Year 10 Tanzania Trip

PS: The fourth photo shows Mrs Connolly shortly after failing miserably at her life guard training.

Day 2

Today we went on a short hiking trip around the local area. We saw how the locals live, what they do when they are sick and saw some primary school students. The Witch Doctor showed us all the herbs she has and which ones to take for different sicknesses. We were accompanied by 2 local tour guides and 3 teachers. We then went for lunch surrounded by banana trees. The food was great. After lunch, we split into 3 groups and parted ways. We went to different houses to help families where the husband had died and one person was left to care for lots of children with no income. We were then again split into 2 groups - 1 group building a goat shed and the other building a stove out of sustainable resources. A tiring but really interesting day that made us all realise how lucky we are.
Livvy Tomlinson 10SOR

Day 3

Today we did our school service which involved brick laying, plastering, and smashing up rocks with a sledgehammer (though this was mostly Mr Malcolm!). We were told, "This is going to be really hard" by Victoria, our group leader, but we didn't believe her. We got to the site, a government primary school, and our task was to build accommodation for the teachers as they have to walk for over an hour in the heat every morning to get to school. I did brick laying, and let me tell you, it is a lot harder than it looks. I also mixed sand and cement powder, which was interesting. The technique was like this: we made a cake and then added the icing sugar, then made two mountains and then made one mountain from the two, to then make a volcano, all to make cement! After doing that for sometime, we went and ate lunch at a children's centre. The food was great and we played Ring a Ring o'Roses with a little local girl. After this we went back to camp, with a lot less energy, and continued on ...and on...and on! There was a really nice moment when one of the students from Champittet School sent his drone up to film us at work and all of the students in the school came running out to see what it was! Judging by their reaction I'm certain they'd never seen one before. They probably thought it was a UFO! We finished by cleaning all the equipment and carrying it all back to the store. We then headed back to camp with a few tired, sunburnt builders and a lot of satisfaction and pride about what we had done. Mhairi Winfield

Day 4

Funny thoughts of the day from Mrs Connolly's group:

Livvy: More cement ended up on me than on the wall...