After 10 weeks in Tanzania, I finally got the chance to leave Arusha! This came in the invitation/requirement to go on a school trip to Morogoro for a swimming and football competition, with 28 children/young people, aged from 10-16.
We left school at 9.15am on Friday morning and drove for 11 hours in a south-easterly direction until we reached our destination. I really enjoyed the chance to see some of the Tanzanian scenery (lots of mountains and little villages) on the way down. The kids were very rowdy after being cooped up in a bus for so long though – I don’t think the heat (about 35°C in places), the excitement or the sodas helped either!
The journey shouldn’t really have taken that long, but the drivers were given a speed limit by the chief administrator, which was over-ruled, after a while, by Jo (the headmaster’s wife). When we started going a bit faster, one of the buses was pulled over by the police for speeding – how typical! The driver got out of paying the full fine and getting a ticket though, thanks to some sweet talking…
At least our journey wasn’t as long as the school travelling from Mwanza (a town near Lake Victoria in north-west Tanzania), who’s bus broke down twice on the way! Pole (this word means “sorry” and is pronounced like “poorly”, rather than how we’d pronounce “pole” in English. The Tanzanian’s say it a lot, in situations where we just wouldn’t in England, it’s quite sweet really).
We had dinner in a nice restaurant in Morogoro as soon as we arrived (we were kind of hungry by 8.30pm), then went to the school where we were staying. It wasn’t exactly luxurious staying in a classroom, but it was still quite exciting. We were all squashed in on foam mats, with sleeping bags, like a sleepover. I should add here that the boys were sleeping in the hall, and had put up tents –how adventurous of them! Before going to bed, the girls had the choice of teeth-brushing in the boy’s bathroom that was completely flooded, due to rain coming through a leaky roof. Or of teeth-brushing in the girl’s bathroom, that was dry but very dark (as the lights were broken). The boys went elsewhere for teeth-brushing (if indeed at all…)
The competitions took place on Saturday, with football in the morning and the swimming in the afternoon. The children were completely exhausted at the end of the day – especially those that had competed in both activities. Braeburn did well, winning the girls’ football, coming second in some of the boy’s football competitions and coming overall first in the swimming! Whoop, whoop! The school in Morogoro had organised a disco in the evening, where the Braeburn kids sat sleepily, watching the kids from other schools dancing –so it was a strange disco in that sense!
We got up early, early on Sunday to leave Morogoro at 8am – determined to get back to Arusha before dark! We ended up arriving at 5pm (ish). I think fast driving and not needing to take many toilet stops helped – the kids slept for most of the journey, so weren’t drinking as much water or soda as they had done on the way down.
All in all, it was a fun trip. Although it was a very long way to go, just for one day’s sporting events! It was even fun hanging out with secondary kids (as a break from Year 4). Some of the secondary kids that came were quite full of attitude, some were really sweet and others were just plain hilarious –eg. one yr 9 boy cracked hard-boiled eggs on his head at breakfast time before peeling the shell off (I’m sure people normally tap them on the side of a plate, with a spoon, or some other implement). What would he have done if the egg was not quite hard-boiled? He was so dim!
Anyway, the real question is: where will I go next? The Easter holidays are fast approaching…
