Africa XXX
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January 13th 2007 marked a life changing stage in my life, it was the first day of my three month, self induced nightmare. Well, that is what some people would call going to live up a mountain, 40km from a hospital, in an area that has no electricity or running water. I called it my Gap Year Placement.
Having already spent two weeks in the area I thought I would be pretty prepared for whatever lay ahead of me, but as BA047 started to taxi out I looked back at Terminal Four and thought ‘What on earth am I doing?’
Cornwall to Heathrow takes about five hours, and then I had a three hour wait because that was how early I had to check in for my flight, and then the actual flight was another nine hours. So that is seventeen hours of travelling, not including the taxi and ferry ride to the resort where I was to spend my first two nights in Africa.
Stepping off the aeroplane at Dar Es Salaam International Airport was like walking into an oven, I had completely forgotten just how much the heat can hit you, because there is no air conditioning in the arrival building. The visa queue was phenomenal and it took another forty five minutes, at least, before I had my visa and could leave the airport. I was tired, hot, and wanted nothing more than to dive into the crystal waters of the Indian Ocean and just relax.
Last time I was in Africa I taught in a small primary school in Msasa IBC, a village about nine kilometres from the camp we were staying in. IBC is rare in that it employs a more holistic approach to teaching than other Tanzanian primary schools. They don’t believe in beating their pupils quite so much, and provide a decent quality school lunch scheme. My three days in IBC school could not prepare me for what I would face in Amani Primary School, where I was to spend ten weeks teaching standards four to seven.
My smallest class at Amani was forty eight, and my largest one hundred and eight, a daunting prospect for a qualified teacher, let alone an eighteen year old student just out of college.. The most commonly used phrase in my classrooms were ‘Teacher, no pen’ and ‘Teacher, no book’. At least half of all my classes would be without the appropriate equipment for learning, no pens and no books. I was supplying my children with half sheets of A4 paper, because I couldn’t give them a whole sheet, knowing they wouldn’t have it the next day to carry on working on it. I had to count pens out as I handed them out, and write the number on the blackboard to make sure that I got them all back.
These children don’t steal maliciously, but a pen is worth more to them than anything else. Having a pen means they wont attract attention in other classes, and they can actually do their work, without waiting for someone else to finish to borrow their pen. They are possessive of their pens, they never let go of them. They carry their school books in plastic bags, but the pen stays clutched in their hand all day. I can go out and buy fifty biros for about £1, it’s cheap as anything, I don’t think anything of chewing through the ends of them, leaving them lying around and losing them. It’s a whole different life.
Needless to say, on the last day of term I gave every child in all of my classes, all three hundred and five of them, a new pen and one other item of stationery, a pencil, or a ruler, or a pencil sharpener, and I have never seen so much gratification. Try giving a western child a biro, and expecting them to be eternally thankful and tell you that they will never forget you. It just wouldn’t happen.
One of the most worrying times, excluding the few days my foot swelled to twice it’s normal size due to infected bug bites, was waiting to know if one of my pupils was still alive. She’d caught malaria, an easy enough to treat condition. It costs about £2 to have it diagnosed and treated, and it takes just three days for the treatment to work. But this little girl was extremely sick, she was crying and shivering so bad that her whole body was shaking, and the headmistress got her older sister to take her home. Now, the cost of diagnosis and treatment is pennies to you and I, but can be impossible for some of these families.
These people are subsistence farmers, they grow enough to eat but make no cash income so they can’t afford medical treatment.
For about a week no one saw this little girl at school, and we were all starting to think the absolute worst, and it was horrible. We thought the worst, we knew how poor the family was, it was obvious by the uniform and lack of equipment, and then one day she arrived back at school again.
On a visit to the International Primary school in Muheza, which is run by an English nun and funded by the Catholic church, I came face to face with possibly the most distressing case of illness I would meet in Tanzania. A small boy, aged eight years old, doing well in his classes, except for one thing holding him back, he was born HIV Positive. His mother has disowned him and his father died of the disease years ago, leaving him in the care of an aunt and uncle who want as little to do with him as possible. He’d just recently ‘recovered’ from tuberculosis and within ten minutes of our arrival he was taken in a taxi to the hospital because he was vomiting violently. Sister Mary told us very simply ‘we don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep this one’.
Until that day I had never encountered a child, or indeed an adult, with HIV, but for some reason I never expected it to be like it was. This boy was so small, so fragile, and to know that he has been abandoned by his own mother doesn’t bear thinking about. Now everyone is hoping that his younger brother does better, he too is HIV positive. Even now as I type this up I can see this six year old boy, playing football with his friends, seemingly without a care in the world, but I also see his older brother, huddled in the back of a taxi on the way to the hospital, and I know that is what could well be his future too.
Nearly one in ten of the children at Amani Primary School are orphans, people don’t talk about it, there is a certain stigma attached to the term, and people certainly don’t talk about HIV/AIDS. One African child dies every three seconds. A bottle of safe, clean, drinking water costs seven hundred Tanzanian Shillings, a bottle of Fanta costs three hundred and fifty shillings. Countless children suffer from worms and chronic anaemia, and other conditions that come hand in hand with malaria. Yet all of these can be treated and prevented relatively easily. Sometimes, I look back at all those children whose lives I touched, whose lives I changed in some small way, and wonder if they’ll get a chance to live the opportunities they have.
So how do I feel? I’m happy to be home, I’m glad to be earning my own money again and I am so thankful for an electric shower, with warm water. I’m grateful that I’m not living a third world nightmare, I’m glad I have access to free healthcare, of a standard that is acceptable. And I am determined, determined to make a difference.
Whether it be by spending less time in the shower, or by donating money to a charity I know and trust will use it on the people they aim to help, not on administration and red tape, I can play my part in making the world a nicer place to be.
Africa changed my view of life, I’ve seen just how fragile we are, I’ve seen the best and the worst of human nature. I have lived, without running water or electricity, for three months, and I loved every minute of it.
Jeannie
- 01.10.2022
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