Help! I'm going to volunteer in Mwanza

Hi everyone,

For once a post in English and for most people this won't be a very interesting one. But for a selected few it will be. This is my post with my tips about Mwanza and what to do if you're going on a placement with VSO in Tanzania. The project here in Mwanza has two more years to go, so I figured I would save everybody (mostly myself) some time and make preperations for you easier!

What you should bring (note, this is a list for Mwanza, probably won't be much different for other places, but I'm adding the disclaimer anyway):
- Powerbank: The power goes out reguarly, so it's nice if you can stil 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. 
- Potatopeeler: Both the little knife and the peeler (dunschiller en aardappelschilmesje). Haven't seen the knife here, but it's so usefull. 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.
- Flashdrive: You need this when you want to print something at the office. Unfortunatly 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.
- Surgeprotector (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. 
- Bed sheets: For some reason they're expensive here. But I brought a bedsheet 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. In our place bed sheets were provided, but in other houses it was not. 

What's possible to bring, but you'll survive without:
- Speaker: It's nice to be able to listen to music. 
- Teatowel: In hind sight I would've brought one. 
- A perculator: One of those small coffeemachine. Very optional. I'm not a coffee person, but May en Veronica were very happy with the perculator 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 to 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 flipflops. 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 mosquitonet: You definitly need one, but VSO provides one. Also in hotels there's a net where necessary. 

Tips about eating or going out:
- Hotel Tilapia: A bit a Mzungu place, the place where the expats gather. It's relatively expensive. But they have the nicest pool (or at least I think so). Officially you're supposed to pay 20.000 shilling, but we never paid this. We did order always food though. The Indian food here is good (the owner is Indian) and if you order something else, chances are  that it's cold. Don't worry about deciding between the roti and naan bread. It's exactly the same and it's neither roti nor naan bread, but it is good. 
- Cask (Bar & Grill): Nice food, but don't get the pasta or pizza. Thursday night is karoake night and during the weekend it's a place where people go out, but this doesn't start until after dinner. 
- Copenhagen: Best pizza in town! Don't eat pizza anywhere else, they really have the best. On Tuesday nights it's pizzanight and all large pizzas cost 13.000 shilling. The burgers are also good (at least I liked them). 
- Flex: Local place, cheap. They don't really have a menu, but the food is nice. They serve a lot of meat, and I always got the burger or the skewers. This was our Friday night hang out spot. Don't go there to watch Ajax or your favorite team though (unless you're British). They will say they will play a very important Champions League game, but they don't, they'll have karaoke instead. 

Other places we have been or we have heard of
- Hotel Malaika: Very expensive and outside the city center. They have a nice pool next to the lake, so you have a nice view. It doesn't have any atmosphere and is very posh though. We have been once, but then always preferred Tilapia. 
- La Shahensha: Indian place. They have nice food, but for some reason we never went back. Nothing wrong with the place, food is good!
- Ryan's Bay: Hotel where you can get nice breakfast, eggs, English breakfast and stuff like that. We have never been there, but we heard it's very good. 
- Villa Park: Nice food, fresh fish. Apparently it's a place to go out in the evening, but we have never been there during the night. 
- Chicken Run Bar: A bar, there's no chickens or running though. 
- Sizzlers: Indian place, never been there, but my (international) coworkers tell me the food is good. 

To shop:
- Vipaji Viyetu Shop: Craft Shop with nice stuff and souvernirs made by marginalized people. Definitly have a look here if you like the souvernirs with African print.
- U-Turn: Supermarket with a lot of products you're secretly missing. They have some things I didn't see on the local market.
- Mall: Before I came to Mwanza I found it kinda reassuring that there is a mall. If I was tired of everything, I could always go shopping. Well, you can't really go shopping in there. They do have a nice place for mani pedi's, a supermarket and a Vodacom shop. It also has a cinema, but I've never been there.
- The local market close to your place: For all your fresh fruits and veggies just go to the market, they're markets everywhere. It's so tasty and cheap (but haggle in Swahili, otherwise you might get charged Mzungu prices). 

Then some other tips and how-to's:
- If you received a laptop from Randstad, it doesn't have Microsoft Office, so no Word or Excel. Ask at the head office in Dar Es Salaam if they can fix that. 
- There is a Facebook group called Mwanza Expats. There are not that many expats here, but they do post things like events in the city, people sometimes look for others to join their safari etc. 
- Housing: I'm sure not everybody at VSO is happy with me writing this, but we weren't happy with the location of our house. The VSO office is not in the center, and there are no houses in this area. So then it's nice to live in the city center of Mwanza. Pay attention to the location of your house and say no when it's too far out. It really adds to the experience if you live closer to everything. 
- If you have a residents permit, go on safari during your placement. It's cheaper for residents than for tourist. Oh and go on safari! 
- 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. 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). Definitly 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 recieved the right amount.

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
I could write an entire list, but these are the ones people say at the office in Dar. Personally, I felt more comfortable when I spoke some Swahili. But this will be different for everybody.

If you have any questions, feel free to message me! If you have volunteered feel free to add more tips in the comment section. But most of all enjoy your time here! And don't worry (I can't say hakuna matata, because that's Kenyan Swahili, but I will say hakuna shida). People here tend not to worry, so why should you? Just relax, enjoy and see what happens!

Asante Sana!