiful clear stream and children play there in the afternoon sunshine. The banks are sloped and lined with banana trees, flowering bushes and locals, locals, locals. Everyone had seen the guy being chased, and knew which direction “Bwana Mhindi” had gone. I think at that point I knew what we were going to find but since I had gotten everything back I …hoped or assumed… that we would be able to reason with a crowd. It was inconceivable to me that people wouldn’t listen to us, after all, it was my bag. No harm done, I’d say. Thank you for stopping him. Look, everything’s fine. There’s no problem, now. We can all go back to normal and carry on with our day.

At the top of a track there was a press of bodies. Taylor spotted Sam. He was standing up, talking, unharmed. Relief, dread. The thief was lying in the dust between Sam’s legs as we pushed our way into the circle. Several people asked whether the thief still had anything of mine and I kept repeating, “No, no I have everything. Stop now. Stop now. Please. Please. It’s finished, stop now”. Taylor was screaming “ACHA!” as young men darted into the circle laughing to aim another kick at the broken, slumped body. There were obvious cuts on his head and face, a gash across his legs. Urine seeped through his filthy jeans, and he groaned. “He’s acting. He’s fine.” one man told me. “You are really OK? You have everything returned?” someone else asked. “YES! So this is finished now… you have to go, all of you go!”

“No, sister! Now we’re going to kill him” a man next to me said with a shrug. The tone of his voice was casual, reassuring, calm. Every time someone picked up one of the rocks lying around, Sam batted their hands away. Crow bars, logs, he picked them up from the dirt and threw them out of the circle’s reach, only to have to slap away another arm rising to strike. The general feeling of the crowd seemed to be vague, patient amusement. Surely these silly tourists will stop interfering at some point. “This is what happens. He’s a thief. He will be buried here” someone indicated a roadwork ditch, 5 feet by 4, about another 5 feet deep. People would grab at the thief’s ankles and inch him towards the hole, the three of us would scream and block the move. We were met with roars of protest, catching flickers of laughter amongst the indignant rage. An old Muslim man in a fierce fury came up and beat the thief’s legs with a metal rod, more fists bearing melon sized rocks were pushed away.

Amongst the chaos Sam managed in desperation to spit out the offer of a cash reward for people who helped us disperse the crowd. A handful of twenty-something men picked up the thief’s ankles and began dragging him back down the track towards the river. Although people were still insisting that the man was going to die, they were also watching to see how our meddling would play out. They must have supposed that eventually we’d be satisfied and the delay would be over. We were told as much, so kept moving because there was no safe place. When we were back at the river, I spotted Ommy, an employee of the hostel. We could see the back wall of the garden, the dormitory buildings. The other residents had realised what was going on and Ommy had called the police.

The defectors sat the man up in the river to bring him back to consciousness, splashing water in his face. I caught sight of his eyes struggling to focus, his shock, confusion. The blood washed away from his head and I remembered thinking, it’s not as bad as I’d imagined. Ommy was there, taking care of it, the guy was coming round… then on the opposite side of the river, a thick set man holding a machete came sliding down the bank. “You go now…” Ommy said and this time we took off, begging him to ensure no harm came to the pathetic figure in the stream.

After a couple of hundred metres, we heard shouts from the other bank, “Run Wazungu! Bad men coming!” so we started to run, and by the time we’d found the railway tracks that led back to the gate of the hostel, the crowd had dragged the thief around the opposite side of the building and were waiting for us out front. Ommy came up behind us and told us that the men we’d promised money to had insisted he give it to them immediately. He’d emptied his pockets and they’d dragged the guy by the wrists away from the threat of the blade. He had lost his piss-soaked jeans, and was unconscious again, a froth of blood oozing from between his lips. Ziggy, the hostel guard dog, was frantic outside the gates, snarling and yelping. It was almost impossible to get him back inside as he tried to figure out who he was supposed to be defending.

Waiting from the safety of the compound, listening to the rise and fall of angry voices from outside, the story was told and retold by everyone trying to come to terms with what was happening. I was summoned outside by the Police. “They ask you… if you want him to die?”. I felt 50 pairs of eyes watching me, the single white face. It was the first time there was quiet, just murmurs. I was struggling to remain calm and answer any questions directly. Once we’d finished I went back inside and cried when I hugged Sam and told him that he’d just saved someone’s life. I sat alone on a bed for five minutes, and when the crowd had dispersed I followed on to the Police Station and gave a statement. Ommy knew the Officer in charge of the van that’d hauled the guy off to hospital, and left me trying to decipher how accurate the Swahili in my statement was. It seemed adequate, so I signed it and went back. It took me a long, long time to fall asleep that night.

