Sunday morning

We woke up at around 7.50am for breakfast, courtesy of one of our 4 cook teams. On the menu was eggy bread and toast, a Gillerthwaite classic. After we all ate breakfast, another cook team had the fun job of washing up. All the others went to get changed and to pack up our belongings. We then went to collect some cleaning cards and began to clean. As we were such a huge group we made up lots of time, it only took us around 40 minutes. When all of Gillerthwaite was tidied and our bags were put into the barn, we congregated in the living room. We then got given some key dates and information about the travel to Tanzania in July 2016. After this, we all got given some evaluation forms. These had to be done all alone so the leaders could get a clear idea of everyone's thoughts and views on Tanzania and the group itself. We all split up and separated around the house. When we had completed the evaluation, we met back in the living room and Ian then covered some of the up-coming fundraisers that we all signed up for. By the time we had finished everything, it was around 10.30am and lifts were beginning to arrive. I don't think anyone wanted to leave because we all knew that the next few hours would be a nervous wait and there was now nothing more we could do.

Abby

Bonfire

On Saturday evening, we had prepared to have a bonfire in Walter's field that we could all sit comfortably round in what was a chilly night. We shared marshmallows round the fire and cooked them with skewers, while Walter told us a bit of history about Gillerthwaite, although it was more of a horror story. Walter spoke of a woman called Glennis who once lived in the farmhouse we were staying in, and she used one of the rooms to torture people. Apparently Glennis haunted the farm and if we heard chains then Glennis was coming for you! We did hear chains and everyone freaked out although we had suspicions that it was his children. After we all sat under blankets together, singing songs, it was a great night.

Luke 

Saturday night challenge

Blog post for the saturday night challenge:

Piped up on energy from a day of walking and conservation activities, it was time for a challenge. This one in particular had a single objective; 'entertain' the leaders. Initially we; the students, divided into separate groups to plan a way to meet the brief, however, as we all piled into the same room to rehearse, somebody had a brainwave (I can't remember exactly who amongst the excited chaos). This entaled producing a flash mob-esque performance, to surprise the leaders that we had actually all worked together. With our irregular orchestra together; Sarah armed with her guitar and voice and Luke with his bongo drum, we set off on a rehearsal. The idea was to have a mellow song to begin with (Budapest by George Ezra), and have a sudden surge of energy in a lively rendition of 'Shut up and dance' in a dark room with flashing torches. At the end of one rehearsal we turned on the lights to discover that two of the leaders had observed a special preview! After a hectic few minutes rehearsing half of us entered the living room to perform, beginning with a lovely verse from Daniel and Sophie, which progressed to a clap-along sing-along. The fun began when there was a knock on the door and the party entered, even the leaders were dancing along to our slightly off-key version of shut up and dance! I think we can all agree that the objective was achieved when the challenge turned into a sing along with everyone, and set us up for a nostalgic night around the bonfire

Emily

Saturday Overview

Bouncing out of bed on Saturday morning, the others in Tyson room and I were ready for the day. We had a vague idea of the hours to follow; a walk to Black Sail, groundwork, interviews and (finally) a bonfire organised by Walter, of the Low Gillerthwaite Field Centre, and his family.

            What actually followed was, for me, one of the highlights of my time spent with CRCL. After everyone split into their respective groups, we began the day’s activities. The walk to Black Sail should have took about two and a half hours- our close shave with a group of cows, bulls and their calves notched that up about half an hour. Following Ian and Andrew’s failed negotiation attempts to clear the gate and our scaling of a barbed wire fence, we finally made it around them.

We managed to get back in time to see the other group pulling out copious amounts of weeds and fence posts, those who had had interviews silently reflecting on questions asked and answers given.

Following lunch, the groups swapped around: I was assigned to paint picnic benches, while the others continued trying to tackle the undergrowth to clear way for some of Walter’s projects. The other group accompanied Ian, again, to Black Sail. The distance between Black Sail and Gillerthwaite is roughly the distance between where we stay in Tanzania and Kisondela, an administrative ward with a local high school in Rungwe.

Once interviews were over and everyone had realised that they are totally not intimidating as we thought they’d be, everyone needed some light relief. Following Saturday night’s dinner made by our fabulous cook team, the leaders tasked us with entertaining them.

I think some of us (myself included) had some pretty serious illusions of grandeur- we capitalised on Sarah Jackson’s knack for playing guitar and sang a fair few songs, Budapest by George Ezra and Rather Be by Jess Glynne included. While it wasn’t what the leaders seemed to have had in mind, we all had a pretty good time.

