Amelie White (A 23): Volunteering in Arusha, Tanzania  

Through the support of the Bevir Fund, for the duration of five weeks, I taught and assisted teaching in a local primary school in Arusha, Tanzania. This experience was organised by a company called International Volunteer Headquarters (IVHQ).  

My volunteering project took place within Heda Primary School, which provides education for children ages 3–13. The school itself was located outside of the main city, Arusha, making it a very serene and peaceful environment for teaching and play. All classes are taught in English and class size varies from 20–30 students per class. 

Outside of volunteering, I stayed in a volunteer house which could hold up to 40 volunteers, roughly assigned to houses based of age. The house itself was minimalistic but was comfortably all we needed from a day-to-day basis. Food was provided three times a day by the ‘Mummas’ who were all charismatic, local Tanzanian women.  

Every day, myself and one other volunteer would take a tuk tuk (a three-wheeled motorised vehicle) or the dalla dalla (a public bus) from our volunteer house of about 30 volunteers (all involved in different teaching/childcare/construction placements) to the school, arriving at about 10am. There were five classrooms within the school, separated into five age-based classes. The head teacher informed me it was only recently where they started using birth certificates to certify these age differences instead of the previous method whereby children would have to reach one arm over their heads and if their fingers could not pass the bottom of the ears, they were not yet deemed old enough to be promoted to the higher classes. This information removed any of the preconceptions I had for what I thought volunteering here would be like.  

My roles here changed daily, based off what would be most helpful to the teachers and children themselves. All classes followed a regular timetable, and my main activities included the following:  

1. Working one on one with students who were perhaps behind the standard of the rest of the class. This included assistance with reading exercises, setting tasks for them, marking work and explaining to them as clearly as possible where they went wrong during exercises. Although at times I found this difficult due to some of the children being much stronger in Swahili then English, I really found this role one of the most fulfilling as I got to see and experience the daily progress of the children I worked with, ultimately leading to the great improvement in both reading and writing skills.  
2. Assisting the teachers within the bigger classes by marking the children’s work for them and working through where they went wrong.  
3. Giving my own classes in English and Mathematics when teachers were poorly or needed a break from the hectic and demanding teaching timetable. This was one of the most challenging tasks as controlling a class of 30 7-year-olds (unsurprisingly) is harder than expected. However, once the work exercises were set, I found it quite amazing to see how willing the children were to learn. It is evident that to them and their parents, education is so highly valued and something that every child I worked with genuinely enjoyed participating in.  
4. During playtime, we would be involved in playing games, singing songs and telling the teachers and children about my backstory and culture. I found although this wasn’t technically a ‘role’ it was one of the most moving parts of my placement. Most of the teachers were women in their early 20s/30s and they were incredibly curious about the state of international countries and what it is like outside of Tanzania. The kids themselves loved holding conversations in English and welcomed me gently into their playground games.  
5. Towards the end of my placement, in the final week, all the children went home for Christmas holidays, meaning we had empty classrooms. This prompted the idea for me to purchase materials and renovate the classroom walls of one of the new building classrooms. This involved the foundation and painting of the walls, leaving the new classroom in a much brighter and professional state. Alongside this some of the volunteers and I hand drew informational posters (e.g. world country flags, shapes and animals) for each of the classrooms, which the children genuinely adored.  

After volunteering during the day, the company left plenty of time for us to rest, chat with other volunteers and participate in activities (both humanitarian and leisure). Highlights of these activities include local thrift markets, Maasai markets, new cafes and restaurants, visiting the local orphanage to cook dinner and outreach programmes. Each of these added so much on to the experience and made time here even more social and worthwhile.  

On the weekends (when schools weren’t running) we had the option to sign up to overnight excursions to Magoroto Rainforest, the Serengeti, Maasai tribes and so on. Each of these trips were unbelievably immersive in Tanzanian culture and some of my best memories from the trip.  

Upon reflection of my five weeks at this school, I found there was so much I had learnt in my time here. I think one of the best ways to describe the volunteering in organisations such as these is as a ‘mutual learning experience’ between the volunteers and the children/teachers at the school. To be completely upfront, I think in low-income countries such as Tanzania, it is not teachers and volunteers which are so crucial to schools but rather funding, resource, good management and the education itself. However, I did really feel my being there was meaningful for that education. Furthermore, experiencing the positivity and hospitality illustrated by every person at Heda was very important to me. On a bigger scale, comparing the difference in positivity between Tanzania and more Western country populations, whilst considering the difference in material wealth is something which was the most remarkable learning point for me. People here really do find joy in everything they do and are never shy to offer a helping hand to a stranger.  

 However, I think it’s important for me to also make clear there were many challenges of the experience. The reality of the volunteering ended up quite different to what I initially had in mind: Overall, the programme is most definitely what you make of it and therefore what you put into it. To name one challenge, it was rarely clear (within the classrooms) what your exact role was and how you should go about it. I felt if I insisted my teaching upon the local teachers, I could’ve ended up being more of a burden rather than a help, so getting this balance right took a fair amount of time and perseverance. Alongside this, in Tanzania there is a broad amount of poverty, making living conditions for big families extremely difficult.

Outside of the teaching, the volunteers put time into outreach programmes where we would purchase and deliver food, oil, soap etc to the poorest families of communities. When completing programmes such as these (and teaching) it was very difficult to not feel like you were coming in as ‘a white saviour’ who is only there for a photo and a highlight reel as very unfortunately a few international volunteers seem to carry this motive. On the streets you would regularly be shouted at as a ‘mzungu’ (in Swahili this translates to ‘foreigner/white person’) and the children at the orphanages we visited were also acutely aware that we could only be there for short periods of time. Though moments like these were very uncomfortable and I never supported the harassment of volunteers, I felt a great amount of understanding for the partial discontent for volunteers in areas like these. As Western societies, I feel many (through a lack of education) may feel Africa is purely a place of corruption, poverty, famine and political fire which can then frame it as a place where the more privileged can sweep in and ‘save the day’. Safe to say this is the furthest case from the truth. I’m aware this may sound extremist, but I think this is also the truth of how many of the Tanzanian people saw us and we can see them. Beyond that, it was important for me to understand this difference of perspective so I could overcome it in the best way possible. Grasping this also helped me to keep intentions for volunteering as focused on social development as possible. At the end of the day, this is also the reality of merging different cultures, leaving it as one of the biggest lessons I learnt.   

I do want to re-iterate that this preconception was most definitely not held by everyone, and hundreds of the directors of schools/construction sites/animal welfare programmes continue to feel and show their eternal gratitude towards the work and time that we put into their communities.  

I would like to end by thanking you all for giving me the opportunity to access such an incredible experience. I feel during this trip, my education from Wellington has been extended far beyond our Crowthorne base as I have learnt such valuable lessons which I honestly do not believe can be taught in classrooms. Both myself and the directory of the school which I volunteered at are hugely grateful for the time I spent at Heda Primary School and in Tanzania itself.  

The Bevir fund is a truly exceptional scholarship programme and I hope it will continue to teach Wellingtonians to come as greatly as it has done for me.