Leaving

At the beginning of March 2017, we began a shift towards the time we would leave Mvumi.
Our replacements would be with us on the 11th and we would spend nearly two weeks together, handing over the responsibilities.
When we left, we went to Dar Es Salaam on the bus, and stayed three nights by a swimming pool and a beach. We ate seafood, walked out at low tide, revelled in the air conditioning, and finally took the aeroplane from Dar to Amsterdam, and then to London.
England was dense and green, birds were everywhere, the weather was bright and clear, and the long evenings were beginning.
We made our way from Heathrow on public transport, dragging our luggage behind us, to where our car had been kept.
The city was crowded, there were motor cars everywhere, and the intense badges of rank: electric gates, powerful vehicles, mown lawns, and shop upon shop upon shop selling anything.
Our badges of rank at that time were a sailing boat that needed to be returned to the water, a cottage in Essex without central heating, a small red car and a London flat that was to be set up to rent out.
We came home quietly, our home showing only an overgrown hedge, and that the house spiders had been keeping the farmland flies in check.
Our memories of Mvumi began to consolidate into an overwhelming sense of well being: we had been out of our own zone, survived the mosquitoes and heat and flourished in ways we hadn't expected, and brought back with us some of the spirit of a very different culture that has a humanity that may aspire to the same materialism as we do in the North, but which is accustomed to the expectations of drought, rain, cash economy, poverty, and a sun that works like a clock.
We will miss much: but we are home now.

• The charm of yellow village dogs that lift their smiling chins and howl into the night that lies starlit from here to far away by the mango trees and empty river beds.
• The banana shrub in the rolling wind like salt sea on a shingle beach, shaking its tattered leaves.
• The sighing wind through the metal eaves, the thin dust.
• The crooked curtains, the dusty louvre glass, the tiny finches on the wire by their cactus nest.
• The swaying shower nozzle, the loos that won't flush, the creaking, leaning cupboard.
• The long, long road to Dar, the knifing sun, the driving wind, the red crowned trees and roadside stalls by the bougainvillea hedges.
• The ghostly nets around the beds, the water tank, the cooker gas.
• The raindrops that drone on the distant roofs as they come to hammer on ours, the mewling flight of soft mosquito wings, the acrid orange scent of a poisonous aerosol.
• The intense fruit: the green oranges, rich pineapples, mangoes, papaya, tomatoes - almost anything so long as there was water to swell them.
• And the smiling and greeting and hand shakes and daily laughter, the social bonds that we struggle with but which flourish with them, the lively village, the curiosity, the venture into Swahili.

It isn't enough to say 'thank you', but it must be said. Thank you Mvumi: School, village, people, place, the dust and rain, the low mountains and the eternally long flat arid plains between.
This blog has been about the fifteen months we spent at the school, in the village and learning about the surroundings: a safe, happy place, busy, unpretentious, ruled by sun and rain.

Alison Leonard and Hugh Morrison
2017.

Kites, insects and rain.

The video is of small kites feeding in flight as insects migrate from somewhere to somewhere now that rain has helped them feed and breed.

With the rain now begun, three months late, people are happier that they will have some crops to see them through the dry season later on. The price of food goes up when there are no crops, as now, and people eat less.

It is part of the pattern: a meal enough for one is enough for two is the saying.

We have soaking rain, the clouds gather heavy and flat, and the wind is light. Every few days there is a scorching day of humid heat, and the rain seems to recover and return. The wind is in the north west today, unusual and cool, and the nights need a light blanket.

The sound of rain on the roof is most welcome.

In a very few weeks time we will take the bus to the coast, and spend a day or two at the sea before a flight back. We will miss this place, but not more than we have missed our home.

There is a lot of wisdom here, and little money. At home there is a lot of money, and sometimes less wisdom. Perhaps our expert lives in the western world are beginning to fray at the edges.

Travelling travails

Leaving the country in December was an adventure. We arrived for the flight we had booked from Dodoma to Dar es Salaam to be told that it had been cancelled and we had been emailed, which we hadn’t. When I asked who he was talking to, the man didn’t know who I was. We got a flight, by sheer luck, with another company. The original company still owes us a refund, which they promised in December, but so far no good.

The replacement airline uses Cessna Caravans, a fourteen seater single engined fixed undercarriage turbo prop aircraft that looks a bit like a conventional Cessna only much bigger with a bit of a caravan built underneath it to take luggage and cargo. And we went on a bit of a round about flight down the valleys and across the mountains, just under the cloud layer at 11,000 feet, occasionally flying between the clouds.

The ground was red, yellow, brown and grey, and very dusty. We caught our flight via Emirates to Dubai where our baggage and selves were rechecked and a group of policemen confiscated my father’s Swiss army knife, suggesting that I could stab someone. There were four policemen. I argued back, insisted on seeing seniors, and eventually a New Zealand woman who was manager for Emirates came in and did some negotiating. After all that, we found that it would have been possible to have the knife rerouted through customs so that it arrived separately in a large plastic bag. All folded up the knife is not as long as an index finger.

After that, seats near the front of a gigantic Airbus, and very comfortable. I nearly fell asleep.

Then the delicious cold of England. And family, the car, the home, the boat.

And red wine.

But back at the shallow ridge on which Mvumi sits, the rain washes the sky and settles the dust and a clear sky sparkles at night.

On January 4th it rained for ten minutes. The first rain since April 2016. Then on the night of the 8th it rained for hours until about 11 in the morning. The trees will be pleased, and the mosquitoes can stop whining while they lay their eggs in the crooks and corners of puddles and branches. The spinach is standing upright again and the papaya leaves aren’t drooping. The bananas grow their leaves like rolled cigars, and then unroll them like blinds. As it grows hot and humid, it looks as if there may be more rain.