I’m sitting writing this hiding under a mosquito net under a twenty watt light bulb whilst incessant lightening creates myriad shadows through the mesh window. Not the typical teaching environment of a teacher from South East London.  I’ve swapped my usual secondary school classes for 114 of the most amazing kids you’re ever likely to meet, in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. This is going to be a momentous two weeks: Both heart stopping and heart breaking.

So, the kids?  They are all orphans in the 5^th poorest country on our planet where the average life expectancy is only 43 years old. There are 114 children here from tiny babies to twenty year old young adults, living together on the shores of Lake Victoria in Tanzania, East Africa, in a slowly emerging purpose built orphanage, run by a group of Tanzanian people and supported by a group of dedicated English people.

There are the usual problems you’d expect and a few you might not anticipate.  Malaria (a child dies every five minutes from this easily treated disease); HIV and AIDS, poor infrastructure, crushing poverty and personal tragedy on a massive scale. It’s a country where a teacher’s starting salary is around 41 pounds a month and where opportunities often need to be paid for.  But then there’s the children, wide eyed, smiling eager, desperate to learn, “Good morning Victoria, how are you?” Hands outstretched welcoming us to their humble home.  Curtseying girls and bashful boys pleased to see us and not just because they know volunteers bring new developments and new hope.

I had expected swollen bellies, malnourished and desperate faces, chaos on some scale at least… but what I got was a welcome like no other, shining eyes, grinning mouths desperate to show us around their home. A home most of the kids we usually teach in the UK would never recognise as such. No Playstations, fridges, telephones or privacy. No bedroom to storm off to when the pressures of teenage life become too forbidding. Instead, huge rooms filled with uniform bunk beds and one wooden shelf for any personal possessions salvaged from a former life. Neat shoe racks at the door for pride in their facilities.  Six shared toilets, six showers and four wash basins for sixty girls.

The boys’ dorm, as some might suspect can be found simply using your nostrils as a guide.  Not simply because there are over fifty boys living in a building just over 200m2 but because their accommodation is bulging and ready to relinquish its offer of safety and a home.  The organisers know and are planning to rebuild it when funds allow. 

The day’s menu: weak tea and porridge for breakfast, Ugali (maize with hot water) for lunch, boiled rice for dinner with cabbage or beans and water to drink. Yet, these kids are happy in ways so many people elsewhere in the world could not comprehend.  No pocket money, trips to the cinema, hair gel, makeup, cars, shopping centres or the other things that seem to bring structure and meaning to our lives in the UK. Here, a safe place to sleep, food, clean water and music brings smiles to the lips like the finest champagne. Eyes sparkle, spirits soar but it’s not always like this…

Today, I went out with the organisers to answer a call for help. The Social Welfare Department; a tall, proud woman, overworked and under resourced, called to say that there is a mother camped outside their office with three tiny children that she can’t care for or feed.  They have been there for a week and the President of Tanzania is visiting on Friday.  We arrive, find out what is necessary and meet the family.  They have been living outside in the open, in an area normally reserved for livestock, sleeping on a mud floor with their few possessions bundled into a corner. A night watchman has been helping provide food and deal with snakes. The exhausted mother is washing her naked children in water splashed from an old tin can. It is her last maternal offering. Their father is dead, she is alone, has tried to make ends meet but the obstacles have been insurmountable and all agree that the Bethany project is best placed to bring up the children.  The two oldest have huge swollen bellies – a clear indication of malnutrition and worms.  The tiniest child sits crouched on the floor like a fallen angel, unaware of the imminent change in his fortune. Photographs taken. Squalor.  Saddness.

It is time to depart, we climb into the Toyota, the desperate mother wants to know our names, offers us her hand, relief fills her face.  Her children are greeted by older orphaned children from the orphanage, who always accompany the project workers when they are collecting new children. We drive away. The tiniest child begins to cry, unsure and unwilling, he looks into my eyes, holds my t-shirt in his fist and falls into a deep warm sleep. The two oldest sit wide eyed, watching, numb.  Later, on the swelteringly hot bumpy journey, the middle one falls asleep on the knee of one of Bethany’s older children and slowly ‘normality’ and peace begin to descend.  We stop to buy mattresses and baby food and return baking hot, despite the air conditioned transport. We are greeted by welcoming children; our precious cargo is unloaded into the waiting arms of the older girls who know what is to be done.

Six days later, the eldest child ‘Linda’ is transformed, her belly still protrudes somewhat painfully but her numb, blank eyes have been replaced by a shimmering smile which reveals the alchemy this place can work.  She runs and leaps in a bright red dress, shouts “hello, hello, hello,” wants to play, have her photo taken and can count to five.  She is surrounded by other children and has found safety and kinship. This is true family.

