video safari nr. 2

Take a look if you like:

http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=5548350231585392299&hl=nl

Have fun, Jan

Home again

Jambo,

After een long flight, lost lugage (which is returned to me now) i came home. Not prepared for the cold i got the flew right away. So here i am: sick.

I made a movie of the first safari-trip which can be seen at:
http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=3273846110078303643

A lot of Pictures have been uploaded at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jan.witvoet/FotosViafricaTripBennyEnJan

Enjoy. I'm going back to bed again.

Bye, Jan.

Week 3, last week at the office…

In a nutshell again:

Monday: teaching Rhoda & Nico about advanced subjects Excel, They were thorn out. Good chat with Mariya. Sunroofhotel with Benny for a beer and a pizza, Good sleep.

Tuesday: teaching R & N about advanced subjects Excel and Word again, it’s a lot for them, it’s warm in the classroom, very warm. Making music with N is cancelled unfortunately, perhaps on Friday. Feel pretty exhausted myself too now. A bit frustrated on how slow some things go. Kisii guys came in and asked for some tricks and tips with Excel. Gave them lots of info in short time
Anyway: after work Benny and I went to the sunsetroof again ( we like that place a lot). We met Thomas, Alex, Liesbeth, David and 2 other dutch volunteers there as well (Thomas and Petra). Very nice people, we had a good conversation with. He offers his building capabilities, just like Benny and I our ICT-knowledge. We went for dinner in an exclusive Indian restaurant. Home late, but great evening. Still: early at the office the next day.

Wednesday: Early at the office, update all kinds of documents, wrote a instruction for Nico, who is going to use my videocam for his Multimedia training, instructed him. Copied a lot of music for Kennedy. Evening: late diner with B, D and Mirian (an retired lady from Sweden who spends her years both in Sweden and Tanzania). (Nice way of living isn’t it?). Nico called me for a drink, but it was too late for me. Sorry chap.

Thursday: rose at 7.00 AM, breakfast with D and an other guest of the hotel, early at the office again, discovered lots of good trainings manuals at the server of VIAfrica.
Making subjectslists for the muanuals, that still have to be written. Prepared for the Headmaster seminar. Especially Liesbeth had done a lot of work to make it all go well. Afternoon: headmaster seminar. Good presentation of both teams. It was highly appreciated by the headmasters itself. I even had to tell in Holland about their appreciation. Well, if you read this….
Evening: Benny and I gave a goodbye dinner in Adventure Africa. Nice evening, with some good discussions and nice farewell speeches. One to remember.

Friday morning now (8.00 PM, yes Joost we start early nowadays): My last day at the office, sitting here to update my weblog for the last time in TZ. Last message will be from Meppel again probably on Sunday. Here we have to close things down, say goodbyes, shake hands, etc. It makes me sad to go, because I have had a splendid time over here. Thanks all of you, Liesbeth, Thomas, Adrian, Nico, Rhoda, Kennedy, Peter, David, Benny and let’s not forget: mama Laida (for her great cooking, which made me fat, lol). See ya all again someday I hope, where ever, when ever.
Afternoon: Benny and I held speeches in which lots of reviews and thank you's (asnati sana's in swahilli) of course. Exchanged presents and all in all i feel sad to leave, although being back will be nice too of course. Don't know how we will spend our last evening, but hey... what will come will come...

Regards, Jan.

Weekend 2, 2nd safari

In a nutshell: left Friday morning for a long drive. First to Arusha, to pick up the cook (John, nice bloke, great cook), then to a masai village, where we were invited for a sunset walk (breathtaking views), a meal and some masai dancing and singing. Yes, we were invited to join and believe it or not: I was jumping with them. It felt awkward, but somehow good as well. 2 beers, a good conversation with Benny and a long night sleep.
Saturday: sunrise walk to the same spot, learned about herbs and plants from Ruben (masai, who did speak English), breakfast, drove to the next campsite, setup our stuff quickly and than to Tarangine national park. We saw it all: elephants, dikdik’s (a deer with the size of a small dog), lions, giraffes, zebra’s, well you mention it, we saw it. Great day.
Back in the camp: some relaxing, good food, a beer, and again a long night sleep. Sunday: early walk, but not that much to see unfortunately, long drive back to Moshi. Great site seeing though. Bought small stuff at a masai market, lunch at a ridiculously expensive touristy spot, then moshi again. All in all a great weekend. Nice dinner with the 3rd kisii guy (David), Liesbeth, Benny and Alxandra (friend of Liesbeth, also from Holland) at Venture Africa (one of our favourite restaurants). Slept like a rose (dutch expression?) again. It’s Monday morning now. Beginning of our last week. Time flies!! About to have our weekly meeting.

