Cheka School is located in Arusha, Tanzania. It's a pre-primary school and has around 60 childeren. In the morning there's the morning group, those childeren are three and four years old. In the afternoon there's the afternoongroup and those childeren are five and six years old. There are two classrooms, a kitchen, a diningroom, an office and a playroom. The lessons start at 8:00 in the morning and they end at 15:30 in the afternoon.
There are two teachers at Cheka School. Teacher Thabea and teacher Happy. Thabea speaks English very well, Happy speaks mostly Swahili all the time. Happy is teaching the youngest childeren of the morning and afternoon group and Thabea the oldest childeren. They are very friendly and they helped us with all our questions.
It's hard to teach the childeren at Cheka School, because they don't speak English very well. It was a challenge to teach them and that made it interesting. We were aloud to give a lot of lessons but teacher Thabea had to translate everything for us and the childeren. We used a lot of pictures and songs to make things clear.
In April we made a curriculum for the teachers to show them how we teach in the Netherlands. We made goals for every single subject that they had to score. We teached them how to give the lessons in a fun way with for example toys, blocks, singing and dancing. The teachers were very enthousiastic to use those stuff in there own lessons. So we made ourselfs very useful.
Marije and I lived in the volunteer house and it was located at the schoolground, so we didn't have to travel to come to the school. It was a small house and we didn't have an refrigerator, washing machine and hot water. But for three months, it really felt like our home. The childeren where not allowed to enter the house. At the playground we had two guards. A dayguard and a nightguard. There was always someone there to watch us and the childeren. We had to cook our own food and we did groceries ourselves.
Arusha is a big city with 271.000 inhabitants. The people in Arusha are friendly and hospitable. There are a lot of shops and restaurants. The first week we were there our supervisor showed us the city. After that week we did almost everything ourselves. We had our own taxidriver who we could call every minute of the day and there were scooters which served as taxi. In the daytime we called them if we wanted to go somewhere. We have met many people in those three months and we made a lot of friends.
The 13th, 14th and 15th of March we did a Safari. It was amazing. We went to three Safaria parks, which where called: Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro and Tarangire. We almost saw the whole big five except for the leopard.
Three weeks after that we went to Moshi for the weekend. The famous mountain Kilimanjaro is located at Moshi. We saw it from the roof of our hotel. In Moshi we went hiking, saw a beautiful waterfall and we did a coffeetour. Our guide showed us how they make coffee. It was amazing.
On April 16th we went to Zanzibar for one week, it's a small island.The first day we were in Stonetown. It was 40 degrees and way to hot. The next day we went to Kendwa beach and we layed on the beach for 4 days. It was great and the view was amazaing. It was very interesting to see the difference between the city (Arusha) and the people from Zanzibar.
On May 2th our family came to Tanzania. We showed them where we lived for three months and offcourse the school, the teachers and the childeren. With our familys together we did a safari again. With twelve people in two safari cars, it was great and we had so much fun.
Before Marije and I went to Tanzania we didn't know what to expect. But those three months were more than we ever expected. The Tanzanian people are so friendly, it's feels really like home. The time with Marije was great, it was nice to have a friend with you on a life experience. I would definitely recommend Cheka School and Arusha, Tanzania, I hope I will be back one day!
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