Hello from Sega Girls School!

The view from our front stoop!

On Tuesday night I arrived in Morogoro after a warm and bumpy 3.5 hour drive.  We picked up another volunteer, Kini, from the Dar airport beforehand and then headed out with our two drivers Mudi and Robert.  The constant banter of Swahili going on between the two of them made me really wish I knew more of the language.  Something to definitely work on.

We made it to the school just before dark and a bunch of the girls helped us bring our bags to the volunteer house where we’re staying.  I didn’t quite know what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised—the beds are comfortable, there is a fridge and a stove in the kitchen, a nice shower, and a western toilet!  And, biggest pleasant surprise of all, we have Wi-Fi!  

There are four of us living in the volunteer house right now.  Dana—the volunteer coordinator—has been showing Kini and me the ropes around here, introducing us to staff and the girls, and making sure we don’t get too overwhelmed.  She’s super friendly and sweet and has definitely made me feel at home here so far. 

Veronica is a Peace Corps volunteer who starts teaching here in October.  She’s from California and will be teaching bio and English classes.  She’s been in Tanzania for almost 2 months as well, but most of that time was spent in Peace Corps training, so she only arrived on campus a couple days before Kini and I arrived. 

Kini is going to be teaching English as a foreign language to the “non-form” girls (basically the younger ones—I’ll explain the Tanzanian school system in another post once I understand it a bit more fully).  She’s from Vermont, played field hockey goalie (!), and will be here for 10 months. 

My bunk.  Settled in and feeling right at home.

Right now Veronica, Kini, and I share one room with Dana in another.  The room I am in is pretty spacious (a lot bigger than my “triple” from freshman year at Davidson).  I kind of packed a lot, so fitting it all into one cabinet was tough—there’s a lot of my “extra” stuff still in my suitcase under the bed.  I’m actually going to probably end up moving into the brand new “staff house” when they get the electricity run to that house, but unsure how long that will take, so I’m here for now. 

Speaking of electricity, that’s been a kind of interesting adventure here already.  The school is completely off the Tanzanian power grid—everything here is run via solar power.  It’s pretty awesome as far as sustainability goes, and I am definitely all about it and it is super exciting to see alternative power in action at a really workable scale.  However, it does mean that, especially on cloudier days, the power can go out pretty early in the evening.  There are a few different sets of solar panels on campus, and last night the girl’s dorms and common space lost power at around 5 pm.  Unfortunately, two of the grade levels have their midterm exams this week so that meant that around 7 when the sun went down they didn’t have light to study by.  The volunteer house still had power so, at around 7:30 a group of a few girls asked if they could study on our front stoop.  Within the next 10 minutes there was a group of 20+ form 1 girls there, all studying for their exams.

It seems weird that today was only really my second real day here.  I won't say that the days have been really packed, because we've had a good mix of down time and activity.  I haven't had any real jobs so far, but I'm working on doing inventory for all of the art supplies which has been cool.  That in combination with seeing the awesome, brand new art classroom has made me really excited to get started.  30 new girls are arriving on Saturday  for their orientation and I planned out some fun art activities to do with them over the next week while the rest of the older girls are home on break.  Really excited about that!

Bye for now from a cloudy and windy Morogoro!

Care