I am feeling particularly well disposed towards Arusha today. I woke up late, as it’s the weekend and I get to hear when everyone else rises, my bedroom being next to the toilet. Breakfast was Mandazi – small, slightly sweet diamond shaped donuts – and finally, coffee! I made a valiant attempt at kicking my habit, which has fallen before the one week hurdle. Teddy’s husband was telling her off for using too many tea leaves, telling her that it can be poisonous, and has “something like cocaine!” in it. Rapidly switching between Swahili and English, he was asking me to back him up, had I heard of this? It took a while to realise that cocaine, cocaine, cocaine translated to caffeine.

During the morning I fixed a load of my clothes that had holes in them either from the hostel mice or wear and tear, and got told I have way too many. About 50% of the clothes I have here (3 dresses, a skirt, 4 light pairs of trousers and a pair of jeans… some t-shirts including one I’ve owned since I was 15 years old) were given to me free or inherited from hostels and I defended myself by saying that England has weather that’s sometimes as hot as Tanzania but others, snow and hail. Obviously, I NEED this many clothes! I don’t think I do too badly on the grand scale of things, only about 10% of my wardrobe cost more than £4 or £5. I’ve been trying to only buy second hand for the last year – incredibly easy here in Africa, but still, that £4 or £5 would feed a family for a week. When one girl in the hostel had a pair of hiking sandals eaten by mice, she was dismayed as they cost her about $110. That’s way over the $90 it costs to kit out a child with uniform and transport to a government school for the entire year. Incidentally, if anyone feels like contributing I know some very worthy recipients. I’m going to get together some photos and information about the oldest children who are outgrowing the charity school, and spam all of my friends with it. I hope none of you mind. It’s little things like the relative value of the price a London restaurant would charge for Sunday lunch that really drives home the differences I’m often asked about.

That’s not to say I don’t still allow myself some extravagant Western indulgences. While taking a taxi home through the shanty town neighbourhood I live in once it’s dark might be completely necessary, the twice-weekly salad lunches at Via Via probably aren’t. I almost feel as though I’m turning my back on the authentic experience of eating just the four recipes that Aisha seems to know, but every now and again I have to get fresh lettuce for my own sanity. Ugali is a traditional and widely eaten foodstuff here, but when it constitutes about 60% of your diet you’re tempted to say “Screw authenticity”. If another 20% is boiled rice, it’s a foregone conclusion. I feel like a naughty teen sneaking off to drink in secret, only my vice is juicy tomato and the odd black olive. I’ve also got a mental map of the cafes in town which have western style bathrooms and a stock of toilet paper. Again, it’s the little things.

This week has seen Teacher Glory making an effort to use some of the exercises from the new books. I’ve noticed a few of the children who were struggling before are able to circle the correct answer from a choice of three when identifying amounts, or first sounds. We’ve got them matching upper case to lower case, naming letters individually and generally we’re shaking things up a little. I’m still working on lesson plan sheets which have ideas that can be written on the board that require interaction rather than copying. The volunteers are indispensible for going round and coaching the kids individually, even if they don’t speak Swahili. There’s lots of pointing, and basic questions such as “which?” and “how many?” and “where?”. The messages get across just fine. I’m looking forward to next week.

The sewing charity is also going OK, with a line of new bags I’ve photographed on http://wastenotwantthat.com for some market research. Drop over there and fill in the surveys if you would… It was the designer’s last day yesterday, and Tash took the women and Karen out for a slap up lunch in a local cafe. My task this week is to call round coffee plantations and ask them if they’d donate used hessian sacks in return for publicity, and I packed 500 bags for shipping yesterday. The old workshop is covered in Kumbi Kumbi wings – the bizarre insects that seem to swarm when it rains. They are so large that when they invade a house it’s really quite disturbing. They flock to the lights then shed their wings and crawl around. Whether that’s part of their life cycle of they’re just fragile I can’t tell. They’re about 3 inches by 2 inches, and you really don’t want a load of them coming at you. To see the small room carpeted with their discarded wings was pretty creepy. The rains are easing off now, though, and while it still buckets down overnight sometimes the weather seems to be on the turn. With the maize and the trees all gloriously green from the wet season, it’s a good time to wander around the town or sit in a cafe writing. Huge yellow flowers obscure the branches that monkeys swing from, and palm umbrellas offer respite from the sun that turns a Mzungu very pinki pinki indeed.

The last week has continued rainy, meaning a lot of children can’t get to school. The others simply don’t bother. The one attempt I made at slogging through ankle deep mud was quite literally a wash out.

