Merry Christmas

...from a warm and sunny Tanzania!

 

Christmas Day photos here

Flying out for Christmas...

 
Alice's parents and Paul's mother and sister landed in Mwanza late last Friday and after a packed journey in a Land Cruiser with a lot of bags and a Tanzanian welcome party, we arrived safely in Shinyanga. Bags were unpacked that night to get our much requested and begged for supplies of cheese, rashers and chocolate. The next morning further gifts and treats were unloaded and we are delighted to have cupboards full of mince pies, crisps and home baking. We're also all very glad that sufficient supply of deodorant for Paul has been delivered.

We've spent the last few days showing our guests around Shinyanga and they have experienced Tanzanian church in Swahili, visited the school and tried Ugali (local maize porridge), with the Ugali receiving mixed reviews! They have endured, sorry enjoyed, two church services of 4 hours each already but thankfully with the entertainment of a visiting choir and in the coolness of the rainy season.

In the spirit of African togetherness, we've decided to hand over the rest of this post to the initial thoughts of our highly esteemed visitors...

Dada yangu (Clare): the people are incredibly friendly and I have been surprised that they actually seem to like Alice and Paul! [ed. note: rude...]

Mama yangu (Joan): enjoying the beautiful country and people but unsettled by the poverty we've already seen and the global inequality that influences it

Mama mkwe wangu (Donna): I love and appreciate the sincere welcome and generous hospitality of Tanzanians

Baba mkwe wangu (Eric): people are great and I really admire their hard-working attitude but my head hurts from being confronted with how unfair the world is

We do miss the rest of our families, Paul's Dad and Alice's brother couldn't make it, but we are delighted to have family with us for Christmas! Click here for some photos.

When Helping Hurts

Statistically, Tanzania is an extremely poor country. The 26^th poorest country in the world, it ranks below Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and even South Sudan in terms of GDP. We are constantly confronted with widespread poverty; it’s hard to miss. Families living in one room houses with no electricity, children collecting drinking water from roadside puddles, schools whose only form of shelter is a tree are all fairly normal sights as you travel around. Material poverty is a serious problem in so many countries and while here to ‘help’, we have been challenged to think about how best to approach what we see as such obvious needs.

Before our arrival in Tanzania, we attended an orientation day with Tearfund in London. There we were told a story designed to illustrate some of the potential negative repercussions when we, as the worlds economically rich, respond to what we perceive as a need in the majority world. The story went something like this:

Members of an organisation visited a community in a rural town somewhere in East Africa. People in this town were impoverished, crops had been poor that year and children were starving. The organisation’s members left feeling the weight of these people’s lives in their hearts and decided to act. Hurried arrangements were made and crates of eggs were transported to the community. The eggs provided a much needed source of protein and immediate starvation was alleviated. The following year the organisation visited a different community in the region and found a similar situation. Having already responded to the need in Community A, they decided they would now give to Community B.

The unconsidered effects of the organisation’s actions went far beyond the immediate delivery of eggs. A family in Community A had a business of 100 chickens and their extended family made a living selling eggs. With the influx of free eggs their business failed and they were forced to sell their chickens and coups to a family in another village. The family became destitute and the next year, when the organisation had moved onto Community B, the family not only had no eggs but Community A had nowhere to buy eggs. Despite its good intentions, the organisation's approach had actually increased the material poverty and potential starvation in a vulnerable community.

This story stuck with us as we realised, possibly for the first time, the potential damage our actions could have in this context. This initial thought process has been further challenged and encouraged by reading a book called ‘When Helping Hurts’. The book calls into question and gives useful advice on how, as the wealthiest communities that have ever lived, we respond to material poverty in the majority of the world.

Reading this book has urged us to "learn how to walk with the poor in humble relationships, rather than providing temporary handouts to them." One aspect that we have been particularly struck by is the potential impact of a poverty alleviation approach that is designed and led by ‘outsiders’ –noting the possibility this has to increase the arrogance of the financially rich as well as increasing the feelings of inferiority and shame of the economically poor. “The way we act toward the economically poor often communicates—albeit unintentionally—that we are superior and they are inferior. In this process we hurt the poor and ourselves”. We have quickly realised that while we have skills and expertise that could have a positive impact, we have a lot to learn about relationships, humility and patience. Our economic richness does not mean we are automatically equipped to identify the most effective way to meet the needs of any community.

At times we have been surprised at our own arrogance. While outwardly denying racial superiority, we secretly believe that we do in fact know best. Initially, even our language reflected this, declaring ourselves as ‘here to help’. Slowly this has changed, we are here to partner.

In the story of the eggs, perhaps the organisation could have used local knowledge, asked what resources the community already had and subsidised the cost of local eggs – helping those who had no food but also ensuring a sustainable supply of eggs in the future. For us, we are aware that everything we do needs to be locally led and support those who have been tirelessly working for the good of their communities before we got here and will continue to do so when we leave.

We miss Tesco

We’ve been on our school holidays for the past two weeks so time has been filled with the normal things of life - the everyday tasks that sometimes seem quite bizarre in the context of our previous life. In the absence of any other excitement, we decided to share some of our weekly challenges and joys.

