We all enjoy being independent and many of you reading this have experienced independence on a deeper level by travelling with us to Africa and Asia. However, it is also an aspect of life that we take for granted. At our community camp in Tanga, Mwambani village, Tanzania. We have been fortunate enough to get to know one of the villagers who is a constant inspiration to all of us and a great help despite him being physically challenged.  ….

Mohammed Bakari aka Raru was a keen footballer and trained everyday with Mwambani FC at the local football ground directly opposite our camp. In 2007, the life of young, strong, loving husband and father took the worst turn whilst playing his beloved game. During an ambitious header, he dived for the ball and as it skimmed above him, his head collided with the up right of the goal post knocking him unconscious. His teammates, all eager to help, picked him up and rushed him in a car to the nearest hospital. There, he lay in a coma for one month. Due to lack of qualified First Aiders around him, Raru was not handled in the correct way when the accident happened. It is unfortunate that he had been left paralyzed. Many of the villagers rallied round to help and contributed towards physiotherapy for him, however, this is a very poor village and funds only stretch so far.

When we set up Camp Tanga in 2010, we consulted with the village chief, Mzee Kapera, as to who would be suitable people to work with us. As it is camps policy to provide employment for the communities that our camps are located, he urged us to take on Raru’s wife, Mwanamgeni, as they were purely living on hand outs from the community.

Throughout the busy times at camp, Mwanamgeni was employed as house keeping staff and at the beginning of 2012 we were able to offer her a full time position. With four children to support in school and daily living costs, a monthly wage completely impacts their daily family life.

Over the years, Raru has received a small amount of physiotherapy and has gradually improved his mobility. He can stand up with a lot of determination and the walls of his house as support and has a parallel pole outside to assist with walking but he cannot walk unaided.

As you know, we are building a Trust House in Mwambani which will host a kindergarten, computers, tailoring school, library and general community education learning centre. When inquiring as to where we could potentially build the Trust House, Raru offered a large part of his land for us to build on, almost as a thank you to his fellow villagers for their support. Bearing in mind that the land is all he has, this is a very generous gesture.

With such a resource in the village we would then get our volunteers to be teaching English in the center as opposed to doing it under a mango tree….

Fast forward just over a year and our volunteers have worked tremendously hard to complete the building. The nursery school play area is being cleared and leveled at the moment and by November we intend for this fantastic project to be completed and for children and adults alike to be utilizing the facilities.

Our volunteers have all been touched by Raru’s story, his generosity and determination and have applied a similar mentality when working on the projects in Mwambani. Recently we gave Raru a wheelchair that he can wheel himself and he is chuffed to bits with it. We hope that he will gain strength in his arms by using the wheelchair each day as his previous wheelchair required someone to push it for him. To restore a small amount of independence for someone who has such a big heart is the least we can do and we know that when the Trust House is open, Raru and his family will be regular users, after all, it is next door to their house!

We at Camps have dedicated this story to Raru the true villager!

I was the lucky one to escape from all the  hype of the Kenyan elections with a bunch of  Vonluteers just over the border to Tanga-Tanzani. See their story….

Jambo Jambo from Camp Tanga in Tanzania. What a crazy couple of weeks it’s been. We’ve invaded here to avoid the Kenyan  presidential elections, so Camp Tanga has gone from three to forty two people. It was quite a remarkable change for Joe, Maria and Alice but they welcomed us with open arms and we are like one big family.

The plastering in the Tanga trust house has temporarily been stopped and we have been involved in various projects.

On the first three days we helped the Mama’s in the village seaweed farm. We were unsure what to expect.However, I was pleasantly surprised. We had to walk out to sea in the morning and tie seaweed to string. Team A beat the record of completing 40 lines in total in two hours. In the afternoon we went to the Mama’s houses and bagged up the dried out seaweed and prepared the lines ready for the next day. When the seaweed is dried it weighed considerably less. The Mama’s only get paid approximately 7p per Kg.In England this is the equivalent to one text message! On average one lady can do 6 lines in a morning, with our help we managed 119 between 4 groups in one morning, this was a massive help to the community and as you can imagine over three days we accumulated  over a month’s income for the Mama’s.

The village livestock has a serious problem with worms which causes the animals to become malnourished and weak. They should be De-wormed quarterly but medicine is too expensive for this to happen. We pioneered a new initiative in Tanga where Camps De-worm the entire village’s livestock every 3 months. We started with cows, some of them didn’t want to co-operate and made it difficult for us to give them medicine! The men showed them who was boss and would not back down, we were victorious.