On Saturday, after a couple of nicer days, I have moved from the hostel into the school director’s house. It’s in an area that was described to me as “squatted” and the crazy mud tracks can barely be called roads. They’re certainly not built for cars or bicycles, with their jutting rocks, zigzagging drainage ditches and piles of burning rubbish. The pot holes appear less as singular entities and more as a constant challenge to vehicular suspension. On my first solo walk through the neighbourhood, a van pulled up asking me if I was lost, someone else asked me if I was OK, and a guy who started chatting to me looked at me sideways and asked, “Are you SURE you live down here?”.

It’s now Wednesday and we’ve had no running water since I moved in. This in itself didn’t come as a surprise to me, but there are certain differences to a western house that have proved problematic. The squat toilet – encountered in the dive bars of Paris and random holiday destinations worldwide – was as intimidating to me as if they’d painted a target on the floor and told me to aim. I have developed a technique of changing into a skirt or one of the two kangas I was presented with on arrival as soon as I get home. The kangas serve a dual purpose; they are wonderfully soft, thin fabric that you wrap around your chest and/or waist and allow a breeze to circulate in the warm evenings, when the air in the house is still and humid from the impending rain. It’s also incredibly easy to hitch over your knees when you’re straddling a pit, much more so than jeans. There are buckets of water next to the sink outside the bathroom, which I have taken to using for rinsing my hands before and after a meal, after work or washing my face in the morning. It’s also used to “flush” with a small container stored next to the toilet. Showering also uses this water, and whichever jug is handy to stand over the toilet hole and rub yourself with soap and shampoo, then rinse off.

It’s taken me a while to get used to having a House Girl. I don’t think she’ll do my laundry, but she does Teddy’s every day, and prepares meals at 0700, 1400 and 2000. It’s laid out in thermal containers, but Teddy will call her through from the kitchen to serve her seconds if she is tired! My shoes disappear and reappear a day later sparkling clean. I make my own bed in the mornings, and carry my plates through to the kitchen whenever possible. It’s slightly alarming to have someone summoned to carry your dirty dishes all of 6 feet, but she’s paid well for the area though she earns it, working from 6 in the morning until 9 or 10 at night. The daytime can be quiet and restful for her if there aren’t many chores. I guess it beats hand hoeing a field full of maize for very little reward, out in the blazing sun.

The house is big, clean with three rooms and a kitchen leading of the main sitting area. A huge dresser creates a hallway effect between the main back door in the kitchen and the bedrooms. She has a lovely 3 piece suite and a coffee table where meals are served. The TV has cable including a lot of Bollywood channels and the Discovery Channel, which I was really excited to watch one evening! Otherwise I spend a lot of time shyly in my bedroom, because I feel awkward about lounging around in front of hardworking Aisha. I have a lot of TV to watch on Craig’s little netbook, though I’ve powered through Deadwood (well hel-LO Sherriff Bullock) and Pulling, there’s still three seasons of Buffy to get through. I don’t mind closing myself away so much. It’s peaceful, although in the humid evenings I am liable to fall asleep at 4pm and sleep through for some ridiculous amount of time – 14 hours is my record. My room has a concrete floor, plain yellow walls, a bunk bed and a double, which I’ve claimed. Teddy has two visitors from Sweden coming in early June so I suppose I’ll shift to the bunk for a few nights. I have a big princessy mosquito net and the odd baby lizard crawling through the breeze block ventilation. Very cute, all of 3 inches long! The mosquitoes are less pleasant, but there aren’t many and the net is secure. Besides that, a few hooks and the top bunk house my clothes, there’s a stool and a small metal table where I’ve settled my books and a few face creams.

