First days

Well Tanzania 2010 began on Sat 19th June with a 3am gathering at Dublin Airport. No last minute problems, check in went smoothly and we departed on time for Amsterdam enroute for Dar es Salaam. with a brief touchdown at Kilimanjaro International but unfortunately too dark at that stage to get a glimpse of Kili! UCDVO has a local partner Tanzed and Robert Lywakurwa is the person from that organisation who has been working on our behalf ensuring that the projects were all ready to go on our arrival. Robert met us at the airport and took us to our hotel (Rombo - yes there was water so we did better than last year's group!). We had a quick snack and then it was bedtime as we were all pretty exhausted after the early start.
Sunday morning we met for breakfast and immediately loaded up the bus and headed for Morogoro. CCT on the outskirts of the town is a Christian Training Centre and they have very decent accommodation where we have settled in very comfortably. There is a series of bungalows with two bedded rooms in most cases but Mary and I and a few of the lads have single rooms (with hot water no less!).
We are blessed with the weather - warm but not excessive except for a few hours in the afternoon which is unfrotunately when we are on site!
Sunday evening we checked out a local restaurant ( Dragonnaires) and the lads were delighted to discover a large screen where many of the World Cup matches are shown.
Monday morning Robert collected us and we set of in the CCT bus on a tour of the 5 schools we are in this year; First stop was Mlimani -a promary school. The welcome was incredible. The students are officially on school holidays but many come in during the break for extra classes so they were all assembled ready to entertain us. Two little girls approached Mary and I at the entrance and tied a little blue kerchief around our necks. We then had to sign the visitors book and then we were escorted to the computer room entrance where Mary and I cut the ribbon and officially declared it open. We were entertained to some singing (school song and national anthem) by the assembled children; the school principal the councillor for the Ward (Morogoro is divided into a number of wards) who also happens to be the Deputy Mayor, the Chair of the School Board and I said a few words and then of course we had to have the refreshments. We then had to rush off to the other schools who were also waiting to entertain us albeit not quite so formally. But everwhere we had to eat! The other schools are Bernard Bendel and Charlotte run by the Holy Spirit Sisters, Top Stars and Lupanga schools. Some are private and Lupanga is a state secondary. But the nuns give scholarships to students that they identify as having potential but who could not afford to pay even for uniforms. They have just started Charlotte secondary school, Phase 1 of which is almost complete. Its a boarding school and is really well designed - the sisters were saying they cut back even on their own food to ensure they get it built. I have never seen a school with a better vista - big windows from the computer room looking straight at the Ulughuru Mountains!
Tuesday we spent loading the computers which have been stored in the Tanzed offices since they arrived from the port. The schools were so excited when we arrived with 20 computers for each school. The students began the process of setting up immediately and by days end the computers were out of the boxes and the rooms actually looked like computer labs!
The following few days were spent ensuring that as many technical problems as possible were sorted and teachers began their IT training on Wednesday morning. They are so eager to acquire the skills that there is no danger of absenteeism - in fact the opposite - as the word is spreading we seem to be acquiring more and more enthusiastic pupils!
We all bought bikes and have been commuting to the schools. The sisters have agreed to transport us in their lorry every day after class so then we will only have to cycle home from the site each evening. Kihonda is the furthest away of our sites so this will still be a 9km cycle home after a hard afternoon's work on site!
This week we have also met our contractor and begun work on the basketball court in Kihonda Secondary School which is one of the schools UCDVO worked in last year. The initial work of clearing the site and excavating is extremely difficult especially with the tools we have at our disposal but everyone is mucking in.
Next week Mary will identify a school in which to do a library project as this is her area of expertise having only recently retired as Professor of Information and Library Studies in UCD.
I will make an attempt to keep this blog updated at reasonably frequent intervals. For the moment suffice to say that we all feel we have put in a hard week's work but it has been extremely rewarding.