Tanzania 2015 - A Day In The Life

A Day In The Life - Monday, 10 August 2015

Trips by Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) include visits to the local community. OAT supports schools in the countries where it travels. When we were in China we visited a local school and had the opportunity to spend night in a Chinese family's house. For this trip, we have already visited two Maasai villages. Today, we visited a local, primary school and a local farmer.

Primary School

We started the day at the primary school. The principal greeted us and brought us to a 4th grade classroom. The English teacher joined us, too.

The students sang several songs for us, including the Tanzania National Anthem and If You're Happy And You Know It. After the songs, we had a chance to sit and communicate with the students. There was a lot of pointing and smiling and not so much talking.

We went outside and were entertained with singing and dancing by 7th graders. They do not start school until age 7, so seventh graders are 14.









Ombeni gave out prizes of pencils, pens and calculators to the students who could ask and answer questions.

We were able to talk to the students after the quiz. Some students had a fistful of pencils and pens. The students with the calculators were very happy that they couldn't sit still.

Local Farmer

Next we visited a local farmer. During the dry season, they dig clay out of the ground and make bricks. The kiln they use to fire the bricks is made from the bricks. Mohan helped stoke the fire.

We were welcomed into the farmer's house. We were dressed in the Iraqw tribe tradition. Their language has guttural sounds. Iraqw is pronounced with a guttural growl at the end.

The entire family was good natured. We all got into the fun of it.

Bobbi created a quick bond with the wife and son. The farmer's kids were fascinated with technology.











We were served some lunch of pumpkin with corn. After lunch, we danced and sang with the family. This family is the group that was performing before dinner at the Ngorongoro Farm House several days ago.

Farewell Dinner

We returned to the lodge and had a few hours to rest and pack.

We met on the veranda for a debriefing. Ombeni reviewed the trip and then asked for our thoughts. Some of the thoughts were that other safaris had a lot of down time during the day (but not OAT), a joke about an elephant eating cabbages was told, someone noted that the guides were patient with us, even when we went to great trouble to see a zebra a kilometer away on the first day, when they knew we would see hundreds of zebras by the end of the trip.