18th March – Return to Arusha with Gratitude

This is the last installment of the saga of my journey around the country and visit to my old home.

I had another close friend to visit before leaving Singida and so spent Friday evening with her. She had been my right hand in more ways than one while we were at Murigha, and was the person I always went to for advice. She was loaned to Murigha from the Government and so when I left she returned to the Ministry of Education and is now Head Teacher of a primary school near Singida. We had a wonderful evening of catching up on the news, including all the news of her seven children and by now several grandchildren. It was a late night and by 5.00 a.m. the next morning Bibiana and I were up and getting ready to leave. We left on the bus at 6.30 and were about 50 kms. out of Singida when we came upon about eight lorries stuck on the road. By good luck our bus had a very good driver, and so (after one failed attempt) managed to thread his way around the lorries and pass through. The bus itself looked like it was sort of put together with this and that, and there was some contraption behind the driver that I think took the exhaust from the motor out the top of the bus. The door handle on the bus was two bolts welded together in some fashion – it reminded me a bit of Greg’s pliers …… But the driver got us here to Arusha by about 1.30 p.m., for which I was very grateful. I had a front seat so the bumps weren’t bad; however, it was a seat for three people and the other two women were as wide as I or more so and the bus got no marks for comfort as we squeezed in. The main thing is that we arrived safely. Bibiana got off the bus at Nangwa where she went to spend the weekend at home.

Arriving here I was both energized and tired, energized by being with so many good friends and by the fantastic welcome by everyone, and tired by a lot of excitement and conversation and speaking constant Swahili. I realized from this trip that there were three things that I need to get used to again: one is using bed nets in order to sleep at night without the company of mosquitoes. These nets do a good job but it’s a pain to have to fix them to the bed every night and then my feet usually touch the net anyway. Still they help. Another thing I needed to do that I hadn’t done for awhile was have a bucket shower. Again, that works ok but it isn’t quite the same as having warm water flow over you. And the third thing that I need practice on is the Asian (squat) toilets. When I left five years ago I was very used to them and actually preferred them because they seem to be a cleaner alternative. My knees have forgotten, however, how to squat and so I need to practice. I hope that all I need is practice/exercise and that it’s not aging knees that cause the pain.

I hope to be able to scrounge up some help for scholarships for students. The school has had to raise school fees in order to pay salaries and to replace the roof tiles that have broken. When we built the school we opted to use locally made tiles for the roofs but it seems as though they were not the best choice. Almost all of the roofs are leaking quite badly now (there are actual gaping holes in the roof of the dining hall) and they need to be replaced with iron sheets. The administration still wants to give priority of access to education to girls from the local area but the families of most of those girls can only afford part of the nearly $400. per year school fees. We’ll see what happens.

Life is a great gift and mine has been wonderously blessed. I am so grateful.