The school of Kingswood College rests on a hill in a quaint college town, “Grahamstown,” located north east of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. Grahamstown is home to Rhodes University, which is a “quite English” school, as opposed to Stellenbosch near Capetown which is “quite Afrikaans,” or so I hear. 

Kingswood is a prestigious boarding school, I am the guest at the moment in the music department. My classes this week have been going fine. Today I was told by a third grader to “please stop using that accent.” I thought this was quite funny, but if there was any doubt that my American accent is really that bad, a fifth grader in the next class raised her had and added “I just love your accent!”

I am all safe, sound, and settled in at this point, but I must admit that getting here was a bit of a drama. I spent the day in Joburg on Saturday, (I went to the Apartheid museum, which is a must do if you are in the city for a day. Very informative and they have a great Mandela exhibit up right now) and woke up early on Sunday morning to get my flight to Port Elizabeth. I had arranged a taxi driver from the day before to pick me up at 4:30 am, and he eventually showed, but was about 20 minutes late. After a while on the freeway it became clear that my driver most likely should not have been driving in the condition he was in. Under the influence, just tired, whatever it was, he could barely keep his eyes open and was serving all over the road. I kept him awake fine enough, but just as we had almost made it to the airport, I could see it off in the distance, the car slowed, lurched, stalled, and he ran out of gas. I got out in the middle of the freeway, went to the side of the road, and flagged down another car. Frustrating, to say the least. There was no problem getting to my flight on time, but not the smoothest travel morning I have had so far.

I am only spending three weeks at Kingswood because their term ends on the seventh of August. On the sixth I will be joining the Kingswood band on their annual tour for a few nights in order to get a ride to Cape Town. I have a lot of good memories of band trips when I was in high school- so perhaps this will be a chance for me to relive the glory days? Haha. 

Been missing home a bit more recently. Still focused on the project, but looking forward to being more stable for a while when I get back to the states. The road is still my home for now and I am okay with that. More students to come, more people to meet, more songs to write, more places to see. 

Until next week,

-T

Hello.

Long time, no blog- yet again. I am going to try and get back to a post once a week. Please hold me too that! 

Only two more days here at St. Jude. Time has flown by, as usual. On Friday I will be on a plane headed for South Africa. Country and school number six this year. 

I don't have a whole lot to report right now, so check out these pictures and a short video for the time being. Expect a more in depth post in the near future. All for now.

-Tom

Hey there!

I've now been at St. Jude's for about 10 days. I haven't had a lot to do at the school during the day, so it has been cool getting to explore Arusha a bit. Arusha is a big stopover location for tourists because of its proximity to the national parks and kilimanjaro. This means there are quite a few nice little restaurants and coffee shops that cater to western tastes. I am at my current favorite coffee place, "Fifi's," as I write this.

St. Jude's is different from any of my previous schools this year in that it exists specifically to serve low-income children. The school slogan is "fighting poverty through education." Because the school relies on donor support to keep running, there is a huge team of volunteers and employees that work to keep a steady flow of income via the school sponsors. St. Jude's is also constantly hosting visitors and sponsors, so unlike some of the other places I have been this year, there are always people coming and going. This definitely makes for an different atmosphere- something I haven't experienced before.

Last week I was working on a song with a group of boys after school. We performed it at the assembly on Friday, and even though there were some technical issues with mics, I'm glad we got a chance to get up and sing it. Their song is a reggae tune called "Life Is Hard Without Education." We made a recording on Monday this week and it will be up on my soundcloud soon.

Yesterday was my first day with the secondary students. Everyday now I take a 50 minute bus ride to the upper campus and work with about 20 students for around an hour and a half. I would say a majority of these students are already writing their own songs, which is awesome. Also, they are quite a bit older- many of them are 19 and 20, so that makes things a little different too. I am super stoked to be spending the next couple weeks with them. Hip-hop is really big here in Arusha, and I'm hoping to get some of these guys a little studio time in the local recording studio. It would be so cool to have some semi-professional sounding recordings for the students. 

One more thing- This song is all over Tanzania right now, and I would bet that it is all over Africa too. The students here love it. It is a Nigerian song about a farmer that falls in love with a princess (something like that). I can't get enough. This is my jam!

Until next time,

-T