Making something out of nothing...

In my short time here I have seen many amazing things but something that has come to my attention more recently is what we can in fact do with very little. We don’t usually have access to the resources we would in our professions back home and in looking around me I’ve seen volunteers stretching their creativity to fill these gaps.

In the chekechea (kindergarten) I’ve seen Amy looking for different ways to enhance the children’s learning, creating story books when there isn’t any and visits to the shamba (farm) show the children what really lives near a pond. Something that can be illustrated in a book, but the real thing is just so much better.

Here at the volunteer village Hannah is the biggest advocate for recycling...almost anything (that the chickens or worms don’t eat) can be collected and used in the classroom. The laminator really does get a work out to make sure that resources that are made can be reused again and colour paper is often created by painting white paper, as this is cheaper!

My husband, and fws handy man, has seen empty afternoons turn into spontaneous lessons on the mechanics of engines with labourers and askaris (security guards). An afternoon and a block of spare wood saw 5 wooden trucks fashioned for the chekechea children (with coke bottle caps for tail lights and fanta caps for headlights).

The desperate hope for faster internet saw the creation of a 5m high hinged pole to make a better positioned home for the modem...internet not that much faster.

And with the increase in volunteers and the rainy season ahead, a plain tarp and steel (and some quickly learned sewing skills by Glen!) was used to increase the people move-ability of our rusty old ute.

Resourceful Amy saw a warped and unsteady bookcase be cut down and built to make child sized furniture (kitchen sink included!). The soda caps and an old rake handle found another...much noisier use with the creation of child size musical instruments.

Making something out of nothing is not only found here when it comes to physical things, but making something more out of your experiences is a part of life. For myself a long tiresome day selling clothes at the markets turned into a high pressure situation to perform my limited Kiswahili skills. Those 20 minutes left alone at the stall as my Tanzanian counterpart left for lunch were the most stressful 20 minutes of my life! But it really is amazing how well you can communicate with such limited ability.

Mounds of maize harvested from the volunteer village shamba (farm) provided an opportunity to work together. A time for all us ladies to sit, talk and laugh together, even though I didn’t know what they were talking about, they assured me the story was very funny.

It seems taking opportunities to create something from what might seem to be nothing is a way of life here. The year for me here has only really just started so I look forward to seeing what some ‘odds and ends, ’ a strange situation or a plain old plank of wood will bring in the future, if we, with a little creativity, look to endless possibilities.

By Ruth