[First of all, allow me to apologize for the very late blogging. There was limited Internet access while we were in Tanzania and when we got back I became rather sick. However, now all is well and hopefully the blog entries will now come fast and furious]
The team consisted of:
The five students from Atlantic College, Anita (London - UWC Bosnia), Nipun (India - UWC costa Rica), Ivonne (Tanzania - UWC Norway), Anna (Tanzania - UWC Hong Kong), Francis (Tanzania - UWC Canada) but he was only able to help for the first week, and of course Caroline (Tanzania - UWC Costa Rica) who organised the project.
It was a great team. We worked well together and had fun doing it.
We were lucky enough to be able to stay in a house beside the city orphanage that was being rented by someone for the summer and was being used by different groups that came and worked.
For the first week we worked with the children in the city orphanage. Their ages range from about 7 to 14.
They attend a school in the city, however for the week we were there their school had not yet started and so we were able to spend all day with them.
We usually spent the morning from 10-2 with them. Then we had lunch and took a small break and then spent time with them again in the evening.
We did various activities such as: singing songs, making bracelets, playing pictionary (so that they could learn new words in english), making posters for their walls, playing football, and reading.
On one day we were even able to take them to the beach which they loved. It is about an hour to walk one way to the beach and unfortunately they are not able to go very often and so we were very happy to take them out for a little trip.
As the week progressed we became more familiar with the children and I think, in turn, they became more comfortable around us.
Their level of english varied quite a bit as did their desire to learn. Some of them seemed to have little desire to sit and read a book or learn new words in English. However, others couldn't seem to get enough of reading through the english-swahili dictionary and trying out words and we were more than happy to help them.
At first we thought we were going to be building while we were in the city but just before we arrived Caroline was informed that we weren't going to be able to and so we had to improvise a fair amount with the kids. And although we weren't sure how useful we were being, one of the girls told us that most of the groups go straight to shamba (the rural branch of the orphanage) and so they were just glad that we were around to play with them. She said that 'if someone comes and gives us money it is nice, but if white people come and play with us we will remember those people forever', which made us feel much better!
Overall, despite a slightly bumpy start I think everyone on the project was glad that we were able to get to know and play with the kids in the city.
It was a good first week!
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