As part of their Mission Possible deployment to Tanzania, volunteers experience what local communiti...

As part of their Mission Possible deployment to Tanzania, volunteers experience what local communities have to go through to get water on a daily basis - a 5km trek, with the water being far from clean and safe. They also get to meet villagers to find out what their needs are and how best they can be met. However, even before taking on any of those tasks, the volunteers found that their first job was to get to the village of Baladi - by pushing their stuck van free. Team A - Kaleem Abbas, Nazia Choudhry and Yusuf Kassam - explain.

Team A - Blog Day 1, Sat 19 Oct 2019

Today was the first day of Mission Possible. We made our way to the village of Baladi where we were going to meet the local community. We started the day with the minibus getting stuck in a ditch! All the volunteers had to exit the van.

We searched for a solution, so we stuck logs under the tyres and we aided the driver by pushing the van out of the hole. That was our first challenge of the day.

SCHOOL

At the school where we would be working, the classrooms were getting built. The floor was unfinished and the walls were not stable. This made us think about the conditions we enjoy compared with what we were seeing here.
The toilets were unfinished - the foundation was set but due to rain, the project remained unfinished. The conditions of where the toilets used to be were non-existent.
A lot of girls miss school due to the fact that there are no clean facilities and that makes it easier to catch UTIs (urinary tract infections).
We later arrived at the community central area in Baladi where we were greeted with excellent vibes. The thrill of meeting everyone was deep in our hearts and it was fulfilled at this point.

WATER TREK

We were given the task by the community members to take on the water trek. This water trek is part of their daily walk of up to 5km of travel for a natural source of water. This trek is done by the women and children of the villages at 5am!
We were lucky to have bicycles on which we loaded the 20litre tubs of water to travel back and forth from the village to the water source area.
This was basically a river off a bridge! The water was unclean and dirty although this will be collected and purified.
This trek is done daily by walk, a big task to do especially to be walking in the sun with the heavy load.

Later we arrived back at the village and had the task of CPA (Community Participatory Assessment).

This is where we spoke to the community members regarding, the history of the village, their daily duties, a map of the village and how each season affects them.

This helps us to know what the needs of the village are and how we can help them with the best aid.