Never knowingly taking the shorter route

The plan for this year was to spend all of it here, splitting my time between two projects - one here and one in Arusha. This was to be OK because it used to be fine just to do that on the three month tourest visas. However those rules have changed and it is now required to have a work permit. I have, therefore, spent the last few days seeking out a solution to that. There are a couple of options kicking around, but I’ll have to see if either of them come off - else I’ll have to leave. I think my plan, if I leave, is to come back to Blighty fo a while (perhaps year or so), work and save up some money, then try again with a slightly more organised organisation. I’m not sure how likely it is to get this sorted in the next week or so - though as the Mothers’ Union are on the case it’ll probably happen very efficiently!

Anyway, other than that I have been continuing to help with the computer stuff - although there has been very little point in me helping with the teaching as the two here who are doing it are very competent. Other than that I have been working on a database to centralise the information that they store here about the diocese and the education facilities in the areas and so on. I am still not 100% sure that it is going to be really useful, but I am going to implement a subset of the functionality and data, then see if that is useful and implement more if it is.

In addition we decided to celebrate Burns night last night - one of the other volunteers in town is fairly scottich and so we thought it might be fun. Kenna made an approximate haggis and we had cock-a-leaky soup and various other scottich bits with bagpipes and poetry and wisky and stuff. All good fun. Will wore a kilt made from a Massai Shuka.

I plan to spend the next week continuing working through this stuff, then the following week I am going to probably go back to Zanzibar to go diving again, then see a music festival, then pick up another couple of volunteers to bring back up here. The others from here are going for the festival and to pick the others up, but I thought I’d extend it by a couple of days as I am no longer sure I’ll be able to come back in the summer. If the permit looks totally sorted in the next week then I’ll probably not go, but I think that’s fairly unlikely.

Hi,

I have now been here just over a week. I have managed to find some work to do, helping the two computer teachers here with fixing up various bits and bobs round site. Their classes start on Monday, so I will probably help with them a fair bit too. I also have a list of databases that might need creating - though I think that they might not really, we’ll have to see, and we have a bit of a scheme to do something interesting that has not been asked for - hopefully that’ll come off and I’ll let you know if/when it does.

So, life here is interesting. Its pretty quiet. The routine seems to be to do a bit of work in the morning, followed by not much in the afternoon. I have been spending my afternoons doing various personal tasks and trying a bit of my swailli and similar. Evenings I have a meal with Kenna and possibly Will (the only other Westerner in town), then either watch a movie or use the internet.

Other than this fairly staid routine I have participated in a mercy mission out to one of the villiages (a child dieing from malaria needed taking back to his village) - which consisted of driving through some beautiful woods on some bery bad “roads”; I have been to the local Massai market (manada), where the Massai gather twice a month to traid cattle, buy clothes, knives, snake bit cures and the like, and then get drunk and fall over. We were quite the odd ones out and had a lot of Massai staring at us and greating us and stuff; I have also been to town a few times and am getting to know it a little - there’s not much there, but it seems hard to navigate around without proper buildings and roads and signs and stuff - all the dirt tracks look the same at the moment. I need to get used to navigating by trees and rocks and things, I guess.

The only other thing that happened here, really, is that CCM, the ruling party, used the cathedral here to gather to choose their candidate for a by election that is about to happen here. This seemed to take a lot of shouting and chanting, followed by a lot of sitting around and making the place look untidy, followed by being paid to show up! They trashed a few of the gardens that Kenna had planted here and dropped litter everywhere and caused us to all feel besieged for the day. But they’ve gone now and thats a good thing.

So this weekend I will be planting some vegetable seeds and going to a little house that is on a hill overlooking the area for some food and probably doing very little else. I have put a few photos up too.

