My penultimate blog entry is about my last day with African Impact, and my time in Mombasa with my African Impact friends. I left off on the last Friday where we were going to the slum schools...
The second slum schools was a very different experience from the first. The slums were in essence the same, but these weren't built on a rubbish tip, they were just a normal shanty town. The school was much bigger and the kids were well dressed (relatively speaking), spoke good English and went right up to the age of 16 - staying in school until your 16 is unheard of in village schools, they're mainly pulled out before or during secondary to start working. The teacher liked to show us around each class, where the kids would all sing a song and recite a little piece about themselves, such as: “my name is George. I am a boy. I am eleven years old. I go to so-and-so school and I am in class 7”. It feels very formal and regimented, I tended to feel a little embarrassed by it but for them it was an important ritual to show us how welcome we were.
We were asked to split up and help out in class. Meg and I paired up and chose to go into the top class - I wanted to see what they were learning and I’d been with pre-schoolers up to that point so wanted a change. Our class were learning algebra and at once Meg and I realised our mistake when the teacher said, 'so you can just go around and mark their books and give them help where needed' - well I haven't done algebra in over 14 years... But we sat at the back and listened to the examples and we started to get it. Then the teacher left us to run the class... I realised that the kids did not understand even the basics of algebra and did classic time-wasting such as write lines through their books so they didn’t have to start the sums. When they did start and got them wrong, I carefully explained how to do it, and had immediate results where the kids would realise what the method was and started doing it right. I really enjoyed helping them and seeing the instant change, and was almost annoyed to be dragged away to go to the Maasai markets. If I had my time again I’d ask to be placed at that school, i could see how i could help immediately and got so much out of it myself.
That was my last African Impact working experience, and it was a lovely way to end my time on the programme. It didn’t dawn on me until a week later what an effect all the school kids, teachers and communities had on me. It’s difficult to explain my feelings on Kenya and my time with African Impact because i have so many feelings about it. With reflection, i think one of the most surprising things about my time is how incredibly comfortable i felt with everyone and everything. I got so used to the squalor, the poverty and the deprivation that i hardly noticed it, and perhaps eventually felt a little like the people who actually live there. I found everyone’s friendliness, enthusiasm and motivation to be contagious; it really was the best time of my life.
When i speak to people about volunteering, they tell me they are concerned with feeling overwhelmed by the sheer size of the problems that they’ll see and fear that knowing that they can’t fix it would be too much for them, almost burdening them for the rest of their lives. I think that as a volunteer you have to accept the inevitable, that you cannot fix the big problems such as the economy, disease, human rights, abuse, poverty. But you can help to ease these problems within a small community, and work from the roots upwards. To me, African Impact is one of the first organisations i’ve ever truly believed in. I feel 100% confident that they know what they’re doing, that if i give them money they’ll spend it wisely, and that they are committed to building a sustainable future for those communities. As one little person there’s not much i can give to the world, but being part of African Impact makes my contribution that little bit more effective.
It now feels wrong that i left the slums and went to a tourist district whereby we essentially contributed to the problem of the rich/poor divide. However, at the time, we were all so exhausted from the week that a break by the beach seemed a great idea...There were five of us that travelled to Mombasa on the night bus. We were giddy with excitement and behaved like teenagers all night.
The bus was uncomfortable, okay the seats reclined but only a bit, and the roads were really bumpy so if you did finally get to sleep you'd be bounced right out of your chair. I think the driver turned up to the wrong venue as he clearly thought that we were at a disco - all night he pumped out 80's disco cheese so loud I could hear it through my own music turned up full - strangely everyone else including all the girls could sleep right through it! About 3 in the morning I had to say something and he turned it down, a fraction... It was like trying to go to sleep in a tumble dryer with MC Hammer banging at my head - impossible. I did discover though that I can sleep if I listen to Mumford and Sons, a trick I used repeatedly throughout my time in Kilimanjaro too. I was so tired when we got to Mombasa that I wasn't overly impressed that before we even got off the bus we were inundated with men shouting at us 'tuk tuk!' 'tax, tax!' 'm'lady!' I literally couldn't even get off the bus. Not fun. We were swiftly picked up and taken to our hotel, where we had been upgraded to the penthouse suite! It was incredible, especially compared to the places we'd been living and seeing. It did make me feel very ashamed having such luxuries and knowing what people in the villages were living like in comparison.
We spent our days by the pool relaxing and sunbathing as some of the girls had gone to the beach in the morning (I was asleep on a sun lounger by then) and found they were again surrounded by men, so it wasn't very enjoyable. For me sunbathing is a full-time, arduous task as I’m so white I’m almost translucent - a stage further and you'd be able to see my internal organs. But I religiously stayed in the sun and covered myself in factor 50 until finally, by Sunday evening, I had a nice mild, reddish tan.
