Nature, red in tooth and claw

Last weekend was very Tanzanian. I am a lucky lady: a family here are friends with a friend of Cath’s (Max and Sam’s mum, keep up now) in England. She put us in touch and they have been very kind to me. This weekend I went with them to Moshi, near Mount Kilimanjaro, to see their daughter’s graduation ceremony at her school. In Tanzania this is a huge deal: massive shiny-wrapped presents, bouquets, a huge celebration day, parents travelling across the whole country. I can’t help feeling their enthusiasm is slightly misplaced as a) the pupils are only 16 and b) they haven’t even done their exams (O level equivalent) yet. However, I felt it would be inappropriate to point this out and anyway, what a laugh! They danced their way into the graduation tent with a big brass band. Then they sang lots of rather cheesy songs in slightly laboured English. And chanted “God is great! That is his nature! Wooo!” in tones of genuine enthusiasm. But the most extraordinary thing was a series of playlets on a theme of “Are the old ways better or worse?”. I was just about to drop off after several laboured depictions of today’s immoral ways when suddenly, and with the same lack of solemnity as was attached to “people used to be polite to their parents and now they are not” they cheerfully yelled “But in the old days, there was female circumcision!” and then acted it out, with much writhing and screaming. I couldn’t believe it. I furtively looked around to see if anyone else was appearing mildly discomfited but no. It’s so different here.

Willbard is the father in this family, and we stayed at his mother’s house. There are many beautiful houses here, with gorgeous tropical gardens – and they are strangely scruffy inside. I am convinced that this is just different values, rather than poverty, as I’ve now been inside some rich Tanzanian homes as well as poor ones. So the grandmother’s house has huge gates, loads of space, lovely plants outside – and inside, dirty walls, no flushing loo and the water from the taps just falls through the sink onto the floor! But I now fancy myself as an international traveller adapt-to-anything type, so I only got water all over the floor three times before I remembered the brilliantly clever bucket-under-sink solution. And then you can flush the loo with the bucket of water! It’s a virtuous circle of water conservation. And also far too much bloody effort. Here’s a picture of the outside of the house and of five-year-old Nadia, though, having a bucket shower – I think she looks like Thing One out of the Cat in the Hat.

I had to get up really early on Sunday (properly early ie 5.30am) to write the funding application for renovating the school sewage. I sat in the garden, because Tanzanians all seem to keep the curtains closed in the daytime – they are used to the luxury of sunlight and try to block it out. Some of the local children found out that I was there and came to stare silently and reverentially at the typing Mzungu. I am surprised that watching me knock out sentences like “this option will reduce the risk of solid waste from the toilets clogging the pipes bleeeeeeuugh” was as fascinating as they seemed to think. Note my characteristic laptop-frown and paper-white legs still: I might as well have been back at PA in this photo.

One of the grandmother’s goats was lurking near, but I don’t think he was so interested.

Then, lo! A super surprise. Rose (the mother) took me to the village where her grandparents come from. Her grandfather is still alive and, she said, about 110. I put this down to endearing exaggeration but when I saw him, I thought he was more likely about 150 and lying about his age. He was all but mummified. And he had buried his wife about ten foot from his house, with a huge grave - this is apparently very normal, because the family wanted me to take their photo standing round it, smiling! Extraordinary.

When I am writing these posts, I keep wishing I had more words for “extraordinary” and “amazing” - or that I hadn’t splashed them around so much in my previous life. Because now I am seeing things that really do make me stop talking and just stare and stare, but I lack the vocabulary to differentiate them from delicious wine I used to drink, or the last of episode of Doctor Who. Bah. So, three things that are different from Camberwell:

Bananas!

In England, I was given to understand that bananas grew in big bunches but I never really believed it. And I never suspected that each huge bunch comes from one massive, creepy looking flower. But they do! Look! The first picture shows a flower dying and the bananas just starting – the second is the bananas more developed.

Sandra, this is truly the country of the Narnie. You would hate it. They grow everywhere, everywhere and keep the country fed. I eat four a day and have them with savoury dishes too.

Coffee! I am cringeing with shame remembering reading an article about the oppression of coffee growers before I left, comparing the cost of a Starbucks cappuccino with monthly growers’ wages etc etc. I found it most tedious and moved swiftly to that nice section in the back of most magazines about lovely gorgeous things to buy. And then this weekend, I saw piles of coffee beans drying in the sun outside people’s houses – houses with just nothing in them, and outside pit loos. I am looking forward to a nice Starbucks though when I get back, though; the nuns serve nasty instant coffee.

A dead goat! We passed a tethered goat as we walked through the village, and I was thinking oh, how sweet. A lovely Billy Goat Gruff gambolling around although in quite a restricted area, being tied up. It was going bonkers, which I naively put down to animal exuberance rather than goaty premonition, like a happy little lambkin in the English spring. I next saw it five minutes later, as I was walking back the other day. With its throat cut, being skinned. I was surprised at how bright red the blood was.

A good thing happened when I got back to the nuns’ gaff. I was really tired after a long drive – eight hours in the back of the car with another adult and two wriggly worm children – and thought “ooh good, I am home”. So I think I have settled in.