Travel Reports
Tanzania: Louisa Anslow
(2003)
Representing a Gap year organisation called ‘Changing Worlds’, I and nineteen other volunteers headed out to Tanzania at the beginning of the year to help in six schools near the town of Arusha.
After a few days adjusting to the different culture and customs, we travelled to our schools. I was placed at a government-paid primary school called Nkoaranga, which was on a hillside at the base of Mt. Meru, an hour by bus out of Arusha. Despite the country being very poor – only 7% employment – there were lots of government-paid schools in the area, meaning most children have a primary education. Unfortunately there are very few jobs available when they leave school. When we arrived at our school, we were welcomed by the headmaster and taken to his house, where we met all the teachers and joined them all for a meal of goat stew.
The school had seven classrooms with wooden benches in them. In each class there were 100 students. The school was quite run down with no ceilings in most rooms, large holes in the walls and no glass in the windows. Despite all this, the children turned up every morning neat and in tidy uniform, enthusiastic about a day’s lessons.
I taught the ten and eleven year olds who were very well behaved. I thought I would be terrified of standing up in front of a hundred ten year olds and teaching them English but when you are in that classroom and you have a hundred faces smiling at you and hanging on your every word, the last thing you think about is being nervous! The children were taught English using textbooks mass produced by the government. They shared a textbook, one between ten, which meant that many children could not see the book we were working from. I tried to mix fun and basic English lessons with the textbook exercises, such as getting them to write diaries and letters, as well as learning songs.
I absolutely loved teaching and playing with the children. It was so rewarding to see the improvement in the children’s English even in the short time I was there. I would recommend travelling to Tanzania to anyone in their Gap Year as we have much to offer which is genuinely appreciated. In return there is so much for Tanzania to offer you with many challenges and the opportunity to learn a lot about yourself and the abilities you didn’t know you had!