Home-Building Expedition Blogs

Saturday 31st of August  Wilson Shaw  With both house builds taken as far as we can help, and after saying farewell to the families, it’s time for some downtime whilst we await to travel home on Monday. The experience has been profound and touched me in ways I didn’t expect.  Whilst I was strangely able to compartmentalise and process the very challenging living conditions and heartbreaking back stories of the families we were helping, and those we were fortunate to witness getting the keys to the homes started by the high school visits earlier in the summer, it was experiencing the hand…

Tuesday 5th November:  (Written by Damien) I had an early rise this morning as a building near our accomodation had some very exciting steel drums performing, definitely an immersive experience! When the rest of the team joined us from the other hotel we sang some songs with Elly, which by now was becoming routine and we believe it or not we are getting really good at the Swahili songs!  The drive from Sengerema to Kazunzu took us over some rough terrain, which Elly welcomed us to as the 'African Massage' Road. The drive was eye opening, the number of different…

Read on for updates from our October Building Expeditions team in Kazunzu.  Monday 14th October We finally arrived in Mwanza last night! The Mipa Hotel was very friendly and we all slept well after the journey. Breakfast was delicious! This morning we all travelled to the Jubilee Hope to witness how far the project has come since 2014. It was amazing to meet the team members and witness the amount of work that has gone into making the project happen.  As I (Holly) write, we are having lunch at the Tilapia Hotel and later we will be travelling to our…

Thursday 25th July  All the volunteers arrived safely yesterday. Today has been about acclimatising, getting money changed and a team orientation meeting. A trip to the market this afternoon proved to be an exquisite assault on all our senses! The hustle and bustle, colours, smells, sounds and happy greetings and smiles from the locals were a wonderful introduction to life in Tanzania. Later, we were privileged to meet Mama Defrosa and her team at the TWAREF headquarters. Our welcome consisted of warm hugs and handshakes and songs beautifully rendered by the staff. It was a a very humbling experience to be…

Tuesday 28th May After three flights, a ferry, and two buses, we arrived at Sengerema where we are staying. Our first impressions - somewhat chaotic at the airport; busy; warm; friendly; strange geological rock formations which were amazing plus the land is very green. We are all getting used to either cold showers or scalding hot; some even have boutique toilet facilities know within the group as either a hot or a cold drop! Wednesday 29th May The people have given us a very warm welcome especially the children who have followed some members of the party, no names, like The Pied…

Saturday 3rd November Jambo from Moshi! The travelling day for the international Babcock team first started for the three Victoria-based employees, who had an internal Canadian flight to Calgary before a nine hour flight to Amsterdam to meet the rest of the team. The rest of the team from Ottawa and across the UK successfully got to Amsterdam on time, although not without some stress for the nine flying from Bristol - a missed connection looked certain after some technical issues with the aircraft, but we all made it safely! After slowly making it through Kilimanjaro airport, we received a…