I think I speak on behalf of my fellow students when I say our recent trip to Tanzania was the most eye-opening and introspective experience of our lives. On the coach trip from the airport to Minaki School we realised that this was a school trip unlike any other.
We spent the first week staying with teachers who lived in houses at Minaki. The devotion to achieving an education we witnessed from the students with little or no equipment was staggering and something unparalleled in this country. Their commitment to learning really hit home when we presented them with school textbooks and laptops. The delight etched on their faces was truly astonishing and showed how for them education was not just something they had to do, but a chance to better themselves and make the most out of their life.
...we played football with the students at which for most of us proved to be very humbling. We managed to win the game but they were the better team. At the end of the match we gave out some football shirts which a number of people had very kindly donated. They were so pleased to receive them that they all put them on straight away and began posing for photos with us smiling proudly.
We also taught some lessons at a local primary school - while seemingly a daunting task, turned out to be a very heart-warming experience. The students followed our every word and swarmed around us after the lessons for photos and high-fives. While the reception they gave us after we donated various stationary and clothes to them was special for us all, our time spent at the orphanage was the undoubted highlight of the trip. From the moment we arrived in a pick-up truck on our first day the children did not stop smiling once.
We spent the time singing to them and playing games with the gifts we brought them and I don’t think that any of us stopped smiling either. The hardest part of the trip was leaving the orphanage for the last time not being able to do more for children who despite their disadvantages never stopped having fun.
We also witnessed first-hand the appalling poverty that exists in Africa - a level of poverty we see on various television charity appeals all the time, but somehow we are detached, numbed or emotionally unaffected by it, until of course we experience it for ourselves - as indeed we did.
It is a standard of living which no human being should have to endure and one which is all the more shocking when compared to the materialistic west. I think the trip made every one of us think long and hard about the difference in the standard of living we enjoy and the one in which millions have to suffer through. It is an experience which I believe changed us all for the better and made us realise that our privileged lives carry a duty to do everything in our power to strive for the eradication of the inequality which exists in our world.
We also taught some lessons at a local primary school - while seemingly a daunting task, turned out to be a very heart-warming experience. The students followed our every word and swarmed around us after the lessons for photos and high-fives. While the reception they gave us after we donated various stationary and clothes to them was special for us all, our time spent at the orphanage was the undoubted highlight of the trip. From the moment we arrived in a pick-up truck on our first day the children did not stop smiling once.
