The Ogden Trust

 The Ogden Trust awarded a Travel grant of £400 to Lissie Muller towards her gap year travel. She spent ten months of her gap year living and working in Tanzania. Lissie worked with disabled people on a charity project producing crafts, learnt Kiswahili, heped illustrate a book, survived a drought and swum in a psychiatric hospital... below is her report of her travels.

"I arrived in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, after a ten hour flight from Tanzania on the 24th of September.  I dialled the contact number I had been given for an acquaintance I had made in the UK and for whom I was going to be working for the next 2 months.  She was expecting me the next day so no bus tickets had been booked.  I spoke no Kiswahili and didn’t know my way around Dar Es Salaam.  It wasn’t the best of starts.

However I found somewhere to stay and got a bus the next day to the capital city of Dodoma.  Dodoma boasts 1 tarmac road and that is about all I could initially find to recommend it (I did later find a functioning swimming pool, albeit in the middle of a psychiatric hospital and prison).

I was put up and fed by a lady who has lived in Africa for over 35 years.  We had an arrangement that I would earn my keep by illustrating a book she was going to have published in Zimbabwe.  I spent the following month doing just this, exploring Dodoma and visiting 2 mission partners working in the hospital village of Mvumi, about an hours drive from Dodoma.  I had a huge amount of spare time which I made the most of trying to learn as much Kiswahili as possible and going on expeditions to find victims to practise on.

My visit was cut short after 1 month by my friend who announced suddenly that she was leaving Tanzania and going back to Zimbabwe.  Luckily the contact I had lined up to work for next was very happy to have me early and so I packed up and got on the bus back to Dar.

I arrived in Tanzania to a severe water shortage and rumours that all power was going to switched off until the rains started in November.  All Tanzanias power is generated by a series of reservoirs and dams and after a shockingly poor wet season the previous year it was nearly impossible to generate electricity.  This was bad news for businesses across Tanzania.  The failure of the wet season had also meant a very poor harvest and a lot of people were already low on food with another few months still to survive until the rains were due to start.

I found myself travelling to Iringa, in the southern highlands, on the 5th of November.  I had completely forgotten about Bonfire night, although there were no fireworks to be had anyway.  Iringa then became my base and although for the next 9 months I did travel quite a lot I always had somewhere to go back, and work was always waiting.

I spent November until February living in a village on the outskirts of the town with a retired Tanzanian couple.  This is really where I learnt Kiswahili as unless Stafford was there his wife and I had no other means of communicating but in her language.

I had a 40 minute walk into town each day to go to work which only became a problem in December when the rain started with a vengeance and I would arrive completely and utterly drenched.  After a few near drowning experiences I decided I would fork out the 10p for a bus although I still had a 20 minute walk to get the bus stop so I ended up wet regardless.

I had been given work by a missionary couple I had met two years before in the UK who run an arts and crafts workshop employing deaf and disabled Tanzanians.  In Tanzania people with disabilities are rejected by their families as they are seen as an embarrassment and completely incapable of earning a wage to support the family.  This workshop gives them an income and their self esteem back.  The workshop makes paper from elephant dung (of which there is a never ending supply being close to two national parks) and maize leaf, which is then used to create notebook, albums, cards and photo frames.  There is a large weaving area which produces scarves, mats and rugs and many beaders creating all sorts of jewellery.

When I first arrived I was taught quickly to make candles and then given the responsibility of teaching and training new employees and setting up the candle workshop.  I was also able to do a bit of design and ended up designing (invitations, order of service covers, table number and name cards, wall hangings) for a wedding taking place back in the UK.  As I was in Tanzania on a three month tourist visa I couldn’t be paid so I was given free food and board by the workshop.

Because I was only able to stay in Tanzania for three months at a time I had to leave the country every three months.  It was a great opportunity to go and see different countries and I made it down to Malawi in December and then to Zambia a bit later on in February.

In March a friend of mine from school flew out and together we travelled almost the whole length of Tanzania to a place on the west coast of Lake Victoria called Bukoba, about three hours from the Ugandan border.  It took a week to get there mainly due to us missing every single connection we where hoping to make.  Having planned to spend a month there we had to turn back after only two weeks in hope of getting back to Dar Es Salaam in time for my friend to catch her plane home.

We spent the two weeks visiting a Tanzanian Pentecostal pastor, another contact I had made in the UK, and doing English conversation classes in three local schools.  We stayed with him and his family who really taught us the meaning of hospitality.  We had an interesting 45 hour bus journey back to Dar Es Salaam during which we broke down for hours, got very nearly rolled into a ditch and had to evacuate the bus at a 45 degree angle, were stranded in lion and leopard territory for the night and then eventually rolled into Dar at 1am in the morning to spend the rest of the night on a filthy floor at the bus station.  It was all good fun!

I had an amazing time and if it were possible I would be on a plane back to Tanzania tomorrow.  The Ogden Trust were a massive help and really enabled the trip to get off the ground.  The whole ten months has been a huge inspiration and fantastic experience.  I am aiming to try and work in Africa after I have finished my degree at university and really just cant wait to get back out there."