The Last Post

Day is done….gone the sun….from the sea, from the hills, from the sky! Ect ect, to quote Nigel Molesworth. At the beginning, when the only thing keeping me here was the potential shame of returning after only five minutes, I never thought I’d feel so sad to go and so nervous about picking up my English life again.

I wanted to make this last post the best one ever, covering the following topics:

• What I’ve learned this year and how I’ve changed
• The Donor Culture: have we done enough to atone for colonialism? Or have we gone too far?
• A selection of the best memories
• Some excellent jokes
• A special reportage feature on Amina

But of course, it will be just the normal school minutiae, a poo story, and a worn-out but irresistible joke about a cow. I was far too busy shouting at the playground contractor at the school for not finishing early enough, and going to choir rehearsals, and shopping, and watching trashy TV and drinking South African chardonnay with Lovely Cynthia to do any proper writing. Actually, I do most of the TV watching out of us two. Every time we plan to have a lovely girls’ night in, like when she MADE me agree to watch a DVD of the horribly gory Last King of Scotland, she falls asleep on the sofa about two minutes after the opening credits, leaving me to watch unspeakably bloody torture or grapple with the plot of Harry Potter on my own. Despite this huge character flaw, I have had such a great time living with her for the last six weeks. Like when my much-loved lodgers Hooch and Stu came to Shenley Road, it’s been like being young again but improved by my being very slightly more mature and less stroppy. I have been delighted to find that I have made real friends here, not just people filling in the gap until I get back to the UK. Cynthia, Tori, Soma, Lucille and Jennifer: super ladies who have let me take, take, take from them this year.

Here are Cynthia, Tori and Soma at our Last Goat Curry Night together:

I will be leaving so much behind, and not just the things I will doubtless leave under the bed by mistake. Every single day, I see or feel something that makes me glad I came. I will miss the huge bright Tanzanian full moon, and the picture-book crescent moon. I saw baby gorillas fighting and mass graves in Rwanda. I was this close to a massive, curious elephant. I couldn’t believe how graceful giraffes were. I love seeing huge flowers and gigantic seedpods, and walking past trees that smell of nutmeg and spicy apples at night. I love being greeted by 27 different people whenever I walk somewhere. I love the difference between the manicured tropical lushness of the Peninsula and the scummy, rotting-meat-smelling, rubbish-everywhere area where the school is. I am constantly amazed by how attractive the African children are, with a faceful of straight white teeth each, beautiful skin and soksi pulled up endearingly high. I was so touched when the Ladies’ Coffee Morning group gave me a goodbye card and a present at my last meeting with them. I like sitting in the front of the dalla dalla and watching everything on my journey to and from school, even though yesterday the driver shut my hand in the door and I refused to pay (12p: well worth a huge Swahili row over; getting all the women in the bus on my side). It’s so much better than cycling through Vauxhall to get to work. I am always amused by the badly translated English everywhere, particularly the exhortation to “Prise the Load” rather than “Praise the Lord”, and being told I am “mostly welcome” rather than “most welcome”. And there are so many little things which make me feel just lucky. This morning I startled a flock of little birds when I was walking to main road and they all flew off. But they weren’t just boring sparrow-brown: some of them were scarlet like plump little flying tomatoes. I won’t get that when I am back in Murderville SE5. Speaking of which, my super neighbour Gareth emailed me this week and mentioned that there was a new deli at the bottom of our road (the nasty Kentucky Fried Rat end) serving “goat’s cheese and truffled antipasti”. Such is the level of my disconnectedness here that I really thought, oooh lovely! That will be a treat to look forward to! Until I realised that he was speaking with forked tongue and cruelly winding me up. Bah.

I thought that my last post’s poo story would be the last one that occurred naturally and that I’d have to exaggerate Cynthia’s mansion’s plumbing problems a bit for amusing final anecdote. But Tanzania didn’t let me down. On Tuesday, I went to check on the newly renovated block of loos on the other side of the school to where I normally am. Despite the teachers giving all the children TWO lessons on pulling the chain, I fear that my change management expertise proved insufficient, because each bowl was filling up with horrid manky old fissees. (A flushing loo is a totally new concept for them, as they only have pit latrines in their homes.) I felt sick - this was only 7.30am - and then puffed up like a pouter pigeon full of righteous anger and gave the teachers a big rocket about Being More Responsible With Gifts From Donors. I even blubbed a bit for effect: easy to do when consumed with rage and really tired from watching trashy TV until late the night before then having to get up at 5.45am. It was most successful. Within minutes, a working party had been convened and there was much slooshing and bleaching. I suspect that some of the very smallest children (like Amina) were actually sent down the pans headfirst to get round the U-bend, but I preferred to remain in splendid isolation in the office grumbling about it all and hence didn’t actually witness this.

