Ten vehicles in three days - a short trip to Njombe

Thursday 12^th October

It’s 9.15pm and I am sitting on the bed of my room in New Ufunuo guesthouse (Ufunuo means ‘revelation’), the heavy blanket keeping my legs snug and warm. I’m in the town of Njombe, which always feels colder than Mbeya, being at an altitude of about 6450 feet (1960 metres) compared to Mbeya’s 5600 or so feet (1710 metres). I boarded a total of five different vehicles to get here, leaving home at 9am and arriving at 5.30pm. First, just a few minutes from home, I was able to flag down a bajaj (motorised rickshaw) to get to a place where I would easily be able to catch a daladala (a sort of minibus) to get to the place where there’d be buses going to Njombe. But the daladala conductor turfed us all out part-way there and we had to wait for another daladala to take us the last leg of the journey! The conductor waited with us in order to transfer our fares, and we piled onto an already full daladala with standing room only in the narrow aisle. I arrived at 10am and joined my colleague, Konga, with whom I’d be travelling the rest of the way. We found a suitable bus fairly quickly, but then sat and waited in it for over half an hour before we finally set off – this is pretty normal on all except the big, long-distance buses, as they wait for the bus to fill up before heading off. (On the big buses, you normally get your tickets in advance, so they don’t have to wait around, and also they have a long way to go so they don’t want to be late heading off.)

The travel saga continued… the last person to sit on the seat I was on had obviously enjoyed a hard-boiled egg. Egg shell was tucked into the net pocket on the seat, and gradually fell through the netting into the open front-pocket of my rucksack that was wedged between my legs. There was also the loud, beating music to contend with (I asked the conductor to reduce the volume, which he kindly did to a more tolerable level).We eventually made it to the windy highway town of Makambako. After over 5 hours of sitting on the bus, we were ready to stretch our legs, and as Makambako is where you leave the main road, which stretches all the way from the border of Zambia to Dar es Salaam, and turn right towards Njombe, we thought we might have a chance to get off the bus for a few minutes. Sure enough, we pulled into the bus stand where most of the passengers got off to catch buses going elsewhere, and the conductor said we’d be there for 5 minutes. I got off, bought some oranges and went to the toilets. Do not think motorway service station toilets – those free, nicely tiled and with fancy hand dryers toilets! But at least this toilet (not the kind with a seat) had a full bucket of water for flushing with and a door lock that actually worked. I headed back to the bus, only to find the bus wasn’t there! I quickly walked to the exit of the bus stand in case it had moved forward, but there was no sign of it. Konga wasn’t to be seen either. I phoned him, we reconnected, but still no sign of the bus. I had been gone less than the 5 minutes I had been given, so where was the bus (and our luggage)? We left the bus stand and started walking alongside the road. Konga didn’t seem too flustered, and decided we should get a bajaj to a place further up the road where he thought the bus may have stopped. That was the fifth vehicle of the journey. And there was the bus, with the conductor looking wholly unconcerned about the fact they’d left without us! We waited there for another 10 minutes or so (for the bus to fill up more) and finally we were off.

It’s nice to be back in this guest house, somewhere familiar – I’ve stayed here twice before. I enjoyed a nice little walk at sunset, in the cool Njombe air, along quiet roads where lots of house building work is going on; it’s a rapidly expanding town. Then my colleague and I went to get food. We both chose ugali and greens, though I opted for beef while he went for gizzards. We had a long conversation about food, in which I failed miserably to explain stuffing and mint sauce as there is nothing remotely similar to these things here, while he told me how gizzards are considered a delicacy, so it’s the part the of the chicken the father would normally be given as a sign of respect. We also talked about alcohol, where I did a bit better at explaining mulled wine, while he told how he grew up drinking locally brewed alcohol. He described an idyllic sounding scene of how neighbours would help each other out with their farms: his mum’s friends would help on their family farm and after a day of labour they’d all drink the local beer she’d brewed, and then another day they’d work together on someone else’s farm and finish with more beer. Unfortunately this communal spirit isn’t quite as idyllic as it sounds, as rather a lot of beer would be drunk. The general consensus I hear from my Tanzanian friends is that when people drink here, they tend to drink too much. For this reason, drinking alcohol is prohibited by most church denominations, and Konga himself give up drinking when he became serious about his faith.

