This week I have made a very valiant effort to make the most of my new gym membership and have been rewarded with barely being able to lift my arms! The main motivators to encourage regular attendance at the gym revolve around the reliable power supply and the shower that has amazing water pressure along with actual hot water! Gym membership is worth every penny just to have a real shower – My excitement over the shower facilities cannot be underestimated. Unfortunately I have yet to test the swimming pool as it has been full of hotel guests each time I have been. The power outages at NIT continued into the first few days of this week - fortunately they did not take place during the night; but it was still an issue on Monday when the generator at NIT was also not working. This made it very difficult to get work done and I also had to endure 35 degree heat in the office with no air con. In addition to my everyday responsibilities, I've been given a new interesting task by Transaid following a Skype conversation with the team in London mid-week. All volunteers at NIT are provided with an information pack about Transaid, NIT and Tanzania in general, but the pack is starting to be considered dated and needs revamping. Throughout the rest of my placement I will be working to update this pack, which will give helpful hints and tips for volunteers in their free time. I have seen this as a perfect excuse to visit all my favourite places in Dar to take photos and do further ‘research’ in my spare time. Additional to my work on the information pack I've been very busy chasing people at NIT regarding the actions that we raised following our meeting with senior management two weeks ago. Many of the deadlines that we agreed were for Friday so it was important that as many of the achievable actions were reached. I was happy that most of the actions were in progress if not already completed and the ones that were outstanding looked overall positive. I also received a comprehensive weekly update from the transport safety and environmental studies (TSES) department which was great progress towards what I am aiming to achieve during my time in NIT. I have spent a lot of time this week looking at spreadsheets trying to develop an easy to maintain database for information on driving licences to be held in at NIT. Hopefully after spending so much time on the document it will continue to be used as a helpful tool by the TSES department – but they may develop a better way themselves. NIT has also invested in two new buses to use for their professional driver training; they arrived this week and look to be great assets. The arrival of two new vehicles should be a great boost for NIT's attendance on their professional driver courses as they can show they are continually investing into improving the standards of training available for the students. On Saturday I did my weekly visit to the fruit and vegetable market and then on to the gym before venturing to the beach in the afternoon. This Saturday was the rugby league grand final and a very stressful day – made much better for the scenery of the beach. My day could not have ended on a better note with the Leeds Rhinos winning the grand final to make them the 2015 holders of all the three major titles. The only bitter aspect to the day was the photos constantly coming from my brother and dad who were actually at the game – it would have been nice to be home just for the one day with them. On Sunday Neil returned from Uganda in the early hours of the morning. I spent the day at home relaxing before finally making a return to underwater hockey in the evening. It was great to be back and see everyone, although the turnout was a little low this week. We started playing with seven people, playing three on four and then it reduced down to three on three when one of the team members made an early departure to go watch the rugby union game. Because of the low numbers the amount of swimming and involvement was increased dramatically – needless to say I was exhausted by the end of the game, but I did lose count of the goals that I scored so it was all worth it. In my absence from underwater hockey they had an amazing opportunity to be featured on the East African Sportsline TV programme. The short video is now available now on YouTube following the following link – https://youtu.be/s8jvHrdAPmg. It’s a good example of the game demands and clearly shows the skill of the other members of the team. The video offers a much clearer description of what the sport entails than I can ever do by simply writing about it. The segment should have some positive impacts on the team and hopefully encourage more people to go along to try the sport out and perhaps even provide some opportunities to travel to other African countries to have a competitive game. |