I am now at KCC in Kibaya, the place where I will be living for the next few months. To get here from Dar we drove the landrover to Morogoro on tarmac, spent the night there and then drove a couple of hours on tarmac to get to the dancing road. The dancing road is an 80km dirt track that is the main road into Kibaya. It took a couple of hours to pass, as its currently fairly dry here and the road had been recently repaired - however in the rains it can become pretty ticky, so I’ve that to look forward to.

I drove up with a VSO volunteer called Kenna, who filled me in on the situation here. It seems that things are not quite as I imagined, but I’ll need to see. The school is nice enough, and the people really friendly. Tomorrow I will begin working out exactly what is needed from me out here, and hopefully start actually doing it. I have mainly been occupying my time sorting out the house I’m living in and trying to get it a bit more liveable in.

So, I’m here safe and sound. I’ll let you all know what I get up to as it happens. Bye.

So I got the bus to Dar, then a boat to Zanzibar. The bus journey was nice and easy, with stunning views of Killimanjaro and north Tanzania. Its all very green, again, and looks a brilliant place to spend a bit of time.

Dar was Ok, I really just tried to find internet, and that wasn’t easy, but I managed in the end. Things seem to shut fairly early here, and in Zanzibar.

In Zanzibar, I have been diving several times, and just had a bit of a look round sStone Town (the main town). Its nice here, pretty relaxed and stuff, though its pretty hot!

So, I’m going to stay here until Tuesday morning then leave for Dar, then on Wednesday I leave for Kiteto to start work. Is come round so quickly, but I’m really looking forward to it.

How do. I’m writing this from possibly the slowest internet connection in the world, in Arusha in Tanzania. Its New years day and most places are shut, presumably all the places with fast internet too.

So, its been an interesting time since I last wrote. So let me take you through it day by day.

On Sunday (23rd) I went to Church with the family I’m staying with in Kajiado, their family home (they have a house there on a farm owned by the family). It was interesting, all in Swahilli, and with lots of gospel singing. Very fun. As this was a fair way away, we stopped on the way back for some food. This was meat. A lot of meat. A massive goat’s ribcage and leg. They cut it into small pieces on the table and you eat it with ugali (a stodgy millet thing). Certainly a protene based meal.

On Monday we went shopping to a supermarket, which appeared to have absoutly everything in English.

On Tuesday (Christmas day) we went to the cathedral in Nairobi, and heard the Archbishop of Kenya talk about the upcoming election and how it should be peaceful. The main opposition candidate was in the congrigation.

In the afternoon we also went to a family Christmas thing for Salome’s (the mother) family Christmas. THis was about 50 Kenyans and me. Most people who know me know I’ve a really small family - so it was a bit mental having so many people around. The order of things was:

• food (lots of meat)
• evey family head introducting their family
• a sermon; a sing song of hymns
• talking to my family on my mobile
• then a BBQ for more meat and some Moritanu (honey based local beer equivilent)
• Soup made from Aloe vera that tasted like soap
• Drunk family membes trying to teach me a massai chant (the family are Massai, but don’t wear the clothes and arn’t nomadic anymore)

Then we went home. Apparently the meat all came froma cow that was slaughtered for the event.

Then on the Thursday there was the election. There had been some expectations of trouble, but it went peasfully. On Friday the votes started comeing in, very slowly, then on Saturday things still seemed OK, until someone noticed irregularities in the incumbent president’s main supporting contingencies. This sparked some minor rioting. On Sunday, though, they declaired the current guy the president, despite international observers, members of the election comittee and the opposition calling for recaounts and investigations. Sunday night neant riots everywhere.

The family I was with left pretty sharpish (though with a well practiced air) back to Kajiado and holed up there (in a house that has no running water or electricity).

We decided, after speaking to the bishop of Kitale (who I was supposed to be going to stay with) that it would be best for me to leave to Tanzania. The bishop was effectively under siege and could hear gunshots from his house. The main busses wern’t running, so I had to take a short one to Arusha, so I’m to Dar tomorrow, then I’m going to have a couple of days on Zanzibar diving instead.