 St Aidan's CBS, Whitehall, Dublin, Ireland |
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| St Aidan's CBS, Whitehall, Dublin, Ireland |
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Its been 3 months now since I left Tanzania and I will never forget my experience over there. The week before I left I was having doubts about the whole thing asking questions like "Is this going to be worth the hard work everyone has put in?" and "What is this place going to be like when we get there?" but after a few days of being over there and settling in all those question we answered straight away and I felt comfortable and I really started to enjoy the whole experience.
We got to do a lot of amazing things over there such as visiting places like Food Water Shelter, the orphanage and the detention centre. In these places I saw a lot of different types of people and how they dealt with hardships in their lives and how that certain place has helped them out. Food, Water, Shelter was unbelievable; it was a sort of sustainable eco village. It was amazing to see how even people in a third world country are worried about the environment and that they too can find ways to try and help it. The detention centre was probably one of the roughest things emotionally that I had go through over the whole trip. The conditions the kids there had to go through in the centre was very harsh and I could only feel sorrow for them even though it probably was their fault why they were there in the first place.
Out of these places the one I felt most connected to was the orphanage, in the orphanage me and the rest of the lads saw how the kids there had to deal with losing their parents and how they made the best they could of what little they had, this really opened my eyes to how much I have that I don’t appreciate. On the trip we learned a lot of things about life over there and the one thing I will take out of it is that no matter how bad things are going in someone’s life in Tanzania they still do everything with a smile and they are always happy I saw this to be a big contrast with the attitude of people in Ireland when really everything goes very smoothly here compared to over there.
The best part of the whole trip for me was the Edmund Rice School, it was amazing how great the people there were and how we got on with them so well. The school was great, it was so laid back and everyone was happy. One of the best parts of the whole school experience was definitely going into the classes and just interacting with all the students. I also enjoyed the matches we had with the students (basketball and football), the talent show and the lunchtimes. I can safely say that we never in a million years thought that we would connect with our partners so much only after as little as 5 days. I’ll never forget Irene, Catherine, Junior, Innocent, Arnold, Emmanuelle, Joyce, Jeremiah, Glory, Samuel and Anthony the cameraman. We were all very sad when we had to leave them on our last night considering that it’s probably going to be the last time we will ever see them, the same went for the last day in the school and all the people there that we grew so close to so quickly that we might not see them ever again.
The safari that we went on with our partners was the highlight of the time we had with them, not only seeing all the animals there that we couldn’t even describe how amazing it was to see them close in action but just getting to know the life of our partners. Irene was my partner and she made such a good impression on me, she was very nice and she told me so much about her life in Tanzania. Paul’s partner Junior was the person who everyone connected with the most out of the whole school, one of the nights after Paul was talking to Junior we were told by Paul of how Juniors father was murdered, it was certainly one of the low points of Immersion and when we were told we were all speechless and most of us felt very upset but it was one of the things we just had to deal with and try to help Junior about.
Another thing I took out of the whole Immersion experience was how well I bonded with the other lads, before going on the trip there was about 4 or 5 lads that I never really talked to and I couldn’t see myself hanging around with up until the trip but the whole experience really brought all of us closer together and I am now real good mates with all the lads who I went to Tanzania with because of what we went through together.
The trip did have its humorous moments as well such as Niall getting lost in the Maasai market, the Dala Dalas and our friends who we always met while walking down the main street in Arusha who were in fact some characters but these things just added to the stories we had to tell when we got back to Ireland. We also visited Father John’s parish in Moita were we learned a lot about Maasai culture. This was definitely a highlight of the trip, getting to see what there mass was like and how they lived their daily lives.
This visit showed me a completely different way of life to mine and I gained an insight into Maasai culture. We also learned a lot about Maasai culture when we visited Allais, he showed us around different parts of Arusha such as the Maasai markets and training centres, he also told us various different stories about the Maasai people and how they live. 3 months on from the Tanzania trip and the whole Immersion experience and I can say that in the 16 years I’ve been alive I’ve never experience anything like it, it has probably been the best time I’ve ever had in my life and its mainly to do with the impression the people of Tanzania have left on me so much so that I’m 100 percent sure in the future I will go back in and do the same experience all over again.
The trip has made me stand back and look at life in a completely different perspective, which was exactly what I was hoping to get out of the whole trip. The only regret I have is that I wish the experience could have lasted much longer. Before we went on the trip we were told that what we put into it we will certainly get back of out it and that has definitely happened. Immersion has been such a great experience and I will never forget it for the rest of my life.