Early days in Masasi

I groaned as I approached the small mini-bus leaving for Masasi. I’d thought I just felt the groan but it was heard by the young man selling nuts who flashed a broad white smile as he realsized what I’d seen and said, “Jambo”. I’d hoped for the larger Chinese ‘Coaster’ bus, high off the road, with wider seats and generally in better condition but luck had cast me forward to the creaking daladala which three men were trying to jump start as I negotiated the last space over the engine casing, facing backwards down the bus; eleven faces half smiling, half grinning as they watched this sweating white man perch close to the door. Mercifully, whether they took pity on me or I was considered a liability so close to the door, I was told to move to the front where a cushion had been placed next to the gear lever and I could squash my bum between the driver and the passenger seat. Things were looking up.

As we chugged away from the bus stand, leaving a thin trail of blue smoke hanging in the morning, I turned to my neighbour to greet him. He was a man of perhaps sixty, unshaven and with a lean weathered face and stern eyes. We greeted each other and he asked me in Kiswahili where I was going. I answered him, returned the question and he answered in English. From here a lively conversation followed in which I learned a great deal about farming, about land prices, about the Courts and about my fellow passenger, Paul. He was a farmer, with ten acres, growing maize and breeding Nile perch. Although he had never attended secondary school and had never left the Ndanda area, he spoke excellent English using archaic vocabulary, indicating a superior education which had stayed with him for fifty years. We discussed the problems he had in getting his fish to market. If he had a refrigerated unit he could transport the catch to Mtwara where he could sell his fish for at least twice the price it got locally. If there were a cooperative to share transport costs, he and his family would be significantly better- off.

“Why then Paul is so much of the land around here uncultivated?” I asked, perhaps a little naively.

“You know Adrian. Poverty is not something you can count. It is in the mind.”

Perhaps, I thought; but there is still much that the government and local development agencies could do to make the business of doing business much simpler and more profitable. Replacing a large culvert under the road between Ndanda and Masasi has for example taken nearly twelve months so far. In Europe it would take a week.

I was in Masasi to meet the education department. The senior officer had already told me that he would be in Mtwara for a seminar and that we should perhaps meet there. I declined and chose instead to meet his junior officers who in any case would be the ones doing the practical work of preparing my programme. The two ‘Statistics officers’ were there to meet me – Richard and Saidi. Richard runs a snacks shop; Saidi a phone repair shop. Both these businesses would prove very useful to me in the days to come; but first, the business of education and our first challenge. They reported that there was no budget to pay for tea and mandazi (a tasty doughnut eaten without sugar). I phoned Bushiru, the senior officer

“Am I interrupting your lunch Bushiru?”
“Don’t worry, Mr Adrian. How can I help?”

“Well, whilst you’re eating your rice and beans and meat and spinach which is provided to you by the government as part of the conditions of you attending your meeting, we are discussing our attempts to find five hundred shillings (40p) for each teacher attending my course to have a cup of tea and a snack. Can you help?”

He laughed so loudly down the phone, everyone could hear and they glanced at one another with knowing looks.

“I get your point Mr Adrian, but you know Tanzania is a very poor country and there is no budget.”
“Mmm,” I said. “I get your point too.” And left it at that. Saidi was keen to distract me and reassure me that we could overcome these challenges.

We visited the school where my programme of teaching four weeks spoken English to teachers from across the district would be delivered. We sat in the staff room nibbling fried cassava roots and sipping hot sweet tea when my eye caught sight of a hand written notice in Kiswahili giving a timetable for the power cuts across Masasi. I had struggled with laptop and projector and cables on large bus, small bus, daladala and bajaj to get to this school, to find that on each and every day except Fridays, there is no electricity anywhere in Masasi for three months or until essential maintenance is completed. Essential maintenance like that culvert under the road had already taken a lot longer than three months but I was also quickly aware that others were not complaining; one teacher reminded us that once the essential maintenance was completed the power supply would be much more reliable. It reminded me of the story of the man who beat his own head on the ground because it felt so good when he stopped.

Against all these odds, the teaching programme started on time, in the chosen venue with all the teachers attending. On the first day, we had to switch the schedule to ‘quiet discussion’ from ‘speech making’, as we couldn’t compete with the crashing and banging of rain and thunder overhead for over an hour but on the second day, tea and mandazi were served on paper plates and delicate white cups, thanks to Richard’s snacks business.  Saidi prefers to talk of challenges not problems and he’s very good at overcoming them.