It's a long way to Magugu

Why do they think 5am buses are a good idea? Not only does it involve getting up when all respectable people are fast asleep, but it’s also a recipe for a bad night’s repose, as despite having set an alarm you are worried about not waking up in time. I was amused to see a man in his dressing gown at the bus stand, making sure his daughter got safely on her bus – I’m guessing he didn’t want to be out of bed at that time either! But his daughter was just one of many children getting on buses, as the one-month June holiday had come to an end and it was time for them to return to their schools. Many secondary school children are sent to schools some distance from home, either because their parents are sending them to a private school (which any parent who can afford it will do in the hope of a better education for their children), or because they’ve been assigned to a particular government school in another town due to their exam results (I don’t quite understand how that works).

I was dressed in a skirt (I find this makes using long drop toilets easier than wearing trousers, and enables you to be more discreet if your toilet break is a bush stop) and had adopted the classy socks-in-sandals look, for which I used to mock my dad! The thing is, it’s cold in Mbeya at 4.30am (the time I had to report at the bus stand) on a June morning, but it will be far from cold by the time we’re a few hours into the journey and have dropped down from the highlands. So socks in sandals are the perfect solution to needing to keep your feet warm at the beginning, but wanting cool footwear later. I also had on a cardigan, a sweater and a scarf. It really is chilly in June!

Why do they think three minutes is enough for a toilet stop, when there are only a handful of toilets to service passengers? So people push and shove to position themselves in front of a toilet door so they can get their turn as soon as possible, and women leave their cubicles still pulling up trousers as they squeeze back through the crowd in the narrow corridor to exit the toilet block. I was last to reboard the bus at this hurried break at Makambako, but being white I think I stand a better chance of not being left behind – I’m a bit harder to forget! At our second, and last, toilet stop just outside of Iringa, we were generously given a whole ten minutes, though this was also supposed to include getting food. My neighbour did so, and so for the next little while I was regaled with the smell of fried chicken and chips and the sound of her chomping away. I’d brought a packed lunch with me.

The route from Mbeya to Magugu,
about 670km (416 miles)

Eleven hours after boarding the bus I arrived in Dodoma, and was welcomed by Fred and Karen, my hosts for the night. They are a lovely American couple who have recently joined the team in Dodoma; so recently, in fact, that they are still setting up their house and only got their guest room bed from the carpenter two days before I arrived. Although they’re new to Dodoma, they have spent many years in Africa, and we are looking forward to the experience and wisdom they’ll bring to the team.

Monday morning was another unpleasantly early start, as Fred and I reported at the bus stand at 5.45am. We were shortly joined by the Tanzanian colleagues who would be travelling with us to Magugu. The journey involved about five more hours on a bus plus a short ride in a little mini-bus. I felt pretty rough by the time we arrived – dehydrated, tired and with a headache. However, instead of being able to collapse on a guesthouse bed, we headed to the church where we’d be holding the Sunday school teacher training workshop in order to meet and have lunch with the teachers who had already arrived.

Why do I put myself through all of this? Because God’s love compels me. I want children to hear the stories of the Bible in a language they understand, taught in a way that is engaging, so that they enjoy Sunday school and remember what they learn. And so I counted it a privilege (except for when my alarm went off before 4am on Sunday morning) to have an opportunity to train Sunday school teachers in the Mbugwe language area so that they, in turn, can more effectively help children engage with God’s Word. In particular, with the help of the Mbugwe translators and occasional input from Magdalena, a literacy/SE worker, I would be training them to use a set of Old Testament Bible story books translated into their language, which will help the children see God’s longing to be in relationship with the people he made and loves and how he has made that possible through Jesus.

It was wonderful to sleep until dawn on Tuesday morning, except for being woken by a black cricket that I found in the corner of my mosquito net. The shrill sound it emitted startled me into wakefulness. At first I thought it must be outside, but the noise was so loud that it didn’t take long for me to pinpoint its location, knock the cricket into a tub and throw it out the window. I was still tired, but ready for the first day of the workshop. Eleven of the expected fifteen participants had arrived, coming from the surrounding Mbugwe language area. Our first day focused on how the Bible is one story about the relationship between God and man, and how important it is to begin at the beginning in order to understand the story properly. The Mbugwe translators then spent a few hours teaching how to read Mbugwe. Its writing system feels more complicated than most of the languages that I have worked with in Mbeya, having various markings for tone and tense as well as having seven vowels. Then we started to read the Mbugwe Bible story books, getting through the first two, together with questions and teaching, before finishing for the day, rather later than we should have done.

