A New Adventure Begins

I arrived in Arusha, Tanzania on August 17, 2011 and joined the staff of The School of St. Jude as a teacher-librarian in the Upper Primary Library at the Moshono Campus. I am here as a volunteer but in the upper primary library there are two local teachers who have been working as teacher-librarians at the school for a while and a full-time guard who shelves, repairs books and seems willing to do anything else he is asked. The majority of the staff at the school is Tanzanian (plus a few from neighbouring East African countries) but there are some volunteer teacher mentors and quite a few volunteers working in various roles in the business office. The majority of the volunteers are Australian.

I visited the school for a few days in June 2010 so I knew the drill of flying into Nairobi, spending the night in a hotel and taking a shuttle bus to Arusha the following morning. I have my own room with an ensuite bathroom (with hot water) and I’m sharing a kitchen with some of the other volunteers. Although there are frequent power outages in Arusha, the school has backup generators so we are rarely without power for more than a few seconds. We also have wifi across campus so I can use my laptop most anywhere. The signal isn’t strong enough for my iPhone to pick it up from inside my room (and I’ve put my SIM card in my Nokia) so I have mainly been using it to listen to podcasts.

The most surprising thing so far has been the number of physical and social activities going on. There are groups of people that walk in the mornings before school and on weekends so I’ve walked nearly every day since I arrived. One volunteer leads yoga sessions twice a week though she has gone back to Australia for a month or so in order to be there when her first grandchild is born so yoga is on hiatus. The lower primary PE teacher was a personal trainer in Australia and she leads cardio and Pilates sessions once a week. There have been several birthday celebrations since I arrived which have involved dinner or lunch at various restaurants. There is a Sunday night tradition of going out for dinner to a complex where there is a movie theatre and a very western style grocery store (most anything you could possibly want is available but at a price) as well as a variety of restaurants around a courtyard including a very yummy Indian one. We had last Monday off as a day in lieu for Eid and a large group of us ventured out to the Arusha Cultural Heritage Centre followed by lunch at Shanga (a glass bead making workshop that employs disabled Tanzanians and has a fabulous restaurant). I’ve been into town numerous times with various combinations of people to grocery shop, run errands, watch rugby matches and eat at a variety of restaurants and cafes. All of this has left me with no chance of being bored and no real time to blog until now. (I’m not complaining but I know there are people who have been waiting for updates.)

As well as working on finding my place in the upper primary library, I have spent a bit of time in the lower primary library, visited the secondary library at our Usa River campus and been involved in the student selection process for next year’s grade one students. (I plan to write about the latter on my other blog at some point).

I haven’t taken many photos as I am reluctant to wave my camera about in public – both out of respect for locals and for fear of having it snatched. I did take some around campus the first weekend I arrived and I posted most of them in this Picasa web album.