Grants and sponorship

Those who came to my recital will have seen my 'proposal brochure'. It is aimed at local clubs and organisations to get some financial help in return for regular bulletins and a talk/presentation when I get back.

Already I'm having a good response. I'll keep this post updated with the names of the kind organisations who have donated...

All Saints Church, Kirkbymoorside, P C C

Pickering Rotary Club

The Sir James Reckitt Charity



Illingworth-Wood Estate Agents


The Ryedale Lions

Enormous success...

'Ivories to Africa' - my fundraising piano recital on Saturday - was an enormous success.

Many more people turned up than expected, and (on the whole) the playing went well. I talked about my project and Tanzania as a country between pieces, and attempted to teach the Tanzanian National Anthem...in Swahili...!

Mum put on a fantastic spread of nibbles with an East Africa 'flavour', and we made a huge display that went down well. Thank you to Martin Hall who leant me the display boards, to boyfriend Jon, best friend Steff, good mate Sam and my lovely family for their help and support.

So, how much did I raise, I hear you ask... in total, an astonishing

£700 !

£474.89 was raised on the night, and £225.50 in donations from people who couldn't make it.

Obviously this will make such a difference to my Africa fund, so a real heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who supported me.

Ivories To Africa - fundraising piano recital

My plans are all very exciting, but unfortunately also very expensive.

I've done my best to earn the amount through my 4 jobs plus babysitting, but I still have a long way to go. £3500 to go, to be specific.

So...
with my grade 8 piano exam on Thursday, I'm going to give MY FIRST PIANO RECITAL - IVORIES TO AFRICA as a fundraiser!

It is on Saturday 15th November (next week) at 7.30 at Kirkbymoorside Memorial Hall.

I will be playing a varied programme: Martinu, Bach, Schubert, Liszt, Mozart, Debussy, Strauss and Grieg. In between pieces I will talk as much as possible about my African Adventure, and will put up a display about Oyster and my plans. Entry is free, but donations will be very welcome. I'm going to do it like the Oxfam Unwrapped scheme - people will be able to buy, for example, 3 days worth of malaria tablets, or insect repellant, or contribute to a water purification device.

I hope it will be a fun evening, and a memorable first recital!

Details

The flights are booked, the placement paid for - time for some details:

DEPART
20th January from Heathrow.
Unfortunately, since I only need a single, it's not possible to get the same flight as the other volunteers, so I will be leaving about an hour later.

ON ARRIVAL
We'll be met at Niarobi by Madeline, our Tanzanian contact. After a 4 hour bus journey through the Arusha National Park we will arrive at a very swanky tourist lodge, where we will spend a few days to acclimatise, brush up on our Swahili and have another teacher training session. After visiting all of the schools involved, we will settle into our homes for the next 3 months.

SCHOOL
I will be at a Primary School called Sekei 2 miles out of the city of Arusha. It is literally next door to a newer and comparatively better equipped school called Naurei, which is only distinguishable through the colour of the uniforms!

I will be teaching pupils from ages 6 to 16, in mixed ability classes of potentially up to 80/100.

The school is in dire need of latrines and desks. Recently, an ex-pupil who is successful in the mining (Tanzanite) industry, donated 1,000,000 Tanzanian Shillings to pay for more latrines, but there are only about half as many desks available as needed.

The education is very old-fashioned by our modern British standards: the pupils work through a text book from beginning to end. Spelling is learnt by rote, and grammar learnt through filling in sentence structures and dictations. If pupils misbehave, they can expect to be caned which, needless to say, I will not be doing.

Creative writing is not part of the learning process at all, so volunteers are encouraged to introduce pupils to talking about themselves, their feelings, writing letters to friends, and story writing. This is for me perhaps the most exciting aspect of the teaching - I'm greatly looking forward to bringing story books (are real novelty) and hopefully sparking imaginations.

OTHER ACTIVITIES
After about a month, we will get to go on a luxury Safari for a fraction of the cost. It will be in the Serengeti National Park, and last about 4 days.

The lodge we will have stayed at on arrival will be happy for us to spend some time there occasionally to have a bath and a good nutritious meal (porridge will be a large part of our diet...).

Being so close to Arusha, it will be easy for me to visit at weekends. From there I can use a computer, buy any essentials, and hopefully spend some time with the rest of the group. One of the schools is 20 miles away, so we probably won't see much of James, Rachel and Catherine!

PLACEMENT ENDS
19th April

I will have a free 10 days to get myself to Dar Es Salaam and possibly visit the island Zanziba and spend some well deserved relaxation time on the beach. My old school had links with a school in Dar, so hopefully I will visit.

JON ARRIVES
29th April

We'll spend a few more days in Dar so he can acclimatise, then begin our backpacking!

BACKPACKING
There is a train line that runs East-West across Tanzania, and terminates at Lusaka in Zambia. The plan is that we pick it up and spend just under 2 months getting to Lusaka.

Once we get to Mbeye (near the border), we will make a diversion and spend a few weeks in Malawi. The infrastructure is practically non-existent, so we will have to follow the tourist trail mostly. It does, however, involve taking a boat down Lake Malawi, so I'm not complaining! Mum was born in Blantyre (in the South), so I'd like to visit. I will be the first in the family to go back.

We will then pick up the train from Mbeye again, and spend a while getting to Lusaka. Hopefully we'll have a good few weeks left, so we will go south to Livingstone (where my grandparents lived for a few years) and visit the Victoria Falls. I'd like to spend a while exploring southern Zambia before getting back to Lusaka.

COMING HOME
25th June

Well, that's the plan. No doubt it will turn out differently once we get there!

Pre Departure Course

On 29th and 30th October, I went to Surrey for an excellent Pre Departure Course organised by Oyster.

It was a fantastic opportunity to meet all the people I'll be going with, who were all so nice! Minibus journey, orienteering (in the fantastic grounds of the school hosting us), volunteer presentations, chill-out in the Common Room and nattering until an indecent hour in our dorm, meant we went a long way to getting to know each other.

But it wasn't all fun and frolics... there was such a lot of information to cover in 2 days. We found out about our schools, learnt about customs and cultures (did you know you must hold your elbow when shaking hands with an 'elder', for example...?), filled out numerous risk assessments, had a very lengthy health talk, and a crash course in teaching. Our heads were spinning by the end!

All of us agreed, especially after seeing a video of a previous volunteer taking a class, that we just want to get straight down to writing lesson plans, and the sooner we get out there, the better - an excellent course!

Welcome to my blog!

Hello / Jambo!

The aim of this blog is to keep friends and family up to date with my big 'African adventure'.

What will I be doing?

On January 20th 2009, I will be boarding a plane whisking me to Tanzania. After three months volunteer work, my lovely boyfriend Jon will be flying out to meet me in Dar Es Salaam (business capital of Tanzania) where we will pick up the train line. We will travel across Tanzania, round Malawi and into Zambia where we will eventually fly back from Lusaka at the end of June.

I am volunteering in a Primary School called Sekei just outside of the city - Arusha. I am going with a very small and friendly gap year organisation called Oyster Worldwide http://www.oysterworldwide.com/ .

14 volunteers will be going, but we are split up between a number of schools. There will be three other girls with me at Sekei in a basic school house - breeze blocks, tin roof, the toilet is a hole in the ground, no electricty, and water only if the rainy season's been good! The house is right in the middle of the school grounds, so we've been told to expect kids banging on the door wanting to come in and practise their English!