Usually, working in a developing country is utterly fulfilling and exciting and a laugh and a privilege. Occasionally, I want to smack everyone really hard and bring back British rule. Tuesday morning was one of those times. But Tuesday afternoon was pretty idyllic. I stayed late at school and played with the boarding children. I sat on a bench with two of my favourites, shown on the left here.

Richadi is a total suck-up, which I love. I have given him a big box of paints (sent by Jane Fowler of course) for his troubles. Lukwesa is surprisingly camp for an eleven year old African deaf. I once saw him walking around with frangipani blossoms carefully placed between all his toes. It was warm and sunny. There was a lovely little breeze, and they gazed at me adoringly. All the other children were having a great old time playing football or practising with hoops. It could only have been improved by a lovely glass of cold European wine.

I could hear the new school cows mooing and lowing as I sat there. I love the school cows. They are a donation from Soma’s husband’s company, Songas, and they will provide some milk for the weakest children and some to sell to generate income.

Here they are. How many old cows in this photo?

Just the one, actually – the animals are only two years old but I am 38 now.

It was my last day at the school yesterday. I only cried a bit: I think because I can’t believe I am really going. Modesty would never prevent me from announcing that my leaving ceremony was more elaborate than the welcome ceremony for the President of the IMF when he came. The school band played and the children did a mime (perhaps unsurprisingly: spoken theatre is not their strong point). It was based on the theme of “Why are you crying? Because the mzungu is going” – very touching. There were speeches, flowers, cards and a big cake saying “Happy Farewell Lucy”. I went to say a special goodbye to the chekechea class and Amina, who sat on my knee.

You can see that her legs have turned white. It didn’t take too long with an economy size bottle of Tippex, and in my last few remaining hours in Tanzania I think I can probably get her looking enough like me to convince Immigration at Heathrow that she is my daughter and that I just mislaid her passport.

And the playground was finally finished, after threatening non-payment of the last 20% of the money and sending the workers off-site. It was like St Trinian’s when we opened it up to the pupils to celebrate. They just didn’t know how to cope with having that much fun and there were many tears as heads were kicked because the children were walking in front of the swings without looking, and small bodies were flying off the roundabout at extraordinary velocity. I am so glad that supervising playtime, and dealing with the inevitable death of a deaf is going to be someone else’s job. Here I am just making sure that the slide is OK:

And Khalili hanging off the climber like a little silent monkey.

It wouldn’t be a Last Post without an addition the list of Children I Made Cry. Today I came round a corner walking through the village and a little child did a fabulously comic skid-to-a-halt like in Tom and Jerry: leaning backwards at 45 degrees and kicking up loads of dirt because of braking so hard. He then ran off screaming and weeping. His friends collected him and he calmed down enough for me to take a photo (the little one in front). You can probably see that he still looks terrified of me.

So finally, perhaps, a little reflection. After really, really not wanting to leave the UK when my friend Cath took me to the Heathrow Express back in London, and a terrible time at the beginning being homesick, I’ve had an extraordinary year. I thought I could only be happy in a house full of books and charming almost-antique French furniture, but I had a great time in my little cell in the convent. I am much less of an idiot than I used to be. Seeing old women breaking rocks in the heat has made me realise that I didn’t need to moan quite so much about PA. Seeing children eat the same basic food day after day, and not enough of it, has made me realise how lucky I was buy delicious little balsamic onions from Ocado without worrying about the price. But more than that, I lost my feeling of being jaded and useless and felt that I’d done something good for once. The cockroaches, evil nuns, killer moskweets, heat, sweat, poo, dust, filth, making children cry and frustration were insignificant in comparison. I’m exhausted but also totally refreshed. I am pretty sure I’ve taken more than I’ve given: lucky me.

I don’t know what I’ll be like when I get home: I feel very stuck in the middle at the moment. Sometimes I get excited about going to buy expensive Philosophy Cinnamon Buns shower gel from John Lewis and sometimes I think I can’t justify wasting money like that ever again. I’m in awe of the hard physical work Africans do, and yet I still found myself slightly irritated last week when our housekeeper didn’t clean my jewellery quite as quickly as I wanted. I suppose I can only wait and see. I will try not to be too up myself and go on about children starving in Africa if you don’t finish your dinner. I might ask you, very politely, to support the school with a teensy donation each month: £5 would buy 140 oranges and help reduce the children’s repellent scabby skin problems, for example. But I will not go on and on about it, and I will try to remember that Tanzania is only one African country, and that I am not qualified to speak for the whole continent. I have changed though, and I don’t want to change back. I am calmer, braver, tougher, more patient and more thoughtful now. I hope that this new combination is likeable enough to make all the friends and family who have kept me going this year with emails, phone calls, letters, cards, presents and even visits pleased to see me again. You have been quite remarkably generous to the school, and to me personally, and I would certainly have fizzled out without your support. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can’t wait to see you all again and until then, Prise the Load!