It is now two days into the New Year and after having had two weeks of enjoyable and relaxing holiday it will be a shock tomorrow to return to 6.30 am starts to the day.  It will be good to be walking to work again – I wonder how many of the little children along the track will have forgotten me in the three weeks I have been absent.  It will be interesting to see whether I will have “Mzungu” echoing after me as I did when I commenced this placement last August.

Today two English friends accompanied us on a drive in the Ngono valley.  We set off in brilliant sunshine in our little Suzuki with a picnic morning tea stowed safely in the back.  Along the way we passed many large groups of people walking either to or from church, sometimes in quite isolated areas where you’d think no-one lived.

Our first stop was at the Kyanyabasa ferry.  We spent about half an hour there looking at the birds in the shallow wetland next to the causeway.  Val has an interst in birdwatching and her own binoculars.  Sheila was introduced to the ‘sport’ today and used a pair of compact binoculars belonging to Val.  We saw some great birds – the Shoebill was probably the highlight as it is one of the most sought after birds in Africa for serious birders.

We also entertained the locals, who were wandering past and who stopped to watch us, with our kiSwahili and kiHaya.  The locals found the binoculars fascinating – Steve wondered if he was going to get his back!  A fisherman who was the first to join our little group put down his machete and his fish and eels and really warmed to the task of finding the birds he was seeing and others he knew in Steve’s Field Guide.  He was able to manage the binoculars very well.  He pointed out where the hippopotamus is sometimes to be found.  A woman in another group who stopped for a chat enjoyed using Steve’s binoculars to look at the baby a second woman in the group was holding!  She had to walk quite some distance backwards to achieve this. (I suspect she thought the binoculars were some sort of camera.)

We crossed the river on the ferry – the ferryman insisted that Val, Sheila and I get out of the car during the short ride as we had paid 100/= to be ‘passengers’ – and continued up through several small villages to a point where there are good views of Lake Ikimba.  We stopped in what we thought would be a quiet spot to enjoy our picnic morning tea.  No sooner had we spread out the picnic on the rug than we had an audience!  The looks of puzzlement on young faces (Don’t these Wazungu have tables and chairs and a nice house to live in?  Why are they eating outside on the grass?) turned to joy when we gave them a packet of biscuits to share.  Just then the rain started so we piled everything back into the car.

The rain thundered down as we drove down the far side of the valley and we could see the road washing away in muddy red streams.  We had the wipers on their fastest speed to be able to see but the rain had sent everyone under cover so the road was actually less hazardous in the deluge!

The sun was shining as we approached the Ngono bridge but we’d had enough excitement for one day so we kept motoring, just stopping to buy pineapples from our favourite roadside stall (up to 7 pineapples for Tsh1000/=) and we were back in Bukoba in time for lunch . It was a very successful birding excursion – though we’ll have to warn Sheila that she shouldn’t expect a Shoebill, a Goliath Heron and a Lesser Jacana everytime she ventures out with binoculars.