One of the freelance roles I do from time to time each year is Expedition Leader for school groups undertaking overseas trips. It’s really rewarding and interesting work and means I get to travel more than I would ordinarily on my personal finances.
My first trip this year (Last week) was to Tanzania with a school group from a Dubai international School. In this case GEMS Wellington International School, a large 3,000 student school in the city. I would be travelling with 18 students and 2 teachers, the Students would be between 14 and 17 years old. Years 10-13. They were a great bunch of students and teachers to work with.
All the photos on this blog have been taken by me and with consent of the person I have taken a photo of unless they are distance photos in public spaces and I will not be naming any of the students in the photos for obvious privacy reasons.
The company I mostly work for and I am working for on this trip are called Camps International and run Ethical Impact and Eco Tourism trips around the world for students from various countries including the UAE and UK, They are UK based but have bases in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and of course the UK where the HQ is.
Students save up or raise money to pay for their trip to travel to see other cultures and help with community projects as well as take part in cultural activities and see a more realistic side to the country rather than being on holiday and get to feel they have really contributed to the community in some way.
Everybody wins, the students get an ethical trip to see the real community and physically help with local projects that are actually needed. The local in country staff get regular employment and are paid a fair wage for their work, the local communities get to choose what projects they need in their area. Camps funds the equipment from the trip costs that the students pay for. I get a fantastic trip overseas and meet amazing people and communities and all I have to do is look after my team and their needs and get them to and from the trip safely. I am also the medic on the trip.
The first and most boring bit is the travel, I obviously have to get to Dubai to pick up paperwork and see the Dubai team before meeting my students at the airport. I mostly park my van near my business office and storage in Essex, I have a place I park my van up when travelling. Yes I live in a van, not a house. It’s a nice van though and quite comfy and not the sort of serial killer van you may be thinking of!
Then it’s a train with 3 changes from Essex into London and back out again to Heathrow, this takes about 2-3 hours depending on train times and time of day. Carting my 40Ltr camps North Face duffel bag and my 36ltr Rucksack with everything I need for the trip. Luckily I am flying Emirates from Heathrow Terminal 3 so it’s a well managed check in and dropping the hold bag off and checking in is quick. Then a quick security process and off to the gate. So far so simple with little delay and queuing.
A couple of hours to wait at the departure gate before boarding passes easily enough and on we get, I am travelling on an Airbus A380 which is the biggest plane you can get on for commercial flights and over 500 passengers including business and 1st class upstairs! They always have good staff, food and free drinks and decent legroom. The back of the seat in front has a decent screen and tons of movies to watch so the 7 hours or so in the air passes easy enough in my aisle seat and we land smoothly in Dubai which is having a mild spell at only 18 degrees. Compared to 5 degrees in the UK when I left.
I got a taxi direct to the Camps Dubai office and met up with a few other Leaders of on trips to Kenya, Thailand and Costa Rica before picking up all the paperwork I needed and had any briefings needed. Then it was another taxi to my hotel which I had for 36 hours. I had to meet my group in the airport at 1am Saturday Morning and it was Thursday afternoon when I checked in to the Dubai Citymax Hotel by the Mall of the Emirates. This was by Dubai standards a very cheap basic hotel but by UK standards it was pretty good for the money paid. Around £30 a night but with 24 hours service, bar, gym and swimming pool and rooms as good as any premier inn. Free wifi too. My room was on the 13th floor with nice views one side and not so nice the other side.
I chilled in the hotel the rest of the day then after breakfast the next day I had a wander around the mall across the road which whilst not one of the biggest ones in Dubai was still the size of Lakeside and as blinged up as a mall can get. Dubai is unashamedly shiny and celebrates everything money, It’ definitely one of the flashier places I have been.
At midnight I got a taxi to Dubai Airport terminal 1 to meet the teachers and students at 1am ready for our 5:40am flight. We were flying to Addis Ababa Ethiopia then changing and onto Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania. Total travel time would be around 7 hours with a very short 1 hour transfer time in Addis. This is where you start earning your pay, herding 18 students and 2 teachers through the airport and on and off planes. They mostly look after themselves and the teachers do a great job at much of the management but you are forever counting people, checking everyone is through a section such as security and helping students who can’t find a visa or have lost a boarding pass in the 5 minutes since they got it!
Eventually we arrive in Tanzania with everyone intact and I meet the local in country manager Hassan and his sidekick Sahid, then we get onto some busses and head towards the camp. I have not been to Tanzania before so this is a very new camp to me. Although the Africa in country projects manager Peter I do know from previous Kenya trips so that’s helpful and helps build relationships early.
It’s about an hours drive to the Camp, it’s a really nice camp location just outside the town of Moshi and the camp Manager and his team keep the place spotless. It’s basic but has power, running water and is clean. The students get group tents, 1 for boys and one for girls. The female teacher gets her own massive tent and myself and the male teacher get smaller canvas tents on the grass.
After we unpacked we met the staff and had a briefing before taking a walk out to see the village and the projects site at a local school where we would be working. We saw local villagers going to church for some event on a Saturday, this meant they were in some of their best clothes and looking very smart indeed. Including the little lad below.
We were going to be working on a much needed project for the local school, They had dirt footpaths around the classrooms and when it’s wet the classrooms get very muddy and slippy. In fact a kid had fallen and broken an arm there a few months previous so we were going to be helping to extend a concrete pathway further around the school classrooms to make a safer, cleaner path for wet weather. We had a section of about 25m to add to a previously built section. We had 3 days to try and get this completed.
We started the next day (Sunday) and had to start by digging out the path to the right depth and then laying rough gravel and stone with sand as a base. No cement mixers or machinery here. We had our bare hands and shovels and hoes to work with. It was hot work too with temperatures around 34c and relatively high humidity, even for the kids used to Dubai where it was only 18-20c at the moment. Even hotter in relative terms for me!