The power went out as I was eating my tea that evening. I continued by the light of my solar light, had a cold shower and then noticed that a building across the way had lights on. Did they have a generator? I wrapped a kitenge (colourful African fabric) around me, to make myself respectable as I had been lounging around in my room in a t-shirt and leggings, and ventured out of the guest house. Everywhere else lights were on, it was only our guest house that was in darkness, but there were no staff around to deal with the situation. Fred called one of our colleagues, who had the phone number of someone who works at the guest house, and he shortly arrived and turned on the solar power which meant we got lights back, but there was still no mains electricity because the money on the meter had run out! He promised he’d go and sort it out straight away. I wasn’t convinced – I could smell alcohol on his breath and doubted that buying electricity was his first priority. The power came back on in the middle of the night.

On day two we worked our way through the rest of the books, breaking up the reading and teaching with children’s songs and games. I was tired by the end, but a brisk evening walk with Fred and a beautiful sunset sky, followed by a hot shower with good water pressure (a rare luxury) was very restorative.

I always find the teaching topics that we cover on day three the hardest to communicate well. After discussing how children learn and the importance of preparation, we started to look at how to plan a Sunday school class, exploring each part of what could be included in an interactive lesson. We talked about having an opening activity (and played a game together as an example), followed by a review of your previous week’s lesson, followed by an introduction to your new lesson and then prayer. Next comes reading the Bible story and teaching. It’s the ‘teaching’ that often stumps the teachers! I had prepared a simple curriculum for them providing the main teaching points and application for each Bible story book. I explained how they can use this as a base for what they teach, but that they should make sure they engage the children through questions, illustrations or examples from daily life as they go. I did an example. Then they prepared and practised in pairs. There were some good ideas in what they did, including little dramas, but for the most part they struggled to communicate the main teaching points in a logical and interactive way. I think what they really need is repeated opportunities to observe a good teacher, as well as time to practise and evaluate several times over. I think very few teachers have had the opportunity to regularly observe good teaching, either at school or in church, so a lot more support is needed to develop these skills than a few hours in a one-off workshop can provide.

Practising telling the Bible story using the Mbguwe books

While they were preparing to teach, I headed off to the other side of the main road with one of the translators in an attempt to find plastic wallets for the teachers to keep their books and handouts in. We visited four little stationery shops, but only found two such wallets (we needed twelve). It’s only a small roadside town, so this wasn’t particularly surprising, but I appreciated the efforts of the staff who phoned other stationery shops to see if anywhere else had them. The answer was no. So we resorted to buying small bags from a shop that also sold homemade peanut butter. If I hadn’t brought my own jar of peanut butter with me, I’d have bought some to sample – it’s a staple part of my diet; I love pure, unadulterated peanut butter. It was a very pleasant experience wandering around with the elderly translator, as no-one called out silly things in silly voices, unlike when I am alone. Magugu has to be one of the worst places I have experienced for people calling out "Mzungu!" or greeting you in a silly voice or making stupid comments.

After my evening walk with Fred, in which we did our best to ignore the secondary school students imitating the way we walked and trying to speak to us in English (but in silly voices), I was looking forward to another hot shower, but every time I turned on the shower, the power tripped and went out. I’d wait a few seconds, they’d switch the power back on, and I’d try again. I tried this several times and eventually gave up and had a cold shower! I had some work I wanted to do after eating my tea (the usual carrot sticks, cucumber, tomato, oatcakes, peanut butter and an orange, which was unfortunately so dry I ended up throwing half of it away, and some chocolate), but when it came to it I felt weary and unmotivated. It had been a tiring day. But there was so much to be thankful for, from the desire the teachers showed to learn, to the fun of playing games and singing together, to having Fred there to debrief with, to God’s weird and wonderful creation seen in the baobab trees and sunset skies.

The last day went well. They did a good job of putting memory verses to music or actions and had fun seeing different ways to do quizzes to review a lesson. At the end my colleagues from Dodoma and I each received a gift of a bag of rice, as Magugu is reputed to have delicious, aromatic rice. So we said goodbyes with smiles all round, phone numbers exchanged and invitations to come back. After another good walk with Fred, I was thankful that the shower behaved itself this time and I wouldn’t have to wash my hair in cold water.

Saturday morning, ready to leave the guesthouse

I was relieved to find out that our bus back to Dodoma would be coming from Arusha and therefore wouldn’t be arriving until 8am, so no need to get up any earlier than normal. By 7.30am we were at the bus stand. We waited. And waited. The bus finally turned up at 9am and our seats were right at the back. Thankfully several people got off at the next stop and so we were all able to move forward a bit so that we weren’t flying out of our seats over every bump. Occasionally a vendor would get on the bus at one stop to sell their wares and then get off at the next. One such vendor was a boy with a big pan of fried something. On closer inspection it turned out to be full of what looked like tiny roast chickens (each one no more than 10cm long). I have no idea what kind of birds they were and wasn’t sure I wanted to ask!