By the time we’d finished, Walter had assembled the wood collected by people doing groundwork into an impressive pile. The bonfire was already burning, and we all sat down to listen to tales about Glynnis, LGFC’s resident ghost. Coincidentally, just as we’d heard of her propensity to rattle chains and walk the grounds at night, we heard some chains rattling and seen someone walking the grounds at night. Some of us were enamoured with the old stories, however some screamed screams that would challenge those of Glynnis’ victims. Despite this, the hilarity of the whole situation and togetherness made the burst eardrums worthwhile.

Giving up on waiting for the moon to come out from behind the fells, we went to bed- those of us in the haunted Tyson room slept in solidarity, hoping there’d be no interruptions from Glynnis.

Ashleigh 

Walk

On Saturday afternoon, after lunch, Group 2 set out for their walk from Gillethwaite to Black Sail. 

The route was planned to take us one hour and fifteen minutes to arrive at Black Sail as the idea was that in Tanzania we have to reach Kinsondela from Lutengano within that time scale. 

We spent most of the walk talking about the selection and sharing each other’s nerves. It definitely helped talking about things. As the walk went on we decided to make it more interesting by putting some music on, although it didn’t last long as it wasn’t loud enough. 

Half way through our walk the group ran into a family of cows, we decided that it would probably be best to avoid them as the last group had been charged by the bull! So we took a detour around the trees which proved to be far more exciting than the original route! 

When we reached Black Sail Ian informed us that we had just made the target for that time (although Group 1 had made it in under). I think that this was a success for both groups regardless! 

After returning from our walk I think everyone in the group definitely deserved a rest!

Becca

Ground work

On Saturday 3rd November we all participated in doing some work on the Gillerthwaite grounds whilst anxiously awaiting our interviews. After breakfast, half of the group went off for their walk whilst the others went off to gather wood for tonight’s bonfire. After around half an hour of wood collecting with the bonfire looking good to go we then split up into groups of 4 to complete several jobs around the grounds of Gillerthwaite.  One of the groups had to take out the old fence surrounding the field so it could be replaced with a new one, another had to clear all of the broken branches and overgrown grass in-between the trees and the final group had to repaint benches in the gardens of the Field Centre. Once we had all had our interviews and we’d had dinner, we switched with the other group so they could carry on with our work. 

Cheiatian

Derdians - Derdians point of view

Derdian’s experience of the activity

After separating off into our groups we were given our task, our team was told that they would be taking on the role of the ‘Derdian’s’- a fictional people created for this task. On the task sheet there was a brief, explaining the issues the Derdian’s were facing with the commute to the closest markets. Currently, this journey took the Derdian’s 2 days to complete; however, with the construction of a bridge across a deep valley, the journey could be considerably shortened to 5 hours. The issue was that although the Derdian’s were of equal intellect to the rest of the world, no Derdian knew how to build a bridge. So a team of engineers were challenged with building this bridge across the valley to shorten their route, in addition, they had to teach the Derdian’s the necessary skills for constructing a bridge.

This process was not as easy as it may first have seemed, as we read on we found out a little more about the Derdian’s culture and their way of life. For example-

• The Derdian’s greeted one another by kissing the person’s right shoulder

• They never communicated with one another unless they were in physical contact with someone involved in the conversation (it is considered exceptionally rude to do otherwise)

• The Derdians did not have a word for ‘no’, instead saying ‘yes’ meant ‘yes’ and saying ‘yes’ whilst emphatically nodding our heads was the Derdian translation for ‘no’.

• The males could not communicate with one another unless first introduced by a female

• Various tools were inaccessible to each gender, pencils and rulers could only be touched by females, no males, scissors could only be touched by males and glue was neutral.

As a result, the teaching process did not go as easy as what we first anticipated. The first engineers came to us (Sophie and Ashleigh, having no idea about the Derdian ways and customs) I went over to greet them with the customary kiss on the shoulder. Both engineers began backing away and questioning my actions, to which all the Derdian’s replied only with puzzled faces and when they began to speak to us without physical contact, we began challenging their ignorance (whilst touching them). This requirement of physical contact whilst speaking delayed the process for quite some time, as us Derdian’s kept urging the engineers to be quiet when they were talking without touching someone. After some subtle hints and constant shushing, Ashleigh soon figured out that physical contact was required whilst speaking.

