Adventures in Musoma and Berega

Dodoma, 27 May 2005

Dear Friends,
Its been a while since TT5, lots of things have happened.
First, the good news is that Anna is recovering very well. She is still in hospital while she waits for a skin graft in the next 2 weeks. Thank you to all of you who prayed.

Tanzania is a very beautiful country but I as I walked out of our gate the other day to see the field of sunflowers with their golden faces smiling at me and the equally beautiful crimson and orange bougainvillea trees in full bloom, It occurred to me that it would be so easy to get caught up in what you were doing that you missed the real beauty of the place.
In which capital city in the west could you see a heard of cattle moving down an inner suburban street or a man moving his cows past your front gate?
Before I tell you about my trip to Musoma, let me tell you a little story that happened to me the other day.

In Tanzania the era of the corner shop (duka) is far from over, these shops mostly no bigger than the width of 3 phone boxes abound. These dukas stock a wide range of household necessities. Here in Tanzania eggs are sold individually, so if you only need 2 eggs why buy more! Anyway I was walking home from school and called at one of these dukas for some cold bottled water, as it was a warm afternoon. There was no one at home, however I could see someone on the verandah of the house 20m behind. So I called out to them and as the obviously African lady approached I called out to her in my best Swahili “Naomba maji” which is the polite way of saying “I would like some water” all I got was a blank look, thinking she hadn’t heard me clearly I waited till she got closer and repeated myself, more slowly this time- another blank look and then she said – I don’t speak Swahili. That’s ok I said, I want to buy some water. Not our shop, they must be out where are you from, she says, – Australia I reply. I’m Danish she says- Ok, I say - Thinking – Hmm never would have guessed that one.

You may remember at the end of TT5 I was catching the early bus to Dar because I* need to be there before 2pm to pay for my ticket. . Well I was successful in my quest. Dar was as usual, Hot, Humid and generally not pleasant, raining on and off all afternoon. I met up with the others and we ended up at a Mongolian restaurant called Storm – Nicely done up and air conditioned – it was a little expensive but the food was good and it was air-conditioned.

Next morning 4:30am wake up early to catch a 5:30 am Taxi to the airport – 20mins out of town. Breakfast on board the plane to Mwanza consisted of a butterless bread roll with some chicken mush and a small tetra pack of Lychee juice. (On the subject of juice – if you ever get the chance to try tamarind juice, do it).

On arrival at Mwanza airport, The first thing that was apparent was how quickly guide books go out of date contrary to what I had read the road to the airport is now tarred & sealed so Taxi’s and Dulla Dulla’s (more about them later) abound. There was not much business coming off the plane so there was a scrum amongst the waiting taxi drivers for my business. I choose a taxi and drive in to Mwanza, Tanzania’s 2nd largest city. I am told that the buses to Musoma now leave from the new bus stand at Nykato about 5 km from Mwanza. So it costs me 9000Tzs from the airport, I find out later that the Scandinavian buses still leave from Mwanza bus station.

I find a bus company that will take me to Musoma, buy a ticket and wait, about an hour later a bus arrives - destination “DAR”.
Musoma is north of Mwanza on the road to Kenya & Nairobi. Dar es Salaam, where I have just arrived from is a long way south. This is obviously not my bus I think – Wrong again! Buses to Dar from Mwanza travel North to Nairobi and back into Tanzania via Arusha, not realizing this important fact I almost miss the bus until the ticket man comes rushing up to me and tells me to get on quickly.
The padding in the seats isn’t great so I have a NB when we arrive at Musoma 3hrs later.

I am unable to make contact the Vinks – I realize the mobile no I have is 1 no. short and no answer on the house phone – so I take a taxi to the only hotel I can remember the Afrilux, having lest the Musoma map and info at home. I have lunch there, I am the only person in the restaurant but my meal still takes 1 hr – which is fine given the circumstances.