School has been moving slowly but surely now Teddy is back. The teaching style has been widely considered lacklustre, and it’s getting to the point where the children are stunted. We’ve bought a few books for the first grade at government school, which shows us what to aim for. The teacher should be looking over these and using the variety of ideas in them, matching numbers to groups of objects, matching the first sound of a word to a picture, circling the correct answer instead of copying, copying, copying. I have begun a folder of plans that have an exercise that the baby class can work with, copying and then trying to fill in gaps, and more advanced subjects. The older children are having problems adding numbers that require carrying over mainly because the teacher hasn’t explained it to them. She was told that they need to add columns of three numbers – that’s fine, they can cope with numbers under ten even if there are more than two of them. The trouble we’ve had this week is getting Glory to explain in Swahili the concept of columns of “tens” and “ones” – she wrote a sum such as 77 + 77 on the board, and most of the children answered “14 14”. She did nothing to correct them, and I found myself standing over a desk of kids and asking her to come over and show them how to carry the ten. We did it on the board, but I’m not sure whether it’s a confidence or a laziness issue with her. I’m not sure whether working from the lesson plans will start her explaining different concepts to the children, as it’s part of the culture that they DO sit and copy, but they could be copying and then using logic or deduction to kick their brains into gear. They’re now being taught by me at the front of the class, “This is the word ‘Cat’. Point to the picture of the cat…” and so on. This kind of interaction keeps them all sitting quietly and they all want a turn to come and point at something, and they are paying attention to what’s going on. I wish she would follow my lead, instead of writing the numbers 1 – 20 on the board, getting them to chant it, asking them to copy and calling it a maths lesson. Most of them don’t write in sequence or miss out numbers and can’t point to “15” if you ask them to. The answer is, “ONE, TWO, THUH-REE, FOUR…”

So hopefully building up a few lesson plans and going through them with her, encouraging Teddy to check on her every now and again, keeping a folder full of ideas handy and making sure she uses it. Just a bit more of a syllabus rather than the incredibly basic lessons they’ve been having so far. I have seen progress with a few of the kids this week, especially some of the younger ones, when they’re cross referencing numbers with the relevant amount of circles drawn next to them, they can perform addition and are starting to see “1,6,3,7,9” as less than simply shapes you’re copying.

I’ve told Teddy I will work Monday to Wednesday at the school, but Tash at SEW is busy with her university work tomorrow. I will probably go in with Teddy and teach some more, or let Glory go for it having spent the night with the book of lesson ideas. Friday I think we might be packing an order of bags, and the weekend I have no plans.

Friday evenings there is a running club who meet and follow a trail set in flour. Last week I went for the first time and managed to run a lot more than I thought I would – beautiful views of Mount Meru and Kilimanjaro as the sun dipped lower and lower, and we ran through a river gorge, a village, and were pursued by enthusiastic children yelling “Mzungu! How are you? We are fine!”. Children learn “Good morning, teacher” in class, so you’ll hear it at any time of day, even from adults. The group go for beer afterwards and have some kind of song and ritual where everyone has to drink drink drink… it’s good fun, and I hope I can make it again. Never thought I would be running but it’s a safer way to get out and see the countryside and meet a few people.

I think this afternoon I’ll swim for a while, have a long soak in the hot tub and make use of Arusha Hotel’s hot showers. It costs about £2 and it’s totally worth it when a cold cup of water splashed down your back is the alternative. It’s a bit of exercise, a bit of luxury, and it gets me out of the house.

The saga of the missing work permit is a long and frustrating tale.
It begins when I arrived at the hostel one Friday evening. A large group of young women are clustered around the TV watching Grey’s Anatomy, and I ran to the toilet to wash my hands, before returning to where my bags stood in the centre of the common room. After a beat, someone realises that I have just gotten in from Nairobi and expect a bed – a South African girl gets up to show me to the large dorm, and we surmise that such and such a bed is empty, so I take it.
It’s days before I see the owner of the hostel – literally. About 5. I manage to catch her and ask her about the visas, and she makes umming and aahing noises but says she’ll bring the forms in. Three more days pass. I see her husband, the co-owner, and he promises the same. They know that the school I’m at is not one of the ones they usually send people to, and how long I’ll be staying at the hostel.

It’s 10 days from arrival before the owner tells me that she can’t process my visa unless they name the placement I’m volunteering at. I tell her about the school and she thinks it would be suitable for them to list, as they’re getting a lot of people through and there are often too many volunteers at the handful of placements they offer at the moment. I message Teddy, the director of the school, and ask if it’s possible to arrange a visit. She’s sick with Malaria, but confident she’ll be at the office.

The next day, the owner tells me that they are down to one car so they can’t come out and visit for a week. Four more days pass. She THEN tells me that they have to list the hostel as my permanent address. I book in several weekends over the course of my stay here, and she seems to indicate that it would be enough to keep track of me, that I would be staying often enough to count, and we’re still discussing the visit to the school.

Week three begins, Monday morning, bright and fresh. I ask if the owner will show up and discover she is taking some volunteers to school, so I make myself late waiting for her. She tells me they can visit on Wednesday. I text Teddy. She replies that she’s not in Arusha and won’t return until Friday…. 3 weeks after I originally arrived and the date that I’d agreed to leave the hostel. I feel like banging my head against the wall, but with the additional weekends booked in, I still believe I’m going to be OK to be processed.
Tuesday after school, I ask how long the visas usually take to come back from the immigration office.
“A week?” I’m told.
“I’m going to Zanzibar on 11th June, so I was wondering if it’d come through in time.”
“That won’t matter. We’re not taking your passport anyway so you’ll have it with you.”