The strength of feeling many Christians hold towards alcohol was brought home to me in another way today. While I was on the bus a Sunday school teacher from the church I attend (where I also teach Sunday school) messaged me as he’d just travelled somewhere to start a new job, only to find that the shop he’d be working in sold alcohol. This went against his conscience, and despite having literally travelled across the country for this opportunity (work is hard to come by) he courageously turned the job down and will head back to Mbeya at the weekend. I couldn’t help but admire him for what he did, even if I don’t have the same conscience about drinking and selling alcohol.

I have a slight headache, probably from dehydrating myself on the bus (because you never know when you might get to use a toilet, so it’s best not to need it at all) and from the flashing lights at the place we went to for dinner. But hopefully I’ll be right as rain in the morning. Good night!

Evening walk

Friday 13^th October

I’m back under the blanket, but though the night is cool and this morning a chill mist hung low over the fields, the midday sun was fierce. Walking the streets of Njombe at lunchtime to find food, it was a relief anytime we passed under the shade of a building or tree. While on the topic, lunch proved surprisingly hard to find. We headed off with a local to find something, but the first two places only served rice and beans (and I can’t eat beans due to my IBS) and the third place was closed. We finally ended up at a decent eating establishment, but the food was surprisingly expensive. I got ugali, greens and a fried egg, costing a shocking 5000 shillings. While this doesn’t sound much in UK currency, about £1.65, it’s twice the price you’d pay for the same meal in Mbeya.

Morning walk

We came to Njombe to do a one-day workshop. The goal of the workshop was to distribute audio devices loaded with the New Testament in the Bena language and train people to hold ‘listening groups’ (a kind of audio Bible study). We had a small group of eight, less people than hoped, and all bar one came from one church denomination. This was frustrating but out of our hands, as it was the local Community Based Organisation (CBO) who had chosen who should be there. This is what we did together:

• Talked about the value of audio Scriptures
• Had an audio Bible study on Luke 15:1-10 and talked about the experience
• Discussed the qualities of a good group leader
• Had another study on the rest of the chapter
• Talked about how you decide what to listen to depending on who you are listening with and why you are listening together
• In pairs they discussed who they could listen with and what they would listen to and then they wrote their plans down.
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  Finally we mapped out the Bena language area, and gave each person 4-5 audio players – one for themselves, one for someone else in their village (from a different church denomination) and one for each of 2-3 villages they’d identified in their part of the Bena area (they all came from different villages), as well as some money to cover their travel costs to do the distribution.

This sounds very strategic when I write it down though I have some doubts about how well it will work out in reality, but I hope and pray that God may use these efforts for good.

By the time we’d finished, got a bajaj back to the guest house and walked to the bus stand to get tickets for our return journey tomorrow, it was already 6.45pm and I was tired. I retired to my room for a light tea (rice cakes and peanut butter that I’d brought with me and carrots, tomatoes and fruit from a local market), a WhatsApp call with a friend in England and…

…time to stop writing and get some sleep ready for tomorrow’s early start (the bus leaves at 6am).

Saturday 14^th October

A headache and the night-before-travel feeling made for a poor night’s sleep. We walked to the bus stand and boarded our bus. It was not going to be a particularly comfortable ride – the seats were far too narrow so I was squished up to the window with no room to adjust my position over the five plus hours that we spent on the bus. As you can imagine it was a relief to get off, though we were straight onto a daladala for the final leg of the journey, and once again I was turfed off part-way and put on another. That makes ten vehicles in three days – four bajajs, four daladalas and two buses!

And finally I was home. I gulped down a glass of cold water, put my luggage away, had lunch (a chance to chat with my housemate), finished preparing for Sunday school and then took a rest on the little sofa in my bedroom, tired from travel and lethargic from the heat (it’s over 27C in my room). I hope the rains come soon to dampen down the dust, freshen up the air and lower the temperatures, though by that time I might be in England, and probably complaining about the cold instead!