This blogpost will be about life here; it’s strange coming back to somewhere that has been ‘home’. So much is different but so much is very much the same!
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| Me NOT buying curios |
We are back living in Oliver’s Compound in Kiranyi village, Arusha. A week before we left last year we had moved from Bamboo Cottage to The Loft and it is to The Loft we have returned. It’s a big open space with an adequate kitchen and a bathroom down a treacherous staircase. It has the wonder of hot water in the kitchen! There is no functioning oven so Steve made us frying pan pizzas.
Our car has returned to us in excellent condition and now after two weeks is as filthy as it’s ever been with the dust. The short rains - usually October and November - which allow two harvests a year have so far failed to arrive and people are starting to worry about food security. If rain doesn’t come soon it will be a disaster far bigger than a dusty car (ndiyo, chafu sana as I said to the small girl who scrawled gari in the dust on the back window) and my choked sinuses.
I am not yet able to work - my visa has not been finalised - but I can visit the Olkokola Centre and talk to staff and students. My friend Sr Jacinta at the Archdiocese is on the job and is insisting to the immigration office that I am here to do God’s work so why should they stop me! I hope it will be sorted soon so I can do more than ‘visit’. I did go with the centre staff and trainees to Sanaa, a social enterprise organisation that makes beautiful things and where people living with disabilities have the dignity of work and earning a living. More about Sanaa here and pics of our visit here.
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| Things both beautiful and interesting! |
What is abundantly clear is that I need to work on my Swahili. All conversations in the workplace are in swahili and although there is plenty of goodwill and patience there is also an element of frustration. I also need to work on my social media skills and make a small video about the exercise room that Australian Volunteers funded and is now up and running with a very competent Maasai physiotherapist Lengay who I finally met on Friday. He had organised this volley ball game.
In the compound there has been a little change. The staff is much the same and Gladness, the housekeeper, was pleased to have us back. I don’t know that Rooney and Socksi, the dogs, remembered us but they’re used to us now. Where there had been a huge clump of bamboo in front of our previous cottage there is now a frog pond and that adds to the variety of sounds. We have the Evangelical Shouty Man at 5am followed by the more harmonious call to prayer from the mosque at 5.30. The birds hit their peak at 6 am with Rüppell’s Robin-Chat most prominent. During the day there is plenty of traffic in the newly named Bendera Street with evangelical shouting, particularly towards evening and on weekends, and regular calls to prayer. In the evening the frogs start at about 6.30 and they are LOUD. Over night it is mostly quiet though occasionally various dogs in the area get excited and raise a ruckus. We have squirrels which can be noisy on the roof. Yesterday there was a wedding somewhere close with interesting musical choices. We don’t come here for the peace and quiet.
We do come for the chance of wildlife watching. Last Sunday we had a day in Arusha NP. When I entered our names in the park register I was directly below the only other entrants for the morning - another Australian couple in a private vehicle! This was quite weird. So I spent as much time trying to spot them as I did giraffes and birds until we located them near Small Mondella and had a good chat. They were a couple from Queensland, a bird watcher and her partner, holidaying in Tz for a month.
As I mentioned earlier, our street now has a name. All the streets and lanes nearby have been named according to Apple Maps and the dry creek bed that runs the one and a half kilometres up to our place is Sakina Avenue! There are street signs going up everywhere and houses and shops are being numbered. We are number 8. I wouldn’t get too excited though - I don’t think home delivered post is going to happen and I doubt that if I told a boda rider I wanted to go to Bendera Street Kiranyi that he’d have any idea. Still, I can put it on the official forms Australian Volunteers sends me as my residential address instead of the Farm Plot number I used to use.
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| Sakina Avenue |
Those of you who see my fb posts know that Australian honey and Vegemite are freely available. What is not available is muesli. We used to buy a South African brand for about $6 for a 500g bag. It was very nice. It was in the big two supermarkets and a few of the smaller ones including two we go to regularly. Now it is just not available. The manager at Image Supermarket says they’ve tried but it’s not around. Someone last night suggested that the increase in Safari traffic means the lodges have bought it all and the wholesalers haven’t caught up. Anyway, there is only Dorset brand (owned by King Charles’ Duchy of Cornwall) for 26,000/= (~$18) for a 400g box which is outrageous! We did have a win with a 20,000/= toaster which works very well after jibbing at paying 160,000/= which is what Shoppers Supermarket wanted for a similar model. I can make do with toast and jam for breakfast.
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| Pikelets for a treat on Saturday |
I hope my next blog can be about work - that’s what I want to be here for - and you’ll all know soon how it goes; also keep watching for a blog from Steve with his perspective!
Love from Jenny
ps Flying over UAE in the predawn I managed this shot through the plane window.
