21st Century Man - Chris Dunning
Leaving for a foreign land brings the thrill of the unexpected, and I could never have predicted the routine I would fall so seamlessly into at Upendo Children’s Home. Let me begin with Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays: After some toast with Marmite and a sturdy brew I head to the site of the new home, I feel like a true manly man reconnecting with my working class roots (two generations removed). The work that has been done on the new home is incredible but there’s still plenty to do, and I slip into my guise as builder/landscape gardener/earth mover extraordinaire and get down to work. Occasionally Ipod shuffle busts out some Aretha Franklin or Supremes and like any good labourer I start wagging my finger and demanding some R-E-S-P-E-C-T, but this is only temporary and before I know it I am loading the wheelbarrow and hoping all my manual labour is at the very least improving the size of my biceps. By the end of the day I find my body and face covered in dirt, and my hands in blisters: I know a hard day’s work has been done.
Wednesdays and Fridays tend to start somewhere closer to my comfort zone with English lessons for the Tanzanian workers at Upendo: Erici, Priska and Joyce. We get down to business with some two-way language and cultural exchange; perhaps the biggest surprise to Erici is the existence of Wali Mayai, or Egg Fried Rice as we know it. Now, in Tanzania you’ll find a shack on every corner selling a Chipsi Mayai (Chips Omelette): mixing chips and eggs is acceptable and rightly so - it’s delicious. But mix rice and eggs and WOAH, hold onto your goat, you’ve just blown someone’s mind.
After English lessons I head to Under Umbrella, a local school for 4-7 year olds. I didn’t quite know what I had signed up for but it certainly wasn’t comforting a dozen or so wailing children on their first ever day of school. My days as a labourer seemed a million miles away and I yearned for the toil and graft of the site. Now into their third week at school, the crying has stopped and the staples of Simon Says, and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes are usually only briefly interrupted by a chicken wandering into the classroom. ‘This Is Africa’ I remind myself...