I am dragged awake at about 6 o’clock by a noise being a city boy I am not particularly familiar with; it was one of the several cockerels that the people keep to ensure they have fresh eggs available. I would come to hate that rooster and a couple of times suggested to Aseri that he should be the first one in the pot, but of course no rooster no eggs so he was off limits. Once again it brings it home to you that if you remove the conveniences of modern life you are no more than just another mammal, I hesitate to say struggling from day to day, rather moving from day to day needing to find food and water to ensure you stay healthy, but I am in some respects fortunate living in the UK where at least I can earn money. Here in Tanzania there are a lot of people that find it almost impossible to find work, but at least it’s warm, it’s winter and still in the high 20’s centigrade so they are not faced with astronomical fuel bills like we are back home, which means that the amount of money needed is not as large and a small amount of cash goes a fairly long way.
By 7 o’clock the first vestiges of daylight are appearing and within fifteen minutes it is fully light so there is little point in staying in bed and while getting my head together I start to realise there is another strange noise and this one I can’t identify. It was definitely an insect and so loud I thought it had to be in the room, this concerned me since there are a number of insects that you don’t want anything to do with in this country, everybody knows about the dangers of mosquitoes and malaria, but there are umpteen others that can sting or bite so I started, carefully, to look around but could not find anything to be concerned about and let it go. Walking outside half an hour latter I had my answer as there, hovering right in front of me was an insect the size of my thumb, giving it a wide berth I walked over to Aseri who was also there, to ask him what it was and if it could hurt me. He laughed and his answer made me realise just how little I know of this country since although he couldn’t name it he describe it as a beetle and a harmless pest. I had never seen anything like it before, it looked like a cross between a giant bumblebee and a beetle, easily the size of a stag beetle and able to hover, over the next few days I watched them, as there was a number of them that flew first thing in the morning and came to the conclusion that it was the African equivalent of a pest we have in the UK, the wood worm, as I had seen them going back to their home which appeared to be inside the wooden eves of the house, it’s just the size of the holes they bore into the wood roughly the size of an ten pence piece, imagine the amount of damage a few of these would do to the wood in your house, what a strange country compared to mine Tanzania is.
After some food and a coffee we all jumped into Aseri’s new, well second hand like most of the cars in Tanzania, four-wheel drive Toyota, which had obviously come from Japan. Earlier on in the week back in Dar I had asked why what seemed like over 90% of the vehicles on the street were imported Japanese Toyotas and was told that due to the road tax costs they got shot of them after a few years as it became inhibitive to keep them on the road, which at least gives Tanzania a source of cars although they are very expensive, Aseri had to pay well over double what the same car would cost in the UK and it came across almost like a Japanese car scraping scheme just like the current bangers from cash thing that is going on back home. The difference is in Tanzania nothing is wasted, everything is either recycled or used to destruction, you would not believe the condition of some of the buses and taxies still driving around, I’m sure the concept of an annual safety check like the MOT test in the UK doesn’t exist here.
Anyway I digress so it’s back to the reason for this week close to the shores of Lake Victoria and the chance for the film crew as well as Mike from Computer 4 Africa to visit several schools, conduct interviews for the camera and find out the impact that the charity is having in the country. We are driven along tracks, dirt roads and the occasional tarmac road to the Rugambwa Girls Secondary School somewhere in Bukoba to visit the first of three educational establishments of the day. Here we are welcomed and shown around the school, which surprised me since it was quite large with over 900 students and they only had one small computer suite with about fourteen computers available for all of them, the suite was so small that it was impossible to fit a complete class in at the same time. This made me think that the pupils at Holy Trinity don’t know how lucky they are I know they have to share a single PC between two, not the ideal situation but at least they get regular computer time, whereas these students are lucky to get any computer time each week and they are very aware of how important computer skills are to their employment prospects, so they are very keen to find more space to increase the size and number of their computer facilities. Following a number of interviews with some students and teachers we hung around to let Joanna get some mood shots, the one she really wanted was when the afternoon break happened and all the students go back to their dormitories. The result was a sea of bright red dresses and white shirts coming towards us and once they realised what was going on loads of excited smiling faces waving at us on way. It left me with a grin on my face and the impression that everyone of them had an irrepressible desire for education, a contrast to what I had seen in some of the schools I have spent time in while in the UK. Please understand that I am not saying there is anything wrong with the education system in the UK, I’m not in any position to have an opinion on the matter, it’s more about my own resistance to education as I grew up and the fact that I didn’t come to understand what it could do for me until I started to study for my degree with the Open University in my mid-thirties, to me the contrast is obvious and immense and many children take education for grated.