The two engineers left for some time and then returned with the rest of their team; which I again customarily greeted with the kiss on the shoulder- which they had now been warned of but some still backed away and questioned me. After our initial meeting we got to work building the bridge, which again took longer than previously thought as we had to keep calling out the rudeness of those who spoke without contact. Another problem came when the female engineers started touching the scissors; I had to constantly tell them of their rudeness and take over the job to do what was necessary with the scissors as only males could touch them. Similarly, when male Derdian’s were getting told to use pencils, the same conversations were had. Additionally, the engineers were constantly confused of the as had no idea why us Derdian’s were saying yes to doing jobs (whilst emphatically nodding) and getting agitated when they would hand pencils to males or scissors to females. After some time we successfully managed to build the bridge and shortened the Derdian’s route from two days to five hours.

During this activity I didn’t quite understand its purpose, however, once we had finished we reflected on what we had just done. It came to light that situations like this could occur whilst in Tanzania, where the differences of cultures could make even the easiest of thing a lot harder. What we gained from this exercise was that we have to be more open minded and learn to be adaptable in situations we have never been or not sure what to do in. Consequently, we all now have an idea of how differences in cultures can change a lot of things and when we go out to Tanzania, we have to be cautious of our actions and make sure we are constantly learning from those around us, their ways of life and how things are done. I found this activity extremely beneficial as it made me realise how narrow minded you can be without even realising and so will make me think about my actions if I ever find myself in a similar situation.

Daniel

Derdians - Engineers point of view

Engineers experience of the activity

Initially, we were split up into groups, my team where informed that we were a group of engineers who where needed to build a bridge for a group of people known as the “Derdians”. This was a group of people who currently had to take a two day journey to reach the local markets, but after the successful construction of the bridge this journey would be cut down to only five hours. The task was that we had to teach the Derdians to build the bridge themselves, we thought this was going to be a relatively easy task until two of my fellow team mates went to visit Derdia. They said this was a very intense situation as upon their arrival they were surrounded by a group of eight people all trying to kiss them on the shoulder and all becoming furious when the gesture was not being returned. The Derdian people began shouting each time Kate and Yasmine tried to speak and shushing them, due to a lack of physical contact, the Derdian people found this very disrespectful. After quite some time Kate realised that the physical contact was needed and the engineers began to get some of the answers they needed or so they thought.

Kate and Yasmine then returned to our team and explained their ordeal, the main problem they described was when they asked a question the response was always yes sometimes just “yes” and at other times the answer was “yes” (with excessive head nodding) which meant no. It was very difficult to distinguish which was yes and which was no. However we were able to get some of the answers we needed, including whether or not we were allowed to use any form of supports underneath the bridge.

We then all returned to Derdia as a group, slightly cautious as we had been informed of the ways of the Derdian people, as expected they greeted us with a kiss on the shoulder. This took quite some time to get around everybody, we then got to work on explaining the process of building the bridge, this process involved a lot of shouting and was very time consuming. A problem arose which none of us had been introduced to was the fact that we asked Christian to draw and gave him a pencil, this is where most of the shouting began as boys are not allowed to touch pencils in their culture, 20 minutes later we had successfully built a bridge a lot less complex then we had originally planned but all in all it met the brief we had, successfully shorting the route for the Derdians.

To begin with we were confused as to why we had been given this activity to complete, but once it was completed we realised that some of the situations we had encountered in this challenge could come up in Tanzania due to the huge cultural differences. As a group we all realised that we had actually taken things from this experience some of these being that you have to constantly be adapting to your environment and be respectful to other people’s cultures. Overall this was an extremely well thought out activity and has made me understand that we need to be constantly adapting to new environments.

Robyn

12 Hour Walk

Why wouldn’t you want to raise money for the Tanzania link? On Saturday 20 August a 12 hour walk was held to raise money and awareness of the link. This is a great charity which helps support many projects out in Tanzania.

The aim of the 12 hour walk was to walk 95 miles in 12 hours. We set this target because the area of Tanzania is approximately 945,000 km squared. We knew this target would be hard to reach but we had to set something hard to make the event more likely to raise money.

Amazingly by 3pm we had managed to reach our target and had walked 95 miles! We were delighted as this was after only 7 hours. By the time it reached 8 pm and the 12 hours were up, we’d walked 220 miles! All of the people listed above did at least one lap and we also counted the laps walked by the dogs as well! The route was around the golf course in St.Bees with each lap being 2.5 miles. As we walked round we carried collection pots to try and get more donations. We also put collection  buckets in the pubs and cafe on route, I picked these up the next day. Throughout the day we had 28 people walking. 

We are yet to know the amount raised because not everyone has handed in their sponsorship money but so far we have collected around £150.

It was a really fun day and a great opportunity to see everyone from the link again and to have a good catch up whilst getting some exercise and fresh air. We were very lucky with the weather, there was only a few drops of rain throughout the day but at about 9 that night there was thunder and lightening and lots of rain. Almost everyone wore their link t-shirts, this showed that we were all part of the same team and helped to promote the charity. We also carried Tanzanian flags. Over the 12 hours we walked past lots of people in the village and were sometimes stopped by people asking what we were doing, so hopefully this helped promote the charity. 