Next were goats! Unlike the cows the goats were roaming around the village. We had to run around the village catching them bringing them back to give them their medicine. David ‘the goat whisperer’ was on fire, carrying the goats back one by one.Then there was Luke, I’m sure I saw him on his back more than I saw him on his feet.

In the afternoon it was the chicken’s turn to be treated. They were pretty much the same as the goats, just flappier! There were a couple of casualties mainly caused by goats. David took a hoof to the shin and Will got bitten. Whereas Shauni was silly and got blistered from the sun but still managed to work as she has incredible self motivation!

We went back to the Trust house but this time we weren’t plastering but leveled and created a playground for the children. This involved the boys setting out on excavating an epic tree root which was great to release all your anger. Meanwhile, whilst the boys were dripping with sweat and working hard, the girls taught the locals, helping them with reading and writing English.

Once all the roots were dug up, the next step was starting to build a fence surrounding the Trust house in order to keep the animals out of the playground. We started to dig holes 6ft apart and 2ft deep, this was very muddy work. We spent 3 days building the fence, even though we had depleted numbers as some were having a great time in Zanzibar and 15 people had travelled back home. Not to worry too much, there are new recruits in camp, in the form of 7 new English gappers.

However it hasn’t been all work and no play! On the first weekend we arrived in Tanzania we went to the local night club. It’s safe to say a few too many tequilas were consumed! Ali P woke up on Sammy’s bus as she fell asleep on the way home and nobody thought to wake her up! We have visited the Tanga International Conference Center (TICC) and enjoyed a swim in the sea, We went to a local hotel for a cool down in the pool and jumped off the pontoon at The Yacht Club. This was all very lovely and then BAM the storm hit!! I got up at half 2 in the morning on Saturday night to check out what the commotion was outside, it turns out the small dome tents were flooding and people were rescuing their stuff. The Dutchees were sat in two inches of water with their little light not knowing what to do. We went around all of the tents and tried to put everyone’s stuff into a dry place. By three o’clock the rescue was finished and we were all laughing hysterically about the whole situation. Sunday was operation clean up we re-waterproofed the tents and dried out our stuff. Everyone pulled together to help each other and by Sunday evening everybody had somewhere dry to sleep.

We are heading back to Kenya tomorrow. We are going to miss the incredible view, the projects and all of the people we are leaving behind. However, we will be celebrating two birthdays, Shauni’s and Kate’s!

We hope you enjoyed reading what we’ve been up to.

Harlie, Will, Shauni  ,Abbie, Lauren, Holly, David and Annabella xoxoxo J

On the 6th of February the three of us arrived in Kilimanjaro in one piece with all our luggage intact! We spent a luxurious day and night sleeping and recovering in Moshi before the six hour drive on to Camp Tanga in Mwambani village. The surroundings are stunning and we don’t think we’ll ever get bored of our beach view – we get the ‘wow’ factor every morning! The only downside is the giant red and black ants who have taken to eating us (and invading our tents!) on occasion…

We’ve been in Tanzania for three weeks now and our main project has been working on the local nursery that has been under construction for the past year. Currently, the 4-5 year old children have to walk six kilometres to the nearest nursery and as a result many of them do not attend. We started with levelling the playground, reinforcing the ground around the toilets before the rainy season floods them. We then concreted the ground outside the school and repaired the cracks in the building and most recently have been plastering the walls – probably getting more plaster on ourselves than the walls (or at least to start with!).

In the afternoons we’ve been teaching an English class in the school building – the students range from about 10-45 years old with varying levels of understanding. We started with “hello” and “how are you” but have progressed to heated class discussions on topics such as corruption, disease and the family. Being a small group has given us the opportunity to integrate with the villagers and their daily lives and we’ve got to know some of them really well! The children are always really excited to see us, and Joe is blossoming in his new role as a human climbing frame, they’re really cute and provide a welcome distraction from work!

On a typical weekend, we take a trip into Tanga on a Saturday morning where we visit the markets do some food shopping and learn about the history of the town. We’ve had trousers tailor made for us after picking out patterns from the material store. It was a shock when we first visited the ATM and discovered we are Tanzanian millionaires! – we’re still getting used to the exchange rate. In the evenings we relax, have a few Kilimanjaro beers and get thrashed in card games by Eliphas and Anderson (our camp leaders/buddies). We introduced Eliphas and Anderson to ‘Ring of Fire’ which turned serious fairly quickly – We drunkenly managed to make it to the local club belting lion king songs along the way. Club Casa was relatively deserted bar a few locals drinking – we enjoyed the Tanzanian hits – and are beginning to sing along with some of them now… We lost Eliphas for the whole night and found him enjoying a nap outside with a new friend (a homeless man). Sundays are usually quiet and relaxing – we’ve been to two of the local resorts – TICC and Tanga Yacht Club which we can only describe as James Bond-esque. Last weekend we treated ourselves to pizza and ice cream on Sunday night as a change from our usual Camps food (which is still delicious!).