The teaching is quite remarkable too, gone are the little staff room squabbles, the hiccoughs with the ICT, in fact gone are most of the things we take for granted at home.  There’s a library, in name only, without shelves or books.  In fact, it’s the room I’m sleeping in along with some of the other volunteers.  The classroom has had hens cluck by; cows poke their heads in and has been filled with children wanting to learn. More than once, I’ve heard kids shouting “teacher, teacher!” when they want extra lessons.  I’ve travelled here with two of the English project co-ordinators, a plumber, a joinery lecturer and two of his students; the Care and Health Co-ordinator and three of her students from Lancashire and myself, a 31 year old secondary English teacher from London. Together, our job is to make a difference, isn’t that why most of us enter into this profession after all?

The men are building beds to accommodate the growing family: bunks, singles, doubles and repairing others. They’re building book shelves, doors and windows for the two new buildings, kitchen cupboards and what ever else they can squeeze into two weeks.  What they’re also building is hope and opportunity. The older male orphaned kids have to help and are usually keen to. Slowly, the buzzing workshop is churning out amazing feats of ingenuity and providing skills and resources to one of the most vulnerable communities in Tanzania.

The three young English women are sharing their knowledge and training in Childcare and Education with girls who have been developing their caring skills since the day they joined the Bethany Orphanage.  New games, pre-school activities and songs are shared, relationships and memories are forged.

… and my role? I’m here to help re-establish a classroom to provide education, particularly in English. Helped by the others, we’ve waded our way through the storage room that is their learning area, faced giant redheaded cockroaches, beetles and spiders of all descriptions, swept, organised and cleaned. Finally, we have a classroom to be proud of. Thanks to the support and kindness of those in the UK we have some books, text books, stationary, a chalk board (I thought I’d escaped chalk!) and bucketfuls of enthusiasm.

The Government provides education at Primary and Secondary level but the reality is that many children and young people do not attend because they are too poor to afford uniforms or live in areas that are too remote.  Some are kept at home to fetch water or perform other chores for their family, carers or villagers. Students are taught in Kiswahili and English during their primary years and in English at secondary level. The children here report that their class sizes can be between 40 and 70 students to one teacher. To progress to secondary level students have to pass an entrance examination which includes English and this organisation desperately wants to provide a future for its children. 

Indeed, the aim is that one day the youngsters it supports will grow and develop into hardworking adults who will take responsibility for the running and funding of the centre as part of an extended family.  The home aims to be sustainable in this way and is trying hard to provide opportunities and guidance to those with the least in order that they can grown up to be part of the future of Tanzania.

The local villagers live in thatched mud buildings, those with money have tin roofs, and they watch and wave as we walk or drive past.  People here walk everywhere, those with a little more cycle and it is not uncommon to see mother, father and children all balanced on to one bicycle whilst trucks hurtle past them on the one tarmac road to Kenya.  There are weekly football matches between the villagers’ children and those at the orphanage, which are taken as passionately and seriously as any in the Premier league in England. The locals once came to Bethany to ask the organisers what they were going to do to help them in the village. Their response was direct; how were they as Tanzanians going to help the Tanzanian children the orphanage cares for? Since then, relations have been positive.

Children here live without parents, without money, with only necessities.  Some have HIV or have developed AIDS. Some children die.  Yet, this is a place filled with hope and life. They live happy, lives full of music, song and choir practice. There is a strong, traditional Christian focus which structures their daily life and ethos.  Eight of the older young people will be studying in Lancashire for a year in August thanks to kind volunteers and an amazing partnership between Accrington and Rossendale College and the Bethany Orphanage.  These young adults have the chance to earn qualifications and skills in Joinery, Plumbing, Construction or Health and Child Care, all of which will allow them to set up in business and train others back at the centre, as well as using their skills practically to build and maintain new facilities.  This is a real opportunity to make poverty history.

The students from England, are learning valuable lessons from this roller coaster experience: all report that it is showing them the realities of our world and teaching them so much that they are re-evaluating their lives and expectations in a way that formal education at home has never managed.

Whilst discussing the project and my planned visit to Tanzania, a timid year 7 student approached me to ask a question; she had been explaining to her family about how we were learning about global education in school and fundraising to support the kids at the orphanage, she described how her uncle had told her that the orphans, “should all just be killed” to solve the problem. Projects like this, whilst certainly not being perfect, and having a long way to go in some areas, have the opportunity to build bridges between the developing world and us and to bring a much needed piece of harmony and understanding to children and adults alike across continents.  These orphaned children are part of the future of their country and have a thing or two to offer us and our own young people in the UK. 

For me, I will miss this place, the children, the songs, the endless African sky but I’m looking forward to rejoining my family, colleagues and students at home but I will be leaving with new eyes and more questions than ever about how we can truly make a difference and bring about equality and fairness for all.

To find out more, contact www.bethanyonline.org

Victoria Delaney 12^th May, 2007