August

July soon slipped into August, one month nearer Lizzie and Tori and Joe coming to see us. Alex next year! The boys on the site were making good progress towards finishing House One by the September deadline and the schools broke up for the holidays so Jane worked on the OVC Holiday Programme with the Sisters.

Holiday Programme

Little Loveness with her stencilled African animals

Jane and the kids

The kitchen is under the tree on the far left

This time the treat for the children was a Sports Day with a bouncy castle, so that proved an enormous hit and we used the Choma Trades (rival college) playing field, next to where we are based.  Before the inevitable football game, girls v boys, they ran lots of school sports day style races - including the egg and spoon race, mealie meal sack race and the needle race – where they work in pairs, one runs as fast as they can holding a sewing needle (health and safety all taken very seriously of course) along the length of a football field where the other is holding the thread.  They have to thread the needle and then the other one runs all the way back!  Just watching is exhausting in the incredible heat, but the children just run around and laugh and laugh as if they haven’t a care in the world. 

They just love a game of football

Much excitement in the camp

Mealie meal sack racing

Go Joyce!

Site Progress

House One was pretty much finished.  All down to the detail now - such as the doors for the kitchen units made and fitted, the floor and wall tiling completed, curtain rails (and rings) made by Oden in the workshop and then fitted by Oden, and the brick piers for chain link open fencing built in both rear gardens.

House Two saw lots of action as well – decorating the house internally, laying tiles, fitting the kitchen and laying on the electricity supply – easier said than done. That took numerous visits to the esteemed offices of Zesco.  Yes, Zesco the electricity supply company that give us power cuts many times a week. Ha, Zesco, Zesco – as I write we have yet another power cut.  Well, Paul had to take Mr Mwango with him to enable maximum communication, mostly in Tonga. It all became a big debate over whether to have two connections to two semi detached houses or just a shared one, as is the norm for houses on the compound; for some reason.  It may seem painfully obvious to us to have separate supplies but that’s the sort of thing Paul is up against all the time.  Hey ho, TIA.

Back at Chodort, Mr Lundamo the welder was making the main gate for the site – it was laid out all across the path (more health and safety at work here) ready for spray painting a deep royal blue – excellent choice. The gate was fitted onto a sliding track in the entrance gateway and with a bit of levelling and tweaking it ran very well.

Tazara Trip

The middle of August brought the trepidatious Tazara railway trip – an adventure into our neighbouring country of Tanzania.  A ‘must do’ trip – but you would only do it once.  The route runs for a 1,000 miles from a rather undesirable place called Kapiri Mposhi near Lusaka, through the Northern Province of Zambia into Tanzania, and ends in the port of Dar es Salaam.  When in Africa one has to explore a little, so off we went.

Team Tazara - Ben, Paul, Jane, Rahem

It took almost three days to get to the train which left at 4 o’clock on a Tuesday, and it was due to take two days.  Little did we know it would take three  .... hmm  ... well when the countless delays could last anything up to four hours at a time that’s not really surprising.  The train would often travel at walking pace – we were told it was because we have brake failure ...  At the next stop we asked if they were being fixed and they said “Oh no, this is the border, that won’t be for another three hours or so”.  So hearts in mouths just a bit.  That was in the middle of the night, and various immigration officials would come into our compartment to inspect passports and visas.  Just sit on my bed why don’t you?  The brakes were fixed eventually, and we spent the days contentedly enough; putting Africa and the rest of the world to rights, playing cards, listening to music and eating from our stash of picnic food supplemented by the occasional serving of chips and beer (healthy) from the dining car (ha!) and bar.

Swahili children talking to the Tazara tourists 

Tazara Tourist

When we were stationary – not unusual – the local people would come and sell their wares to the passengers at the open windows, so we could buy bottled water and fruit etc, and we spent many a happy hour talking to the children –them teaching us some Swahili and us teaching them some English.  We played games with them and made them laugh, and persuaded them into having their photos taken which they eventually loved.  So, never a dull moment on the journey, it took 66 hours going and 54 coming back, but we fell under the spell of the Tazara. 

A 45 second walk to the beach

We had just three nights at our destination – Bagamoyo Beach on the Indian Ocean.  Bliss.  We stayed in a small ten room hotel each with with verandas amidst palm trees and flowers on a small grassy slope down to the open thatched restaurant on the beach.  The sand was white and soft, the coconut palms were bendy and beautiful, and the Indian Ocean was shallow and warm.  We swam several times each day, and could sit on our coconut leaf sun beds and order drinks and ice creams from the bar.

Goats passing by on their daily walk to fine pasture -
the cows came later

Refreshed - ready for the Tazara home again?

While we had been to Bagamoyo, Ben had flown on to Zanzibar and enjoyed the delights there – that’s a place we have to visit one day now it sounds lovely.  We met up at the Tazara station in Dar es Salaam and set off on the journey back – not without it’s surprises and delays.