Our peace has been disturbed by 40 new volunteers from Camp Kenya and things are different in Camp but still really enjoyable and our work rate has increased massively! We had our first day Seaweed farming today – it was very sunny and we came across many starfish and sea urchins – everyone enjoyed themselves and groups got competitive about how many lines of seaweed they could plant!

We’ve just got back from watching Coastal United (Team Tanga!) play a team from the south at the local football stadium – it was very lively and although the score was 0-0 the atmosphere was fantastic- A heady mix! We’re now going to go and cover ourselves in DEET before settling down to an evening of relaxation and cards!!

Pole pole rafikis, hakuna matata, chakula kitamu!

Alice, Maria and Joe
(sponsored by Simba cement (a coca-cola company))

On the 24th of January, the Aussie Gap team moved from Camp Muhaka to Tsavo. When we arrived we were warmly welcomed by the staff here and presented with lunch. We were then given a brief overview of the camp and its projects. These included making elephant dung paper, the tree nursery, sanctuary maintenance, Sasenyi School, wildlife monitoring, the bush adventure and lastly the safari. While listening to all of these I could tell that everyone was excited and looking forward to our time here.

On our first official day here at Camp Tsavo we made elephant dung paper. Although this may sound bizarre and even a bit gross, it was actually quite interesting and fun. We were showed how to make this by some staff members who also explained to us how important this paper was to the local community. We smashed the poo, mixed it with glue and panned it. We then left it to dry and some of us even added some flowers to it. Overall this was a different, yet interesting and worthwhile experience. We also got to spend the afternoon working in the tree nursery, where we filled some plastic bags with soil ready for planting, cementing the bottle well, removing aloe vera plants and chilli picking. Overall these projects were relaxing, yet eventful.

During our stay here we also had the opportunity of working at Sasenyi Primary School. During this time we did demolished an old school building, in preparation for the building of a new one, cementing the walls of a newly built room, and some of us even had the privilege of being inside the classrooms with the children supervising and teaching. Our time here was precious, as we all felt the work here was helpful and it was also amazing being able to talk to the headmaster about the school and also experience some time with the children.

We also got a chance to visit Imani Womens Group and were surprised to see how women have worked together to improve their living standards as well as tackle their daily challenges. We visited the local community and worked in their farms by helping them harvest green grams and cowpeas. In the afternoon we made bracelets and necklaces from locally purchased beads. It was amazing since everyone came back to the camp with a souvenir of a bracelets and necklaces.

One of the projects we also got to take part in was sanctuary maintenance, which involved filling in the pot holes and ditches in a road on this ranch. Although this work was found a bit hard, it was worthwhile. We also got to take part in wildlife monitoring, whereby we had the exciting task of spotting animals and listening to the staff tell us interesting facts about them.

We also got to experience a bush adventure during our last week here at Tsavo. We got to go on a game drive where we left the buses and looked at the many different footprints. We were also taught how to identify the footprints which was very fascinating. In the afternoon we were divided into three groups and had a competition in building huts. We then got to try and use a bow and arrow and shoot the target, which ended up being harder than it looked. Then we were shown how to light a fire without using a lighter or matches.

On our last full day here at Tsavo, we spent on safari. We got to explore Tsavo’s East National Park where we saw giraffes, baboons, different type of antelopes, zebras, buffalos and many elephants. From living in Australia where you can only see these animals on TV or in a zoo, to seeing these beautiful animals in their natural environment was fantastic and presented us with some amazing photo opportunities.

 Our time here at Camp Tsavo and been a brilliant one. We have been able to experience Africa in a way that normal tourists couldn’t. From being able to see beautiful creatures while just driving into Voi, to the amazing staff, our experience here is unforgettable and unlike any other.

And a big congratulations to our Camp Kenya gap year students at Camp Makongeni for completing a new house in less than two weeks!…

What a week!! Reunited together we finished Mama Maimuna’s house, well structure, and had an amazing opening ceremony with balloons and singing. Other smaller projects included making a bin for the community of Makongeni, we collected rubbish and did another day at the wicked.

