Okay, children get out your books, pencils and Stanley knives

So yesterday I joined class three for the morning and observed the teacher teaching the most advanced class in Gohechi before they had to move schools. It was pretty much the same as the first day except I was able to give a vocational skills lesson. These are lessons centred around verbal communication and practical skills designed to give Tanzanian children the skills they need to get a job. I was required to read a short story and get the children to answer comprehension questions. I think they found it a bit difficult to adapt to my accent and I was possibly speaking too fast. I was also given an introduction by the pastor, the owner of Gohechi, who wanted to know more about me, what I wanted to achieve and what skills (and more importantly, what contacts back in England) I had to offer. He made a plea for me to help promote his school in any way possible as they are struggling to find ways of financing any expansion of the school. He explained that the children were supposed to have lessons in the afternoon until 4:30pm but as they could not afford to buy enough food for lunch, they sent the children home at 2pm.

I left the school at noon in order to visit the Projects Abroad office so I could update the team and use their faster and more reliable internet connection. I was invited to attend Arusha's International Women's Day march on Thursday as it would be a useful introduction before my human rights placement beginning in April. After leaving the office, I decided to take a walk towards the Eastern side of town and the town centre with its landmark clock tower. As I walked towards the centre of town, I was greeted by a local who spoke very good English. He seemed eager to talk to me as he followed me all the way to the centre of town, pointing out lankmarks and chatting away about Arusha and asking how it was different from the UK. I found out that he was a guide and would probably expect some sort of payment after so I let him tag along and asked him any questions I had on the surrounding area. It actually turned out to be very useful. He showed me the town centre and the market; he also pointed the way to the Masai market and showed me the museum, a bar called Via Via, and the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Rwandan Genocide. He explained that it was possible, and free, to go and watch the trial going on, which is something I definitely want to do when I have a spare moment. He did eventually lead me back to his street stall and was attempting to get me to buy a wristband for roughly £4 or 10000 shillings. To be honest, I actually had enjoyed his company and I had gotten an enjoyable afternoon walk as well as useful information from him so I was thinking about given him something like that anyway but this way I got a wristband out of it too. Quirine later told me that they were worth about 2000 shillings, but I didn't particularly mind.

Today, I was back in class three but took a back seat for most of the morning session. As they began a lesson called Personality, Development and Sport, a mixture of P.E. and lessons on ethics and responsibilities, it began to really dawn on me how little they had. When I was in school, gymnastics in P.E. consisted of getting the floor mats out and climbing the frames or ropes (I always loved climbing the ropes). Here, it was balancing on a table. I also forgot to mention in my previous post that these children don't have sharpeners for their pencils. They use a blunt stanley knife. Anyway, today I was able to teach again, this time History, which is heaviliy focused on economics and family than anything we have in the UK, and helping supervise group work on grammar.

I have also told Projects Abroad that I am interested in writing a piece for their monthly newsletter that is read by past, present and future volunteers and I will link these here if/when I get them done. I also want to do an in-depth blog post on Gohechi, its aims and the the challenges they face so watch this space.

Also, if you could spread the word to anyone who might be interested by the things covered in the blog, then please spread the word.

Finally, the children spent the entire day trying to copy my eyes and make me do kung fu.

'Til next time.