After lunch I start to explore the town –Musoma is on Lake Victoria and by the lake there are lots of boats and a small fruit and veggie market. To cut a long day short I finally make contact with the Vinks and they pick me up at 6:30pm. They have a lovely house in a compound on Mara bay, about 8km out of Musoma towards Mwanza. They look out over part of the lake, and enjoy very much sitting on the deck that Grant Murray made – during his time there. It is very peaceful sitting watching the lake. Behind their house on the road in there is a very interesting large granite kopje with a monolith on top – we climbed the kopje on my last evening in Musoma great view of the area from up there.

The location is beautiful but it does have a problem, over the years salt water from the lake has seeped into and contaminated their well so they wash in cold salty water most of the time unless their rainwater tank is full and then they can use a camp shower with some added hot water. The other problem with this part of Lake Victoria is that it contains Bilharzia and Giardia so swimming is out of the question.

The next morning – Monday, I go in with Jono to the Diocesan offices in Musoma and get a tour from Arthur who wears many “hats” in the Diocese. I meet a Crosslinks UK couple Martin & Sue who are doing a great work there, Sue has set up a typing school with old donated typewriters and also teaches English to the students. The school is highly regarded locally and almost all their graduates had found a job with 6 weeks of graduating

Martin has set up a small peer to peer computer network with a number of old donated Pentium computers running Windows98. They have a brilliant Tanzanian teacher who teaches MS office and was teaching the students how to link sheets in Excel the morning I visited.
I did investigate the possibility of catching a bus to Seonara in the Serengeti game reserve but they wanted me to be at the bus at 4:30am – far too early and I had been to other game parks previously. After looking around town and having fish & chips for lunch in a local “hotel”. The fish has been fried whole – not much flesh on it but it was only 1500tzs, about A$1.90. I arrive back at the Vinks and soon dark & threatening clouds appear accompanied by thunder, but sadly we get nothing.
Tanzanian’s often show great creativity when naming their shops, my favourite in Musoma was the barber shop called “Man barbing”.

Dalla Dallas – small people movers in various states of repair, are the predominant form of transport used by the people because they are very cheap a trip in a Dalla Dalla usually costs around 1/20th the cost of a taxi. The cost of a taxi from town to where the Vinks live @ Bweri is 5000tzs, (8km) the trip in a Dalla Dalla is 250tzs.

The disadvantage is that although they are not supposed to they often have far more people than seats. One afternoon in fact, I’m sure I participated in the Dalla Dalla people stacking record attempt, at one point we must have had 26 people in this bus with seats for 14.
Later that day Jono, the kids and I went down to the lakes edge towards sunset, saw a mono sail dhow making its way back down the lake and some boys fishing off some rocks just off the shore on the way back we saw 2 mongooses on top of a rock quite close to us up on their hind legs keeping a close watch on some local dogs.
Thursday morning early Jono dropped me in town to catch the Scandinavian bus – to Mwanza.
This turned out to be a drama & a half, bus was 2hrs late and despite being assured that there would be plenty of seats, the ticket collector on the bus told me that there were none! I went back in and complained and in the end there were actually seats – I got a single seat and my money back. The seat was right at the front and a bit scary as I could clearly see the bus speedo and he was doing 130kph on several occasions.

That afternoon I went out to the Sikuma cultural centre 15km out of town and 1.7k on a dirt road off the main road. It was a very warm afternoon and as the taxi kept on going on this long dusty road mostly uphill I was thinking about how I was going to get back, I wasn’t looking forward to walking back to the main road.
A French Catholic priest set up the center in the 50’s. He appeared to have been quite an enlightened fellow. The church is round like their huts and all the things in the church have symbolism for them in their culture. E.g. the pulpit is shaped like a drum with a flat sloping top, in their culture only the chief was allowed to bang a drum and when he did everybody would come to here what he had to say.
They have a collection of chief’s drums from all the Sukuma tribes – some of the drums are 900 years old I was told.

They also have a school that has so many students they have to run a 2 shifts a day as they only have a few classrooms. At the end of my tour I asked the guide about the possibility of a lift back to the main road. He went looking for the man with the car; he was nowhere to be found. However he did find a man with a bicycle who was prepared to put me on the pillion seat over the rear wheel. Not all that comfortable, but I was very grateful that I didn’t have to walk. On reaching the main road – caught the next Dulla Dulla for 500tzs.
That night it turned out that Helen Hoskins, CMSA misso from Bunda (between Mwanza and Musoma) was in town, having just arrived back from Aus and I caught up with her over dinner.