So, Harlie and Rory on the ball for this week’s blog. Liking it so far? Well, we worked very hard on mama’s house. We did things from mudding walls, and we dug hole the height of Jackson (and that’s deep), completed the mangroves, all contributing to the income of the community.

However, it wasn’t all work and no play! Good old Gladys organized games night (even better than bingo) we had potato slinging, balloon popping, (some of the guys had to get extra close)and water weeing into a cup! Safe to say the boys lost! To finish our awesome week we had a ‘friendly’ match of netball with the local school kids, leaving the campers a tad bruised!

Rory was manager and wasn’t very good at it! Onto the latest goss… Solveig conquered her Essex accent! Nonie got the award for monster eater! And Stephen was crowned Prince of Holland.

Tune in next week! Laters babe!

And the Gap Year in Africa diaries continue on (thank you Chloe and friends)…

It’s safe to say that our experience at Camp Kenya has been anything but ordinary. Over the past two weeks we have come together as a group, working on each of our projects and bonding with the camp staff. The three projects that we worked on include Mama’s mud house, the grey-water system and the bottle house for the polytechnic school.

Working in the heat and humidity was pretty tough, but all our hard work paid off once we saw the progress that we had made on each of the projects. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t finish some of the projects, because we know that we have made a great contribution to each of them. The team that worked on Mama’s house with Sampuli exceeded their personal expectations by shoveling clay into wheelbarrows and pushing them through soft sand; quite a difficult task for a group of girls (excluding Matt). The teams that worked on the grey-water system and bottle house found it very rewarding to contribute to sustainable projects that will help the community in Muhaka.

In the evenings and the weekends we enjoyed spending time with the community, playing soccer, teaching netball and exchanging language tips (although some were better at learning Swahili than others!). I don’t think that any of us will forget witnessing a brawl between the monkeys at camp, especially when one of them took refuge in a room with girls that were sick in bed! Most of us also had the opportunity to spend time at the local schools and dispensary. Those that participated in the optional activities were able to spend a day snorkeling in the marine reserve near the border of Tanzania and Kenya. Here they swam with stingrays, dolphins and a wide variety of tropical fish.

On behalf of everyone, we would like to thank all the staff at Camp Kenya for making our experience so memorable. Eustace was a fantastic father figure while we spent time away from our families, and each team leader was a great mentor and friend. As we leave to continue our journey in Tsavo, we are going to miss everyone that we met in Muhaka, and hopefully one day we can meet again!

Our two month and three month Camp Kenya Gap year volunteers have just finished their first week in Camp Makongeni after spending their first two weeks at Camp Tsavo. Gladys, our Camp Manager at Makongeni, Jackson Reid and others have sent a short blog on what they have been up to in Makongeni and more importantly the story of a mother’s life that’s about to change…

The last four days have been epic. In that time we have started the main structure of a house for a local mother in the community. After a long time of struggle Maimuna Hamadi Redano now has something to smile about. Maimuna is the lady whom we are building a new traditional house for. Maimuna is a single mother after her husband died and left her with 7 children and no were to called home.

She used rent a single room for herself and her children in the village which she could not manage to pay the rent every month and at the same time providing for the children. She doesn’t have any source of income and even she tried to start a business in the village, she didn’t have enough capital to keep it going. After the business was unsuccessful, she moved to her aunt’s house where she stayed for 1 year. It was becoming a big burden to her aunt who told her she could no longer manage. The Makongeni village Chairman choses her as the first priority for the house building program and now the volunteers are doing an amazing job building her house for her. In 2 weeks time Maimuna and her children will have their own place to call home…

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The group have also already immersed themselves into the the Baraka Women’s Mangrove conservation project…

Also we have reinforced the walls of a local pond which the local mothers rely on for an income. This includes planting hundreds of mangroves trees which help increase the local fish population. We can’t stress the amount of fulfillment and joy we have experienced here in Makongeni.

Today being Friday, we have enjoyed the comfort of a fire and the sweet taste of beer to bring our group even closer together. With the addition of simple games such as limbo and musical statues we have truly formed a bond that will last longer than our trip here in Kenya.

Not to mention the food is fantastic!

It’s the end of the year and our gap year volunteer program in Tanzania comes to an end (but not for long!). It’s been a year of tremendous achievement for the little village of Mwambani in Tanga. We have finished so much and set our targets for next year including setting up a little community centre in the heart of the little village. Asante Sana to everyone that worked so hard to make such a difference to this little community…

So we’ve come to our final week in Tanzania and it’s time to say goodbye to each other and all the friends we’ve made here in Tanzania. We’ve already said goodbye to three of our gappers; Rose who’s gone off to Zambia, Josie who’s returned home to the UK and Laura who’s currently climbing Mt. Meru.