We got a fair bit done Sunday, especially as there were no schoolchildren as a distraction from the work. We got most of the area prepped and started to mix cement and concrete for the paths and edge blockwork.
The walk to and from the camp to the school took about 20-30 minutes and was great for chatting and saying “Jambo” to the locals as we passed each other.
Every day we passed the local art gallery and shops as well as schoolchildren and parents off to work or about their business.
Monday was a whole different kettle of fish altogether, with the school full of children getting work done with the same intensity was proving hard! Every time there was break in class or kids would pop their head out of a window to see what we were doing we would lose 10 minutes work as we engaged with the kids and took photos!
Everyone was knackered after a good days hard work and we went back to camp for tea and had dinner and chilled out by a campfire. The food is basic but fresh and delicious. Made each day by our cook Sarah and her assistant. Sometimes a couple of the girls from the team would help the cooks.
Tuesday was the last day of Project work and we worked really hard to get the section we were working on finished in time. Everyone worked really hard as a team and we finished the section by 4pm when it was time to head back to camp.
Another great night chilling by the fire learning some Swahili words.
The trip now switched from project work to a cultural and education focus. The next morning we went to a local village family’s house and learnt (and helped) how they prepare food and plant new Banana trees and essentially how they provide for themselves in this village. The Mama of the house was preparing a beef stew and we helped peel Banana’s to go in it and alongside it as well as the fresh Mango and fried Banana as side dishes.
After we had lunch provided we went to the school for a final farewell to the kids and teachers who wanted to thank us and spend some time with our students.
There were a few tears and not just from the girls as everyone had made new friends and bonded with one or two children.
It was a fantastic end to the day, the next day we headed to a Waterfall and rock pools about an hour away. The falls are Kilasia falls near Marangu, they are off the beaten track and hidden away from the main tourist falls. The waterfalls were in a steep valley with rough steep steps down to the river and then a rough scramble to the waterfalls proper and the best views.
Unfortunately I have few photographs from this section as we had one student who had some mobility issues and I needed to support her down the steep steps and at the bottom the scramble would have been hard to manage so we sat by the smaller pool with the falls in the distance and let the others explore the falls more closely. They are stunning though.
Back at the top of the steps was a small souvenir shop where a couple of guys had some Chameleons which they were letting people touch. The teacher was a great sport and let one climb on his head!
We then went off to see the Chagga caves and learn all about them after our packed lunch at the cave site. The Chagga caves are a network of underground caves and passages that the local tribes used to hide from enemies who would come to steal women and kill men or enslave them. This was not such a long time ago and only in the last century, our guide explained how violent the enemy tribes would be and how they stole the women and forced them to have children from their men to repopulate the tribe and then killed the women once the babies were old enough not to need their mothers and they would not know they came from another tribe. Brutal times and it was good for the students to understand African internal slavery told by a local storyteller. To hide the locals would go down into the caves and hide for weeks or months if needed, the network is several km of tunnel’s and chambers deep underground that can be easy defended. Think Vietnamese army tunnels but more planned for living in and you have the idea. These were dark and tight and hard to photograph plus the tightest ones were challenging to the student with the mobility issues and I missed going down some. I do after all have a job to do as well and I will get other opportunities of future trips and these people may not.
We decided rather than have evening meal at the camp we wanted to go to a restaurant to have dinner, we went to a local bar and grill which was very nice and we could have different foods such as pizza and pasta and all in a lovely garden setting. It was inexpensive with most meals coming in at around 24,000 Tanzanian Shillings or about £12 including drinks.
Then it was our last day!
Our final day was a safari in Arusha National Park, We had 4 76 Series Toyota Landcruiser’s with pop top roofs to use for the group with guides. They picked us up at the camp and we drove the 90 minutes to the Safari Park. Arusha is very much a forested terrain park with fewer wide open spaces compared to other safari parks and while it has plenty of life its much harder to see stuff even when looking for it. You would think elephants are easy to spot but they hide surprisingly well in forests! We saw little of the big stuff and there are no big cats in this park. But we did see the following…
- Colobus Monkeys, Blue Monkeys, Waterbuck, Dik Dik, Zebra, Flamingo, Baboon, Giraffe, Eagle, Water Buffalo and various smaller birds.
On the way back to the camp we stopped in the market area of Moshi to buy souvenirs and the students wanted to buy some stuff to donate to the school. Just giving money direct in Africa can be problematic as you don’t always know the money goes where you want it to and you don’t want to build a culture of hand outs. I arranged for us to go to a place that sold school equipment such as text books and pens, pencils etc and we bough a bunch of stuff that the school needed and could be used to support those students that really needed it. We dropped the stuff off at the school on the way back and we had time to play football and netball with the kids for 30mins before heading back to camp for the very last night sleeping there.
That was the last of the really fun stuff, a last night in camp and packing in the morning for a lunchtime bus to the airport.
A fantastic rewarding trip for the students and teachers and a great bunch to work with, just the 7 hours of airport, security and flights to endure before arriving back in Dubai and dropping off all the kids to waiting family. Then my personal travel continued, off to a different airport terminal for a flight back to the UK in 4 hours time. 7 1/2 hours back on the plane to Heathrow then 4 hours getting back to Essex to collect my van from storage again.
Good to be home though I had to adjust back to colder temps and picked up a sniffle on the plane I suspect.
I do get to do it all again in 2 weeks time when I go back to Dubai to collect another group to go to Kenya this time. I have also picked up a better lens for my new camera that will allow me to zoom in better on safari and take better photos as some of these ones are a little out of focus and I need to practice more.
Thanks for reading.
Lindley