By Tarik Raouf
Using 45 US dollars, I signed up on the Workawayer’s platform. This is where you choose which specific country you would like to travel to, and on the site you can organise the potential hosts that you will stay with. I chose to go to Africa, somewhere I could help teach kids English, and maybe give something to people who are less fortunate then myself.
On March 1st I arrived, sleep deprived and hungry, in Dar El Salam, Tanzania. It was a bustling place, and as there were so few taxis I decided to risk it and hop on one of the local motorbike taxi rides to the bus station in Ubungo. As it turned out, it was a much faster and cheaper journey that the taxis, which I noticed along the way, all seemed to be stuck in traffic. It was quite hectic when I finally arrived; there were not many tourists around and people were a little bit too eager to help out. It was around 7 in the evening so I couldn’t take the bus to the place I was going to stay at, Mafinga (bus leaves around 6am), therefore I stayed at a lodge that night somewhere close to the bus station.
With help from one or two of the many people around, I prowled the streets looking for things to snack on. I tried a few fruits that they sold at stalls (the freshest you will ever have) as well as some of the street BBQ, then I decided to retire for the night. Unfortunately the lodge was quite old and rather hot, and added to my woes was the fact that there was no AC. Having said that, I was so tired I still managed to grab a few hours of sleep.
I left the lodge quite early, it was a short walk to the bus station, and there the officials sat me down on a bus (after swapping a few times) and I waited to depart. The 12 hour bus trip itself was incredibly tiring, and my neck ached from straining to look outside the window to see everything I could (so much greenery). We stopped a total of four times, yet only one of those stops allowed us to actually set foot off the bus to stretch our legs, get some food and use the toilet.
Finally we got Mafinga and my host picked me up. His name was Albert and he took me to the school (one of three) where I would be working for the duration of the placement, and introduced me to Robert and his family, who are in charge of the place I would stay with the volunteers. This is where I and the other volunteers would spent the majority of the free time we had. When I first arrived I was the only worker at that specific project, though a couple of days later a few more people joined me.
I was there for a total of two months, usually waking up around 6 in the morning to get ready to leave for the new location of the school we were going to build. Our project was to erect a kindergarten and this is where we did the majority of work, which consisted of burning huge piles of wood, gathering resources, digging out tree roots and trunks, farming, prepping the land, wood chopping, planting, construction work and relocating materials. It felt great to have a sense of purpose. Life felt relatively simple having a specific goal to achieve each and every day. Thankfully, before I left we managed to set up the third kindergarten, have it fenced off (funded from donations made by previous volunteers) and up and running for the children.
Albert and Robert were incredibly passionate about the project, you could feel the intensity of it whenever we talked about it. At the start there were 157 kids in two schools and so it was vital we built the third or 65 of them would have been kicked out due to there not being enough space. Teachers get paid when Albert can afford to pay them, and while they aren’t strictly speaking volunteers, they get fed. Talking of which, food was cheap and most of the time we ate ugary, which is water and flour, and pretty basic! When stirred and boiled until it was edible: not pleasant, but it did the job. We ate a lot of rice and beans too: things the locals could grow themselves. The agricultural system there is very good. I usually got mangoes, bananas and passion fruit, which were dirt cheap. Around 20 passion fruits for 5 AED, so I definitely stuffed myself with fruit in that way.
It was a lovely experience, and it showed me how frugally some people around the world live. The simplicity of their lives. Dubai is very modern and it is incredibly easy to take things for granted. It was a mind opener to say the least. The people were amazing, very open to suggestion and determined to improve anything that could be made better, and to work on their hospitality too, which really couldn’t be faulted.
The most difficult thing about it was being alone. Entertaining yourself is difficult as the host’s English wasn’t quite what I’d expected: he spoke very little, and what he knew was difficult to understand. In fact, very few natives spoke English, but they were really friendly. I learnt a tiny bit of Swahili, and on one occasion I got a couple of sentences right and everyone cheered, so that was pretty funny.
Due to lack of Internet coverage there was less time than I usually have to use social media, but on the odd occasion I did have coverage I would play games. My screen time cut down incredibly. I messaged the family and read a couple of books (21 in total), There is a lot of free time, so I explored the area, went to villages, Ruaha National Park, it was incredible. I saw so many animals: lions, giraffes, hippos, monkeys, crocodiles, jackals, and a komodo dragon type creature, these were all in the wild too, so it gave me an incredible rush.
I would do it again for sure, and I would definitely recommend doing something similar to anyone. Some days were difficult, others were so inspiring, and to see the progress we made and what I accomplished was a great feeling and gave me a real sense of purpose. At some point I’d like to go back and see how much further they’ve got since I left. I’m sure I could learn more by going back. Another thing I did while I was there was to help Robert create a blogging site for his progress updates, which you can check out at https://robartmdamu.wordpress.com/. Otherwise feel free to check my own blogging site which covers a few specific stories in Tanzania here: amecreations.wordpress.com
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