Chloe and Angie's Tanzanian Blog: Week 1 in Arusha!

Hi everyone! Well that's us arrived safely in Arusha after 3 very long flights! We were picked up from the airport by the work the world team and it was then about an hours drive to the house we are staying in (a very bumpy ride)!

We arrived at the house about 12:30 at night which was quite scary, we were shown our rooms and had to attempt to climb into our bunk beds and under our mosquito nets in the dark without waking our room mates, not very easy!! There is 4 of us sharing a room and everyone in the house is lovely :)!

On the Monday we had our orientation day, we were shown around Arusha and headed into town on the local transport ... A Dala Dala! Which has to have been the weirdest experience we have ever had. There are no rules over here it's madness when you think there is no more space on the bus you can fit about 8 more people on :0!! And there driving is crazy! You have to bang the Dala Dala to get them to stop!

After a long and interesting trek around town with our lovely guide Fidelis, he then treated us to a Tanzanian lunch. We can't lie when we said we were a tad apprehensive about trying the local cuisine but we gave it a shot and it was actually amazing! The meals are really quite healthy and rice/beans based which sounds boring but it's really not!

After our orientation we were pretty knackered as you can imagine (so difficult walking/eating/drinking in the scorching sun) so we headed to bed early for placement the next day!

All we can say about placement is that mental health is pretty different compared to back home. It's really upsetting as the health board can only afford a few medicines and the patients who are prescribed injections can't always obtain them as they are too expensive. The nurses over here, if they are lucky, make around 5000 Tanzanian shillings a day which is roughly about 2 quid. Some people barely live on 1000 a day which is less than 50p... It's difficult to visualise but the lack of money does not have an effect on the locals in the slightest. We have come across the nicest of people in the past week, makes the heart melt!

We worked on placement Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday therefore, earned a night out! About 20 of us left the house to go to a local club called Via Via. We somehow managed to fit in the one car haha, oh dear! The club was great, very different from home, had a bonfire too!

We had a relaxing day on Friday and went to River House! It was beautiful! We were greeted by some amazing food, (5 courses) which were all great and only came to 12,000 shillings which is about £5... Everything here is dirt cheap! We are actually millionaires when we look at our bank balances! The money made from our meal at river house funds material for produce used by people with physical and learning disabilities to sell in the local shop!

Later that night we went to Nema House, which is right across from where we stay. It is a house full of abandoned babies and is heart breaking as a lot of their mothers died during birth. People struggle so bad for money over here and some babies are simply abandoned at the road side because their family can't afford them. Nema house is run by an American couple who are truly amazing and have all 23 babies in total ranging from 3 months to two and a half years. The babies are beautiful and so cute. We are thinking of using some of our fundraising money here as well as the orphanage (which we will be visiting next week) as it would be helpful and greatly appreciated.

Yesterday we spent the day at a Snake park which was brilliant! We seen so many scary snakes, all which are located in Tanzania! We even got to hold some :) they were surprisingly cute! We even held a baby crocodile which was a little more daunting! There were so many cool animals there: birds turtles, vultures, lizards, crocodiles, baboons and snakes!

We also got a tour around a Maasai village by one of the Maasai tribe warriors, which was really interesting to see that people still lived like that... But the best part had to be getting to ride camels :D they are so big! It was hilarious trying to get off them, as they go down on their knees first! It was an amazing day!