Aye, Teacher's

Happy St Andrew’s Day! What I’d give for a plate of stovies and a copy of “Sunshine On Leith” right now…

Anyway, since coming down off Meru, there has been a lull in my blogging activities, for various reasons, which I am finally getting the opportunity to address. My second month with RISE Africa has been a busy one; I have been writing extensively for a range of local organisations, including two schools, Ngarenanyuki and Nkoaranga, and a home-based care project, Msamaria.

To recap, the purpose of my work is to ultimately help these organisations improve their business activities, and try to connect them with donors who may be able to help them. I feel like I am partly achieving this objective – the proposals I have written are well-received by the organisations I am working with, yet I am quickly discovering that trying to entice donors is a lengthy, frustrating process. Welcome to the world of international development…

It doesn’t help that my laptop is ridden with viruses, plus I have very limited, slow internet access, which makes hunting for the relevant people even more difficult. It’s something I will perhaps be able to do better when I return to Scotland next year. But explaining that to people like the head of the home-based care project, who is absolutely desperate (a word I hate, but appropriate here) for cash now for the HIV-affected families she supports, isn’t easy.

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Anyway, my stint with RISE officially ends on Friday, but I am ready to assist them in anyway I can while I am in Tanzania and beyond. Moshono has been a brilliant place to live and work, not least because of my host family who have made me more than welcome.

There have been a few highlights of my time under Mama Anna’s roof, but my favourite came a couple of weeks ago. One afternoon, the father of the house, Kazzy, asked me a question:

“Ross, what is a Facebook?”

I explained, gave him the whole social networking spiel, and found out why he was asking. It turned out he has a daughter in Canada, who he has not seen since she was a baby 24 years ago. During one of their calls, the daughter explained she used Facebook, and urged him to check it out so he could see some up-to-date pics of her, as the latest ones he has are from 1997. Natch, I suggested to Kazzy that I escort him down to the local internet café where we could hunt for his daughter together through my Facebook account.

This was a piece of piss; we quickly found the girl we were looking for, and sent her an email to introduce ourselves. The next day when we returned to the internet café, both Kazzy and I were delighted to find a cheery email from her, which gave us access to dozens of pictures – not just of the daughter but of her own gorgeous baby daughter, who Kazzy had never seen a picture of.

Prints were made, which Kazzy has since taken great pride in regularly examining. We celebrated afterwards with a few bottles of Kilimanjaro, which we will do again when I join him and other members of the family for Christmas.

Finally, something Facebook is good for, other than skiving!

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After three months (and Bixler, you will be delighted to hear this), my attitude to the local music is softening. I am finally embracing Bongo Flava, Congolese and other variants of African music popular in Tanzania. My favourite song, which is never off the radio, is called “Piip Piip” by a guy called Marlow.

It’s all in Swahili, but according to my mate, it’s all about a fella who is in the car, and late en route to meeting his missus (the “Piip Piip” is the toot of his car horn).

Anyway, that’s not to say “Sunshine On Leith” wouldn’t sound REALLY terrific today…

Home later for a nip of Teacher’s. Off to Eldoret in Kenya on Friday to do something super-exciting that I can’t wait to tell you all about later…

Bye for now,
Ross

PS Princes Street now open to traffic??