Mzungu!

We're only at the end of our second week in Tanzania but it feels like we've been here for ages. We walk to school every morning through the town of Moshi and then through the poor housing area where our school is based. The walk takes us just under an hour and the last half through the houses is definately the most interesting. We can't walk more than 5 metres without someone pointing and shouting Mzungu! (white person!) and running over to see us. Adam has learnt how to say high 5 in swahili so is now the most popular mzungu around! It might also have something to do with the fact that he has taken to using the small children who follow us around as make do gym equipment and lifts them up in the air over and over again. Alright for him but not so great for me as they expect all Mzungu's to do it!

School is going well. As we said before there are about 50 children in each class, however this week over half of the school was sent home for not paying the latest installment of their school fees (20,000 Tzs a year which is about 8 pounds). Quite nice to have 'normal' sized classes for a change! Ad's started a couple of football clubs after school with the only other male volunteer - they were impressed by his football skills (and the fact that he brought with him real footballs and not plastic bags scrunched up into the shape of a ball!) I ended up taking a Netball session - thought they would have played before but it turned out they hadn't - they thought netball was running around holding the ball and then punching the person with the ball to try to get it off them - slightly different to our version! Had fun trying to explain the rules!

This afternoon we are meeting some of the other volunteers to go on a pub crawl through the poor part of town. We get treated like celebraties there and the beer is really cheap - about 30p a bottle! ("YIPEEE!!" says Adam!). We haven't been to many of these small local bars yet so thought it would be fun. We did go to the bar attached to the local football club the other day though and everyone stopped and stared as we walked in but then continued dancing on the stage at 5.30 in the evening - strange!

Looking forwards to hearing from you. We'll update again soon!

Tanzania!

Our journey from Nairobi to Moshi took us eight hours on a very hot and dusty bus. Got to admit that this was probably shorter than we anticipated, especially as it included being dropped off in a car park in the middle of no where and waiting over an hour for another bus to pick us up!

It was definately worth the journey. Moshi is a very busy little town where you can buy almost anything - and if you don't have cash swapping things of your own is fine! There are loads of restaurants and bars - however - they are very much on African time - all of the volunteers (about 16 of us) went out for dinner last week at half 7 and our food finally arrived at 11pm!! Much to our surprise the local swimming pool is very clean and even has a dodgy looking diving board at one end (neither of us have dared that yet though).

We are teaching at a two class secondary school that was opened last May. Each class has about 50 pupils of varying ages (13 to 17) and abilities. After the shock of the first day where we were told 'teach' (and Ad ended up teaching Tanzanian History) we have begun to settle in .

Hope to hear from you soon.