Lions led by donkeys.

I nearly lost my temper. Nearly, but not quite. Instead, I joined scores of fellow Mtwarans and joined a crowd of earnest, expectant customers hoping to catch the eye a young bank clerk, in white shirt and a studied look of apathy. I had been to the bank the day before, waited in a snaking, sweating, shuffling queue for just over thirty minutes until I realised that, at that rate of progress, I wouldn’t be served before the bank closed. So I left and returned this morning, ten minutes before the bank was due to open. It opened ten minutes late.

I arrived at the teller’s desk in time to watch him indolently switch on his computer and stare aimlessly anywhere but at my face. I forced him to say “nzuri” to my “habari yako?”. He looked at my cheque and told me to go to the most inaptly named “Customer Service” desk; actually a counter, with one clerk serving the pressing throng. A man came from behind, smiled at the supervisor and had his cheque approved over the heads of the customers in front of him. Against any principles I might have had, I did the same. In old-fashioned colonial style, I held my British passport aloft, smiled at the supervisor and had my cheque approved immediately.

After morning chai, I moved across to the dormitories to supervise the “cleaning of the environment”, actually the slashing of thick, long grass and short, stubbly bushes which have not been cut since mid November. Using a kwanja or curved, blunt blade, about a metre in length, sixty students worked in shifts for two hours to cut an area of about half a soccer pitch. Edison, my fellow tutor on duty, and I, supervised while the students laughed, sang and occasionally spoke to me, made gentle fun of my accent and gradually became bold enough to ask questions. Why was I here? Am I German?

Cutting grass is hard hand-blistering work and they have to take turns as there are more students than kwanja, but no-one times anyone. When one person is tired, he or she calls a colleague to take over. And they do, without complaint, often with a joke. This class of sixty students will spend every waking hour together over the next eighteen months; in study, in revision, in prayer and in duties around campus. Edison told me that he hoped that with Tanzania’s development, it might not lose this spirit of kinship and community, a quality in short supply in the bank this morning.

There are more private cars in Mtwara nowadays, many more driven by Africans, white Landcruisers owned by NGOs, and big vehicles – lorries and diggers – presumably connected to the gas and oil installations near the port. There is some investment in roads. One, much needed near us, I am told, owes its existence to the planned visit to a nearby school by the President later this year. We mused today, as to how much of President Kikwete’s itinerary we could foretell by tracing the route of new roads laid. But the more cars and lorries there are, the greater the chance of the odd accident or two. As cyclists we have grown used to a comfortable pace of life where a highway code, were it to exist, would comprise one rule,

“Try and read the other driver’s mind.”

For all the new roads being built or improved in Mtwara, there is still no talk of the road to Dar being finished. This is the main highway linking southern Tanzania with the rest of the country. The unmade road makes it impassable for many weeks and slow at the very best of times. The additional costs for transportation add a good few percentage points to the cost of living down here. Sofa cushions, for example, made in Tanzania, but bulky to transport, cost as much as they do in Europe. They are foam and come in one size only, because all sofas are the same size and design. They are nearly all gold, yellow or brown in colour, of various designs and sold in packs of ten cushions, costing the equivalent of two weeks wages for a teacher.

The cost of everything goes part way to explain why I have had such difficulty in getting anyone to throw anything away whilst I have been clearing the Teachers’ Centre. Teaching aids made from wooden boxes and rice sacks are impressive for their ingenuity, but thirty year old typewriters offer this country nothing. Still Maskat looks at his most serious and wise when I ask him if we can throw them away.

“You see Mr Adrian, it’s not just that they might be useful, but if we throw them away, that is exactly when the Ministry will come and ask to see our inventory”.