Early starts, unexpected sights, crazy food prices and an English cucumber

Sunday: Mbeya to Dodoma

Another early start. Another bus ride. A nice coach – one with a toilet and air conditioning that works. But nearly 12 hours of sitting with only a 10-minute break is unkind to the body, however nice the coach may be. I tried to watch my home church’s morning service, but halfway through the first song, the phone network became too weak to keep watching, so I was glad I’d downloaded a sermon and had plenty of other reading and listening material on my phone. The most unexpected sight on the ride was a field of camels!

The sun had set by the time I arrived, so no time to go out for a desperately needed stretch of the legs. Instead, my host was waiting for me, and I was warmly welcomed to their home with dinner ready on the table. A big thank you to Fred and Karen for taking me in. This lovely American couple work in our (SIL Tanzania’s) Dodoma office, Fred doing the same kind of work that I do and Karen serving as a translation consultant.

Monday: Dodoma

I walked to the office with Karen. It felt like a walk in the park compared to my daily trek to the office in Mbeya, even though the distance is similar, because Dodoma is so flat. The paths are sandy rather than dusty, so my feet remained relatively clean. A pleasant change, but not an environment I would want to live in, as I prefer to have mountains on my doorstep. I spent most of the day in conversation with Fred, who I supervise, discussing the literacy and Scripture engagement work for projects administered from the Dodoma office. Temperatures were surprisingly pleasant; it seems the cooler season had lingered longer than usual.

An evening walk in Dodoma, looking across to Simba Rock

Tuesday: Dodoma to Magugu

An even earlier start. Another bus ride. Same bus company, same kind of nice coach, but this time a mere 4.5 hours on the bus. The most unexpected sight was fog and drizzle, which was the first rain I’d seen since May. However, it was far from being cold and grey in Magugu. I’d come to Magugu to help facilitate a workshop on Paul’s letter to Titus. The goal of the workshop was to enable a small group of church leaders to grow in confidence in reading their Mbugwe language and to apply that to reading Titus, as the Pastoral Epistles had recently been printed in Mbugwe. The workshop began on Monday with learning to read Mbugwe, so two of the Mbugwe Bible translators were already there. I would start on Wednesday, teaching through Titus and modelling some basic Bible handling skills and Bible engagement methods along the way.

Waiting for the bus. I've never seen a coffee cart like that here before (the white van on the left) - great idea, though I didn't actually buy a coffee!

I found my way to the Lutheran church, where the workshop was being held, to greet the participants, before heading to the guest house and taking a rest. A little later, one of the translators came by and we headed to one of the many roadside cafés for lunch. The cook had been a bit heavy-handed with the salt in the greens, and the beef stew was very oily, but the meat was tender and the flavour was good.

Guest house room

The afternoon sun beat down on us as we headed back to the workshop, though thankfully the room we were using felt a bit cooler (about 27-28C). I watched the two recently trained literacy teachers help the pastors learn the Mbugwe writing system and did a bit of work on my computer as the beautiful, soft sounds of Mbugwe floated unintelligibly over my head (I can’t understand a word). Then I took my turn at the front of the small class of ten participants. I started by asking everyone to rearrange their chairs so that they were sitting in a horseshoe rather than rows!

Literacy teacher teaches how to read Mbugwe

It turned out that the translators hadn’t done some of the things I had expected at the beginning, like explaining the goals of the workshop! So, I filled in the gaps and then we handed out audio devices and explained how they could use them to listen to the Mbugwe Scriptures in different situations, such as listening with the family, listening with people at funerals, and playing them through the church sound system.

After we’d finished for the day, we paused to listen to the church choir, who were standing outside, practising for a competition. They were singing a couple of classic old hymns, in beautiful harmony, very unlike the singing I hear in my church in Mbeya. I loved it! Back at the guest house, I put on some trainers and set off for a brisk walk along a sandy road. Magugu is the worst place I’ve ever been to for people calling out mzungu and shouting out “Hi!” or saying, “Good morning”, whatever the time of day may be. I think one of the reasons for all these English greetings is that Magugu isn’t too far from a national park, so most white people they see are probably tourists who don’t speak Swahili. Mind you, I didn’t see a single other white person the whole time I was there, so I’m not so sure! I tried not to let it get to me too much and instead focused on enjoying the trees, distant hills and other sights, including one very unexpected one – zebras!

Enjoying the sights on my evening walk

I finished off my walk in the dark with a visit to the market to pick up a few bits of fruit and veg, before heading back to the guest house for a refreshing shower, a light tea and a quiet evening.

Tea time

Wednesday: Magugu

A full day of teaching. Among other things, we looked at some key Bible-handling principles. Afterwards one of the translators told me that some of the participants were saying that they’ve realised they’ve not been handling God’s Word aright. I hope that this workshop will motivate them to become more careful readers and teachers of the Word.

I joined the translators at a different café-bar for lunch, where I had ugali and fish (a whole fish) in a tasty sauce, with okra and a sour tomato in it. Sour tomatoes are a bit smaller than a normal tomato, yellow and truly sour in taste; I’ve never seen them in the UK. Someone was smoking somewhere, which is uncommon enough to be noteworthy. Despite washing my hands afterwards at the hand-washing station, they still smelt of fish sometime later! Every café has a hand-washing station – this will be a bucket with a tap in it, sitting on a stand or stool, and with a bowl underneath. Some soap (often an old plastic bottle filled with liquid soap or sometimes a pile of laundry powder) will usually be sitting on top of the bucket. These hand-washing facilities are a necessary feature as most food requires your hands. Ugali is eaten entirely with your right hand, but meat and fish also require using your hands. The meat will rarely be small and tender enough to eat whole pieces, and there is no knife and fork for delicately removing the bones from the fish or for cutting up the meat and removing the fat and gristle. So you inevitably finish every meal with greasy hands, and of course, you need to have washed your hands before eating.