As soon as the film crew had finished we were off once again to the next venue, which would be the Josiah Kibira University a specialist teacher training college, unfortunately the students have started their holiday and so we look around the facilities in the company of the headteacher and the film crew arrange a future date to return and interview some students and teachers. The university is comprised of a number of new buildings overlooking miles of open countryside and feels like a lovely place to study with an atmosphere of calm conducive to the delivery of education. The only down side to me was the large black wasps that were building their nests among the rafters of the covered walkways between the buildings and appeared to be everywhere, I don’t like wasps yet another insect that can sting, at least they are not as aggressive as the ones in the UK.
Once we had finished here we had one more school to visit before returning to Aseri’s home. The difference in this country is the distances between the sites, the roads seem to go on forever and they are not as good as back home so it’s not possible to cruise at high speed, in fact a lot of them aren’t even tarmac so average speeds are very low and sometimes you have to deal with large quantities of dust that can make it quite hazardous driving.
We arrive at the last school, the Ivony Lutheran School, by late afternoon and once again it is a secondary school where the students are boarders, like all the other schools we have been to it is fee paying, which does mean they have better facilities than the state schools as I was to find out later. I say better facilities but that paints a false picture, all the other schools we had been to had beautiful grounds, good classrooms, windows with glass in, power and water, whereas the Ivony School was just a few bare buildings with nothing on the walls except a blackboard no power or water and the classrooms didn’t have windows just square holes in the walls, I can’t imagine what it would be like in the rainy season when there could be up to six inches of rain in a day. Even with these rudimentary facilities the teachers where upbeat about what they could accomplish and at pains to point out the good grades their students were achieving. They hoped to have power in the coming year and were extremely enthusiastic about the prospect of being able to offer courses in computer skills with the help of donated PC’s from Computers 4 Africa. If nothing else the views around the school were spectacular, it was sited high on the side of a hill and you could see for miles with not a single building in sight, just green rolling countryside with mountains in the distance.
Once again there were loads of those big black wasps floating around and it was while we were standing in the principals office, office more like a bare room with no windows or even ceilings, which is why the wasps appeared to favour nest building in the eves under the tin roof, that Mike got up close and personal with one when he went to flick something away from the side of his head and was promptly stung by it. With that the film crew decided to film outside and Mike and I got out of their way and went and hung around the car, it was while we were waiting I spotted three large birds of prey floating about in the sky, I had already seen a few of them and over the coming few days I would see loads more. When the film crew had finished it would be time to load up the car and drive back to Aseri’s place, it’s amazing how tiring it is being bounced about on unmade roads for hours on end, but at least I get the chance to see some of the countryside, which makes it worth while.
We get back to Aseris to find the kids are doing their thing and as soon as we turn up it’s time for them to watch the muzungu, which is Swahili for ‘white person’, and get us to play with them. Unfortunately I was exhausted and just wanted to sit and read a book for a while but that was not going to happen, I found myself surrounded by the children who wanted to shake my hand and touch my skin, some of them had gone and found some fresh avocados and these were presented to me as a gift, I was very uncomfortable about excepting their gift because these youngsters had next to nothing but still wanted to share what they had with us, it would have been very wrong of me to refuse so making a mental note to think of something I could do for them I took the fruit.
