All settled in Milingano

School is very hard work and I have up days and down days. I’m well and truly settled into the ‘Big Mili House’ now (so-called because we sometimes feel like we’re on Big Brother without all our luxuries!). Going to bed at 9pm and reading by head torch light has become a bit of a habit since we get woken up by cockerels at around 530am.

We keep ourselves entertained in the evenings by the light of a kerosene lantern, playing a whole variety of card games and of course Yahtzee! We always have a giggle but I wouldn’t mind the odd night in front of the tv with a glass of red wine or the occasional night out on the town! My Ipod is driving me nuts as it only charges enough with the solar charger to listen to about 2 songs and then dies again until the next day. Still, one of our neighbours has a radio which, although usually blasting out weird African tunes, occasionally provides us with a little pop music from the 70s or 80s for us to dance madly around the house to! That’s when we have our Big Brother style moment of madness, dancing like fools, just because we’ve not heard music for ages.

We’re in Lushoto for the weekend and loving the use of electricity and contact with the big wide world again!

Before dark we are never short of entertainment as the children gather around the back of our house, desperate to carry on learning, singing songs, playing games etc. They’re cheeky little monkeys but I love them to bits!

School is very hard work and I have up days and down days. Like home, I love the teaching but hate the planning, preparation and marking. I’m bored of colouring in now as the school has no resources so we are forever drawing pictures and colouring in! The best times are when the children’s faces light up as if you’ve given them treasure just because you drew a smiley face on their work. This week Kirsty gave a child a new plastic bag because the one he was using (typically) was full of holes. He looked as if she had given him a brand new bike or something! It is also at times heartbreaking and frustrating. A lot of days last week there were only 2 or 3 teachers without us, between a registered 700 children. A lot of children don’t bother coming to school anymore because they know they won’t get anywhere to sit. A lot do come to school, some walking an hour to school, only to sit in their classroom all day without a teacher, except for in English lessons. My standard one class have no idea how to behave in class as they have had so few lessons. There are 80 of them to control and with very little Kiswahili it is hard to explain the rules. I am trying to get the local teachers to see that it is possible to control a class without using the cane, but I sometimes feel like using it myself! Most of the time the kids are lovely though. I particularly like teaching Standard 3, who are between 11-16 but only in their third year of school. There should be 137 of them but because of the shortage of desks, there are usually only 50, which is manageable. I’m hoping to use some of the money I raised to get some desks made soon. They need 125, and cost about 8 pounds each.

I have also decided to buy some blankets for the poorest people in Yamba as it gets so unbelievably cold up there, and will put some money towards running the health post. We heard a sad story the other day. I visited Yamba on Thursday. On Friday I heard that a grandmother had climbed up to Yamba through the night in the pouring rain, carrying twin baby boys. One of them, Ernest, had malaria and was having convulsions. It turned out he also had pneumonia. The doctor immediately started him on a course of medication and when we visited him that evening he was apparently doing well. He looked gorgeous all snuggled up in a blanket with a woolly hat provided by Village Africa. One of the villagers had kindly given up their bed and home for the grandmother and babies, despite the cold weather. Community and family spirit is everything here. Sadly, a few days later there was a funeral in Milingano and we heard that baby Ernest had died. The healthpost had given him a fighting chance but it was too late by the time he got to Yamba. Unfortunately it is the closest place to go for a doctor around here. We keep meeting people with malaria, and a lot of people seem to live with it and are fine for a long time, but it kills a lot of children sadly.

Onto brighter things! We’re in Lushoto for the weekend and loving the use of electricity and contact with the big wide world again! We had an evening at The Lawns Hotel last night and enjoyed the luxury of catching up on the world news on tv for the first time in 5 weeks. I only had 2 vodkas and felt hungover this morning so goodness knows what I’ll be like by the time I get back to the UK! I love our weekends as we get to catch up with the 4 who live in Yamba and have a good giggle. We must stop tormenting ourselves by talking about all the food we miss from home though! Today we went on a long walk and stopped at a farm where we bought CHEESE! Real luxury!

Right must go. Hope everythings good at home. Keep the emails and texts coming. I’ll probably hike up to Yamba next weekend and get some phone reception and then the weekend after that I’m going to Pangani on the coast, so should be able to check emails there.