Before you start in Mwanza

Geplaatst op 25 juni 2019 om 13:43 uur

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What you should bring:
- Power bank: The power goes out regularly, so it's nice if you can still charge your phone then. This probably happened way more often at our place than places in the center of town though.
- Flashlight or headlight: So you can still see something when the power goes out. We've been cooking once with a headlight, actually pretty convenient. 
- Potato peeler: Both the little knife and the peeler (dunschiller en aardappelschilmesje). Haven't seen the knife here, but it is so useful. You buy your veggies at a local market and you have to peel them. Nice if you don't have to spend so much time doing that.
- Flash drive: You need this when you want to print something at the office. Unfortunately they don't have a fancy system like they do at Randstad.
- Towels: I liked not having to search for on when I came here. They do have towels, but they're not as nice as the ones back home.
- Surge protector (overspanningsbeveiliger in Dutch): This way your equipment doesn't get fried when there's a spike in the power. This happens a lot when the power goes out and turns back on. 
- Tampons: Never seen these here. They do have pads. Or get the cup, whatever floats your boat. 
- Contact solution: Haven't seen this either. 
- Dress clothes for at the office. Men wear often a shirt (the ones you wear with a suit). Shoulders and knees need to be covered, so for women, wear a long skirt or pants. I didn't really dress fancy, but people will take you more seriously if you do. Or you can create a typical African dress with kitenge fabric at one of the trailers the LZYE project works with. 
- Bed sheets: For some reason they're expensive here. But I brought a bed sheet for a single bed, turns out everybody has bigger beds, so bring one that's big enough. Check if you need to bring this though. 

What's possible to bring, but you'll survive without:
- Speaker: It's nice to be able to listen to music. 
- Tea towel: In hind sight I would've brought one. 
- A percolator: One of those small coffee machine. Very optional. I'm not a coffee person, but May en Veronica were very happy with the percolator and coffee Veronica brought from Italy. This way we could always make nice coffee at home.
- An electric fly swatter: Nobody is going to bring this of course, but I would've loved to have one. Get revenge on the mosquitos that like me way too much.  What not to bring:
- A lot of toiletries. Mwanza is a pretty big town and you can buy almost all toiletries, except tampons and contact solution. If you're really attached to your vanilla strawberry coconut shampoo then you should bring it. But there are a lot of options, so you don't have to bring enough toothpaste for your entire placement (like i did). 
- A lot of warm clothes: We are here during the "winter." In the Netherlands we would call this a hot summer. Sometimes it cools off a bit in the evening and you can wear jeans. But you don't need more than one pair of jeans and one sweater. A coat is also unnecessary. I brought one, but I've never worn it. Unless you want to climb the Kilimanjaro of course. We all just wear sandals and flip-flops. Sometimes in the evening I wear closed shoes, but that's more because of the mosquitos. I could've left home 90% of the socks I brought.
- A mosquito net: You definitely need one, but VSO provides one. Also in hotels there's a net where necessary. 

Then some other tips and how-to's:
- If you like to get a better impression of Tanzania and the project, visit the Facebook page VSO Tanzania.
- If you received a laptop from Randstad, it doesn't have Microsoft Office, so no Word or Excel. Ask at the head office (Lidya) in Dar es Salaam if they can fix that. 
- There is a Facebook group called Mwanza Expats. There are a few expats here, they  share events, markets and other fun things in the city on this page and people sometimes look for others to join their safari etc. 
- Housing: VSO is arranging the housing. Normally it is not allowed to live gender mixed, but in the LZYE project they make an exception for the corporate volunteers. If you arrive in Mwanza, the first day you will visit the apartment to make sure you are ok with it.  
- If you have a residents permit, go on safari during your placement. It's cheaper for residents than for tourist. Oh and go to Zanzibar, the ferry from Dar to Zanzibar is also cheaper with the permit residents. 
- Transportation: There is an app similar to Uber called Taxify (or Bolt, they recently changed their name). You can order a taxi with this without having to haggle and chose in de application if you pay by card or cash. Do check the receipt later, because sometimes the amount of kilometers is not correct. Then you can say so in the app. 
- Public transport: There's the dalla dalla, the bus. They have no schedule, but they go all the time. It's super cheap, but takes a long time because they stop at a lot of places to recruit passengers. I liked traveling with the dalla dalla. People find you interesting as a Mzungu, so lots of people will talk to you. On the streets you can also get a boda boda or piki piki (motor). Definitely not very safe, most of them don't have a helmet for you. It is sort of adventurous, and not expensive, but you have to haggle well. Same for the bajajis (tuk tuks). 
- M-Pesa: This is a mobile payment system. One of the first things they do during introduction is taking you to a Vodcomshop to get you a phone number. You get paid on a sort of bank account on you mobile number. At the store ask if they can set the setting to English, otherwise you have to figure it out in Swahili. At every streetcorner is an M-pesa "shop" where you can "withdraw" money. Ask a local or another volunteer to go with you when you do this for the first time. Always count the money you receive, but so far I always received the right amount.
- Airtime or internet as we would call it, with your M-pesa account it is also possible to buy airtime. VSO provides 35.000 shilling a month for this, make sure you receive this, because sometimes they forget.  

Some Swahili words:
- Karibu - welcome
- Asante - thank you (you reply this to karibu
- Mambo - Hi what's up (or something like this) you reply with poa

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