Going to school on a rainy morning (Godfrey on my left)

Me, Godfrey and Lockie hanging out before dinner.

Report by Sasha Fraser

Recently my friend Godfrey invited me to see his house in Mkyashi near Kilema. He is my best friend here and so I was happy to go to his home.

When I went to Godfrey’s house I met his mom Rosa, aged 39, and his dad, John, aged 41 and his older brother , Damian, aged 19. John owns a duka, which is like a small general store in Canada. Rosa owns a bar which serves, pombe, an African beer made from bananas and wheat. One gourd filled with pombe is equal to ten beers in Canada and costs 1,000 Tanzanian shillings (roughly one dollar in Canadian money).

When my dad and I went to the bar, an old man was there. He wore old sandals and worn out pants and looked poor. I asked him how many buckets of pombe he had drunk and he said 5 or 6. I WAS AMAZED! How could he drink that much?

I noticed that the bar was a sort of meeting place for old people and maybe they were gathering there to tell stories. Not many young people were there.

Then about an hour after that , when Godfrey and I finished playing soccer, I saw a young child drinking a small bag of Premium Vodka. I thought that would be illegal but my dad told me that in Tanzania many children do drink alcohol. I think that is dangerous because children could get brain damage from drinking alcohol at a young age.

We went on to Godfrey’s house. We went inside while he was getting changed out of his school uniform. I sat down in the living room chair that in Canada would have been junk. As I looked around I noticed the house had no fancy lights like in my house. There was only a light bulb with no cover dangling from the ceiling.

I looked at the living room ceiling and it appeared like a wrecked boat at the bottom of the sea, with many dark holes. There were probably a lot of mosquitoes up there, which could bite Godfrey in the night when he is sleeping and give him malaria. I plan to get him a mosquito net so this won’t happen.

When I look in Godfrey’s bedroom, there is an old bed with no mattress. He lies on boards to sleep. He has a box with his clothes in it. There is no electric light in his room and I don’t think he is able to read or study in the dark. He must get all his work done during school hours because he has many chores to do at night.

Even though he lives in simple conditions, Godfrey is happy because he has good parents and he is an excellent soccer player. On the field, no one can take the ball away from him and his shot is so accurate he could hit a marble falling from the sky.