We were very lucky to get to use the Scout hut in St. Bees for free which was great for dropping off bags and we always had someone there for health and safety reasons. It was also nice to have a rest and a drink and biscuit between laps. Each lap took about 50 minutes so people often had a 10 minute break between laps. We managed to keep someone walking for the whole 12 hours and, even though we had met our target at 3, we were determined to keep going for the whole 12 hours because it was a 12 hour walk.

I was very pleased with the outcome of the whole day, especially after all the worrying and preparation I had done in the lead up to the event.

Lucy Brock

Selection Weekend - Friday Overview

Friday 2nd October 2015. We set off for Gillerthwaite to meet with the group at 5pm. When we arrived we all got set up in our rooms, then met in the main living room to each write down a question that would be answered later on. While the first team was cooking, the rest of us went outside and relived our childhoods playing games such as 'hide and seek' 'black and buzz off' and 'splat bang'. Amy's team cooked dinner, which consisted of vegetable spaghetti bolognese and for dessert, custard, bananas and digestive biscuits, asante Amy's team!! After dinner, we all sat in the living room and each read out a question that we had wrote previously, this was a chance for us to air any worries with the leaders and for them to answer any questions we had about the outward trip. Next we were all split into 4 teams to participate in the Derdian team building challenge, 2 groups were Derdians and the other 2 groups were the engineers. Before bed we all sat in the living room chatting, needless to say the main topic of conversation was the outward visit and reminiscing about the inward visit! Then it was time for bed, ready for our next early morning.

Yasmin Hailes

Car boot sale

On the 16th of August I headed to Silloth Sunday market with my Mam, a car full of clothes, toys, games and books to sell at the car boot sale.  I hadn’t done a car boot sale before so this was all new to me.   I thought it would be an excellent way to raise some money for the link.  

I had spent all day on Saturday sorting through all my old books and toys then researching online so I had a more accurate idea of the prices I could charge.  

We arrived at the market at 9.30 and began to set up our stall.  The other stall holders were very helpful and gave us some good advice.  It was a lovely sunny day so the market was busy. The day was extremely enjoyable and although we didn’t sell everything we managed to raise £73 in total.

Becca Williamson  

New Trip Blog for 2015

Hello all,

The new trip blog will start posting here: http://crcl2015.blogspot.com make sure to subscribe!

Group Meeting - March

 On Sunday, March the 22nd, the Cumbria Rungwe Community Link gathered for yet another productive group meeting. Students took part in team building activities, such as speaking to one another in Swahili. Afterwards, we spent some time developing our journalistic skills, which will help in allowing us to promote ourselves, in social media and in the local news. We then split off into groups, where we explored the benefits and potential issues while hosting our visitors from Tanzania. The group are all looking forward to the arrival of the exchange students, even though our Swahili needs some work.

Luke 

ASDA bag pack!

On Saturday the 21st of March, we hosted a bag packing event at Asda Workington as another part of our fundraising. We spilt the day into two halves but some people volunteered to participate for the full day. This was from 10am to 4pm! This was a great day to talk to lots of people and let them know what we do, the benefits of doing it and why we all take part. Overall the day was a huge success as we were able to raise a total of £766.41!

Jack

WLA Numeracy Event Cale Sale

On Thursday the 22nd January a parent/student numeracy event was being held at Westlakes academy. We hadn't started any fundraising for the link within school yet, and we thought it would be a good opportunity to sell cakes at the entrance to the people walking in an out of the building for the numeracy event. We built up a force of 9 cake-loving girls and organised a delicious cake stall and information board about the Cumbria Rungwe Community Link for the people passing by to read and learn from. Each cake cost just a donation and was brought in by students involved. It's fair to say, the turn-out wasn't as large as we had anticipated, there was a lot of waiting around between sales in the beginning, and the majority of those who did pass us seemed to be rushing to get to the event. We were in need of a solution to our situation, when somebody had the brilliant idea of going mobile with our little stall, we packed a tray full of delicious cake and ventured around the school looking for other people who were also enthusiastic about the charity (and of course the cake). It was a success! We sold cakes at a much faster pace than we had done all evening (especially the ever-faithful cake-lovers from the English department). With more optimistic spirits the night eventually came to a close, there was still quite a bit of cake left, so we packaged it all up and waited for the next school day to come around. At break time on Friday the 23rd we resumed the mobile cake-stall technique and took to the sixth form common room to finish off our sale, it turns out teenagers and cake are a good mix (who would've thought?) and soon, with the word about the cake sale for the Tanzania link flooding around the sixth form centre, there were no more cakes left to sell! Our team of 9 had been successful and £72.70 was added to the funds for the inward visit this summer. Tip for all future cake sales: if all else fails, go mobile!