Now, as the owner is Australian I’m not going to blame African culture and any language problems for this miscommunication. I could have started the process myself earlier if I had gotten the straight answer that she definitely wasn’t going to accept me through their organisation. I feel as though I’ve been wasting time – I’m now uncertain whether I should attempt to fill in the paperwork with Teddy, muddle through and hope we don’t ever get inspected, effectively working illegally as even unpaid work is forbidden on a tourist visa. I am annoyed that I don’t get any notice when people disappear for a week, especially as I was supposed to move out of the hostel on Friday and into Teddy’s house. I’m glad I extended by a day to allow myself to move on a weekend day – though now I’m even more nervous that I’ll be standing around with a backpack on Saturday and nobody will remember that they’re supposed to be meeting me, showing me the route to the house and getting me settled in. It all feels very futile sometimes. I understand that people are busy, but does the sunshine pickle their brains to the point they can’t give a simple “yes” or “no”? Organisation as a concept seems to be the least of people’s concerns here, and I am anxious about finding myself in a whole heap of trouble – I’ve managed to arrange meeting on Saturday but I’ll have to check and double check as I’ve been stood up before. As for the passport fiasco, I suppose there are plenty of volunteers who don’t manage to get the work permits for a short trip. I just have to forget about it and carry on.

At least the sewing charity is productive! They keep getting orders flood in, and I think most of their old stock will soon be gone. They have applied for a grant to expand, buy their own land, build a workshop which will have space for 20 women instead of the 4 that they currently employ. A volunteer designer from England has made patterns for new bags – a shopper, a cute little shoulder bag, a laptop size courier bag, a backpack. The production process should speed up and the new designs use materials much more efficiently – less waste, more bags. I did a stock take the other week, quality controlling and sorting about 750 bags, repacking them into giant laundry sacks. We then marched around town for an entire day before picking up stamps and fabric, and it was 5pm before I was at Natasha’s house and we were ready to stamp the extra logo for an order onto 180 squares of fabric. Her area has the rolling power cuts in the evenings at the moment, and we ended up printing by candlelight, while watching a movie on the last of her laptop’s battery. I also arranged for 20 big boxes to be bought from the market – they’re now sitting at the hostel until the next day I visit.

It’s good to see the women learning new skills with the production process, and I’m really rooting for the grant to come through so they can get bigger and bigger!

This week has been fits and starts. School was quite literally a wash out on Wednesday, after I’d missed Tuesday to have a conversation about getting my work permit sorted out. Things just seem to take much much longer than you ever think they will – questions take a week to get answered, then the decided action takes yet another week to look like happening. But I taught one English class at the start of the week then attempted to get to the school on Wednesday through thick ankle deep mud, adding half an hour to each journey, which resulted in 4 hours of travelling to be faced with one very damp and thoroughly unimpressed child who had been dragged along by the other two volunteers. They left this week but that was the only day I managed to see them as I didn’t save their numbers correctly on my cheap Tanzanian phone! When the teacher arrived, also 2 hours late although she lives across the main road from the school, the 4 adults stood around for 5 minutes before deciding there was nothing to be done, and turning round to go home. Next time the rain is heavy I won’t even attempt to get out there, there seems to be little point.

That’s been a theme this week – heavy rain. I was getting used to the downpours at night disappearing halfway through breakfast and to have the sun come out and dry the roads up by 9am. This week it’s been coming down a lot heavier, even lasting until the afternoon, and a little in the evening. It’s still not as torrential as I thought it would be, and on the whole life’s been easier to cope with because you can still travel about even if it’s wet overnight.

Thursday was a very productive day over at Sew, where I did a stock check and quality control check on somewhere between 750-800 of their bags! I counted how many of the different types there were, made sure the pockets were the right way up, that there were no prints that are known to rub off. I made up two orders of 150 and 500 bags. It was dusty, children hung off the metal security door and yelling at me for coloured pencils, food and money, but I found that once I got into the rhythm of checking the bags it went smoothly and I was able to work my way through quite quickly. Friday I visited the workshop after ordering shipping boxes from a local guy, then went to Natasha’s to stamp logos onto fabric.

