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.