Kelty the teacher

Kelty and I went for a cycle ride around small, very rural village called Mtae in the beautiful hills of the Usambaras.  As has been happening everywhere we cycle the kids race us, which is always a bit embarrassing as I cycle so slowly and at every pothole nearly fall off which sends them into fits of giggles.  I have been noticing what games they play in the streets.  Some kids had made a bicycle tyre into the figure of eight and put it around their heads pretending to be a car.  It looked so uncomfortable but they were loving it.  Another boy was playing with a homemade football, which was a stuffed plastic bag.  Ingenious.  Many push wheels around with sticks.  The kids here after school don’t do school homework but literally they do home work.  They go home and then help their parents.  We saw some kids in the Serengeti (some maybe only as young as 7 or 8) walking along the side of the road all with pickaxes on their shoulders.  We were told that after school they go and work in the fields.  Another two, who were tiny, were wielding machetes.  Some boys today were bashing rocks at the side of the road – still in school uniform – these smaller rocks are then made into cement for house building.  Wherever we go, the kids work hard.  But all of them, always so smiley.  Happiness comes from very little.  Hopefully Taran is picking up a few tips here but I still am packing his bag everyday but maybe when we get back to Oxford he will be transforming the garden and cooking the dinner!

Kelty and I passed a school so we asked the teacher if we could meet the class.  The teacher in Kelty immediately took himself to the front of the class and I was so impressed.  All big eager eyes on him.   He tried his very limited Swahili on them and they found it hilarious.  He was loving it and so were they.  They then sang a song for us.   Post Christmas trees, Kelty should definitely be a teacher again.