We’ve been very busy over our last few weeks; mountains have been climbed, choos (toilets) have been built, the nursery has been roofed and we took a trip to the Usambara Mountains!

Chloe Therese and Josie finished Mt. Kilimanjaro in 7 days and made it right to the top. Very tough but very rewarding!
Hugh climbed a coconut tree.

The jiggers have hit Mwambani Village with Steven and Matty being the first victims.

Amelia, Will, Maud and Therese had a week in Zanzibar.

We all took a trip to Usambara in the mountains for 4 nights and 4 days. We had a great time and the weather stayed beautiful right up until the last day and then the heavens literally opened on us. The tents we were staying in got flooded and our stuff got soaked. We stayed at Emau Hill and it was very self sustaining, with no electricity only solar power, no running water, bucket showers and composting toilets. Whilst there we helped out with a few local projects, putting a roof on the school staff room, painting offices, local road maintenance and working with the Amani womens craft group. We really enjoyed helping out in the workshop with the local women, stuffing toys, sewing on the old school machines and cutting fabric. All profits from the items sold goes to funding the workshop and benefits local women of Amani. Steven is definitely an inspiration.

We went to a football game, Tanga Vs. Dar Es Salaam. We all got into the sporting spirit and made it onto the local radio ‘mzungus (white people) in yellow shirts getting rowdy on the sidelines’.

We also held our own match against the villagers of Mwambani. We didn’t win, but we didn’t  lose either; it was a draw and we played very well considering none of us play professionally!

Today we handed over the last house to Mama Saum. It was very emotional, but great to see how happy Mama was and all our hard work paying off! We had a big celebration and many villagers came along as we passed the house over. Mama gave a speech to us saying how much she appreciated the work we’ve helped with and how happy she and the family are.

It’s also our last day in Tanga today; tomorrow we are travelling to Moshi and we will then be leaving for our homes. We had a small celebration at Mama Dahabu’s house with Mama Dula. Together they prepared us some African food and we all sat in the garden with many of the villagers. After eating we all had a dance and a sing and laughed a lot. The people in the village have been so lovely and welcoming and it was very sad when it was time to say goodbye.

Our journey in Tanzania is now coming to an end and we’ve had the most amazing time and have literally thousands of photos to take home with us. We’ve all become so close and as Eliphas said, we are like a family now. It is very emotional in camp and saying goodbye will be very hard, but we already have plans to meet up once back home. A big thank you to Anderson, our camp manager, Eliphas, our project leader, Donald, our chef who cooks us gourmet meals, Ashura, not only our bar lady but our friend as well and of course the Mamas, who have looked after us so well.

They have all been amazing and our stay in Tanzania would not have been the same without them!

Another memorable week at Muhaka and lots to be proud of as our Kenya gap year team help complete all the projects that we set ourselves for this year…

At the start of the week half of the group went to complete work on a mud house built by previous volunteers that Mamas Fatama owns. We had to get at least 18 wheelbarrow of sand from the lovely deep sand pit, its some sweaty work, especially when you have to push them back through thick sand. Then had to mix sand and water to and inside the house we had to throw balls of mud onto the walls, patch up the holes then smoothy smoothy.  The week before we had finished plastering the outside, so a few started painting. The paint is water mixed with lime, then paint it Kenya style, dab dab then up and down. Mama Fatama is so happy that we are finishing her house and always has a smile on her face.

The other half was across the road constructing the new  ICT centre, filling up bottles with sand for the new vocational training centre, the Trust House, and also some were making cement and building the walls with bottles.

In the Trust House across the road four of us, Leeann, Kaisha, Steph and Rose were teaching students who would like to come along to learn about computers. The students can vary in ages like 18-22; some of them can’t afford their fees for their last year. We teach them how to use Microsoft Office for example, times table chart on Excel, practicing typing, writing letters, making power points and posters. It’s such an achievement when you can see the progress and how well they pick things up.

It has been an achievable and rewarding week, and looking forward to the nice break at the beach for the weekend.

If you want to find out more about our gap year programmes, check out other gap year diaries on the project blog.

Jambo! On Saturday Camp Tanzania traveled to Camp Muhaka in Kenya to start our two week Kenyan Wildlife adventure. We went out with some of the group on Saturday night to a local beach bar, it was fun and nice to get to know everyone and try and learn new names! On Monday we headed [...]

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