Incidentally, when I say café, don’t picture a quaintly decorated room, with nice furniture and shiny appliances. Rather imagine a concrete room or a wooden structure, maybe with some tarpaulin sheeting for shade and a net curtain across the entrance. The tables and chairs will all be plastic, probably with a Pepsi or Coca Cola logo on them. The plates, bowls and cutlery (spoons) will probably be mismatching. The cooking area will be charcoal stoves with big pots on them, arranged in small corner. Large amounts of rice or ugali, stews and greens will be cooked ready, so that when you arrive they can serve your meal within just a few minutes. It’s impressive what the cooks can achieve in such a limited space and with such basic facilities.

No zebras to be seen on my evening walk, but the sky was a picture.

Thursday: Magugu

We started the day’s teaching with some more Mbugwe reading instruction, as the translators had noticed one or two things that were regularly being misread. Then we worked our way slowly through to the end of Titus 2, following a simple Bible study format with some extra teaching thrown in as needed. At the end of the day one of the participants came to thank me and said he’d already started applying what he was learning to his own Bible reading that morning, working slowly through the passage and asking himself questions about what he was reading – he even showed me his notebook where he’d written out his questions. Hearing that thrilled my heart!

Reading the Mbugwe Scriptures

At lunchtime we were visited by the wife and daughter of one of the translators. The daughter had just returned from school for a week’s holiday. Term times are different here, with the academic year beginning in January, month-long holidays in December and June, and then a few short breaks in-between. We all went to the café we’d been to the first day, where I decided to go for fried chicken with rice and greens. Thankfully, it was less salty this time, but the price made me gulp. I knew chicken was a more expensive meat option, but I hadn’t realised just how much more fried chicken would be. It was 9000 shillings, which is less than £3, so it sounds ridiculously cheap compared to a meal in England, but when you compare it to the rice and beef I’d had the first day at just 3000 shillings, it felt shockingly expensive.

Friday: Magugu

By Friday I think people were starting to get used to seeing this strange white person marching along briskly each morning. The young men hanging around with their motorbikes, waiting for people to rent a ride, didn’t bother me any more, and I mostly only received respectful greetings from the children and adults I passed, which made the walk much more pleasurable. Every morning had been overcast and pleasantly cool, but the clouds would clear away by lunchtime, leaving the afternoons hot and the evenings warm, though it wasn’t until Friday evening that I felt the need to turn on the fan in my room, as it was 27C and felt somewhat airless.

Morning roadside walks

The last day of the workshop went well. Near the end, I split them into two groups and asked them to compose a song based on what they’d learnt from Titus, giving them some specific verses they could use for the words. They soon came up with something, which they performed in the traditional Mbugwe way. The Mbugwe have a particular style of dancing in a circle, accompanied by a drum, with call and response singing. It was fun to watch them getting into the song, coming alive to the beat of the drum (an upturned bucket) and all moving their bodies in unison.

Singing and dancing

Saturday: Magugu to Dodoma

After quite a palaver, the translators had managed to get me a ticket the previous evening for the bus to Dodoma, that we were told would be there about 7am. This time it was a different bus company, Kimotco, and although the bus was somewhat less fancy, we made good time to Dodoma, arriving after just 4 hours 15 mins. Shortly after, Fred came to pick me up. Although I enjoy using Swahili, it felt good to be speaking English again, to be able to express myself freely and easily. While I am quite proficient in biblical Swahili, I can struggle to express myself when it comes to more general conversation, depending on which direction it turns. I get frustrated when I lack the vocabulary to express clearly what I’m thinking or when I fail to understand what others are saying because I’m missing a key Swahili word or adequate cultural context.

The highlight of my afternoon was mooching around a supermarket! Dodoma boasts a moderately sized store called Shoppers, so under the hot afternoon sun I walked just under 2 miles to get there, glad of the wind that kept the worst of the heat at bay. I slowly meandered up and down the aisles, with no intention of buying anything, but eventually emerging with a well-filled shopping basket! My purchases included a bike lock, a fake chamois leather for the car, some sweet treats to try (the dark chocolate coated peanut clusters were half gone by the end of my afternoon’s excursion!) and, excitement of excitement, an English cucumber. I giggled away inside as I saw products from the UK, including some Co-op gluten free pasta of all things, whose labels proudly proclaimed the British price, while the price in Tanzanian shillings was often twice that. I have no idea how these products have ended up in a supermarket in the middle of Tanzania!

Del Monte fruit cocktail for 10,300 shillings, about £2.90. Dove Farm gluten-free pasta for 21,000 shillings, about £5.90. Surprisingly the Co-op pasta wasn’t too bad at about £2.50.

Sunday: Dodoma to Mbeya

Another early start. Another bus ride. 

View from the bus

About twelve hours later I alighted in Mbeya. Home sweet home. Back to our beautiful mountains. And dust. Back to my lovely housemate and home. And to roosters, mosques and other noises disturbing my sleep. Every place I go has things to enjoy and things that are hard. God graciously sustains me. Thanks be to God.

Arriving home