Lucas' job

halo! my name is Lucas Mayoba, im a community liaision coordinator. im very glad here with my work as i do different things such as teaching the volunteers kiswahili, i`ve been doing this for a long time and that`s because i enjoy it, gain more skills by getting challenges from them which makes me find if not think different ways of making them understood the lesson. not only they learn from me but i also learn from them by this way.

i also doing home visiting with ruth to see the really life of child who looks different from other weather sick, disablled, or unhappy and happen to come to chekechea. also networking to different Ngo`s, vacation center, church etc, wich makes us to learn from each other, understand te way they deal with children like how they got the lincense of keeping them, just the way they manage them in general.

and for this moment when Karen is not here Ruth and we took over so if someone is sick weather mama or a child from KeshoLeo, we can give assistant just like if they need to see a doctor, and health issues in general.

there is a blissfully things i gate when i see the younger and the older children that i teach kiswahili as they work hard, try to emulate with the lesson, which they can tell by seeing the stape they are making.

working together with Hannah, Amy, and Kate in tuition is also a wounderfull thing, i get a lot of expirience by working with them, and they dont hasitate to dirrect me when i need to.

bellow is a photo of me teaching volunteers kiswahili

Changes, challenges and chalk.

I arrived in Arusha after a long and dusty bus ride and lengthy border crossing from Nairobi. The journey resembled many taken across Africa and as always was characterised by long delays, sweating under the sun and bumpy uneven roads. Although I had visited Arusha three years ago my memory of the town was rather hazy. As we pulled into the main street I recognised a few sites and instantly felt a warm familiarity with the place I was to call home for the next three months. Tanzanian hospitality truly is a wonderful thing.
Upon reaching the bus stop I immediately picked out my companions at Food Water Shelter. There is something about an Aussie smile that you don’t miss and Sarah’s was a nice sight to see after eight hours in transit. I heaved my ridiculously oversized backpack onto the back of the ute with Amy and Hannah and got a quick briefing from Sarah and Mudi on the way back to the volunteer village. There I was greeted with yummy lentil patties for lunch and given a tour of the ‘vollage’. My room was much more luxurious then I had been expecting and I set about unpacking and making myself feel at home. My first bucket shower that evening was much appreciated after a long day on the road (it’s true- you do appreciate cleanliness so much more when you have to work for it!) and I slept blissfully under my mozzie net that night.
The weekend was spent getting to know the other volunteers who all made me feel very welcome and comfortable in my new surroundings. After three months of running around it was a nice change to be settled for a while. But come Monday I was ready to throw myself into the work. My first visit to Kesho Leo gave me impressions that I will never forget. I was astonished at the efficiency and sustainability of the village and very impressed with the cleverly designed buildings and layout of the project. The ability of Food Water Shelter to make use of every resource possible is one that I hope other communities can emulate.
Teaching with Hannah and Amy in the afternoons presented challenges I wasn’t expecting. Everything from relating to the younger kids to writing on the board legibly with chalk has been a test of my skills and patience! The children are gorgeous but have so much energy and I have found myself exhausted at the end of each afternoon. But every day I am learning something new and loving the experience. I have spent my evenings giving myself a crash course in Kiswahili in an attempt to catch up with the others as quickly as possible. But as with everything here it is a case of pole, pole!
I have loved my first fortnight here and found that the days fly by and every one presents a new challenge to meet head on. It’s fantastic to be part of such a great project and contribute to realising some of Food Water Shelter’s goals on the ground. Now if only I could find that mosquito in my room...

Kate Brooks

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

Critters: crawling, creeping and flying

Just when you think you are alone something flies past your head, so close, you think your brain is buzzing or you feel a tickle on your leg only to see an eight legged critter about to tuck into its afternoon snack (your ankle). Then there is the 'hunting show' put on every night by the little lizard who calls the crack behind the loo his home and the two resident (now positively overweight) frogs who appear at the same time each evening and use the bright lights of the kitchen as their own 7-11 store.
These are just a few basic examples of the critters we share our space with, and as I've learnt over the past couple of months, it is indeed best not to look up often if you suffer from any kind of critter-phobia (particularly those of us with a slight case of arachnophobia) as the ceilings and awnings around here could benefit from their own postcodes for fear the spiders may lose track of their own webs .

However it is not all bad when it comes to the little creepy crawlies living amongst us, in fact they have provided many hours of conversation and have even been given rite of passage within the Vollage: I give the example of when the 'ants crossing' sign lovingly placed as a warning in front of the 2 cm thick trail of (fittingly called) safari ants. These are rather impressive ants (not to mention ouchy!) with a work ethic that would put even us FWS volunteers to shame! They work long hours, even on Friday evenings when they have been known to invade the loo's, leaving little room for feet!
One of the first crew of critters which really amazed me were the butterfly's. I have never seen quite so many nor so many varying colours, shapes and patterns. I often think that some of these butterfly's have modelled themselves on bad 80's fashion, where psychedelic colours are in!

So aside from the usual flies, mozzies and spiders (I do believe I have been over- generous to the latter, sharing my bed on more than one occasion) there are the larger crawling variety of critters: here I refer to the big 'r'...rats. I'm not entirely sure how much the cover charge is for the night club 'Rat-attack' located above my room, but I'm sure the proprietor is making a killing as the noise generated is rather impressive. And yes, there are rats elsewhere, perhaps involved in some type of education training scheme where the smart ones are trained up to become pedicurists for the volunteers- I refer here to one rat in particular (r.i.p) who licked, yes licked my little toe. Suffice to say he didn't get to graduate.
Being a magnet for critters of varying hostility, I have to date been a brothel for some flies; shared a shower with some other bugs seeking privacy; a mozzie magnet; a target for the kamikaze, giant black bugs (name unknown); and harassed rather violently by a 'wiggly-butt bug' (so-named by Sarah and Ruth on account of this flying critters wiggly butt).

I am actually quite fond of most of the critters (crawling, creeping and flying variety) as they provide endless entertainment and are quite amazing to watch as you make your way to Kesho Leo and back. In fact we just spent three weeks at Chekechea learning all about bugs, and our excursion around the shamba was just as exciting for me as it was the children.
So as the saying goes: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and in my case what doesn't bite, sting or latch on, makes a good friend.

By Amy Moule