This weekend 11 of us in the hostel had planned a trip up to Lake Chala but the other guys left without me in the morning. I woke up at Tash’s as it’s too dangerous to get back from hers after dark. I’d assumed we’d go around lunchtime as it’s quite remote and there isn’t much to do there, but they caught the bus after breakfast. I could have caught up with them but when I came home to find the blanket I’d been sleeping under had vanished (it turns out the girl who owns it, who hasn’t been here for a few months, has returned!) I just couldn’t be bothered trying to find myself enough bed linen to ensure I’d be warm in the tents. I also ache after dancing a lot on Thursday night, being damp all day Tuesday and just feel so sleepy and tired I didn’t want to make the trip to Moshi by myself. I’ll have to take a week or so up there towards the end of my stay as there are hot springs I would love to visit as well, or maybe another weekend somewhere along the way with a smaller group of people.

So…. I’ve had yet another slow, frustrating week. I feel no closer to having my work permit sorted out, though I think the owners of the hostel are going to come and visit the school this week to speak to Teddy & see if it’s possible to get the paperwork from her that allows them to put me through with them. It’d be nice if she could get other volunteers coming through too, so I’m sure it’ll be a case of filling in a form and then processing it in Dar es Salaam. It makes me anxious not knowing how long or what else can possibly go wrong with the process. The children haven’t even been at school to teach, though I have made a folder for recording their exam results and I will write several exams to get them regularly tested. As long as we have some kind of idea of the progress they are making overall, it demonstrates the school is working efficiently. I have also encouraged the director to get a book which shows what “Standard 1” children will be taught when they start school, as the kids out in the village should at least be getting that level of education, so they’re ready to go on & maybe travel into a government school. I’m going to get hold of a syllabus another school uses and show it to the director and teacher as an example as I really think that the lessons could be more varied and allow more of the children to actively learn, instead of the ones who can’t read or write being ignored, and the ones who are perfectly capable of basic maths problems sitting bored after they finish within the first 20 minutes.

My first week in Arusha has passed well. Although Teddy has been on a seminar all week so I haven’t seen much of her, I went to the school 4 days and met Heidi, the volunteer sent by a charity called Future Sense. I am particularly pleased that she’s there, as last time I was in Arusha I met a lady called Sarah at the bus stop and started chatting to her. She manages the placement of volunteers through Future Sense and I passed on her details to Teddy who called her. Heidi is the first volunteer Errat have received from them and she’s staying at Teddy’s house which I imagine brings in even more money to the organisation. Heidi helps at the school as well as interviewing women from the groups Teddy and Mariam run, and Future Sense will give 10 grants based on proposals they give her for ways to improve their businesses. Some women sell charcoal or eggs from home, run a cafe in the village or travel to markets to sell beans, maize and other foodstuffs they buy wholesale. After they have come up with a clear purpose for the grant, for example, building a shelter so they can continue trading in the rain, or building a chicken coop so they don’t lose as many eggs, Future Sense reviews their living conditions and awards the grants to families who will benefit most. I am really pleased to see that a conversation I had 5 months ago has led to income generation in the village!

A lot of the older children have moved on to Government schools further afield. They have quite a distance to travel but Happiness, Faith, Calvin, Glory, Johnson and Haroun have all moved up into the school system. I have seen Glory walking home a couple of times in her uniform, which can be prohibitively expensive for a lot of families. She was dumbstruck when I first encountered her, but I managed to ask her in Swahili if she liked her new school and was doing OK. She nodded and was very, very shy but waved to me the next day. I’m particularly pleased to think of Haroun in school as he was the little boy who I taught to do sums. He used to copy every symbol from the board during maths lessons, but have no idea that he was supposed to attach values to them and work out answers, so I started him off drawing the relevant number of circles and labelling them – “O-1, OO-2, OOO-3” and so on. Then I would give him simple addition and subtraction sums below, and pretty soon he could cross reference and work out the answers.

It’s great to see the progress the children have made. Pendo, who I helped to write her first letters when she began school, is now copying the alphabet and sentences confidently. Martha has made leaps and bounds and has a natural ability to pick up writing and maths. Tumaini has gotten very communicative and shows a creative flair, being one of the only children who will draw pictures from imagination. We talked about his drawing of “Home” and he showed me his mother, older brother and little sister proudly, and then tapped a figure and told me, “…and here’s Tuma!”.
There are a lot of tiny younger children who have started at the school.