Movie is to follow soon.

See ya all, Jan.

Week 2 at the office, Moshi

In a nutshell:

Monday: weekly meeting, finished making word exercises, resetup the VIAfrica office, ate at Adventure Africa with Benny, long long night sleep…

Tuesday: Finished Rhoda and Nico’s lessons and demonstrated it to me, In the afternoon we went to a secondary school to install some CD-ROMs. The guys tried to make me believe that we had about 250 of them to install. I didn’t believe it, but…hmmm. It turned out to be just about 50 or so. We were received in a very hospitable way and got shown around. This school it was almost as a community: accept from learning these students also grow their own food, etc. All in all a great event and a fine day again. In the evening we met the “kisii” guys. Viafrica has got another office/organization in Kenia (kisii to be exact). Two of those guys (Peter and Kennedy, nice blokes) are here mainly to exchange information. We had dinner with them and a good conversation. Slept well.

Wednesday: Introduction of the kissi guys; they told us a lot about their situation and I gave them my lesson about toc’s, Good! Than: terribly news from a very good friend. It swept me of my feet and I took some time off, to come to my senses. That’s all I want to say about it here.
Luckily Benny is here and Ben and I had a good talk about it, went to the sunroof hotel (where we saw a splendid sunset on the Kilimanjaro), and a pizza to finish the day.

Thursday: Taught Rhoda and Nico a lot of advanced Excel subjects. That mainly covered the day. In the evening we had dinner together at Nkulima (African food, really nice) and afterwards I thought to go back to the hotel. Wrong!! We went to a disco. My God am I popular. Seriously, quit a bit of attention of the girls (for various reasons, money is one of them). Felt like papa dating his daughter. Not that comfortable, but good fun after all. Perhaps it was too dark to see the difference between grey and blond. Lol. Then: finally back to the hotel. Wrong again!! Flat tire!! After some discussion about what to do: the ones that had to rise early went by cab. The rest waited for a spare tire. Slept at 2.00 AM, and rose again at 7.00. So ….

Friday now: just a short morning at the office and then at 11.00: safari again. To the Masai village. I’ll tell all about it on Monday. Have a nice weekend.

See ya all, Jan.

Sorry

Just realized that the settings of this blog only allowed people to react if they have a google account. I Changed the settings, so... An appropiate excuse from my side.

Beginning of week 2

Ok, ok, it has been ages, but being busy is the excuse (as usual). Here we go:

Tuesday: Gave Lesson to the two teachers of VIAfrica: Rhoda and Nico. Liesbeth (dutch VIAfrica Employee) was also present. All in all it was a nice experience and I did get the impression that it was a kind of eye-opener for them. We’ll work it out in the future. The term “JW-Style” was born. In the afternoon Thomas and Adrian took me to the market to get some clothes. 2 pants, a shirt and a pair of slippers for…. Tsh 17.000 (about 11 Euro). Yes, I guess I know what you’re thinking now.
In the evening we ate local-style at Malindi with the VIAfrica-team (as welcome diner). Very nice indeed. Too bad I felt so tired.

Wednesday: Just work as if there is already a daily routine. Ate at Mama Moshi’s (The owner of the hotel). Great meal. All the food is fantastic here. I’m sure I gained some kg’s.

Thursday: At work we make progress concerning the rewriting of some manuals and I hope to teach Rhoda and Nice how to make it themselves, in a structural way. It’s coming along, slowly though. After work: sunroof for a snack (hotel with nice view on the Kilimanjaro) and diner afterwards with Thomas, Liesbeth and Benny. Again great. Starting to feel at home here.

Friday: just work in the morning (making exercises for word with Rhoda and Nico), coz….. the first safari starts. First to Maji Moto-springs: great swim, great meal, nice guys (safari leaders: James and Christopher), good sleep. We had been there before, but nevertheless: great way to start a safari (I guess, coz it’s my first one).

