The Mistrys in Tanzania: The Final Furlong

Lucy - I am writing this whilst sitting on our small two-seater sofa with a storm going on outside. Every now and then the curtain to my left billows out with the amazingly gusty winds that we get out here whenever there’s a storm and then there’s the continuous pounding of rain on our tin roof. The rain comes and goes sometimes stopping altogether, then at other times sounding so loud that normal conversation is no longer possible. That coupled with the thunder means it pretty loud in the house at the moment, but Esther is managing to sleep through it – which is great. Just behind me the rain is starting to come in below our back door. This happens when we have very heavy rain, but as all the floors in the house are concrete, it doesn’t really matter.

Lucy blog writing and storm

Right, this week. This last week has been our penultimate week at Mavuno. We now only have 5 and a half days left as we’re leaving very early Saturday morning. I can’t believe our time out here is now so nearly over. Although, I think we’re both looking forward to seeing friends and family again and also to having a flush toilet!

This week has been a fairly quiet week. Esther and I spend most of the day on Monday pottering around the house. On Tuesday afternoon, as on every Tuesday afternoon, was the Mavuno staff meeting. So far I have only managed to attend this once (as Esther tends to refuse to sleep at the Helsbys and gets tired and grouchy), and Hitesh has never been. And so we thought we’d both try and go this week. Esther settled very quickly on a rug on the floor at the Helsbys, which was amazing, and so we both went. It was a good meeting and really interesting to hear about some of the things going on apart from what we are already aware of. At the moment they are planning their fourth parenting conference where existing and prospective foster parents are given training on the basics of parenting – which from the sounds of it, should be very good. Subjects such as health, discipline and nutrition are all to be covered.

On Wednesday we had the kids bible study, as usual. There were loads of kids there this week as children from Kitongo ‘centre’ are now also being invited along. I counted at least 30 kids there - which was great.

On Thursday morning, after the usual ‘kids praise’ session at the Helsby’s, I had my usual coffee morning with Milka (plus Manyashi, Mariam and Jona) and Baseki. Baseki wasn’t around for all that long so it was mainly Milka and I. It was really good just to get the chance to chat. We also both prayed for healing for Manyashi as his eyesight is really bad and he really struggles with seeing anything unless it is very close to his eyes.

On Thursday afternoon Becky popped around with Jake and Katy and asked if we fancied a trip to Kitongo centre. So off we went. I’m really glad we went in. It’s odd, we’re not that far from the centre of Kitongo (probably about 20 mins walk) but it’s the first time I’ve been there. Our walk there was interesting as we kind of got a bit lost and ended up walking through a lot of mud at various points, having to remove or rescue our shoes from the mud. Was good fun though! Once we got here, everyone stared at us, as is the norm! We had a look around the very small clothes market there and then went to visit a man whose little daughter had got burnt by some hot chai. I couldn’t believe it was just tea that had burnt her as the whole of her tummy area was really badly burnt. She’s got some penicillin injections from the hospital which her dad administers twice a day. Was a bit scary seeing these couple of needles just open to the elements which presumably will get used and re-used until her course is finished. We walked home quickly through some rice fields as a heavy storm was approaching fast!

On Friday Becky, Amy and I (and Esther and various other children!) all headed into Mwanza. We had the weekly visit to U-turn (a shop which sells a load of western food goods, some at exorbitant prices) and the food market. We then met up with Tammy, Lisa and Biata for ladies bible study. It was really good to meet up with these ladies again and get to know them a bit better. Unfortunately Esther was very over tired and was not a happy bunny, so my time involved in the bible study was a bit limited by her!

