Tanzania Schools & Community Project – Georgiana Kirby School

Quest are delighted to be working with our partner charity in Tanzania, the Livingstone Tanzania Trust, to provide a schools expedition for the Georgiana Kirby School in California.

A group of 25 students, parents and teachers will be heading to Tanzania for just over two weeks to renovate and rebuild a delapidated school, whilst also taking part in cultural activities to learn about Tanzania culture.  

Specific Trip Information

Project History and Quest Overseas Projects in Tanzania

Quest was approached by the Livingstone Tanzania Trust to work with them to help improve the quality of schools in the Babati district, near Lake Manyara. After a visit to the project in August 2007, we could instantly see how our volunteers could help! It was truly heart breaking to see the teachers and students struggle through each day with the poor facilities they currently deal with. Walking away was not an option.

Julian, our project partner told us that when he first arrived, the boys from a local school had been challenged to a football match with a another school but were too afraid of the humiliation of not having a football that they declined the invitation. So he bought them a football and says it was the best $10 he ever spent. He still can\'t quite believe that something so simple could give so much happiness to so few for so little.

We are now working with the LTT to help renovate the existing buildings, cement the floors, plaster and the walls, put in windows and doors, put in new desks, give the teachers shelves for their books, build new buildings from scratch, put in water, irrigate land for teachers/student\'s gardens, improve the teaching standards, get English conversation groups up and running to build student\'s confidence, have football matches with other schools, introduce computer technology for the school administration, have educational posters so that groups can study them. As you can see the list goes on as to what we want you to do to help us give these kids a chance and give the teachers more value and so more satisfaction!

The advantage of partnering with the Livingstone Tanzania Trust is that the charity has a substantial local staff network and logistical support base and are able to continue work and maintenance on the Quest projects throughout the year.  The charity also benefits from extra funding from outside sources and so they are not entirely dependent on Quest for all their funding which means that the financial base of the overall project is solid and they have the resources to combine funds for large scale projects

Key Aims

The aim of the Quest Africa Tanzania Project is to help rural Tanzanian communities improve their existing education and health facilities and, where possible, to provide additional infrastructure to further this aim.

The Project



In Tanzania only just over 50% of the population enrol for primary school and even fewer manage to make the next step to Secondary School. Facilities are extremely limited and often pushed to the limit to cope with the number of children:teacher ratios. Classrooms have fallen into disrepair, have leaking roofs, termite infested walls, mud floors and often no windows, doors or even desks.

The Livingstone Tanzania Trust has been made aware of a dilapidated school near the town of Dareda, on the slopes of the Great Rift Valley. This school is in a poor state of repair and is desperate need of repair and renovation.

Georgiana Bruce Kirby teachers Don Stoll and Marianne Kent-Stoll will lead two dozen volunteer students, parents, and staff members from their school to the tiny village of Bacho. They have been invited by the villagers to stay long enough to help finish building four classrooms for the Ufani Primary School, which serves 230 children.
 
Don, Marianne, and the other volunteers will pay all their own airfare, bus, food, and lodging expenses. And on behalf of the nonprofit organization recently formed by Don and Marianne, Karimu International Help Foundation (www.karimufoundation.org), the volunteers are raising $14,500 to pay for building materials and all-local labor. The villagers of Bacho would be unable to raise this sum because almost all of them work as subsistence farmers who occasionally acquire extremely small amounts of cash from the sale of crop surpluses.

Your team will be working with local skilled builders to help repair and renovate the school building. You will be mixing cement, laying bricks, plastering and painting. It will be hard work, but ultimately the reward will be worth it.

Overall Aims of the School Project:
1. To improve the access to education for children from local communities.
2. To learn more about the culture and history of the people of Tanzania
3. To Interact positively with the village communities



Itinerary

12th June
Arrive at 08.50 at Kilimanjaro International Airport. To be met at the airport by Quest and M&L Tours who will transfer you to Babati. Once in Babati there will be a lunch and a welcome briefing session with Julian and Joas. After lunch there will be a transfer to Bacho Village, Dareda where you will be taken to the Agricultural institute where accommodation is provided. The local guides will be there to welcome you and will take you on a tour of the village before returning for dinner and evening de-briefing and entertainment
13th June –22nd June
Start building programme mixed with Cultural programme - including local coffee farms and the ancient Barbaig tribe.
Full board and lodgings at the Agricultural Institute.
23rd June 
In the morning there will be a presentation at the school with dancing and speeches followed by lunch.
At 2.00pm you will be collected from the Institute and driven to Babati where you will be taken on a tour of Babati and a trip to the Waangwaray Primary School.
There will be a chance to go to Lake Babati to have drinks and watch the sun go down and listen to the Hippos call each other.
Dinner will be served at Joas’s guest house and accommodation provided at different spots in Babati (all close by)
24th June
Depart very early for Tarangire and a day in the park with lunch boxes. 
Dinner at Mto wa Mbu and overnight at Guest House
25th June
Up early and drive to Ngorongoro crater for a day drive returning that evening to Guest House at Mto wa Mbu
26th June
Early breakfast and a morning safari to Lake Manyara.
After lunch at a local restaurant we move depart for Arusha and the Airport, arriving at 17.40 for a 19.40 flight

Accommodation

For your duration of the project you and your team will be living in basic accommodation, at the agricultural college, just 10 minutes away from the project site. Each room has four bunk beds, shared bathroom facilities and every volunteer has an area to keep their clothes.