With Magdalena (back) and Emilia (front), colleagues from
Dodoma, as we wait for our bus

Fred arranged for a bajaj to come and pick us up from the bus stand, using Bolt, which is a service like Uber. A few minutes later it turned up, we squeezed in with our luggage and 15 minutes later had arrived at Fred and Karen’s house. It was wonderful to gulp down a glass of iced water and enjoy a baked potato and cheese, a refreshing change after a week of having rice or ugali, greens and a couple of pieces of fried beef for lunch every day. I enjoyed a quiet afternoon, doing a bit of work and going for a short walk before relaxing in Fred and Karen’s company over dinner and into the evening.

Sunday morning was another early start. We got to the Shabiby bus terminal (Shabiby is the bus company I used) just before 5.30am only to discover that my bus was at Dodoma’s main bus stand (despite a colleague calling to confirm the bus stand and time), but I was just in time to get on one of their other buses going to that bus stand. It turned out that most of the people on the bus were doing the same as me, so when we arrived at the big, almost empty, bus stand, we alighted and found our respective buses. Just after 6am we were off again. But instead of the 11 hours it had taken to get to Dodoma, it took us 13 hours to get to Mbeya, mainly due to the Prime Minister! We were held up twice by police, who were stopping vehicles so that the PM and his retinue in their shiny 4WDs could speed past to get to wherever they were going (I heard it was something to do with opening a new school). The second time this happened at least gave me a chance to get off the bus, make myself comfortable, stretch my legs and have a friendly chat with the bus conductor.

Sunrise from the bus, as we left Dodoma

During the journey I exchanged occasional remarks with the lady sitting next to me. At one point she asked the usual question (one of the first questions one is likely to be asked when getting to know someone) of, “How many children do you have?” When I answered none, she looked at me compassionately and asked whether I’d not been able to conceive yet. I replied, “I’m not married, that’s why I don’t have any children.” She looked at me in surprise, and basically said, “Why should that stop you?” I explained that as a Christian, I believe that children should be conceived within a marriage. She told me, “We don’t really worry about that here.” This was despite her telling me she was Catholic. Sadly this conversation was no surprise to me, because I have heard it before and seen it lived out time and time again, both inside and outside of the church. I’m sure there are many reasons why this is the case, though I think a contributing cultural factor is the high value placed on having children, such that it’s shameful for a woman not to have children and men will leave their wives or tell them to return home to their parents if they don’t conceive. In turn, this leads to women having children before marriage, almost, it seems, to prove that they are fertile before they’ve tied the knot (sometimes those children are had with the man they then marry, but often not).

Some way through the bus journey I really fancied a juicy orange. When a bus stops somewhere, vendors usually come running to the windows of the bus, holding up boxes of snacks and drinks or bowls of fruit or a particular local product (like when we stopped near a reservoir the vendors were selling fried fish). Oranges are often among the options – they shave off the skin with a knife, just leaving the clean pith underneath to make them easier to eat. So, when we came to a bus stand I looked out at the vendors. The only orange vendor was some distance away at another bus. Fail. At the next bus stop, I saw oranges and indicated that I wanted the vendor to come over but just as she arrived at my window our bus pulled away. Fail. At the next bus stop I saw my chance – the lady told me it was two oranges for 500 shillings, and just as I was about to hand over the money the bus conductor opened the doors of the under-bus storage, which rose up right in front of my window, preventing any further communication with the orange seller. My desire for an orange seemed doomed! But when the conductor pulled the doors back down, there was my lady holding up two oranges in a little bag and change ready for my 2000 shilling note. Stretching my arm as far down as I could, we were able to make our exchange. The orange was a welcome relief for my thirst, as I was afraid to drink too much water because there wouldn’t be any more toilet stops until we reached Mbeya several hours later.

Arriving at Mbeya’s central bus stand, I alighted from the bus, claimed my backpack and hoisted it onto my back for the ten minute walk home. It was heavy, with the big bag of rice (5 or more kg) in the bottom of it, but it felt good to stretch those legs and enjoy the cool evening air and the pink sky over the mountains as dusk turned to night. I’d enjoyed my trip, the teaching had been fun, the participants enthusiastic, my colleagues engaged and supportive, and the travel exhausting by safe, but it was good to be home.