Mike and I are picked up from the hotel at about 04:00 in the morning and deposited at the airport where we meet up once again with Joanna and Julian, who will accompany us to Bukoba and film our visits to the various schools for a corporate video for Computers 4 Africa. Once we have all gone through the rigmarole of the various security checks and checked in we end up sitting in the departure lounge for over an hour before boarding an ATR 72 turboprop aircraft for a two and a half hour flight from Dar to Mwanza. I was very excited by the prospect of flying on a couple of smaller planes since, apart from once as a child, I have only ever flown on large commercial jets and I was told that the flight from Mwanza to Bukoba would be on a single engine twelve seater, which would be interesting.
At Mwanza we only had time to check in the baggage and get through yet more security checks before boarding a Cessna Caravan twelve-seat single engine turboprop for a 45-minute flight to Bukoba, where we were met at the airport, it was more like an airstrip than an airport with a dirt runway and little facilities, by Aseri. Jumping into a couple of 4 wheel drive vehicles we went to a local hotel for a welcome coffee and an opportunity to discuss the schedule for the coming few days of visits to a number of schools in the area. Once we were fed and watered it was back to the cars to be taken about 20 clicks out of the town to Aseri’s home. Although Aseri’s home wasn’t that far out of Bukoba, you can only reach it by unmade roads so the Chelsea tractors that picked us up from the airport were not a luxury rather a necessity.
When we finally arrived I found that his house was in the middle of groves of bananas and all the local children used the open area at the front as a playground. I will never forget the excitement our arrival generated amongst them particularly when Mike got his camera out and started taking pictures with all the children crowding around him wanting to see themselves. Little did I realize the feelings that this group of kids would make me experience over the coming week, with their fresh faced innocence and openness and always smiling and happy even though they had nothing. Don’t get me wrong the children appeared well fed, but I’m certain I never saw any toys except for the footballs, which were a number of plastic bags screwed up and tied with string, that they played with until it got to dark to see. They soon coerced Mick and Julian into playing footie and even though they towered over all of them they certainly didn’t have it all their own way, these kids were like whippets and the levels of skill and ball control they had had to be seen to be believed.
Aseri proudly showed us all round his home and the land that he owns pointing out the various food plants that grow there, which included bananas, avocadoes, passion fruit, mangoes, pineapples, cassava, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, coffee and several others that I can’t remember, along with his livestock, his pig, chickens and goats and little did I realise that later on in the week we would be eating some of them. Although this doesn’t bother me having been a cook at sea for a few years, it makes you appreciate that for me to eat meat an animal has to die and it is important not to waste any. He is fortunate that he has electricity, generated by a solar panel on his roof, as it gets dark very quickly in Tanzania and within fifteen minutes from seven o’clock it was pitch black so time to go in and have a meal.
It was while we were eating that Aseri explained that his inverter, used to convert the 12-volt power supplied by the solar panel to 240-volt mains power was not working so the only power available was not suitable for charging camera batteries or mobile phones, which could be a problem as we were here to film and needed to keep in contact with the UK, but we would have to be resourceful and charge the equipment as we went on. We were luckier than most as we did at least have lights, which Aseri was at pains to point out was all being supplied by eco-friendly light bulbs, along with a Trevor Baylis windup torch which was to become something I would come to rely on when visiting the toilet late at night. With no TV, sitting around the table after dinner would be our entertainment with relaxed conversation that often ended in laughter, from a group of dissimilar people that had come together for a common cause telling stories from their different experiences of life. It really brings it home to you that if you remove all the trappings of modern life, the TV’s, DVD players, games consoles, computers and most importantly to me Internet, all you have left is who you are, it may sound like a cliché but it almost feels like removing a suit of armour to reveal your soft inner core.
A highlight of this day for me was still to come, when we arrived I realised that we were basically in the middle of nowhere and I had been banging on about waiting until it was dark and going out to look up at the stars, as to this day I remember doing the same thing in the middle of the various oceans I found myself 30 odd years ago while in the navy. So I slipped out to see what it was like, very soon I walked back in and insisted that everybody followed me out to see what I had, we all trooped outside and walked a short distance away from the lights on the front of the house to stand and literally gaze up in wonderment at the natural light show that was on offer, with the milky way laid out like a great road in the sky and literally thousand (if not millions) of stars twinkling in all directions across the sky. This would be something I would look forward to doing every night, assuming there was no cloud cover, as I will never grow tired of looking up at the spectacle on offer for free that leaves me feeling extremely humble, making me realise that the human race is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. With that it was once again time for bed as yet again we were expecting an early start in the morning, although I didn’t quite realise just how early as Aseri had suggested that breakfast would be on the table at about 8 o’clock.
