UN Day Part 1- Community Service

United Nations Day (UN Day) marks the birth of the UN. This year the UN celebrates its 64th anniversary on October 24th. The aim of UN Day is increase the world's awareness of the aims and achievements of the UN and to gain support for its work. As part of the commeoration here in Tanzania, the UN agencies participated in a UN Day community service activity. On October 23rd (tomorrow) we will be going for an official flag raising ceremony (a post will follow). I participated in the community service activity and have included photos of the event. I've decided to share the factual occurences of the day. It would not be so smart for me to share my opinions, negative or positive, as I still work for the UN. Those of you who know me, especially the one who got a 100% on my 'How well do you know Payal Patel' quiz, will be able to imagine how I felt.

The day unfolded like this:

This year's UN Day theme- education. All agencies were asked to participate and we were split into 3 groups to go to 3 different schools. The group I was in was taken to Ruvuma Primary School. Since I was told there was not enough room in the cars going, I had to take our agency's car with me as the sole passenger. We arrived at the school in the morning after about an hour's drive. We were greeted by a pathway lined with kids singing and dancing to welcome us. The jeeps and minivans (about 6) proceeded to inch through the welcome party surprisingly without crushing any toes along the path.

Once we exited our vehicles, we all gathered in our matching, newly made UN shirts and hats. We enjoyed the kids singing and dancing and then we shook every child's hand. They continued to sing and dance and giggled at the opportunity to shake some of our hands. Following the hand shaking and greeting we sang and danced our way back to the start of the line of children and sat down in school desks. I often heard the comment 'Sitting in these tiny desks brings back so many memories of my school days.'

The UN representative of our group then gave a brief talk on the importance of education and the UN's committment to community service. During this introductory talk, I sat in front of two UN staff members having an entirely different converstation about their personal lives. Caught between the two dialogues I was unaware that we were just given instructions on where to go. So I just followed a couple of people I knew and ended up in classroom 2. There were 3 classrooms that the UN had donated resources for repairing the concrete floors. We entered the classroom and were told to clear out the concrete that was being broken. We formed a chain and started passing chunks of concrete.

Some of us worked very hard and some of us watched.

After some point the classroom became overcrowded with people so some of us started talking/playing with the kids. Too many people and not enough work.

After about 45 minutes, with cut hands, I went in search of some water. I found the person in charge of water and he told me that he couldn't give me any because they didn't bring enough for the kids and we couldn't drink in front of the children. I said that makes sense and I turned around to see UN staff members drinking away. I understood that there were exceptions to what I just heard, but I didn't mind. So I went back to the room but decided that I was being useless and ended up taking photos of the kids.

After a few photos, I went back to the classroom to see if I could be of help, still I was useless. Then a man brought in about 6 bottles of water and handed it to one of the senior staff members. All the children immediately ran to the woman and starting jump up and down trying to grab the water from her hands. Now they were thirsty. The school had no water and the UN didn't bring enough water. She asked the students to get in a line and separated them into groups of about 6 and gave each group 1 bottle to share, while right outside the door some people had their own bottle.

Now I'm not sure exactly what this girl was doing with the water and who it was for, but...

After an hours work we were rounded up and taken to sit back in the desks. An award was given and the bags of concrete that the UN donated were brought out. That was it. We contributed an hours work and left the mess for someone else to finish. We piled back into our jeeps, drove through the line of kids singing goodbye and that was our day of community service.

At lunch that day I was talking to a colleague and asked why priority was given to the floor when the school could have been painted to enhance learning or why not get the children drinking water by perhaps building a rainwater harvesting tank. She couldn't tell me why priority was given to the floors, but did say this is how it is. There were mixed reactions after this event. One colleague said, "Sometimes I don't like to remember that I'm part of the UN." Another colleague said, "Well, I've done my contribution for the month." My reaction...

Let us see how the flag raising ceremony goes tomorrow.