Schooooool’s out for SUMmer

I have vague memories of this song from the eighties – recorded by Alice Cooper? Who, I think, was a man, with runny eye makeup? Anyway, it has firmly settled in my brain this week, because it was the last day of term on Friday. Or rather, it would have settled firmly, but my brain is hot and runny like the inside of an omelette because of the heat here, so actually it’s just splashing about aimlessly.

Apart from the sweat and the fact that I have started to exude the native odour here (kind of chemical and sweetish, like a sweaty marker pen) this has been another week where I can’t believe my luck about ending up here. But the sweat! My day goes like this:

3am
Wake up, wipe sweat off self, say Blimey it’s hot. Go back to a fevered sleep

6am
Get up, first shower of day

7.30am
Get to school. Wipe self down with sweat-flannel. Discuss sweat with teachers. Watch more sweat fall off face, with detached fascination. Wonder what the point was of putting on sun cream. Ponder impending leatheriness of skin without sun protection.

Through the day
More of same, Etc etc

2pm
Get home. Marvel at wetness of clothes and salt marks. Have shower.

Until the evening
Sweat more.

11pm
Have another shower. Briefly cool and clean, get into mosquito net still wet, to try to stay cool longer


Sweat aside, and coping with only intermittently running water (“showers” from buckets and a jug) and breaking my camera hence no photos, this week has been another corker. I had lovely chocolate in the post from Jane “postmistress” Fowler, and a proper wrapped up excitingly weighty present from Emily in Australia, which I MUST NOT OPEN until Christmas Day, apparently. And I saw a cow being slaughtered. On the school grounds. I couldn’t believe it. You may remember that on a meeting agenda a few weeks ago was “Shall we slaughter one of the school cows?” and we’d said yes. I thought it would be gently led off to the abattoir for a nice sanitised ending to a happy and useful life. But actually, the pupils of Buguruni School made a mat of banana leaves, and the audiologist stripped off, put a flowery apron on, and killed it. I stumbled onto this idyllic pastoral scene while hunting down the carpentry teacher to nag him about getting a quote for carpentry tools for a funding application. I was most taken aback. The audiologist was supervising and about twenty pupils, in uniform, were clustered round with knives, helping to skin the cow. A very glamorous teacher, Christina, was matter-of-factly holding the its head in the right place to help, trying not to get blood on her nice clothes. Then they cut the tail off and she demonstrated that it would be used later as part of a traditional drumming kit by doing a little dance and swishing it around. They were all absolutely roaring at my amazed expression. It all smelled strongly of raw meat. Which is what I suppose a dead cow is. So I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I’d just never seen or smelled one freshly killed before. I told some Tanzanian friends (who are professional people) about it today, and the husband said calmly “oh yes, when our fourth was born, he had trouble breast feeding. So the head of our tribe slaughtered a goat and made Rose some blood soup, and after the second bowl the milk came so fast that Misha could hardly keep up!”.

I am constantly impressed here by the range of things people can do: they leap from being chartered accountants to bloodied slaughtermen. Except the lovely lovely choir accompanist, who told me he was too squeamish to wring chicken’s necks, and so he held their beaks closed to suffocate them instead.


I sat in on a parent teacher meeting this week. I have mentioned my favourite child, Amina, before – here is an old photo of her with my mother.

She has to repeat nursery next year because she has missed so much school this year – sometimes her mother is too ill to bring her in. I asked her teacher if I could join in the discussion with her father, because I am concerned about her attendance. I also agreed with her that I’d pay for Amina’s school contributions, morning snacks, a new school dress and new socks and shoes. A strangely small total of about £25 for a whole year. My aunt is going to buy her a hearing aid, and one for two other children too, which is a considerably bigger total. I was all prepared to be strict and I was nervous that the father would be angry and aggressive. But he was tiny, obviously very poor, and openly delighted and grateful to be helped with what is really a very small amount of money from me, but combined with the hearing aid, utterly unattainable for him. I had the feeling I was seeing into his life too much and too casually, and it made me feel burningly ashamed about how I have moaned about my very over-privileged one in London.

But more practically, we have agreed that a neighbour will bring her to school when her mother is too ill. It’s a 30 minute walk, which is a long way in the sun for a six-year-old. At the end of the talk, I showed him some pictures of Amina on my laptop and offered to print some off for him as a present. I thought his face might actually split apart from grinning. Printing photos costs about 20p a go, but is still out of his reach as a luxury item.

Choir has been marvellous this week – lots of rehearsals and a gloriously glamorous evening at the Italian Ambassador’s residence on Friday, where we were part of a musical programme. It is always warm here in the evening, with a lovely little breeze. So attractive Italians swanned around in tiny dresses, confident that there was no need of wraps. The residence was (of course) huge and ornate, and it was covered with little fairy lights, and swarming with waiters offering sparkling wine. I had too much, but I think it helped with the pitching in the hardest song.

And as always, people here say things that have made me laugh like a drain later, when I am on my own. One of the teachers told me that I had been sent by God. Jaded consultant escapes London and fetches up in Tanzania by accident, more like. And the nuns have been delighted by my horror at being told I have big legs and have been going on about it ALL WEEK. They point at my calves approvingly and say “Good transport” and then sympathise with me for being the wrong shape everywhere else. Poor you, small bottom, big boobs - that is very unfortunate in Africa.

I actually went on a date on Saturday. With someone highly unlikely: the man who emailed everyone at the Rotary Club to say that I’d better be young, beautiful, intelligent and tall or there’d be hell to pay. We had a surprisingly nice time, with a few comedy moments caused by African openness compared with European evasion. He announced quite early on that it was good I wasn’t too young, because young women wanted lots of children, and then said a little later that he would really like to get married again. And, he continued, for example, if he married me, where would we live? Tanzania, London or Sierra Leone (which is where he’s from)? This was our first date! I hasten to add that for here, our whole conversation was totally normal and genuinely conducted with the utmost courtesy on his part. He said he was really pleased to meet me and that I had a lovely smile, paid for dinner AND drove me home, totally out of his way. I walked into the nuns’ common room when I got back, reeling from processing the differences between here and London, only to find them all watching wrestling on TV with great enjoyment. It was a difference too far and I had to go to bed to read some Jane Austen with my head torch.