Can we borrow your mouse?

We were to be spending a few weeks working on an educational project in Boman G'ombe, a village between Arusha and Moshi in the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro.

View of Mount Kilimanjaro 

Our Swahili was non existent at this point but within the school community this wasn't a great problem, we could get by with English and a Swahili phrasebook. We passed our days helping out at the school, doing art and photography lessons. The school had a computer center but there were problems with some of the computers so I offered to try fix them.


Running a computer class in a village that has very unreliable electricity is very difficult. Most of the time there is no electricity and when there is, the power level is so  inconsistent that the computers will regularly restart due to lack of power. The mouse didn't work on one of the computers, I concluded was a problem with the motherboard.  If my diagnosis was right then a USB mouse would fix it, the problem was we were a 2 hour bus trip to the nearest town where I might be able to buy a USB mouse. If I was wrong I'd have wasted time and money on a useless mouse. It doesn't sound like a big deal now that I write it but at the time in the situation it was.

Computer class at Bomang'ombe

I found out that their was an Internet cafe at the other end of the village so figured I'd go there and see if I could borrow a mouse. We didn't really think more about it, that was our plan. On our way we came across a small restaurant so we decided to stop for some breakfast. We managed to order vegetarian food despite not speaking any Swahili. Just after we ordered the principal of the school entered, immediately she came over to see how we were doing. She was amused as to how we'd managed to go to the restaurant and order vegetarian food despite not speaking the language, she was even more amused or possibly worried when we explained our plan to borrow a mouse from the Internet cafe.
After breakfast we made our way to the Internet Cafe, it was a very small room with 2 computers. They also suffer from the same electricity problems as the school which makes it difficult to run an Internet cafe without a reliable source of electricity. In a combination of sign language, English and a few badly pronounced Swahili words from the phrasebook we explained that we wanted to borrow a mouse. We explained it was for the school, that we needed it to test something. We even mentioned the principals name but that didn't work as she didn't know her. The girl didn't quite get it no matter how many ways we tried to explain.


Eventually I said I would like to use the Internet for a half hour and paid for this time. Then I slowed disconnected the mouse explaining that I'd return it in a half hour. I'm not quite sure the girl understood what we were doing but she agreed it was OK for us to leave with the mouse. She wasn't losing money as we'd paid for the computer so she seemed content with that. We returned to the school, tested and confirmed them mouse worked then returned it to the Internet cafe. The girl at the cafe was quite pleased to see us return with the mouse. Strange how it seemed like a perfectly logical solution at the time but I wouldn't dream of walking into an Internet cafe in Dublin and asking them if I could borrow a mouse.

Almost Famous in Argentina

One of the last tasks I did in Baradero was to paint their logo on a big tank. Daniel knew I liked sketched so he asked if I’d like to do it. It was challenging due to the size and height of the tank. Normally I sketch on paper so sketching on the side of a tank while on top of a ladder was quite different. Once I was happy with the sketch I painted the design in white.

Work in Progress

The end piece worked out quite well and is visible from almost everywhere on the site. In hindsight it probably would have been much easier to have sketched the design on paper and created a stencil to paint the design on the tank.

Swimming pool and sports grounds with Logo visible in background

After a week I left Baradero returned to Buenos Aires, moved into my apartment and started Spanish school. My intention was to return to Baradero for their official opening which was a weekend a few weeks later. I went to the bus station after Spanish class on the Friday to get a bus ticket but they were all sold out. Baradero isn’t a popular tourist destination, actually I should say it isn’t a tourist destination so this was surprising. Turns out the weekend in question was a long weekend in Argentina so the same as in Ireland everyone goes away from the long weekend. All buses for Friday and Saturday were booked out so the earliest I could get was Sunday morning. I’d miss half of the party but seeing as it was a long weekend it wasn’t too bad. When I got to Baradero I saw their invite/flyer for their opening party. I am now famous in Baradero.

Almost Famous

One week volunteering in Argentina

I spent a week in Baradero, working on a range of different tasks each day. They are very flexible in relation to what work you do. You don’t have to do anything you don't want to do and if there was something you interested in then you can ask to work at that.

Some days I was working in the vegetable garden and feeding the animals, another day I cleaned out a room, helped lay carpet and assemble the gym equipment. The room is now the gym! Another two days were spent digging a trench around the swimming pool and another day I helped with some tree’s that needed to be cut down.

Emptying the trailer!

Feeding the Chanchos (pigs)

My time in Baradero was a great introduction to the way of life in Argentina. I was introduced to Mate (This deserves a blog post of its own), how people greet each other (again maybe a blog post in itself), food and meal times.

From the time I had spent in Buenos Aires I knew it was common for people to have dinner late at night. For example many restaurants are full of people eating dinner at 12am in Buenos Aires. Breakfast isn’t really a meal in Argentina, well not like it is in Ireland. Generally people will have a drink such as tea, coffee or mate and maybe a pastry. Lunch is usually around midday and in Baradero was a large meal. Then around 5 or 6pm people generally have an afternoon snack (biscuits or pastries) again accompanied by tea, coffee or mate. And finally dinner is normally around 9pm or later and it is a big meal.