The Journey from Southport to Dodoma
We had a smooth passage, picked up at the front door of the lovely flat where we were staying in Southport. We were ferried by mini-bus to Manchester Airport- a wonderful, free ride from very kind friends at our church in Bursough who organised this lift for us.
At Manchester Airport, we were well wrapped up in our winter wollies and still looked fresh, clean and ready to go! We also had the much appreciated help of my parents to manage our 12 suitcases, pram, 3 children and 4 pieces of hand-luggage!
Friday morning: By the time we got to Dar es Salaam, we were a little less fresh! We were overcome by the Dar heat, a little jaded after the farewells in England, surviving on a night of very little sleep and managing without the extra hands to help load the luggage:
Then it was time to all pile in and drive the 8 hours to Dodoma...We enjoyed the English sandwiches I'd made the day before and stowed away in my hand-luggage (!!) and the treats we'd picked up from our flight. The food kept us going when the tiredness threatened to overwhelm. However, shortly after lunch, poor Benjamin suddenly brought all his food back up, as we sped along in the car!! Needless to say, it was not very pleasant for any of us, particularly little Ben.
Arriving home, we were made very welcome, with a great sign on our front door courtesy of our neighbours:
BUT later that evening, it was my turn to be sick! Spending an evening in the toilet with a bucket on my knee and the mop at the ready was not my favourite home-coming! Poor Joel could not understand what was going on and yelled and screamed and cried, overwhelmed with tiredness, confusion and anxiety- but by 11pm, at last all was calm in the Parker home and we all slept and slept...
Saturday
Not feeling very well and still all rather tired, Saturday was not an easy day- and only got worse for me when I discovered that my much-cherished washing machine- a major bonus in Dodoma- had been destroyed by the constant power-cuts and power-surges of Dodoma. It's motor and element are burnt out and so my machine has come to a sad demise! :-(
Where my washing machine once stood now stand bucket-loads of dirty laundry waiting to be hand-washed:
Sunday
A calm day at home to recover and to start the big task of unpacking!
Monday
Back to school for Ben and Esther- and they were so keen to see their friends! They are thoroughly enjoying being back at school and enjoying the routine again after weeks of being moved around in England (having slept in 6 different beds over 8 weeks!).
It was out to town for me and Joel: time to restock the cupboards!
We had 6 visiting MAF guests from Dar es Salaam for lunch.
Then in the evening, we had an unexpected guest at dinner- another MAF pilot whose flight had gone differently from planned and who had ended up in Dodoma instead of Arusha for the night!
After dinner, it was our turn on the MAF rota to host the MAF staff meeting, so 10 of us met in our lounge from 8pm. It was a good chance to see our colleagues after our time away!
Tuesday
Time to greet Jane and Pendo, as they came back to work at our home. It was nice to see them again, although I must confess to being a little taken aback by Jane's greeting as she exclaimed to me, "Oh, you've gone so fat! It must be all the food you ate in England!"
I was feeling ever so efficient on Tuesday morning, as Joel and I had driven the car round the corner to a local shop to buy a huge, heavy bag of flour, so that Jane could start again on our bread-making. By 10am, this new 25kg bag of flour was in my larder and I had poured it out of its sack and into our flour-bin.
I was now looking forward to getting back to the incompleted job of unpacking our 12 cases.
This feeling of efficiency, as it so often the case here in Dodoma, was short-lived. Jane soon called me into the kitchen, where she was standing with her elbows deep in a bowl of bread-dough. "Look, Mama," she said, "this flour is FULL of "wadudu" (= insects)!" I looked and sure enough, in her floury sieve, a party of Evil Weevils were having a fabulous time, crawling about, looking even fatter and better-fed than me! ARGH!!!!! After a moments consideration, I decided that we must take the sack back to the shop and try to get another sack. 33,000 Tanzanian shillings (£13) and 25kg of flour could not be wasted! But I would need help to carry the flour and evidence of the weevils...
So after a bit of faffing, Jane and her sieve full of (now-squashed) weevils, Joel and I and Gadi (who works in our garden 2 mornings a week), carrying the bin full of flour, crowded into our large vehicle and drove around the corner back to the shop. We were met with great surprise by the shop-keeper, but after considerable discussion and a good look at the flour and the weevils, I was really thankful that he took the flour back and returned my money.
