Arrived Dar es Salaam airport c. 7 a.m. on 2 October. I joined several other volunteers were on the same flight, Lesley who is also British and is going to work in Dar es Salaam for an NGO that advises small businesses, and several Canadians who had already travelled for 14 or so hours to get to Heathrow. We were met by Robert, a VSO volunteer working in a TV production company in Dar es Salaam, and taken to the VSO office where we were greeted by Director and some staff, given wonderful, tasty bananas and a warm welcome.
The VSO office is on the Msasani peninsula, where most of our induction sessions will be, is about 6 km north of city centre, near the government offices and embassies etc. On our walk round later in the afternoon the traffic was stopped to allow a convoy of government people to go by: police escort, several 4 x 4s all going at about 45 mph, quite unnecessarily since the road was empty, unless of course they were afraid someone would attack them!
There are several VSO volunteers already in Zanzibar and four from my group are going there, Peter and Jane who are working with the Ministry of Education on education projects for a year and Niki who has a short term placement with the same Ministry.
We stayed in the Econo Lodge hotel near the centre of the city, which is, as its name implies, towards the bottom of the market as far as Western standards are concerned. I shared a room with Niki. However I cannot fault the hotel’s laundry service: slight anxiety that no record was made of what I put in for washing but all the clothes came back ironed, each shirt had all the buttons done up! They are washed by hand and hung to dry on the roof of the hotel.
We mostly travelled by hired bus to and from the hotel and office but for two days we used a local bus, the ‘daladala’. These are a bit mad, the conductor pushing people on and holding them into the bus from outside the door, collecting fares and remarkably, managing to give people change as well as bus tickets. When very full, which seems to be normal, passengers climb in and out through the windows.
We ate in the evenings as a group in some fantastic venues: Coco Beach near the office looking out over the ocean and frequented by locals, very good Indian food in the courtyards of restaurants such as the Badminton Club near the hotel. I had a wonderful vegetable kurma there that was better than Tooting’s best.
Induction meetings
Over our five days in the city we were briefed on VSO’s development policies, which, consistent with those of the European Union governments, are centred on the UN Millenium Development Goals. VSO recruits volunteers from a wide range of countries and receives significant funding from government and NGO donors in the Netherlands and Canada as well as the UK. I am working in the health programme and I was briefed by my Programme Manager, Rosalia Marandu, who recently visited Zanzibar to meet the Principal of the College of Health Sciences where I will work. Rosalia said that the accommodation set aside for me is very good – I’ll report back!
About 15 of us participated in the induction programme. Other volunteers in health are clinicians who are going to various hospitals to practice and teach and experienced managers who are also going to hospitals. There are also volunteers joining the other two VSO Tanzania programmes, education and ‘secure livelihoods’, which focuses on business and civic society development. The age, nationality and experience range is wide, which makes for interesting discussion. As well as the Canadians and British, there are four Dutch and two Swiss.
Language training in Morogoro
On Saturday 8th, we set off for the long distance bus station which is outside the city centre. Small single storey shops and workshops line the main road, selling all sorts including large wooden bed frames, coat stands and coffins!
The bus station is lined with tables with people selling soft drinks and food. Buses are used to transport all sorts of things. Ours was loaded with what looked like bathroom or kitchen building materials – several packs of tiles plus large sheets to face walls.
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| Our bus |
Our Kiswahili teacher, Benjamin, took charge, had bought tickets and reserved us seats at back of bus. It was a 60 seater, five seats to a row, so rather cramped! When the bus stopped in small towns on the way, traders sold snacks to passengers through the windows - packets of cashew nuts and crude but ok potato chips with slight chilli flavour. One or two traders got on the bus, continued selling and then got off again a few miles up the road.
The flora is amazing - bananas, coconut palms and mango trees are recognisable but there are many unfamiliar plants and trees in all shades of green.
After about three hours we arrived in Morogoro. We are staying at the Amabilis Centre run by the Mgolole Sisters. This is the nuns’ headquarters from which they run several schools and welfare services. After a good lunch we walked round the town in the afternoon. The market has all sorts of local produce piled into large baskets, also made locally. Here you can get freshly picked bananas, papaya, mango and pineapple, local rice and potatoes as well as many other vegetables, hardware and clothes.
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| Morogoro market |
On the way back from the town we saw and heard a wedding party that seemed to be having a wonderful time.
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| Morogoro wedding party |
Our Swahili classes start at 8 a.m. on Sunday and continue until Thursday. We finish in the afternoon at about 3.30 p.m. but also have homework! Learning the language is a challenge. As with Italian, there is no alternative to memorising vocabulary, which I find very difficult. We practice with the nuns and in the town, the shopkeepers are very tolerant, as are the nuns, although their laughter at our attempts is a little disconcerting. There seem to be quite a lot of words that need to be pronounced carefully to avoid misunderstanding, for example, ‘mbu’, which is mosquito and ‘mboo’, which is pooh! The language has some amusing words, like ‘lala’ for ‘sleep’ and ‘keepi lefti’ for roundabout! I hope to be able to learn enough to function in shops and to be able to pass the time of day with colleagues.
First thing each morning a group of us walk around the village near the convent for about 45 minutes, starting out at about 6.30 a.m. We are not alone – children are walking to school, people are setting up their street cafes, traders are walking with laden baskets to the market.
The nuns feed us very well. The cooking area of their kitchen is on a veranda where there are two charcoal fired ranges, used for boiling water for rice and vegetables and heating oil for deep frying - chicken, banana and potato bajis and chips.
On Friday, our day off this week, most of our group are going to a safari park. I am going with one of the Dutch doctors to hike above the town in the Uluguru mountains. The highest peak is about 2,600m and has been shrouded in mist since we arrived. This is the short rainy season, it rains every day but not for very long, showers that clear up quickly. It is humid but hot, about 28 degrees when the sun is behind cloud, warmer when the sun is out.
Saturday is our final teaching day and on Sunday most of us return to Dar es Salaam en route to our placements. I will arrive in Zanzibar on Monday evening.
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