Saturday started with a walk in the environment of Maji Moto. After that to camp2 (nice ride) but, rain… lots of it. And cold it was!! Luckily at the end of the afternoon the sun came back, so: game drive in the environment. Fantastic: baboons, impala’s, birds of prey, zebra’s, wildebeests and one big elephant. A video about it is to be seen soon on this weblog. Dinner afterwards, which was good as usual (Christopher is a great cook). James and the ranger went to a village to get the car fixed (one of the springs broke). We waited in the pitch dark, which was a bit spooky I must admit. A beer afterwards and the usual evaluation of the day with Ben (we do that every day, which is good to see things from a different perspective).

Sunday: After a good sleep we rose early for a long walk on the savannah. A bit scarey was the fact that a big elephant was in the way what forced us to walk quite a bit extra. We saw lots of animal’s again even giraffes. Brunch and back to the hotel: long shower, washing, napping, eating pizza with Benny and a lousy cab drive home (trying to rip us of, but this stingy guy didn’t buy that: we’re dutch after all). Lol. Sitting here in the restaurant writing this so I can update my weblog tomorrow with a simple copy/paste action. I’ll try to keep you all informed on a bit more regular basis.

See ya, Jan.

Impressions, impressions.... lots of them

Jambo (Hello) everybody,

Update at last. Really haven't had an opportunity to do it earlier, since there was so much to do and organize. But here we are. Moshi, TZ. What happened so far..

First the flight to here: stress about being on time on schiphol airport, but my brother fortunately was able to bring me there on time by car (thx Kars). After a good flight the second problem: we weren't allowed to enter the country, because we didn't know the name of our hotel. Luckily Liesbeth (staf memeber of Viafrica) was there, so... we could give the name and then everything was ok.

We were welcomed in a very hospitable way. A very nice and cosy hotel, a nice glass of beer, nice rooms and a good introducing conversation with Liesbeth and Thomas (also Viafrica) made a good start of these 3 weeks.

The first night: no muscitonet. I thought it to be OK, since i saw no muscito's in my room, but... well, you guess... bzzzzz, stung and hardly any sleep.

Anyway, next day was a sunday, so no work to be done yet: Thomas and Liesbeth took us (Benny & me and some friends of Thomas & Liesbeth) to a spring (Maji Moto), where we could swim and relax. Very nice place, some 20 km's out of Moshi on a very humpy road. We went by car, the rest on maintainbikes.
I drove on the way back (left side of the road, steeringwheel right) through the savana(like) environment. Loved it.

Evening: dinner with 2 other guests as well: Enno & Merel, who are preparing a documentary film. Really nice people. Too bad they had to leave the next day.

I slept extremely well after that day, under a muscitonet!!

First working day: met all the other members of Viafrica. Nice people. First the weekly meeting, then some preparations for the things i plan to do with Nico & Rhoda (2 two teachers of Viafrica), studying some of their teaching materials, writing a little lesson myself, which i'm going to give to Nice & Rhoda this afternoon. Just to give them an impression of my teachingstyle.
Also visited the new storage location, and two schools. Unfortunately there are exams these days, so no ICT-lessons were praticed at that time. Still: really nice trip. Made some small video's as well, which will be uploaded soon, so you all can see. Back at the office we worked untill 18.00. In the evening Benny & I had a nice dinner (food is really good here), and a last beer at the hotel.
We both came to to conclusion, that, although we had been here just 48 hours it felt like 2 weeks. So many impressions, and all good ones. Glad to be here.

It's tuesday now: just finished my lesson for Rhoda and Nico. Updated my weblog. More coming up soon.

Preparations

Hello everybody,

Still at home, doing the last preparations for my 3 week trip to Tanzania (from now on written down as: TZ).

In july I found this project on freelance.nl, where this organisation Viafrica (www.viafrica.org (take a look please)) asked for ICT (related) people, to support their projects in TZ. I reacted and after 2 interviews they decided to let me do the job (with 3 other people). And so...

On saturday (10th of november) I'll fly to Moshi, together with Benny Huwae (service manager), to contribute to the projects they carry out over there.

I wiil try to keep all of you informed as well as i can, hopefully being able to add some video and photographs, but (as Joost (director of Viafrica) told me) it might be hard to find the time to do so. Anyway, i hope to see you all on ths blogspot and please feel free to react.

For those of you who want to write me personally use my yahoo emailadress: jwitvoet2000@yahoo.com. I will check it every couple of days (if possible).

See ya all there, Jan.