Life at Mavuno

Hi everyone! Hope you’re all ok back home. We are all very well, and are enjoying the Tanzanian adventure. We’ve been in Africa just over two weeks now, and we have all settled in well.

We are amazed at how quickly Esther has adapted and settled in to life over here. Thank you to all those that have prayed for this. Esther absolutely loves it out here. She loves to walk around and explore. Her favourite place is by the front gate where she likes to watch the two dogs run around and play with each other. She’s very often shrieking with excitement, as only Esther can do! Esther loves the kids and gets on really well with them. Plus she’s a great hit with the locals, and is a great ice breaker. Attached are a couple of photos of her. She’s still full of life and energy, and is constantly on the move!

Esther in a cupboard!

Esther playing

We’re staying in a very lovely house. Attached are a couple of photos of the house, including one that shows the storage compound in the distance plus a few storage containers. There’s also a picture of our room. We’ve been very blessed with this house and the accommodation. We were amazed at it when we first came here. We’ll be staying here for another week and a half before we move into some more simpler accommodation, which is about 10 mins walk past the compound. This current house has solar panels for electricity, plus solar heated hot water. Water comes from Lake Victoria, which is to the left of the photo (you can just see a bit of it in the zoomed out site photo). Lake Victoria is probably about 15 mins walk away from our current house. In fact, Mavuno have cleared a little area and have their own beach! It’s very cool, though you can’t swim in the Lake due to the parasites in it! We went there on Sunday, and there’s a picture of most of the current team – Helsbys, Millers and Mistrys.

Current house and surroundings

Current house


Our room

Families at Mavuno

There’s a whole host of bugs and creatures around, and one of the insects we’ve seen a lot of lately is the siafu! They are crazy ants, and pretty vicious little things. They go out on the march for food, and form this thick line, probably about an inch wide. There’s a photo with a thick black line of siafu, and one close up. Often, there are some sort of soldier ants that cover and protect the worker ants that run up and down the channel underneath. If you manage to step on a line, they will crawl up under your clothes, and will all bite in unison once someone gives the signal. Not nice.

"Line" of siafu

Siafu close up

Hitesh – The main family house we’re working on is about 10 mins walk from the site, which is the other side of the photo. They had hoped to have it finished and a family moved in by now, but the house is still not ready yet. I’ve been busy working on it trying to help get it completed. I’m currently working on the drainage system to the septic tank, installing all the pipework. It’s not quite as easy as the UK, especially as the quality of the materials is variable to say the least! Plus it’s boiling hot! I spent nearly 2 hours today digging out a trench in the baking heat for a pipe, and it was VERY hard work! Other things I’ve been doing include: fixing and wiring solar panels; fixing leaky hot water pipes; fixing a leak in a large 3” water main; building storage shelves; placing mosquito screens; and designing roof trusses.

My day start with breakfast at 7:30am, and then attempting to start work at around 8:00am. I say around 8:00am as Africa time is never very precise! We work from 8am till 1pm, where we stop for lunch for an hour. Then continue work from 2pm till 5pm. We have dinner around 6pm, then generally to bed about 10pm ish. Flexibility and patience are the key, and I’ve struggled a bit with the patience side of things! I was aware that “the west has the watches, but Africa has the time”, but it’s different when you’re in the thick of things. Often I spend the whole morning trying to get and find tools and materials, and don’t often actually get started with productive work till the afternoon. When I’m at work in the UK, I have goals and lists of things to do for the day, and generally get most if not all of them done. Here, I’m really learning to just go with the flow of things. The Africans say that even though you’re moving slowly, you’re still moving!

Hitesh putting up mosquito screens

Flexibility is also very important. We’ve often planned to do a certain task the previous day, but come the morning, other tasks take precedence, such as having to fix a leaky pipe, or having to run the water pump to fill the header tanks. Or even having to source a generator to top up the electricity batteries as it’s a cloudy day and the solar panels aren’t generating enough power. I’m enjoying the work, and definitely know at the end of the day that I’ve worked hard, despite often having very little to show for it!

Lucy – My life has been a bit less extreme than Hitesh’s! In general I am playing a bit of a balancing act between looking after Esther and trying to do a little bit of work! My day starts, following breakfast with everyone, with a bit of bible reading and singing with the Helsby’s six kids. Esther loves the singing time! Then I put Esther down for a nap and spend a bit of time reading the bible and praying a bit myself too. Then I try and fit in a bit of work if I can - not always successful! I try and pop over to the ‘family house’ that Hitesh has been working on to see if I can help out – see attached photo. After lunch when Esther has her second nap I try and fit in a bit more work. Yesterday I had a bit of a wander around the site pacing out rough distances between the pump house, and various junctions and bends in the pipework that have already been laid, trying to get an idea of what’s in the ground. Whilst I’m here I’m aiming to try and put together a sketch of where all the pipework is, where the connections to the houses are, and where the header tanks are positioned; together with pipe lengths and diameters. I think this’ll be useful not just for now but in the future too. I was out yesterday measuring distances for about an hour – but managed to get burnt. Can’t get over how hot it is here!

Lucy at work - painting

Although weather is generally very hot we’ve had a few wet days and nights recently with a fantastic thunderstorm last night – was awesome! Never seen lightening like it – Was pretty much continuous lightening flashes for about an hour!

Hmmm… what else is there to tell you. Well, we went to church last Sunday for the first time – which was cool. Couldn’t understand a word of what was being said as it was all in Swahili but the people were really warm and welcoming – which was lovely. The kids got extremely excited when we took the digital camera out and took some photos of them. They especially loved seeing the photo we’d taken. It’s quite a small church of about 50 adults and slightly more children. It’s one of out ‘local’ churches but it still took about 45 mins to drive there and the drive home included a fair amount of off-roading over fields and very rocky tracks… all because a local construction company had decided to open up a trench across the access road we’d used to get to the church and had felt it wasn’t worth providing any means to allow people to continue using the road. The only option was to wait until they’d laid their cables in the trench and backfilled it again, or to off-road it. As the Helsby’s have a 4x4 we took the later option!!!

Church

We are very slowly picking up bits of Swahili and can generally greet people and ask how their morning/afternoon is going and how work’s going. However, it still takes me quite a while to process the information when someone greets me in Swahili so my response is always a little delayed!

When we move into our new house I think our Swahili will have to improve as we’ll be living amongst the locals. Think it will end up being quite a different experience to where we’re living at them moment.

Still can’t get over how beautiful it is here! It is such a privilege to wake up and look out onto Lake Victoria, see beautiful blue skies and the sun beaming down. The setting here is idyllic – I don’t think you could ever get bored of it! Even the evenings are lovely. We’re sitting here writing this listening to the crickets chirping away and… that’s about it. Every thing else is silent. Fantastic!!!

Esther - I is very tired today, cos I helped Daddy put in a pipe. I liked it today when Daddy took me for a ride in the pick-up truck.