On Tuesday I met up with Natasha who manages the sewing charity, “Supporting and Empowering Women” (SEW). They currently employ only 4 women as they are having trouble with premises. They had to vacate their old workshop as it became unsafe when the rainy season started. Tash has applied for a grant to get better premises and she hopes to employ 20 women. They have a designer working with them on new bag styles now, smaller purses and backpacks. The book bags and courier type bags are now selling well in Melbourne, Australia and it was good to find out what they’ve been up to. I went to Tash’s house on a Christian Video Production company’s campus way about 40 minutes outside of Arusha – it was amazing, with a steepish slope to the grounds, lush vegetation surrounding several houses where people she knew from church all live. She has a one bedroom apartment I am very jealous of! I collected a bunch of clothes that I had left with her, my precious Urban Decay eyeshadows (!) and we had movie night with her friends, sitting on a sofa munching popcorn and watching The Matrix with a soppy Jack Russell clambering between the three laps on the sofa.

This weekend has been mostly for relaxing, and I could barely keep my eyes open Saturday. Sunday had a slow start, me leaping through Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman in about 2 days. I’ve watched a little TV on the laptop, which is proving popular with everyone else for transferring their photos to USB sticks, writing emails to their friends and so on. An American girl who arrived earlier in the week has gone to the Arusha National Park today but we’re planning on booking a night at Lake Chala up by Moshi next weekend.
My lovely mother averted a minor disaster when I realised that I didn’t have a copy of my qualification which immigration demand, and she’s scanned it so I will have to go and print it out today and get some passport photos done for my visa. I’m going to wait til I have it to book the flights from Dar to Zanzibar as I think at least one of the airlines offers a residents discount.

This week coming I will be at the school for 3 days, hopefully sorting out some shelving for the office and getting Teddy’s piles of papers, magazines and random exercise books in which she keeps records in some kind of order, as well as bringing in a folder I’ve bought to keep tabs on the children’s progress. I will write several exams to be sat at each half term, and we’ll record the children’s results as well as making a note of their attendance and any health problems they have. Heidi suggested that the more advanced children stayed for an extra hour after school to get more challenging exercises, so we will start asking them next week about staying late twice a week. I’m heading to SEW to help pack orders for shipping on Thursday and Friday, and perhaps I’ll make it out with the guys from the hostel one night this week…. if anyone’s keen!

Settling in to the hostel has been fine. Many of the guests are away for the weekend so it has been relatively quiet over my first few days. The mix of people is quite pleasing – a couple of women around my age, two younger Danes and a South African girl who’s friendly and at ease in Arusha.
The food has been great so far – breakfast a little spare, most people buying cereal or oats to supplement the white bread and fruit on offer, but dinner is hearty and tends towards vegetarian. I have been buying nuts and pulses that I eat at lunch time to keep my protein up. I felt healthy on the local diet last time I was in Tanzania, so I am hoping that lots of walking and possibly a few visits to a local hotel gym will set me up.

The pace of life over the weekend has been very slow. I finished a book in a couple of days. I have been trying to avoid watching too much television as the house I will move to after the hostel has less communal space and I will doubtless want to lounge on my bed with headphones on for a semblance of privacy. It’s easy enough to avoid it though, when there are other people around to talk to, and more are arriving this evening after their trip to Moshi. I have been cuddling with the younger, larger dog that lives here while reading on the sofa on the terrace. He’s a bouncy, friendly boy called Ziggy, and copies humans. He’s been known to stretch next to someone practicing Yoga, and if you’re lying on your back he will join you and roll over himself. His sister Bear is much more demure and shy, although she appreciates a stroke she’s unlikely to climb into your lap as he will.
Besides lounging around the house I have managed to catch Craig on instant messenger, sent a few emails and walked to the western style supermarket for groceries. Last time I was here I was able to hold my head up and bluster through the crowds of people calling out to me, smiling and waving, but this time I’m feeling less confident and I’m finding it more of a challenge to wander around on my own. It’s silly, as it’s quite out of character for me, but I’m still a little unsure as to what I’m going to be able to achieve. While some people seem to think Westerners can just hand over cash, and I wonder whether the plane fare would have been better spent just donated to the school, in the long run it will run out. The children will find their teacher stressed at late payment, copying exercises from the same basic book and leaving the youngest to struggle with exercises for older children. I can only hope that by bringing a few new teaching ideas to the classroom and encouraging the Director to contact other charities, watch how other orphanages and schools have set up sponsorship links with the West, I will have helped in some small ways. The hostel has a really good supply of teaching materials and books left by previous volunteers and I am hoping to create a kind of lesson plan folder of my own, something else for the teacher to work from that gives ideas both for the baby class and the older children to work from. There is no money for photocopies, sadly, and the children and teacher are so used to learning by rote that even filling in the blank in sentences such as “I am ___ years old” is a challenge sometimes. I tried to give them more creative exercises, using crayons to label the correct colour on a picture of a rainbow, for instance. I hope that with these written down it will bring more ideas into the classroom. I’m also going to see if there’s anywhere the standard Tanzanian curriculum is documented, what the children will be expected to be capable of were they able to get to a government school, so we can work from that too.

