Mr. and Mrs. Paul

Our current routine consists of Monday to Wednesday in school and Thursday / Friday spent initially observing community based projects with the aim of becoming more involved in those as the months progress – we have a lot to learn and get used to before we get really stuck in! The school is a good place to get used to how things work, meet local people and help us feel like we’re instantly involved.

As we are now called in school, Mrs. Paul is teaching English and Mr. Paul has got roped into helping with a few Physics classes so our evenings are spent refreshing distant Junior Cert Physics knowledge and trying to work out what using the present continuous tense to convey repetitive irritation means (answers on a postcard to Mr. and Mrs. Paul, Shinyanga please). Thankfully, secondary school education In Tanzania is all done through English so our lack of Swahili does have some uses. It seems to be going well so far, we think...

Alice is having a lot of fun with the standard English comprehension texts in her class which have included gems such as “The woman’s husband has died. When is the funeral?”, “Why was he buried that day?” and question and answer sessions with responses like “I like to pray, I do not like to death”. Needless to say, Alice is going to try and inject some less morbid themes into her classes. 

Water and electricity supply are interrupted relatively often here (as we type this we’re in the middle of a power cut) but you adjust to that pretty quickly, cooking meals and charging phones when you have it and reading by torch light when you don’t. We are also very fortunate that the house has a water storage tank so we always have a steady supply.

However, the school is badly affected by water outages, particularly as they need quite a bit to feed and wash 200 boarding students. Last week, the school’s supply was stopped because a heavy truck drove over a mains pipe – an avoidable error in its own right. Within a short space of time, their storage tanks were drained so the students had to take it in turns to walk with buckets to a pump half a mile away which majorly disrupts classes. Although, as with most things that pose a problem here, the collection of water was done with a cheerful attitude that sees such adversity as a challenging part of life to be overcome, not wallowed in.

The lack of water is also a major issue in terms of hygiene and health and is something that the school is looking to rectify. During a meeting we were told that now there’s a Water Engineer here, we won’t have any more problems so looks like Paul will be involved in that – no pressure!  We are beginning to adjust to the pace and approach to life here but as we do we increasingly realise that it will take time to overcome our limitations.

To see some pictures of our school, click here