VSO Photos


Arriving and training


Picture 1 VSO Tanzania new volunteers arrive September 1995
Picture 2  The room i stayed in for the first month during our language and culture training
Picture 3 Inside the room! The geezer on the bed is my friend Simon Shercliff who was posted to same school.
Picture 4 My brilliant KiSwahili teachers
Picture 5 For one week of our training we went to stay with a Tanzanian family. On the last day we offered to cook and this is a picture of me cooking it.  

Life at school

Picture 6 Tosamaganga Secondary School. The school i taught at for 3 years. This is a picture of Friday morning assembly.
Picture 7 Another view of the school. Tosamaganga was built by the Roman Catholic Church early part of this century and was taken over by the Tanzanian government at independence in the mid 60's. The mission stills plays a big part in peoples lives at the school. The is a large parish church, seminary, convent and primary school still at Tosamaganga. Nuns, priests and kids everywhere!
Picture 8 View of the school. The two big buildings in the far ground are dormitories. The long building in the foreground is the main admin block and the white building on the left is the school church.
Picture 9 More school buildings. The biology lab on the left, classrooms in the middle and then one of the chem labs.
Picture 10 More classrooms
Picture 11 The staff room during 'chai' time at 11am.
Picture 12 The academic office. All teaching and discipline was coordinated from here and there was always lots of work to do.
Picture 13 A picture of one of my classes just after i arrived.  This was by far the smallest class i taught with approx. 30 students. All the other classes were more like 60 in size.
Picture 14 The same class during their last lesson with me, just before their A-level exams.
Picture 15 In the classroom doing an exam.
Picture 16 Form 6 students sitting their A-level exams.
Picture 17 Catherine in the lab supervising a practical
Picture 18 Graduation Day! Students receive their leaving certificates and everyone has a big party with tons of food. The teachers get prizes for last years results and lots of free beer.
Picture 19 Students singing and dancing a thankyou to all the staff during the graduation ceremony
Picture 20 Me with some of my students on graduation day.
Picture 21 Sister Anna Rose, a woman of unbounded energy, whom i worked with in the library. In this picture she is serving cake to 100 odd people at a meal during a visit by the Minister of Education.
Picture 22 A picture of another one of my classes just before their exams.
Picture 23 Some of my students just before they left.
Picture 24 A picture of the library. During my time at Tosamaganga, me and the other volunteers renovated the school library which had been lying unused for about 20 years.
Picture 25 The computers that were donated to the school from England.
Picture 26 A picture of students mending the road. The typical punishment for students at the school.
Picture 27 The success of the school football team was of paramount importance for school moral and there was always an opportunity to do some coaching or get a game. A picture of Si playing in a game.
Picture 28 A Panoramic view of the school


Outside school hours

Picture 28 A picture of my house.
Picture 29 A picture of the Ugulumu clan who lived next door.
Picture 30 The kids round at our house cooking fresh corn just before harvest time.
Picture 31 The kids would often come round, camp out on the front step,stare at us and scrounge bananas.
Picture 32 Invariably the first round was Ezechiel Ugulumu in his moon boots.
Picture 33 Our ducks, Missy and Mister.
Picture 34 They would always waddle into our house and show us exactly how much they thought of us all over the floor.
Picture 35 Our first chicks!
Picture 36 Two of these piglets ended up as ours and grew to 100 kilo monsters.
Picture 37 Collecting flying insects called Kumbe Kumbe which only come just after the first rains.
Picture 38 They taste just like bacon when you fry them up!
Picture 39 A shop in town. We didn't have to live on Kumbe Kumbe!
Picture 40 Occasionally we would get hold of of something special, in this case strawberries and chocolate angel delight.
Picture 41 A bottle of Safari Lager was often the order at the end of the day!
Picture 42 Or we'd go down to our local for some beers or local brew which was fermented bamboo juice called Ulanzi. 1 litre was the equivalent of 2 pence!
Picture 43 We'd also go into town on the weekends and meet up with other volunteers. In a bar normally.
Picture 44  We were lucky to live near a town with lots of volunteers from lots of different countries and it made for many good times. I remember laughing myself silly when taking this photo but not what was going on!
Picture 45 Sometimes we'd have people round and play Risk.
Picture 46 Having no TV was great, we got so much more stuff done. This is me finishing a colage made of hand painted bottle tops.
Picture 47 Burning the stubble in the field around our house.
Picture 48 Mending the pikipiki (motorbike) which we used to get to town 20km away.
Picture 49 The cathedral at Tosa where i was confirmed in November 1997. In this picture a wedding has just finished.
Picture 50 We went to alot of weddings. They were always great days of celebration.
Picture 51 Dancing at the reception.
Picture 52 It is a tradition that the bride feeds the groom a piece of the wedding cake to symbolize her committment to her husbands wellfare. This also occurs the other way round and other family members also get fed some cake to symbolize the joining of the two families.
Picture 53 Our good friends Alex and Christina Kibiki with one of their daughters, Rose.
Picture 54 Round at Alex and Christina's house for a meal.
Picture 55 Christina and Catherine 'sample' some Ulanzi.
Picture 56 Me with Mr.Magesse and his family. Mr.Magesse was the academic master at the school.
Picture 57 Me with Mponzi, a teacher at the school and my neighbour for a year.
Picture 58 Me and Mponzi at my leaving do. Long story!

 

Travelling photos

Picture 59 On safari with Al, Richard and Jim.
Picture 60 Gazelle type animals.
Picture 61 A giraffe.
Picture 62 A crocodile.
Picture 63 An elephant.
Picture 64 Elephants.
Picture 65 Lions.
Picture 66 A beach on the East coast of Zanzibar, which is an island of the coast of Tanzania.
Picture 67 Chilling out in a bar by the beach on Zanzibar.
Picture 68 Watching a pitch invasion during a football match whilst travelling up Lake Tanganyika.
Picture 69 On the train, at a stop out in the bush.
Picture 70 Travelling on the roads could often be 'entertaining'. A bridge that had been washed out during the floods caused by the heavy, early rains in Decmber 1997.
Picture 71 I also did a few bike trips. Here with Jeremy in Lushoto.