I am heading there today to meet Teddy, and catch up a little. Hopefully the owner of the hostel will be home tonight and I can arrange with her for visa paperwork and so on to be done, so I can rest easy that I’m not going to be deported! Besides that, I’m going to join the hotel gym although I can’t escape the guilt that spending money on myself results in. I just want something more of a routine and something that will tire me out so I sleep better. The beds at the hostel are much better than the volunteer house I lived in last time, and it’s overall quieter and more comfortable but still I find myself restless and unable to drop off. Hopefully it’ll strengthen up my neck and shoulders too, as they often cause me a lot of pain. There’s a few cardio machines, weights and a swimming pool in a beautiful garden, plus the guarantee of hot showers in the changing rooms!

When I left Tanzania before Christmas, I had felt confident and inspired to return and continue whatever good I had been doing. However, after four months back in the UK I was very nervous boarding the plane to Nairobi. I hadn’t been able to maintain regular contact with the charities I’d hoped to work with once I was back in Arusha. Language and computer literacy were likely problems on one hand and perhaps a lack of time on the other. I felt very much as though I was walking cluelessly into a mess of my own making.

The days before I flew I had a few offers of fundraising efforts at home I could happily report to the director of Errat. A fellow volunteer from my 2010 trip offered to raise money with her school, and also pay for a child’s HIV medication. My mother asked if her office having a sponspored casual day would help. A couple of friends promised to send money through PayPal while I’m here.

I am going to get my book back up and running with to do lists and ideas which have been really neglected over my months of couch surfing. I have gathered some information about similar organisations operating both in Tanzania and Kenya. Sponsoring a child or a building is popular – but it requires organisation such as reporting back with photographs, exam results, health status and so on that I would need to be sure to receive if I was running a UK charity on Errat’s behalf. The challenges of getting the money into the country, where methods we take for granted such as Bank Transfers and PayPal either don’t exist or have huge costs attached to them. Budgeting skills within the NGO would have to be demonstrably improved. At the moment the school has no regular source of income or donations, and there is a certain haphazard approach to the support provided. When it’s available, it’s available, but no guarantees. Having the extra money that sponsorship would bring in should allow certain things to be regularly available, but without documenting the basic running costs for the charity and knowing they’re covered, priorities are fluid and someone intending their sponsorship money to be used to feed children may be upset to discover it went on the office rent.

Anyway. As I write, I am sitting in Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. A smoother flight I have rarely had – helped along by an old prescription of tranquilisers I managed to sleep through the entire thing whilst surrounded by boisterous French school children. Immigration was very simple, as I just needed a Transit Visa which at $10 is pretty reasonable. I have spoken to the representative of the shuttle bus company and he assures me it’s simple to get a $50 Tourist Visa at the Tanzanian Border just as I did when I landed directly in Tanzania last year. I intend to get a work permit for volunteering either through filling in the forms myself with Teddy from Errat, rejoining the Tanzanian Volunteer Experience program or using the one run by the hostel I’m staying at for the first three weeks. It will depend on how easy I find it to secure accommodation elsewhere, how simple it is to do battle with immigration and how much support I have around me from other voluntary workers or friends.

I’ve spent the last year moving house every few months and then the first part of this year moving what seems like every week. At one point I stayed in a different house every night of the week and I’ve been living out of a suitcase for so long that at times I found it incredibly difficult. I think a lot of it revolved around being close to my old life in London and not having a stable base or income there, missing my friends while mulling over things that have gone wrong in my personal life. I’ve desperately been in need of some time to rest, reflect and heal from a few hard experiences and all I wanted was the security of a routine and instead, I found myself with more “what if?”s and “where am I going?”s than ever. I’m lucky in that I do have supportive friends, and Craig’s offer of somewhere to hole up after Christmas to adjust led to us plotting little adventures in the mean time and he’s been really great. He is visiting me halfway through this trip for a little more R&R for both of us! The relief of finally being here is huge, though. I just have to get on with things, get organised, see what’s possible and where I can be of use. I’m in a much better mood to socialise and network with other volunteers and internationals this time, and I’m excited to see what’s possible. At the very least, I will bring some teaching ideas, small amounts of fundraising and ideas for raising the profile of the school and can return to the UK at the end of July ready to resume that bass-playing, gig-going, beer-drinking, ideal worlding version of myself with a few tweaks to allow for what I’ve seen and learned here.