Mike and Julian seemed to have more energy than me so it was time for them to take part in the regular game of football that seemed to happen each night outside, it started with the younger children and got bigger and bigger as the older ones returned from school, some nights there could be as many as 20 or 30 of them ranging in age from as young as a few years to older teenagers all wanting to play. Obviously small children playing fairly full on football with hulking great teenagers wouldn’t work as somebody would be guaranteed to get hurt and I found it fascinating to watch the dynamics of the group and how they sorted it out. I had noticed since arriving here that all the children seemed to look after each other, if one of them fell over one of the others would always go to their assistance and comfort them, there was hardly ever a squabble and if it happened it was quickly dealt with by other members of the group. As the older ones arrived wanting to play the younger ones would defer to them and suddenly another plastic bag ball would appear, as if by magic, for the youngsters to play with, they would vacate the ‘pitch’ and congregate to an area that seemed to be off limits to the game. As the game progressed it would get more and more competitive with some strong tackles going in but never unfairly and virtually no one getting hurt, I will never forget Mike breaking through the oppositions mid-field and being faced by a slip of a girl acting as last line of defence, she couldn’t be more than four feet tall and I doubt she weighted more than four or five stone, which was less then half what Mike weighed and yet on three occasions that it happened each time she took the ball away from him, the last time is still very clear in my mind as she shoulder charged him and left him sprawled on the ground, they do seem to love their football.
They do seem to love their football, it was this thought that gave me the answer to my earlier embarrassment about accepting gifts from them and wanting to reciprocate. Later on I would have a word with Mike about it and bring him on board, but while I was watching the action unfolding in front of me an idea was formulating in my mind. The area in front of Aseri’s house was the only place I had seen that was open enough to play football on and seemed to be the meeting place for all the children from the surrounding homes that were hidden away in the banana groves. Even when Aseri was back in England there were people in the house as he had a couple of adopted teenagers living there and a number of relatives and people that appeared to look after them and him, whenever he was there people would come and pay their respects to him as he appeared to be a much loved and respected man in the area, I remember the first evening we arrived when he suddenly came out of the house with a box full of second-hand clothes and started to hand them out to the children and the excitement this philanthropic act generated in them, it made me laugh the next morning when Aseri and I were standing outside as the kids went to school in their new cloths and all he would say was “Ah, I see designer wear!”. Returning to my idea, I thought the best thing I could do for the children would be to get hold of a couple of real footballs, store them at Aseri’s house and give the responsibility for keeping them pumped up and handing them out to his youngest adopted son, who was mad keen on football himself. In this way I would be able to give back something to the children that would last for some time rather than just buy them a load of sweets, to say thank you for the pleasure their innocence and joy of life had given me over the last few days, I only hoped that I would get the opportunity to carry out my idea as the coming few days we had a busy schedule and it might be difficult to find the time to go looking for the balls, I didn’t even know whether it would be possible to buy them in Bukoba. I knew that Bukoba was the regional capital of the Kagera region but having driven through the town it didn’t strike me as the place you would find a sports super store on the corner, but I would try my best. Over dinner that evening I broached my idea to Mike and he thought it was a good one so I talked with Aseri to find out if he would be happy about storing any balls in his home, not that I though for one minute he wouldn’t be it’s just that over the last few days I had come to have serious respect for the man and I didn’t want to take anything for granted, his answer was typical of him when he said we would have to make the time to do it and from that moment I knew that it would happen in some form or another, so I put it on the list of things I wanted to or had to do before returning to the UK and went back to the regular nightly entertainment of sitting around the table listening to and tell stories.
By about 10 o’clock people were beginning to drift off to bed, as yet again it would be an early start in the morning, so after a quick look to make sure the milky way was still up there in the night sky, I said my goodnights and hit the hay myself. As I drifted of to sleep that night I was wondering what the next day would bring and secretly hoping that the rooster would sleep late in the morning although I didn’t hold out much hope of it actually happening, while trying to take in all the sights and sound I had experienced today.