Esther and Kate tired after a long day in Mwanza

Saturday saw us at the Catholic Choir rehearsal again. This time however, it had been pre-arranged as the choir leader had asked us to make another recording of them singing… so rather than a rehearsal this turned into a full blown performance. The keyboard was there, the choir had been practising all week (and had even added some actions to their songs), and the choir leader was obviously very excited, and just a little stressed about the whole thing. They sung really well, as expected, but to me there seemed to be a bit less joy in their singing… I think I preferred it when they just sat around outside one of the houses and just sung completely unaccompanied. It seemed somehow more natural and spontaneous. Our enjoyment was also lessened a bit as we learnt from my conversation with the choir master, and via a subsequent conversation with the Helsbys, about some of the completely non-Christian ideas that are preached and believed throughout the country in the Catholic church. It’s really sad to hear of some of the things that have been added or taken away from what is the amazingly good news of the bible. It kind of opened our eyes a bit to some of the beliefs that are held by those living around us.

The Choir

Hitesh – A quick reflection at the week, it doesn’t seem as though all that much has happened. But we have managed to get quite a bit work done on the staff house. It took about a day to transport the nine roof trusses to the site from the Mavuno compound (about a mile), and by the end of the week, we had managed to put six of them in position. The house is now starting to take shape, and we’ll hopefully be able to get the remaining trusses on this week before we leave.

When I’ve had some down time this week, I’ve been doing some tiling at the team house – the Helsby’s current house. There were some tiles missing at the tops of the showers that I’ve now done, but still have to grout. Not sure why they were missing. Plus I’ve been working on tiling the kitchen walls, immediately above the work top. The kitchen tiling has proved to be a bit of challenge in that the walls are all over the place. The kitchen worktop has a gap between it and the wall of as much as an inch in some places, and nothing in others. So I’ve had to make some shutters, build out the wall with cement to close the gap, then tile on that. Bit of a mission really, but almost done with that.

I would have finished the tiling on Saturday, but was frustratingly delayed by the Catholic Church Choir. The choir leader is called Peter, and he desperately wanted us to film them. I spoke to him on Friday, and he said they’d be there at 2pm, and said my “presence was requested” at that time. I’d worked on the tiling in the morning, and had hoped to go back after the singing in the afternoon. We had lunch at our place, and by 2pm, we couldn’t hear anything (we can hear them singing from our house). We hung around for about half an hour, and then went there at 2:30pm to see what was going on. There was no-one there. So I went on back to the Helsby’s to carry on tiling. Lucy stayed with Esther and waited around. At 4:15pm, Lucy came over saying they were now ready to go. So we rushed off, assuming they were waiting for me to get going. I set up the camera, but was told not to start as they were just warming up! We sat and waited, and waited, and waited. Then about 5pm, it kicked off. I was then filming for over and hour! It finally finished at about 6:15pm. The singing was great, but it was just very frustrating to wait so long, especially as I was working and had to literally drop everything to come and start filming. I know the Africans hold their timings very loosely, but starting 3 hours late, when you’re working is a bit trying. If we’d had been just hanging around at home, then it would have been fine as we could have just waited till we heard them start practicing!

We’ve had a really lovely day today. Today was our final Sunday at church, as next week we’ll be in the Serengeti! We went to the Baptist church in Kisesa, which is about 45min drive away. The service was in Swahili, so I just read my bible during the sermon, and alternated looking after Esther with Lucy. After the service, we all went out to Mwanza for lunch. We went to this hotel that has a really good Indian restaurant. It was the same restaurant we went to when we first came to Mavuno. It was a really good afternoon, and we all enjoyed ourselves.

Musa and I at the restaurant

So we’re now in to our final week at Mavuno. We actually catch our flight home on a week Wednesday (28^th). We leave Mavuno on Saturday morning, being picked up at 7am to start our three-day tour of the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater National Parks. We will be dropped off at Arusha on Monday 26^th, staying the night there. We travel to Nairobi by bus on the 27^th, staying at Mayfield Guesthouse again that night, then fly out on the 28^th, landing in the morning of the 29^th. I am looking forward to coming home, but will certainly miss this place. Hopefully, God willing, we will come here again soon.

Oh Forgot to mention, that Barack Obama is very popular out here. He is on everything including, T-shirts, buses, posters, and even bubblegum! Take a look at this:

Obama bubblegum