School Holidays in Dodoma

The 5 week break from school is almost over! Yes, really! It began at the end of June (when we made our trip to Dar for medicals!) and school starts again on August 4th, so it seems strange when we hear about all our friends in the UK, just finishing the school year, as the girls get ready to start again. BOTH girls ... Naomi can't wait! 

In the meantime, with MAF officially closed, Mark and the few remaining engineers have a whole pile of extra unexpected work. We're pleased to announce however that a new company run by the ex-chief engineer and providing work for many of the ex-MAF, is well on it's way to being set up in the hangar. We're so happy that many of Mark's former national colleagues will still have employment even though MAF is gone!  

There is currently still no news on the Australia front, but Jenny and the girls weren't going to let that dampen their fun over the school break, although you have to get creative here as there is not much to do in Dodoma and nowhere to 'go'! As well as catching up with both ex-pat and Tanzanian friends, there have been play dates, birthday parties and sleepovers ...

Makeshift camps in the living-room, material and second-hand clothes shopping, and meals out, like the yummy Zanzibar mix and samosa's shown below!

Jenny and the girls also set themselves a crafty challenge ... to do some different kind of craft every day, which isn't so straight forward given the resources available here! From playdough to paper flowers, paper plate crowns to welcome home posters, birthday cards to paper lei's, heart tree pictures to paper plate weaving, straw necklaces ... the list goes on! Here are some of the photos we took ...

The lovely thing has been that with each project, the girls have always been thinking about who they can give each of their new creations to! Many of which they have allocated to some of their friends who are in the process of leaving. Below is a photo of Naomi with 2 of her friends, the one on the left will be here till the end and the one on the right left earlier this week with her family to a different part of Tanzania.

The girls have also been enjoying riding their bikes a little more too, to get rid of some of their energy after all the craftiness! Naomi has really cracked it (with stabilisers!) this holiday and never wants to stop! It's been fun to watch them improve as they cycle up and down our compound and we're really grateful that we were able to bring both bikes in the container with all our stuff last year!

There is just one week of the holidays left now before both girls head to school. We're pleased to be able to share that our temporary Tanzanian visas have just been renewed once again and we are not having to plan to leave the country in that final week ... but have instead planned a little adventure of our own to a different part of the country! Watch this space and we'll update you when we get back!

While We Wait

So, what are we up to ... now that the majority of our friends here are bailing ship for one reason or another and we have no choice but to play the waiting game? 

One thing is jumping through all the administrative hoops that Australian Immigration requires. We are still constantly filling out forms and uploading documents to our file on their website ... and waiting for a response.

One requirement is the 'medical examination'. It is necessary for all of us, but only accessible through one doctor in Dar Es Salaam ... for the majority of East Africa! YES really! After 2 weeks of phoning the doctor every day with no response and then just being told come tomorrow, come tomorrow, we heard he was meant to be in his office last week and so did the 8 hour drive to Dar to see him.

It was in the centre of a very busy city, down a back alley of one way and blocked off streets but we found it! We arrived promptly the first morning to get it out of the way, only to be told the doctor was out all day in meetings and to come back tomorrow!! Only in Tanzania.

We thought we would get the second part of the medical out of the way instead, so then went to the hospital to get chest x-rays ... only to find that protocol requires we see the other doctor first before they could authorise the x-rays. We did however register as patients (see below) in anticipation of better success the following day!

Instead, the rest of 'Day One' was spent visiting a few more western highlights that we don't get to enjoy in Dodoma. A play-park, a fun restaurant, the little book shop at Slipway where the girls got comfortable very quickly!

We also picked up a few fun memento's of our time in Tanzania, knowing that the 'clock is ticking' for us ... including these fun Tinga Tinga name plaques for the girls! But apart from that, we spent 5 of the 10 hours we were out of the guest house that day negotiating Dar gridlock not going very far and with very little to show for ourselves.

Dar 'Day Two', was a lot more successful! The doctor was there and this time we knew exactly where we were going! There were no requirements listed for things we needed to take with us but we took everything we could think of, the only thing that was missing was a passport photo for Naomi. While Mark and Abigail were sitting in the doctor's office with him, Jenny and Naomi nipped out and were tracking down a little shop that we could get a quick photo done ... no pressure! (Especially when Naomi threw a fit for about 15 minutes in the shop refusing to have her picture taken. Not pleasant!) Eventually though we had success!

After the medical we were escorted down the alleyway to do bloods and urine samples. Sounds wonderful eh?! The office was fine but when it was our turn, we were taken into a corridor, just behind the door there was a desk and we were all lined up along the wall (because that was the only space there was!) ... very bizarre and Tanzanian! It was however sterile and over very quickly.

Once that was completed we returned to the hospital for the x-rays again. It was another bizarre set-up, including one 'changing-room' being an old office with holes in the floor with wires sticking out of it and a section of cracked and missing tiles, a working computer on the floor and other randomness and then another 'changing-room' including a broken x-ray machine piled high with boxes of patients files and large canisters of some chemicals, complete with an alternative door, that random cleaning ladies walked backwards and forwards through whilst you were mid-change!

Needless, to say we were extremely relieved when it was all over, it was quite the experience! The girls were really patient throughout and we got it all done in the time we'd allocated. So, the next stop was the beach and a few days away from it all ... especially the traffic! This was our view! MUCH improved!

Although we hadn't planned for another Dar break, we were going to make the most of the fact that we were right there and spent a few nights at the beach and the adjoining water-park for the girls! When you think water-park, think Butlins 30 years ago ... with no improvements since! What you can't see from these photo's is the peeling paint, the rusted and cracked pipes that are not successfully holding up bridge sections or even the fish carcasses that were floating in the water dropped by the crows flying overhead! However, for Tanzania, this place is awesome and our girls had nothing else to compare it to, so for them it was the best thing ever ... needless to say we had lots of fun and ignored the inconveniences!

Waking up to the view below every day was just perfect and enjoying the hotel pool was fun too ... that's where we hung out each afternoon! We are really lucky that this kind of scenery is 'right on our doorstep', it is truly breathtaking and something we will miss when we leave!

Before we made the long drive back home to Dodoma (which we achieved in record time!), we managed a trip to a shop that sells lots of recognisable home brand products or things that just aren't available around town in Dodoma! Other items we bought include: broccoli, iceberg lettuces, hula hoops and a box of Dorset cereals! All things you might take for granted normally back in the UK, just not if you live here!!

This was just the first week of the school break. Who knows what the next few weeks will bring, lots more packing (each week a couple more boxes are being filled!), hopefully news from Australia ... but also lots more fun!