Just below my window at the hotel was a market that sold only clothes and shoes, both new and used, many, many vendors all crammed together.
Next morning back to the airport and back to Dar. Which was hot & humid as usual. I had planned to stay overnight in Dar, as I wanted to do some shopping for the computer room. The thing I had forgotten was that this Friday was a public holiday. And none of the shops were open.

I could have made the 11am bus back to nice pleasant Dodoma if I had realized!
It also turned out that it was Muhammad’s birthday and there was a big street procession with many different groups taking part including a troop of boy scouts who were carrying long wooden poles that they all banged on the ground in unison.
My trip back to Dodoma the next day was pleasantly uneventful.
Then back to school on Monday. The next important date was Anzac day, celebrated with a gathering of the Aussies and Kiwi’s at the house of Kath Budden another Aussie CMS Misso, a very pleasant evening was had by all. Then this was followed by Jeremy’s birthday which we celebrated with a BBQ on the escarpment overlooking Dodoma, we watched the sun go down and after dinner the clouds cleared completely and we saw the stars in their full beauty – undimmed by light pollution. “ In the skies his handiwork I see” goes the old hymn, we certainly did that night as we looked at the Southern Cross in all its brilliance and even the Milky Way was bright that night.

The weekend before last I was invited to spend the weekend with the Bradfords who live in Berega, which is half way between Dodoma & Morogoro – see the map, Steve is the deputy medical superintendent at Berega hospital and Kate teaches at the Lay training center and home schools her 2 delightful young daughters. So early that week I go down to the bus terminal to find a bus that will get me there on Friday afternoon after school.

After explaining the time I wanted to leave in both English and Swahili (you may remember that time in Swahili is different to English time) I was assured by one bus company that they had a bus at that time. When I went down on the Thursday arvo to buy the ticket – it was a different story of course – their last bus was at 11:30 am. They did however direct to another bus company that had services in the afternoon. But again when I actually got there on Friday arvo it was another story – but they put me on a long range Dulla Dulla bus – a big bus but doing the all stops to Morogoro, about 180kms. After leaving at 2:30pm we eventually got to the got to the Berega turnoff @ 6:00pm where Kate and the girls were waiting for me. The cost of the trip? 3000Tzs how far do you get in Sydney for $3.40? And the trip was quite comfortable really. They didn’t start loading the chickens and stacking the people in until Gairo –about 20mins before the Berega turnoff.

Berega village is only 6 km off the main road but it takes 20-25 mins to get there over a bumpy dirt road. A local chief gave the area where the Hospital, Bible College are and the wazungu live to the church 100 years ago. Berega is typical of most villages - no electricity so the Bradford’s cook on bottled gas, use a bottled gas fridge and use solar power for lighting. The house I am staying in has no water connected yet except a rainwater tap in the kitchen, so showers are a ‘bucket & chuck it’ affair with a thermos of hot water added to take the chill off it.

The next day we visit the orphanage- a slightly different setup, these babies usually have a family but the mother has usually died in childbirth or when they are still very young and the family can’t cope. Often a sister will come and help look after them and they will teach her mother craft, hygiene and give some basic schooling. Later they will reintroduce the child back into the family when it is a bit older.

After this we went to the hospital & visited the wards, in many hospitals especially rural hospitals like Berega, the parents or relatives of the sick person have to cook and provide food for them, as the hospitals cannot afford to provide food. At Berega there is a “relatives camp” at the top end of the property bordering on the village where they can rent a small bare room for a very small sum and can cook for their patient on small wood fires they make themselves. The village is typical of the area with thatched roves with mud brick walls or thatched lean-tos supported by sticks. Later that afternoon we were able to have a look at the surgery theatres – which had been recently renovated but were still very basic but practical.

On the way home the bus was ½ hour late and it started to rain while I was waiting but a another lady waiting for a bus shared her tree with me so it wasn’t all that bad.