We miss Tesco. Daily food shopping includes a walk to our local bread lady where we proudly ask for ‘mkate’ and ‘mayai’ if the local chickens have been in a laying mood. It’s then onto the moving fruit cart and the canny banana lady whose prices seem to be indirectly proportional to the size of our smiles and length of time spent greeting her and her friends. Finally, a visit to the vegetable market which consists primarily of avoiding the piles of dried fish and trying to work out what a ripe aubergine is supposed to look like. 

Tanzanian fruit and vegetables are local, season fresh and much tastier than the chemically treated, frozen-for-long-journey varieties we are used to. It’s currently mango season which is an incredibly delicious time of year. Not all our fruit has to be bought, we are fortunate enough to have quite a few fruit trees in our garden and have even resorted to climbing to get at the best lemons, limes and papaya.

When in the market, we usually have a tentative look at the meat section...always disconcerting when the meat section engages you in staring contest before returning to peck and scratch. Our lack of killer instinct has meant that our home diet has been entirely vegetarian, only eating meat when it has been slaughtered and cooked by someone else. Having struggled to decide whether to pick a spritely, optimistic, king-of-the-coup chicken or do the humane thing and pick the dejected one in the corner that looks as though it would appreciate being put out of its misery, we have persuaded friends to buy, keep and kill chickens for our Christmas dinner.

Home dinners mostly consist of rice and vegetables. In the absence of Uncle Bens quick boil rice in our local ‘duka’, it has taken us quite a bit of practice to master the art of rice cooking. After many stodgy, sticky, lumpy attempts we discovered that the rice must be washed, soaked for 30 minutes, sautéed in oil and boiled in salty water. The learning process did provide us with our own recipe for ‘creamed rice’ – our many failed attempts becoming a white congealed mass which turns out to be tasty with sugar and banana. 

There’s no municipal waste disposal facility so every couple of weeks we gather together as many dry leaves as possible and carefully pile our plastic bags of rubbish on top. While admittedly bad for the environment, burning does seem quite effective – although we do now have a small charred pile of glass bottles and tins in our front garden. 

We’re delighted our families are visiting for Christmas; a countdown of days has been going for some time! We’ve been stocking up on all the visitor essentials – charcoal, insect repellent and beds. The bug spray and charcoal are easy enough to get, although we are learning to always check a charcoal bag for sneaky rocks, bits of damp wood and other ‘filler’. The previous tenant of our house took one of the beds with him so we’re going to have to buy or hire some for Christmas. 9 days and no beds – we really are adjusting to Africa time well.

Teacher Training

After a day of invigilating exams, a Land Rover of teachers (collective noun questionable) arrived at our house for ‘An Introduction to using a Projector in the Classroom’ – evening one of an exciting forthcoming series.  The AICT secondary school is closely linked with one in Denmark and the ‘sister school’ has very kindly donated two projectors, three laptops and two tablets (they are referred to as iPads, no trademark issues here).

The school are very keen to start using technology and feel it would attract more students. Like us, the school’s white teachers, the projectors also feature in the current advertising campaign although it is still unclear as to which is the bigger draw. A projector is a complete novelty here, for teachers as well as students, so we offered to do some informal training to get them started. A brief question time established that one teacher had access to a PC at home, some had never used a computer and only a couple had internet capable phones.

The Principal had seen a projector in action but none of the teachers had used one before so it was an introductory session in the truest sense of the word. They are very enthusiastic about the potential of using technology in the school so were eager to find out as much as possible. Paul went through how to connect it, emphasised that a projector is just a big screen, as well as discussing how fragile they are – especially in this hot, dusty environment. There had been much chat over the previous weeks about magical ‘PowerPoint’ and when Alice opened a blank PowerPoint document, there were hints of disappointment as she chatted through the preparation required to turn it into an effective teaching aid.

We also showed Physics experiment videos to show that presentation software was only one potential use. A projector and access to the internet would allow a teacher here to find and use resources from all over the world. As suggested by one teacher, she could use the projectors to show students pictures of other countries. Something not possible now when there aren’t even enough text books to go round. However, as we kept saying, a good teacher is a good teacher and a projector is only another potential tool to be used alongside other teaching techniques.

The highlight of the evening was when we showed a sample English language resource; the Lion King. Most readers will have unconsciously been taught their first Swahili words through undoubtedly one of the greatest movies of all time. 'Simba' Rafiki' and 'Sarabi' now being staples in our Swahili language storehouse. We have found out over the past few weeks that the Lion King never reached Tanzanian shores – hence, when we say ‘Hakuna Matata’ it isn’t met with the knowing smiles and the few hummed lines we’d expect. It really was a privilege to share Timon and Pumbaa (Swahili for ‘thoughtless’) singing ‘no problem’ to a group of Swahili speakers for the first time.

We think that the technology is a great addition to the school but only if the teachers feel confident enough to use it in their classrooms. The laptops and projectors are currently not being used and all involved in the school feel that they need to be benefiting students as soon as possible. This week’s installment was well received so we are planning on continuing to help and train the teachers over the next few weeks and into the new year, we’ll keep you posted.

Class Two: ‘Turning on a Computer’...