On the Sunday, I was just relaxing on the sun lounger when to my horror I noticed a massive line of ants walking to and from the pool. I'd never seen so many in all my life and watched in fascination as they converged near a hole next to the sun lounger, all with a piece of sugar in their mouths. I realised when they started to congregate underneath my sun lounger that they were in fact conspiring to lift me up and take me to their queen. A panicked decision led me to order their genocide by the poolside attendant. I am ashamed that i’m responsible for wiping out an entire colony of ants - karma is definitely coming for me. On Sunday night the girls and I had some crazy girl time in our penthouse, playing music and eating cake, I haven't had a girly weekend like that in years and I loved it. I can’t believe what amazing friends i’ve made in such a short space of time, i feel like i’ve known them forever. I think that African Impact has brought us together in a way that nothing else can, because we’ve all shared such an incredible experience.
Monday morning, very very early, I got up to catch my bus to Moshi, sadly leaving all the girls behind who were spending another day by the pool. It was pretty daunting, being taken in a blacked out car to the bus station in Mombasa and getting on a local bus by myself. I was sat at the very front of the bus, which meant I got to see every little twist and turn, donkey, goat, pot hole and cliff edge in the road. Awesome. Next to me were two little Kenyan girls, one of which had amazing red glittery shoes on.
Now i don’t want to generalize, but the drivers in Kenya all seem to be completely mental. The driver from Mombasa to Moshi was a perfect example - he made some seriously questionable decisions in his terrain-avoidment-strategy. Of course, the bomb under the bus would have exploded if we dropped below 50mph so he must be sure to maintain the speed at all times... Nothing could induce this man to slow down - pot holes in the road, blinding sandstorms, oncoming juggernauts, all three at the same time, he wouldn't even stop for passengers to get onboard. Kenyans seem to like to jump onboard moving buses, and this wasn't an open-sided bus, it had a door and everything, but it's all part of the challenge they like to give themselves. At times like this all you can really do is plug yourself into your iPod and listen to Rage Against the Machine on full blast. When I didn't have my eyes clamped shut, I noticed that the scenery was beautiful as we drove through the Serengeti national park.
Considering I was on my way to the biggest mountain in Africa, the terrain seemed worryingly flat, so it was a good sign when I was finally given a Tanzanian immigration form. You fill out a form, get your passport stamped, walk through about 20 metres of no country whatsoever, then come into Tanzania, fill out a form, passport stamped, and you're in. I sat and thought about those 20 metres a lot on that 7 hour bus journey - where exactly was I?!
I chose a terrible time to develop narcolepsy. It happened just as we were pulling into Moshi, a time where I desperately needed to keep my eyes open and find my hotel, as the detour to Mombasa meant that I was now not being dropped off directly outside it. Nothing, however, could have kept my eyes open at that point. Not even the promise of a cheese sandwich. I've only known myself this tired once before, on a flight back from Benidorm when I was 17 and had lived off pro-plus for 3 days - I woke up with peas stuck to my face where I’d fallen asleep in the airplane food.
Eventually we pulled up to the bus station and I woke up, confused and disorientated. There were a couple of other western girls sat at the back of my bus, who when leaving the bus were greeted by another western woman who whisked them off in a smart Jeep, leaving me in the dust, with three bags too heavy for me to carry. At this point I wished that previous me had thought about future me and organised some transport. It's lucky that Tanzanians are just as friendly as Kenyans, and one of the bus porters went and found me a taxi, got in it with me and all my luggage, charged me 6 US dollars (grr) to drive round the block a few times then a few hundred metres down the road to my hotel.
I had 2 days relaxing at Springlands hotel where I spent time organising my bags for Kili and burning my stomach to a sort of tomato-red colour. That evening I went to the orientation session and learnt that despite me booking myself into a group, I was in fact climbing Kili all by myself. This did not go down well with me at all. I wanted to be in a group so that I could have the mental support of other group members, so that I was safe, and so that I didn’t have to tip as much at the end. It would mean that I would have all to myself 3 porters, 1 cook and 1 guide, it seemed a little over-the-top. But there was nothing I could do, so I made the best of it.
The food in the restaurant was very average and I complained to myself that the food wasn't half as nice as Brackenhurst, that the place wasn't as friendly and that the fan/air conditioning in the rooms was dreadful. Ahh, post-Kilimanjaro I think back to that naive person and shake my head at them, as little did I know what I was about to endure in the next 5 days...
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