African Volunteer Project
When I started to plan my trip to Africa I had decided that I wanted to do a volunteer project while I was there. I knew that it would be hard to find a wildlife volunteer project, but I started my search with those, but moved on to doing a construction project (my other profession (the one that pays the bills)). Sadly most volunteer projects in developing countries are no longer volunteering but donating money. That is they charge volunteers to come and volunteer, not just to pay for their room and board, but to pay big money towards the project. In the case of the big wildlife in Africa thousands of dollars to be a volunteer for two weeks! They don’t care if you have any experience because they look at it as babysitting tourist who will donate lots of money and not as volunteer work. I realize that they need to raise money, but I feel you should raise your money from other means and get volunteers with actual knowledge of the work that needs to be done.
After considerable searching on the internet I found a group that did not charge their volunteers to work. They were interested in people with skills who were willing to volunteer. This group had been doing projects in Uganda for a while and was just branching out to do some in Tanzania also. It was arrange that I was going to meet in Tanzania in early February with one of their regular volunteers to help him and the locals to build two rain water catchments; for supplying a hospital and a school with water. Currently the students and teacher needed to bring their own water and the hospital needed to haul water from the nearest well.
When I left for Africa that was the plan, but during my two months of traveling prior to the start of the project things changed. In the end the other volunteer was not going to come. They sent me the plans for jobs and gave me the name of the person who would meet me when I arrived.
The day I arrived in Arusha, Sister Rashmi met me at the bus, she was the onsite project director plus had access to the money I would need for buying the parts. She was great she showed me around town, took me to the village and introduced me to my host family. My host and his wife were great. Michael was one of only three people in the village who spoke very much English, his wife Reheim(sp?) spoke a little and was the one who taught me the most Swahili. The language barrier was confusing because much of the time they spoke in the Masai language so I didn’t know which language they were speaking. There also was a woman Doctor at the clinic and an older man who spoke English and a few other people that spoke some. Africa has many languages so it is hard to learn unless you stay in one place for a while, which I haven’t been doing. The next day the sister picked me up to take me to the back to the city of Arusha to buy the materials I would need. The adventure begins.
The project was interesting and it tested my patience. At home I could have gone to Home Depot bought everything in 2 or 3 hours gone to both sites with two of my workers and poured the foundations all in the first day; and had both sites done 3 days later. Here I managed to get 2/3 of the project done in 13 days. The hospital’s system was finished and as the rainy season was starting they will now have water. The nursery school I finished the base and hopefully I succeeded in instructing a local plumber (that the organization hired when they realized I would not be able to complete the project) how to set up the system and he could finish it. Finding materials is very difficult, several days just running around the nearest city trying to find stuff. Adapting the plan to using the wrong parts because that is what is available. Including the tanks that got delivered which were different then what had been ordered so the foundation is wider and taller than it should be. One entire day wasted waiting for the truck that was supposed to meet us in the morning; we got back to the village at sunset. I spent many hours every day trying to round up tools and workers (such as they were). The tools were old, non-power and largely broken; every day the men that lent me the tools said I could just keep them at the site until I was done, every night after I left they came and took them back and the next morning I couldn’t find those men so I had to look for someone else. The workers mostly stood around and came late. I had a few guys that were great for one day, but if they came back for a second day they stood around like the others. Lack of the right material and tools makes for much more work than otherwise would be necessary.
One funny occasion occurred when I was inside the large black plastic holding container. Michael was on top waiting to assist me when I was finished inside, but since I had lent him my camera he was too excited and got down and ran around taking a million pictures. Imagine being stuck inside a large black plastic tank that is mostly enclosed in the hot African sun! I pounded on the wall and hollered for a very long time before someone got on top and looked in, naturally he didn’t speak any English. I was able to get him to understand that I needed help to get out of the tank. He disappeared for a long time and finally shows up with a big ladder, the ladder is so big that if he lowered it threw the opening there would not be enough space for me to pass through the opening. Again I tried asking for Michael, but no luck finally the guy shows up with an empty five gallon bucket and drops it down to me. By turning it over and standing on it I might be able to jump high enough to just grab the edge of the opening but if I fail to catch it I will land on the bucket and it will tip over. Even if I catch it I have to then pull myself up to the top and through the opening, plus how do we get the bucket out. I was getting desperate so I was about to try it when finally Michael appeared. It took a while but finally he showed up with a small piece of rope and a piece of string. I tied the string to the bucket and me. Michael held the rope, while I got on the bucket and grabbed the rope, I then climb up it till I could reach the opening and pull myself through while the bucket was dangling from me. We then all sat around and laughed.