Karen, one of our Account Executives in Elevate, is volunteering in Tanzania for six weeks… here’s how she’s getting on:

I’m having such a great time, and am now half way through the project – I can’t believe how fast it’s going. We’ve just been so busy, it’s crazy! It feels like I’m here about three months not three weeks.

The school I’m teaching in is super nice, it’s called Top Stars and it’s really far away from the place that we’re staying in, but the principal comes and picks us up every morning in her pickup truck which is hilarious because we sit in the back with the bikes and chickens and food and stuff!! We all got bikes because we cycle everywhere! Seriously surprised I haven’t shed half my body weight because there have been daily bouts of sweat and tears on that bike.

In my school, there are only about 10 teachers but they’re all amazing people. It’s a nursery and a primary school so there are super small babies there, who are just adorable. The kids in the school are 3-10, years so they are quite young to be learning computers, but the teachers are really good with them. All our teachers started teaching the kids computers this week and they are really good, its great thinking that we taught them all of the stuff that that they know now…feeling very proud of myself!

Morogoro, the town we’re living in is a nice place up in the mountains. When we were on the way here from Dar Es Saleem, it was scary! You get such a culture shock when you arrive, as there are people everywhere, all living along the sides of the road. On our three hour journey to Morogoro, there wasn’t a second that we didn’t see people living in little houses on the side of the road. All of the African people just stare at us all of the time, they seem gob smacked that we are here. They constantly scream Muzungu at you (“white person”), which took a bit of getting used to, as they stare you right in the face and just roar the word at you!

The basketball court is built already – it was a killer to build and I got more cuts and bruises than I’ve ever had in my life. They don’t use any machines over here to build, so everything is done by hand; mixing cement and shovelling sand are totally my new fave things to do! I’m so glad that it’s all done now, as it was so hard building it. We left for school every morning at 8.00am and would teach from 8.30am until 1.00pm, then have lunch, cycle to the building site, build from 2.00pm until 5.30pm and then cycle 40 minutes home. Our entire group are exhausted all of the time.

Loving the group though, they’re really cool, I’m living in a house with seven other girls, which is slightly cramped at times but it’s great too. We’ve done lots on the weekends as well. The first weekend a lady that works for TanzEd brought us to a dance competition. It was supposed to be a ‘club’ but it was more like a shack, where they played African bongo music and people came up one at a time to dance – it was really cool.

Over here, women don’t go out at all with their husbands or boyfriends, so we were the only women in the place. We also went on a hike that weekend, which nearly killed me, the mountain was so steep. And last weekend, we went on Safari, which was amazing. I saw so many animals, some which were a bit too close for my liking sometimes! We also went to an African Irish night, which one of the girls organized in her bar. She came over here ten years ago as a volunteer and ended up marrying a Tanzanian man. Every time we go out, she tries to organise weddings for us with the locals, because she wants some new friends!

As well as having lots of fun, we’ve also had a few casualties! One of the girls was bitten by a spider, another of the guys was brought to hospital from the building site because he hurt his arm and twelve people got food poisoning from their school, all at the same time. So far, I have escaped…..

We’re going to Zanzibar next weekend, very excited to leave the builders hat behind and whip out the bikini!

Hope everyone is good in there!

Karen xoxo