Taking a gap year was something that I wished I had done. I felt that at seventeen I was too young for university. It got a bit tiresome having to 'forget' my id every time I went to the pub in first year. On the flip side it meant that when I had graduated I was still very young so I decided to take my gap year then. I didn't however fancy frittering the year away on some island in Thailand. I wanted an adventure and I suppose I wanted to challenge myself. The fact that I ended up being tested like never before while also doing something really worthwhile was a lucky bonus.
I decided to go to Africa. Not having the money to travel for a year, some work was necessary. Added to that, I had never been to a developing country before so I wanted to go with an organisation that would provide some form of in country support. SPW or Students' Partnership Worldwide fitted these criteria. It's an organisation that partners young volunteers from Europe, America and Australia with volunteers from the countries in which it works, namely India, Tibet, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa. For me, Tanzania was the one that appealed most so I applied and before I knew it, we were off.
In Tanzania, the training that we had was mainly concerned with how young people like us could educate the students who were close in age to us about various 'youth' issues but in particular, given the AIDS crisis in Tanzania, sexual and reproductive health. Towards the end of our training, we were paired off with our partners from Tanzania.
My partner, Mercy Chimtawi was not a typical Tanzanian girl. For one thing, you always heard her before you saw her. She was outgoing, funny and she certainly didn't suffer fools gladly. I think that between the two of us, we managed to surprise quite a few people during our placement.
Our arrival in the village was met with unbridled curiosity. Mdabulo was a good four hour bus journey away from anywhere. As you can imagine, small things were big news. Wherever we went, children followed and if we stopped to chat to anyone, a crowd soon formed. They were fascinated by my skin and hair, but also by the fact that Mercy and I were living and working together. Skin colour is still a huge issue and it took a while for people to realise that Mercy wasn't working for me.
Initially, things were hard as I had to relearn how to do everything. Even washing dishes is different without running water and a sink. Language was an obstacle and Mercy was a Godsend as far as cultural dos and don'ts were concerned.
We had to get our work started though, and we soon made friends with our students. It was such a novelty for them to have 'teachers' who took an interest in them and their activities outside school. They were also curious about AIDS and general sexual health. After a while they felt comfortable enough with us to ask us specific questions that had been bothering them. We had a unique bond with them as the student-teacher relationships in the school were strained and distant, marred by the threat of corporal punishment.
The teachers themselves were happy enough to have us there as they had no desire to broach what they could see, even if they didn't admit it, was an increasingly important subject with the students.The signs of widespread AIDS were everywhere in the village; emaciated people in an area where food was plentiful, frequent funerals and many orphans.
We were given leave to do things and tackle subjects that would normally be frowned upon as taboo. However, AIDS was seen by many people to be a western problem that was somehow deliberately spread in order to kill Africans. It sounds far fetched but even condoms were regarded with extreme suspicion. It was therefore very important that our messages about AIDS came from Mercy and not from me. She was brilliant. People were amazed to see a Tanzanian girl speak with such confidence. The effect that she had was wonderful and by the end of our time, female students were standing up and arguing against their male counterparts in debates and discussions that we organised. Word spread, and soon people were coming in droves to our AIDS prevention events and football matches. Whether they came to hear the information or just to see us didn't matter. They got both anyway.
There is no way of telling what difference we made. I know that we certainly made a big impact on a few people. Students such as Onesmo, the shy musician, Farida the outgoing actress, Neema the rebel with too many causes will all remember us well. Mercy is studying law in university now and I'm teaching in a primary school. In Mdabulo, new sets of volunteers are out there continuing the work as I write. SPW Tanzania is going from strength to strength as people recognise the worth of the programme.
As for me, I had an amazing gap year. I got my adventure but it was so much more than that. Unfortunately, like every time I'm asked to sum up exactly what it was, I realise that I have yet to find words that suit.
