It's the Wikiendi

24 October

Well it’s the “wikiendi”! The course is over and we are getting ready to leave. This morning we did a short trek with a local guide into the Uuruguru hills, home to a small matriarchal tribe where women own the land and men do the menial work. We climbed about 500 metres to a beautiful waterfall where two of the party went for a dip in a shady plunge pool. A woman came out of a small mud-built house to shout at us not to take photographs of her vegetable patch further up the hill. I wanted to say to her that once you’ve seen one cassava allotment, you’ve seen them all; but my Swahili was not up to it.

We’ve walked under banana, aubergine and avocado trees, seen pineapple and yam and lemon grass - so many tomatoes and oranges, you’d wonder why they need to import food, but we also met a young mother, with her 18 day old baby boy. I asked the little girl by her side how she liked her new kaka; she just shrugged. Perhaps they were waiting for the health visitor to arrive. Maybe not. Anyway dad came out on to his porch and with a beaming face shouted “karibuni nyumbani” - welcome all of you to my home. The family had one room, two windows, a mud floor and two old sofas.

We passed scores of women laden with baskets on their heads returning from Morogorro where they had been selling a few bananas. We wore the best approach shoes and walking shorts – they wore kangas with worn rubber flip flops.

We pack our bags again this week-end to prepare to travel to Mtwara, journey of about 200 miles from Dar-es-Salaam. We are girding our loins already preparing for a journey of unknown length and discomfort. Most people we speak to say, “ooh that’s a long way!” VSO tell me the journey is 10 hours – “that is, the bus leaves at 06.00 and arrives in Mtwara at 5.00pm” - 10 hours (sic)! We are to be collected from our hotel at 05.00 with all eight suitcases packed and ready, we take a 40 minute taxi journey to the bus station, a huge sprawling complex full of buses cars, vendors of every kind and then hopefully get seats near the front of the bus for the long trek south. Mama Etiwaja has said that she’ll be there to meet us on Monday afternoon.

We’re both very excited now, glad this “soft landing” is over and looking forward to setting up home and doing some work. Without that we would both miss home far too much to stay here.