The network is alive !

Dodoma 20 Feb

Dear Friends,

Welcome to a short but significant edition of Tanzanian Tales. Last Monday the computer room had its first classes and apart from a couple of small teething problems it all went very well. We are still waiting for the router to arrive so no internet access yet. It is very appropriate at this time to thank those of you who responded so quickly to my emails with good advice and answers to my questions. Asante sana. This doesn’t mean however that my work is anywhere near done yet, the school office has no cabling yet – Jeremy plans to do that while everybody else is on holidays and after that comes creating an internal website where the students will be able to access web pages and other resources that the teachers have downloaded


Can you guess what goes beep beep --- beep beep beep --- beep beep --- beep beep beep?
It is the horn of the lead car in a wedding procession as it passes by with the wedding party in an open top van, followed by bus loads of guests. We have had 2 pass by since the last TT.

Some of you I know like going off road for the bumps and dodging the pot holes well I reckon you get more action driving along road the road that leads to our headmaster’s house than many places I’ve been and that’s only a stretch of 900 metres !!
Apart from the main streets in town and out of town all the others are dirt and full of potholes and do nasty things to your suspension.

The 2 teachers I mentioned in TT2 are now back in town and will start teaching again on Monday but please keep praying for them .

In conversation I discovered that the concept of a “pie” – any sort of pie doesn’t exist in the Tanzanian culinary encyclopedia. I am doing my bit to redress this. Last Friday to welcome Kath Budden – a returning CMSA misso to our compound we had dinner at my unit. With the help of Jon my neighbour we started the process by explaining and showing her a picture of a shepherds pie except with a pie base and using steak pieces instead of mince . It was an outstanding success – nzuri sana - (very good). The next step this Tuesday will be to substitute a pastry crust for the potato… stay tuned.


Last Wednesday I started Swahili lessons with another CMSNZ short term teacher in my compound. Lucy – the teacher comes on Wednesday’s for around an hour for only TZS 2000!

Today at church we had a visitor, the bishop of Tabora, Francis Ntiruka was passing through on his way back home. It was a great honour to meet and talk with him. When I was in Tabora 2 years ago he was away. He is retiring this year in July, so please pray for a wise and godly replacement.

School holidays start next Friday and a group of us are going Dar to drop off someone and go shopping, they for school books and me for software and computer bits. There is no tax at all on computer parts and accessories so computer parts and most peripherals are quite cheap here.

Then we are going to Iringa – higher, so much cooler – to visit friends and look around, we are told the craft markets are very good there.
While we are there most of us are going to Ruaha National Park about 3hrs drive. I’m staying at the Ruaha River Lodge and the others are camping .
I am hoping to see some big cats as I didn’t see any of those last time apart from a couple of lionesses.
Apart from mosquitoes, one of the other more unpleasant dudus (insects) that inhabit Ruaha and partly the reason for its existence the guidebook says, are the Tse Tse flies which abound and can carry sleeping sickness…. Which is another reason why I am staying in a nice comfortable screened lodge!

In the meantime ;
Please continue to pray for my health as there is a bug going around at the moment.
Pray for our safety in Ruaha – wild animals can be unpredictable and as well the elephants in this park are known to be potentially very unfriendly and aggressive due to massive poaching last century – it is true – elephants never forget ;)