We then found a different shop selling the same type of flour- but it was 5,000 shillings cheaper ( a day's wage out here) and wonderfully weevil-free!! I parked this sack in my larder and told the tale to anyone who would listen. Ben was smiling too when he got home from school, as a Mum without weevils in her kitchen is a much happier Mum than when she is on a weevil-killing mission!
On Tuesday afternoon, a friend brought her 3 children came to play. It was all fun and games until the children discovered this new plant in our hedge:
That was when the trouble started. Joel gave a scream of shock and burst into tears, opening his mouth and saying "sore! sore!" My friend Meg informed us that these pretty red plants are actually the hottest chillis that are grown in Tanzania! Their name is "bird-poo chillis", as birds drop the seeds into other plant beds and these chillis sprout up unexpectedly.
Poor Joel drank about a pint of milk and sucked on an ice-stick but it still took quite a while for the effects to wear off!
Wednesday
Wednesday was a jolt back into reality for me and Joel, as we stopped off at Dodoma's main market after driving the 07:20 MAF school bus, to drop off Esther, Ben and their school mates. The market is always a bit of a shock to me after time away. The noise, the dirt, the mud, the mice and coping again with the language are all factors that bring me back down to earth with a bump after all that gliding around with a trolley on pristine floors in English supermarkets!
In the afternoon, we had more fun and games when another good friend brought her 3 children to play. We had a great time catching up and were also joined by a couple of other kids off the MAF compound. In fact, the children had so much fun that Andrew, on returning home from work, stood shell-shocked in the doorway, surveying a lounge and garden that had been turned upside-down: cushions everywhere, chairs lined up like trains, toys galore, dens in the corner created by a washing-horse and picnic blankets, clothes, discarded princess outfits, dirty tea-sets, puddles of water and asked, "Has there been a tornado passing through here this afternoon??"
"Oh no," I calmly replied, "just 8 children having marvellous fun, making up for all the time apart over the last few weeks !"
Thursday:
A day to get think about being healthy as Joel helped Jane to sort and clean the brown wheat, so that we can mill it into brown flour and start to bake bread with some brown flour next week:
Also a good time to spend with MAF friends for Joel as I, as we cycled over to compound B and had a lovely morning at a friend's house- probably the calmest and most sane time since we've been home!
We had 2 MAF friends for lunch- our short-term next-door neighbours who come from England. It was Janet's birthday, so we thought it would be nice to have them over to join us for lunch!
Friday
Joel and I enjoyed going to our very small but much valued "Toddler" get-together group. Every Friday, a group of up to 6 of us Dodoma Mums get together with our pre-schoolers. We take turns to host in our homes. It's such a good opportunity for Joel to get some socialising with little ones his own age, since there are no suitable nurseries or Kindergartens in Dodoma and no creche on Sundays at church, so we both enjoy this time together with other tiny tots and their mums!
In the evening, we joined some MAF friends for dinner at Dodoma's one and only Pizzaria. Back to the old routine of making the children wear long sleeves, long trousers and socks despite the heat and covering them with insect repellent! Mosquitoes are a constant worry as soon as it starts getting dark. Better to be overdressed, hot and sticky with repellent than be bitten by a malaria-mosquito.
Saturday
Back to the 9am Ladies Keep Fit class, led by neighbour Margaret! If Jane is to be believed, I need to attend every Keep Fit class I can find!! ;-)
In the evening, I discovered that my computer is broken!! :-(
I am now using Andrew's work laptop, but I am very, very sad that the battery and powercable on my 7 year old laptop seem to have given up. How on earth I am going to get a new laptop in Dodoma I have not yet worked out. And there's still the issue of the broken washing machine. They say that events like these often happen in threes- I am not usually superstitious, but I can't help wondering what will break next...???
Sunday
Back to the cathedral for the English-language service at 09:15. It was my turn to teach Sunday School. It was great to teach the children again, although I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with 6 little Tanzanian girls who turned up half way through and couldn't speak a word of English, at the English-speaking Sunday school!! A bit tricky to keep them focused when teaching the other children in English, whilst also competing with the VERY loud Swahili singing being blasted from speakers in a nearby room!!
Still, as a friend said to me this week, life wouldn't be any fun without the challenges, would it??!! Welcome back to Africa!!
