The First week

Before I start I wanna warn you!! Its going to be reaaallly longggg!! Common guys I haven’t updated you for a whole week and you know how long a week can be! But before I go ahead with my blog let me show you what we eat everyday for our chakulaa cha usiku (dinner) as I had promised.

You have to agree that made your mouth water!!

We started with our Swahili lessons and engineering lessons from Monday and this routine continued for the whole week till Thursday.  So, let me tell you how a typical day for mhandisi (engineer) in Tanzania is(I am talking about myself guys). We arrive at TCDC- this is where our classes are conducted, at around 8 in the morning (I know that’s early!!). 

TCDC-Pan Africa Classrooms

We then go to our respective classes and start with our Swahili lessons. They are super fun and our mwalimu (teacher) is super cool. We joke a lot and ask a lot of questions and this is what makes the school fun. And you know what the best part is?? No exams…yup you heard it right!!

Swahili classrooms

We have a chai break at 10.00, which is quite refreshing, and we meet all the other groups. We finish our Swahili lessons by 12.30 have a lunch session (lunch boxes prepared by our dada’s and mama’s) for about 1 hour where some of us just chat and others play.

The engineering lecture helps us to know about common problems we might encounter in hospitals while fixing devices. The labs are more involving and exciting as we work with our group, the one we will be working with in our second month in the hospitals. We got to learn a lot in the first week itself. We built our own plugs and sockets, soldered to almost perfection and made some basic circuit measurements.

So once the labs are done at around 5-5.30 we are done with a day of school. And if you didn’t realize that’s like straight 8-9 hours of school. I don’t remember the last time I have been so long in the school, but this is not a problem as the day just slips by and before you know it, its over!! After the school we usually just hang around in TCDC for about an hour or so. Some of us skype, some play basketball. Sometimes we just watch the guys play basketball or football.

Relaxing after classes

We get back home at around 6.30-7.00, freshen up, have the yummy dinners at around 7.30-8 with our family, do some Swahili and engineering homework and get to bed around 10-10.30. That’s it!! 4 days from Monday-Thursday the same routine!! But the week just went by.

Friday was different as we went for our first field visit to the hospital Mt. Meru. We were divided in groups and each group was given a medical device to troubleshoot and fix it. I was amazed by the fact that even after four years of studying engineering, I did not have the knowledge to fix them without the help of our professor. And ya you don’t need a PhD. to repair most of the devices! The faults are so trivia that anyone can repair them if you know your basics well. It took us a whole day to troubleshoot and almost fix one device but then we learned a lot.

Group working on an equipment 

We decided to go to a bar and chill out for rest of the day. The best part was that we had to split in groups, as we were so many!! One of us mentioned that it looked like migration of wild beast when we were walking together. We had dinner in an Indian restaurant, had super spicy kebabs and the Americans and the Dans loved it. All of us then met at a bar again where every single one of us danced till we were tired to continue any further.

The next day, Saturday, our coordinator had organized a trip to a  chagga (one of the tribe) village. It took us like 2 hours to reach the place and the bus journey was fun.

Chagga hut

We started our trip by visiting a coffee plantation with banana plants for the shade. This was new to me as I wasn’t aware of the whole coffee beans making process. From picking up the ripe coffee beans to drying them and then passing them through a seed separator to using hand operated device to separate the beans from its covering, from roasting the beans to grinding them into the coffee powder. Phew!! Trust me it’s a long and tedious process, but these people do it everyday and I seriously respect them for all the efforts they put in. In spite of so much efforts, they don’t get the required share and the traders benefit from the profits!! Arghh so irritating!!

 

Coffee making process

Sorry for digressing guys, I will move ahead to the Chagga caves, which as the name suggests are NOT caves. They were used by the chagga tribes to protect themselves from another tribe, Massai. It was an epitome of Engineering. To start with, they camoflauged it with cow dunk and a hut to mistaken it as a cowshed. Even when some tribes entered, the passages were so narrow that most of the attackers would get banged on their heads and thus had to return. Some of the lucky or should I say the unlucky ones who survived would then be hit by two soldiers guarding the entrance. There existed a whole room to keep the families with animals, cook food. And this stretched for about 3 kms underneath the ground!! You have to see it to experience it!!

Inside of a chagga cave (kitchen)

Our trip ended with lunch prepared by local villagers. We were amazed at how easily they were able to slice the raw banana (trust me its difficult). I was good at grinding the coconut as I have done that in India too. My group was amazed to see me do that and I taught everyone how to do it!

A local preparing food for us

With so much effort put in by the locals, the lunch had to be tasty. It was prepared on those traditional stoves with traditional skills. We all thanked the locals for the delicious lunch and headed back to our bus. Most of us were pretty much tired from the long but interesting day!! But every single one of enjoyed the trip and got to learn and experience many new things.

Our group enjoying the delicious lunch

Samahani (sorry) for such a long post, but I had to update you on everything. I will update you about my next week in my next blog. Tutaonana badayaa(see you all later)!