January 10, 2008

From the cradle of Life

This was my first and hopefully now last generic email that i sent if you did not recieve it. 

Mombo,

Well has certainly been a whirl wind few days since leaving Sydney. Especially after finding out about the election problems in Kenya just before I left. So here is a brief run down.

I flew straight to Jo’berg where somehow Derrick (a South African I lived with in England) after a few sms’s as a line of communication met me at the airport. Stayed one night with him in Pretoria and then was back down to Jo’berg Int Airport to fly to Nairobi the next morning.

After many mixed reports on what the situation was like in Kenya some saying they are not targeting tourists while others asked why the f%*k are you going up there, do you want to die, I decided to go through Nairobi. The flight was maybe 1/3 full as most had decided not come and most on the flight were catching connectors to Kilimanjaro Airport rather than go into Nairobi which was not what I wanted to hear. A friend from Negs was on the flight also on her honeymoon which was good to be able to jokes about the situation but they were meeting a tour group to escort them into town.

The up side to the whole thing was I had three seats to my self and when we went through customs there was like two people in the line. I haggled for the taxi and jumped in with the name and address of the hotel and the knowledge there was a protest scheduled for today in the CBD. After hitting the third road block into the CBD and maybe the 4th smoldering car with locals smashing them with sticks the driver decided he was going back to the airport, some after some persuasion he took me on a long drive through the outskirts to attack the CBD from another angle which was a success and I got to my hotel. Nairobi was a ghost town at maybe 2pm when I arrived until the next morning. I did go for a tentative wander with two English guys where we saw a few riot squads breaking up groups, one with tear gas, many arrests and a press conference but I stayed in the bar for most of the day, watching it all unfold on TV.

The bus to Arusha (Tanzania) left from the across the road the next morning which was good, but as we drove out all seemed to be back to normal, and I think it has continued to improve since. The bus ride was great as I still had not seen much country side. The African boarder crossing was quite fun and as the bus got further into Tanzania the outlines of Kilimanjaro and Meru started to become more and more prominent. No wildlife on the way down with the exception of Massai’s herds of cattle, goats and donkey’s.

Two people for the school met me at the bus and took me out to the school. All of the stories and pictures I have seen can not do the place justice and that was just the first impression of the original Moshono campus. Over the next few days when I got out to Moshono’s boarding campus (1km from the academi9c and original) and the Usa River campus (30min drive) which both are still under construction despite school starting today at both, they just blew me away. These two campuses are phenomenal. There are huge for one, and rather than  doing the old Australian tradition of lets throw up some demountables and see how we go, these are both permanent campuses, in Usa Rivers case brand new ready to start with 300 k-6 on Tuesday and eventually maybe 800 k-12 in the future of which at least half will board.

My room is allot better than I expected, big bedroom with an ensuite and a decent sized sitting room all to me. Then there is a communal kitchen area. There is also a bur just out the front of the school gates (100m walk form my room) which Gemma’s husband owns and set up which is a good little hangout for a beer or just to watch some TV. There are range of people my age maybe 5 or 6 and then a range of people quite a bit older but all are friendly and mostly aussie.

 Have had a couple of nights out sampling a few bars which has been good fun, a couple of nice local hangouts around Moshono and then a few further in to Arusha. Last night we went to a place that is a mechanic garage by day and serves the most amazing chicken at night.

On Sunday we went out to some Massai markets out of Arusha and then
dropped into one of the guards villages on the way back. His family
still lives the traditional Massai life so we took a goat as a present
which we bought at the markets for like $25.

The guards, drivers and gardeners which are called fundi’s are all really friendly and fun although most speak little English so I have been going through crash courses in Kiswahili which has been fun, esp. when you test it on the guards.

Had a staff day yesterday which I spent organising PE equipment to go to the new campus and reorganising stuff here. I am teaching at the original campus, Moshono, and will have each class once a week for practical. There is no Syllabus for PE as Tanz do not usually run it. Which is great as I get to create my own program, but also bad as I have to create a program from scratch. Started school today which was weird after seeing the school without kids for a few days to suddenly have an invasion today. It was all over the place but I got to teach a couple of classes which was fun but spent most of the day writing names on the Standard 1 (Kindi) books which was funny. 50% of the standard 1 class’s did not come thought the pre school so most can’t speak English, have maybe seen whites a handful of times and have never had much structure so they are pretty wild.

Anyways I know I said brief and I hate writing these generic emails to everyone but I think I could keep writing for hours. I am going to start a blogg to avoid these emails. Once I get my laptop up and running you will not hear the end of me.

Hope all is well with every one.
Until next time

Simon or those any of those other names you may wish to refer to me as.