Tanzania Trip Day 10

This morning we headed in two directions. Half of us went with Ms. Police and Taylor on a home visit - they went to the home of a local SEGA graduate and got to see how they live - I will describe the home visit more on Friday when my group gets to go on one. For the other group, our mission for the day changed at the outset - we were going to attend class with our hosts for the Life Skills course, but the teacher was sick and the other classes were preparing for exams on Saturday. So they came up with an alternative plan. There is one classroom building on campus that is covered with murals. But the murals were falling off the wall and leaving large chunks of exposed plaster. So they asked us to reconstruct these. We embraced the mission. First we scraped where the walls were exposed, and the murals came off in chunks. For the lower half of the walls, we ended up with a empty white canvas on which to create - the upper half was still attached to the wall pretty well as were the ends of the building. So after scraping and putting a base coat down, we split into five groups - four of which created new murals each with a unique design, and the fifth did touch up work on the ends. The kids really got into the project and it took up our whole day - until our 1430 lunch with them (we also had a tea and bread break at 1100). The results were pretty spectacular.

First we scraped where the walls were exposed, and the murals came off in chunks. For the lower half of the walls, we ended up with a empty white canvas on which to create - the upper half was still attached to the wall pretty well as were the ends of the building. So after scraping and putting a base coat down, we split into five groups - four of which created new murals each with a unique design, and the fifth did touch up work on the ends. The kids really got into the project and it took up our whole day - until our 1430 lunch with them (we also had a tea and bread break at 1100). The results were pretty spectacular.

Our hosts were impressed. After lunch with the SEGA students - rice, beans, cooked greens, and fish - we had a meeting with our hosts where we split into groups and compared cultures on topics like marriage, music, sports, religion, etc.

After an hour of that, it was sports time - some played netball and some played football (soccer). This ended at dinner time, and after a relaxed evening, we got to bed early - we depart for our safari tomorrow at 0600 - breakfast at 0530!