Emily A

Christmas Quiz at St Bees

On 28th November 2014, we held a Christmas quiz at St Bees School in order to raise money. We sold tickets for family and all ages a couple of weeks before and there was a bar and snacks on the night. As well as this, we had a raffle and many people very kindly donated lots of gifts. The quiz was a great success and it was enjoyed by everyone. 

As well as this, on 3rd November 2014, we held a fireworks night at St Bees School. Lots of families came along in order to support the Tanzania Link. We sold food, drinks, cakes and we had small competitions for children. Also, we sold glow sticks which went down well with the kids. Then, the night ended with a firework show which everyone enjoyed. 

Finally, we have held two cake sales at St Bees School also to raise more money. We has one cake sale for a week in October 2014, and also a cake sale for a week in January 2015 which began on Monday 19th January. Many people kindly donated cakes for us to sell and we also sold cans of soft drinks. We sold the cakes at break time and all the students and teachers enjoyed the cakes and lots of money was made. 

Abbey C

Valentine's Card Fundraiser ❤️😍

Whilst brainstorming ideas to help fundraise for the Cumbria-Rungwe Link, me and Beth realised that Valentine's Day was coming up and it would be a perfect opportunity to do something seasonal to raise money. We knew straight away that we wanted to hand-make something that we could sell, and since chocolates and roses were already being sold at our school (Westlakes Academy) we decided to design and make a handful of cards that were influenced by last years fundraising. We printed one of each card as a sample and set up a 'stall' kind of table in the school to advertise and take orders for the cards which were 50p each. The cards proved extremely popular, and Emily and Sarah wanted to get involved as soon as they saw we were selling them, which helped us because the cards were a lot of work and took up a lot of time to hand write, colour in and add glitter to, not to mention tallying each design, printing and collecting money from people who purchased them. We hand delivered all cards on the last day of term and eventually raised £35.

Emily Ward

January SASRA

Everyone made lovely cakes to sell at the Sasra all different varieties, and hot chocolate, tea and coffees were also prepared to sell. At half time when the music had finished we served the drinks and the cakes asking for a donations for the cakes which was great because the audience was keen donators and then we washed and packed up together as a group. 

In total we raised £75.65.

Sophie F

New Years Day Dip - St Bees

 Lucy and I took part in the New Year's Day dip at St.Bees beach. We all met at the RNLI lifeboat station at 11:45 then at 12:00 we ran into the sea which was absolutely freezing. 

It sounds crazy but it was actually quite enjoyable and we raised a total of £30 which will go towards the Tanzanian link! 

Hannah W

Recent activity

Group mettings, SASRA concerts, Halloween facepainting, charity sales and much more!

New Years Eve Dip - Whitehaven

On New Year's Eve at 10am we all met by Zest Harbourside and warmed up by doing the Hokey Cokey. 

At around 10.30am around 100 or more locals ran into the sea for various charities. 

Myself, Abby and Kate ran in, with the money which we raised from sponsors going to the Tanzanian Link. We raised a total of £160. 

Alisha, Abby and Kate

Christmas Carol Singing 🎅🎄🎶

On Monday the 22nd of December a group of 6 students and 5 leaders sang carols on King street in order to raise money for the Tanzanian link. Despite the drizzly December weather everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves and we brought the Christmas spirit to Whitehaven. Local shoppers seemed to appreciate our enthusiasm with several joining in, thanks to Mary's festive spirit! We raised a grand total of £293.96 after an enjoyable day putting us all in the mood for Christmas!

Alisha 😊

Group Meeting - 4.1.15

On Sunday 4th January we had another of our annual group meetings, taking place at moresby hall from 4 to 6. At this meeting we did a number of activities including team building exercised and a question and answer session with former members of the Tanzania Link. The meeting started with team building which was a lot of fun and really brought the teams closer together. After which we were asked to come up with problems concerning the inward and outward visit, and think of solutions to them. We then discussed fundraising which some students have done since the last meeting including some students who took part in the New Years dip in Whitehaven and St Bees. The last part of the meeting was a question and answer session with 4 former students of Tanzanian Link, many of whom have hosted Tanzanian's and have been to Tanzania. With a wide variety of questions which ranged from how to stop feelings of home sickness to how long is the flight. 

Kate B