My introduction to Tanzania and the School of St Jude
Monday 30th Jan 2006

Well, I'm here! After many months of preparation, a little trepidation and a short enough journey, I arrived at The School of St Jude yesterday afternoon around 2pm local time. For the uniniated, Tanzania (and Kenya for that matter) are currently 3 hours ahead of GMT and 8 hours behind Sydney/ Melbourne (EST). Tanzania is in East Africa just below Kenya and just below the Equator, so it's in the Southern Hemisphere. It doesn't really have seasons, mostly the wet and the dry, kind of like Queensland.

To get here, I flew from Dublin to London (1 hr), from there on to Nairobi (c. 7.5 hrs) and then on to Kilimanjaro airport. And suddenly I found myself here! I was met at the airport by an Irish volunteer working at the school, Paul from Artane in Dublin. Paul has been here for around 5 months and he looks after all the new volunteer staff, longterm and short-term. I'm going to be one of the long-term staff. Some people come for a few months and do odds and ends around the place, maybe some teaching and that kind of thing.

Paul drove us from Kili airport to Arusha which is the nearest town, where we stopped for some lunch (samosas, which are pretty popular here - there's a huge Indian community in Arusha). Arusha has actually been declared a city meaning that the land is more valuable. This has some disadvantages - it's difficult because it means that acquiring more land for the school I'm in will be hard.

Arusha seems to have a decent range of shops and apparently most things are available, at a price. The imported products (shampoo, pharmaceuticals, certain food, electrical items etc.) are quite expensive, though no more than the Western world - it's just that the locals (or volunteers for that matter) don't earn Western $$ so it's not really fair to compare them. IN comparison to earnings, the cost to buy these products is almost prohibitively expensive.

It's a hot and dusty town because it's high up and dry - there's little rain, especially at this time of year. Arusha is surrounded by lots of barren land and spectacular mountains (one obviously been Kilimanjaro but several others though don't ask me which yet!). And yet, despite the altitude and dry climate, there's lot of greenery around which, I assume is fed by the rainy season. There are forests, bush areas and lots of beautiful flora and fauna so it looks pretty spectacular to drive past (will get a picture and you can see what I mean).

We headed toward the school after lunch. This was the part I'd been looking forward to. Never having been there before, I had built an image in my head from what I had seen on the website and the TV programme, Australian Story, on ABC Australia. But I am also well aware that the perception and vision of something and the reality are rarely the same.

As we left the town of Arusha (Arusha is also like a township which occupies a large part of Tanzania) and headed to the school, the road soon turned from gravel to sand. Apparently this has been an election carrot that candidates wave at the electorate, but which never eventuates. But the newly-elected president, who didn't mention it in his manifesto, has said it's going to happen imminently. I think everyone hopes so, I certainly do as I'm getting a bike and it would be a LOT easier to cycle the 6 km into the local village on gravel!

Around 6km on the road from town is a left-hand turn into a dusty lane that leads down to the school. The small painted sign post saying "The school of St Jude" is fairly inocuous and doesn't give any indication of what lies beyond it. There is another sign below it which says FULL in English and Ki-Swahili. It tells a lot about the demand for a school like this!

Down the lane, tucked away, past a set of security gates, is short driveway until you turn a corner. And lo and behold, is a big, bright school yard, filled with buses and a playground with so much life and colour that it's really quite surprising to the visitor/newcomer.

The playground is surrounded by buildings in a U shape with classrooms on each side. It's not like a traditional Western school with an indoor and outdoor area. So here are the classrooms on three sides, the playground is in the middle and the Assembly hall is on the fourth side. This is where lunch, assemblies and any other school gatherings take place. It's a fabulous open room (ie with just a roof but no walls), with tables up and down the length of it. It's colourful and has a nice feeling.

As it was a Sunday when I got here, the yard was empty and the school silent apart from a few staff, who live on the grounds. It was a good time to arrive because it was easier to look around the place, get my bearings and find out how things work in general though I suspect it will take a at least a few weeks to get my head around the specifics. To get used to the new culture and language will take far longer than that I think.

I'm living in the volunteer area (ie non-local staff). There are around 25 of us from places such as Australia, NZ, USA, UK, Ireland, Germany, France - a veritable United Nations but I'd expected that.

The short term volunteers all live in one house (with a main living room in the middle and bedrooms off it). The long term volunteers (anyone here for a year or more) get a little bit more space and have their own rooms. This is where I stay (just to the right). inside this hut is one large room with a table down the middle that everyone sits at. Then on the left and right handside (it's quite a long building) are bedrooms. They're tiny but we have a shelf each to put our clothes on and a mozzie net plus a few hooks on the wall.

The school itself is a fabulous place. I have been really humbled by the amazing job that they have done to create such a fabulous opportunity for these children to learn. They now educate almost 700 of the poorest children in the Arusha area, who would otherwise have no opportunity to get an education. To see these children so very happy and getting so many opportunities is incredible. More on that soon.

There's an orphanage up the road which some of the volunteers help at and I'm going to work with them on it. They have no running water, electricity or very much space there. From what I saw of it, they have three main bedrooms. They have a dry toilet outside and they cook outside in pots on a fire. We're going to fundraise to help them improve this situation asap. So that will be an additional project to keep me busy in the evenings.

More soon.... I have to sleep!