Bad dreams, basketball and some bold children

The Larium had worked its wonders again, as I was woken abruptly from a strange, rather disturbing dream, featuring an unlikely collection of people from over the years, to the irregular thuds of the unduly zealous basketball player. I silently plotted some appropriate revenge for when I return. I opened my eyes to find a small, double headed centipede making its way painstakingly up the mosquito net. You might recall that there are frequent disputes as to whether this or a smaller cousin is the poisonous type. It certainly seemed to have heads at both its head and its bottom, so I urged Caroline not to use her fingers when removing it, just in case. It was her turn to go for breakfast, so there seemed no point in my getting up just yet and it is a measure of some progress, that, although she screamed and went to find rubber gloves, she did carefully remove it and placed it gently in the garden.

A second, strong memory from our time in Mtwara is the daily negotiation for breakfast with the kitchen ladies. We never know whether there will be chappati, mandazi, sambusa or barghia; we never know whether they will have chengi  but we do know that we will have to struggle with our basic Kiswahili with the morning greetings and suffer their laughs at all our basic mistakes. One regret that I have is my woefully poor ability in Kiswahili. For a variety of reasons –some would say excuses – we can still manage little more than basic introductions and greetings and simple shopping transactions.

Children will feature prominently as we reflect on our time here. Winston  Wangi and, Salu; Witness and Joycie and Stella; none of them quite knows what to make of us. Salu has learned not to shout mzungu  but mwalimu as he asks for sweets, pens, oranges, anything....Joycie has not yet learned not to open our door and walk straight in without waiting to be asked. We don’t have sweets or oranges for them, but they always knock and ask politely if they can take our empty plastic water bottles away. They play with them for hours. Where ever we cycle around Shangani we are greeted with “Mambo”, “Good afternoon”, “Good morning Mr Strain”, “How are you Mama?”. Ironically, it will be a relief in some ways to be back at home where people don’t know us, or greet us every time they see us.

Whether people know us or not, at times they can be disconcertingly direct. Last week in church, the woman kneeling behind Caroline, slowly and deliberately plucked all the loose hairs from Caroline’s back, rolled them neatly into a tight ball and passed it reverently forward. Caroline thought it rude to do anything other than carefully place it for storage in her basket. A young man, a teacher I know slightly, stopped me in the street and as we chatted and he learned that I was returning to the UK, said,

“So will you leave me your laptop?”

This last alarming question throws up the lasting pervasive memory of this first stay in this poor country. And that is of poverty. Poverty pervades every street corner and nearly every conversation; but poverty in the teeth of development aid. We have the impression that Tanzanians have become inured to development aid. There is just so much of it. Wazungu mean money. It can be debilitating. It offends my sensibilities, but, far worse, it corrupts Tanzanians’ view of the outside world.

When we return in January, we will be much busier and hopefully, much more productive. Philbert has still much work to do in persuading Mama Mohamedi, the District Education Officer, to encourage the release of teachers. Mama Eliwaja is quietly confident that teachers will attend and the Centre will be ready; but as the dirty boxes of exam papers, which Maskat promised would be removed, are still in place; and the key to the Centre sits stubbornly in his desk drawer, I do not yet share that confidence.

When we return we plan to take a much fuller role within College, undertaking the same pastoral duties as other colleagues. We plan to expand and extend our excursions to local places of interest and try and understand better the thoughts and aspirations of this very religiously-minded body of students. The role of the tutor involves, amongst many other things, supervising early morning cleaning duties. The slashing and sweeping can be heard each morning from before 7.00am. That early morning basketball player is going to get to practice more cleaning and cutting, and less bouncing of that damned ball.