There will be basic toilet facilities and showers – hot water is not always guaranteed! There is a running tap outside which is useful for washing clothes and collecting water for cooking. The college has a large dining room, where you will eat breakfast and dinner.

Most students sit outside on the balcony in the evenings writing diaries and preparing dinner.  There is a large amount of recreational space for playing football or frisbee and clothes dry very quickly in the sun.  The accommodation is about a 20 minute drive from Dareda town which is where you’ll go to find the markets and shops for buying food and supplies.

Food & drink

There are two types of food that you will be eating whilst in Tanzania.  Firstly food that you and your team will cook for each other and secondly traditional food that you will eat usually at lunch times when you are on site or when you are invited to eat at someone house.

Breakfast:  Porridge with raisins or sugar. Tea/coffee.
Lunch:       Hot dish like vegetable stew and chapattis
Dinner:      Large rice or potato base dish with vegetables and/or chicken with salad.
Pudding:    Everyone loves having a pudding so do bring some recipes with you! Favourites for project site are banana custard, roasted chocolate bananas, marshmallows or rice pudding.

The most important aspect of food on the Project is to eat enough of it. Volunteers who think they are coming to Africa to ‘lose weight’ will be in for a surprise. The amount of energy you will be using on the project usually far exceeds that which you use at home and you will be surprised at how hungry and how much food you will find yourself eating. 

Try to keep your energy levels up by eating a good balance of proteins, carbohydrates and essential fats and you will feel the benefit. This is an easier project to be a vegetarian on as its harder to prepare and cook meat every day for the team. Usually a team will try to cook meat twice a week to ensure everyone gets a good amount of protein in their diet. Don’t forget that almost all the meat that is bought in Marangu Village is as organic as it comes – the term ‘freerange’ applies to almost all the meat you will be given up here. 

Water is plentiful in Dareda as it comes gushing off the rift valley in many streams and waterfalls. Drinking it straight from streams and taps, however, is not a good idea as the water filtration system in Tanzania isn’t advanced enough to filter out all the micro-organisms that can cause stomach upsets and diarrhoea. For this reason, all water will be purified before drinking.

Day to day life

The wonderful aspect about this project is that volunteers get to live in the heart of a small local village and so day to day life can be varied and interesting depending on what events are happening in the village. Below is an example of what the most typical day is like working in Tanzania.

6:15 am     
Wake up call by the Quest leader. Time to wash & dress for the day.

6.30 am 
Gather for breakfast which has been prepared by the ‘cooking team’ for the day who would have been up since 5.30 am preparing breakfast for the team. Breakfast usually consists of porridge with raisins and/or golden syrup/sugar with fruit and eggs when available. Cereal is not often available.

7am 
Volunteers return to their rooms for final preparations for the day.  This includes packing a day bag with three litres of drinking water, sun cream, sunhat and personal first aid kit. Volunteers to also pick up whatever kit they are using for the day’s projects. This could be work gloves and hard hat for construction sites or just a large reserve of energy and ideas for working with the children in the schools.

8am 
Usually we try to be on site by this time and volunteers usually walk to their project site through the village, which usually takes half an hour. Volunteers tend to work in groups on different projects whilst on site, managed by a Quest Leader or Local staff member. 

12 noon 
Volunteers tend to have lunch around noon when the bulk of the day’s work has been done. Its nice to have a chapatti or a couple of apples with you for breaks and to keep the energy levels up during the morning.

4pm 
Volunteers on building projects start to head back by 4pm to wash and change clothes. There is a real pressure to complete any building projects before the team leaves so sometimes this day can be extended as the finish date draws near. Volunteers on cooking duty need to start preparing dinner at 4 o’clock which usually takes two hours. Volunteers often have an hour or two in the afternoon to attend to personal laundry, letter writing or just snooze in the sun!

6pm 
Everyone should be back at camp and have had showers and changed into clean, long-sleeved evening clothes with mosquito repellent liberally applied.
Dinner is ready when it’s ready!

7pm 
Usually there is a group meeting every evening after dinner to make sure that everyone is happy about what work they will be joining in on the next day. The volunteer leader for the day will usually be in charge of this session and its an opportunity to rotate onto different projects if you want a break or to voice your preference for staying a project you are particularly enjoying. It’s a relaxed and informal meeting but if you have any issues you are unhappy about this is the chance to bring it up. Its also a chance to chat to each other about what happened with each group that day and to write up the team logbook.

9pm 
If you stay awake until 9pm that shows real stamina!  We tend to head to bed soon after eight o’clock.

Safari



During your last few days you will be taken on a safari to the northern game parks, Tarangire National Park and Lake Manyara where you will have the chance to see all of Africa’s Big Five animals - lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo and rhino. This is an adventurous few days involving lots of bouncing around on rough tracks trying to spot wildlife and birds in amongst the bush and savannah grassland. 

It is often a once in a lifetime experience for many volunteers and so its worth bringing a good camera and a pair of binoculars, if possible, sealed safely inside a dust proof bag. Automatic cameras tend to jam up if you allow the dust to reach the mechanics which can be an enormous disappointment half way through watching a pride of lions feeding on a kill. The safari is two days and one night.