Time to Say Goodbye

We have come to the end of our time in Tanzania. Despite knowing it’s been coming – booking flights, selling everything in our house, finishing up projects, saying goodbyes - it has still somehow come as a bit of a shock.

It has been and maybe always will be impossible to summarise our time in Tanzania. It’s been an incredible privilege and a fantastic adventure. Shinyanga became home, to the point that daily life there became normal...paying bills, going to work, shopping at the market, eating a ‘delicious’ chip and egg omelette.

As always, its people we’ll miss most. We made great friends in Shinyanga and needless to say the goodbyes have been emotional. Paul’s work hosted a goat BBQ for us complete with dancing, speeches and a classic Tanzanian photo shoot. Lilliane and our ASMK friends had us over for dinner and singing. Then there was ‘Shy-stock’, a day of games and sun and tears. Huge thanks again to Opita, Moses, Liliane, Makwaia, Sabine, Koen and Jacqueline, Liam and Margaret, Nida, Tyler, Myles, Lucy and co. You guys made Shinyanga home.

We’ve had our ups and downs but generally we’re proud of what we’ve been involved in and achieved. Buhangija is a very different place now and we know there are people who will continue working there. The Water Project is progressing well and most of the construction is finished. In exciting news, Paul has been asked to remain on the project team and so will stay involved from Ireland (thanks, Skype).

We have constantly been struck by what an amazing and beautiful country Tanzania is. Its mines full of gold and diamonds, parks full of wildlife, lakes full of water and villages full of friendly, welcoming people. Tanzania is a great place to holiday and explore a tiny part of this vast continent, in short, go and visit! Take pictures, have fun, talk to people and go home different.

Thanks to all of you who read this blog, and sorry it has ended so abruptly – it’s been a busy few weeks! We’ll probably still post things as we remember them or feel the need to share, but as we have only a few more days in Africa, it probably is time to say goodbye. 

Digging for Diamonds

Contractors have been appointed. Contracts have been signed. Construction work is Maganzo has begun. 

As most things do in Tanzania, organising everything to get started on site took a while but pipes are finally being laid. 

There has been a lot of community interest in the project. There are many women who have told us having access to water will be life changing. The arrival of 10km of pipes on trucks also caused quite a stir in a quiet town. And then there are those who are very interested in the soil we dig out to make the trenches. Maganzo is only 6km from Mwadui diamond mine so every day there are quite a number of guys with sieves 'panning for diamonds'...no finds yet as far as we're aware! 

As with all construction project, there are plenty of problems and frustrations but it's exciting to finally see progress. 

Vocational Training

As always, life in Buhangija moves along and its own pace and in its own way. So many things have been accomplished but there is always more to do – it’s just that sort of place.

Before Christmas, donations from Swords came through to send 40 children from the Buhangija Nursery School to proper, real Primary School just outside the compound. This really was a huge accomplishment and credit must go to the nursery teachers for working so diligently to prepare everyone for their big move.

When we had bought all the books and uniforms, paid the school fees and sorted the other bits and pieces needed, we had some funds left over. While chatting to Claire and Sarah one evening, we discovered that they had organised for some of the older ‘residents’ to attend a local Vocational College to learn a trade or skill. This is very exciting as it hopefully provide these teenagers with a means of income after they leave the centre. A lot of people with albinism end up begging on the streets of Dar es Salaam or Mwanza.

Apparently, 15 had signed up to be enrolled on a course but to date there was only enough money for 9. After a few quick calculations, we worked out that the funds remaining from the Primary School fees would cover the additional 6 so thanks to the donations from Ireland, all those who expressed interest will be able to attend college!

  

Swahili word of the day: Fundi (Technician, used for any trade person…and hopefully there’ll be a few more albino fundis in the future!)

Gombe Stream National Park

Despite how it may seem, we are not being sponsored by the Tanzanian Tourist Board…although we are open to payment! 

As proud products of the marvellous and free (yes, Mr. Trump, free) Irish education system, we boast that Newgrange is older than the Pyramids, the Giants Causeway the geometrical genius of an irate giant, our saints and scholars rival any others and that, on a good day, there is no land like Ireland.

However, Tanzania is proving to be quite the competition. Not in an emerald isle, cliffs and waves way…more in a giraffe and elephant, colossal mountains, picturesque beaches, gold and tanzanite way. Home of Serengeti, Kilimanjaro, Ngorongoro, Zanzibar as well as numerous East African peace talks, mines full of treasures and the largest volume of freshwater lakes in the world. In short, everyone should come on holiday here.

Gombe Stream National Park is Tanzania’s smallest National Park, situated on the banks of Lake Tanganyika in the west and only accessible by boat. This is where, 55 years ago, a young Jane Goodall went, accompanied by her mother, to study the behaviour of chimpanzees. Goodall’s studies in the following years proved to be groundbreaking and are still talked about in scientific circles.

Last week, we took the 10 hour drive to visit the park and its world famous chimps. The Park is still remote, welcoming only around 1000 visitors each year (compared to Serengeti’s 300,000+). It’s hot and humid and requires a long, long hike through steep hills to try to find a community of around 50 chimps.

So we hiked. And then hiked some more.

In school, all Irish essays seemed to revolve around the phrase ‘go tobann’. It has remained a staple of Gaelige leaving cert essays for generations; coming to mean much more than a simple ‘suddenly’. Never has there been a more apt moment than after three hours, we went around a corner and ‘go tobann’, there they were.

My dad is a big monkey fan. He’s been known to go to the zoo for his birthday. Just himself and my mum walking around a cold Dublin zoo in the middle of March. It’s always to the monkey house he wants to go, and I must confess I never got it.

Now I get it.

Watching these human-like animals play and jump and tease and groom, seeing frustrated mothers swatting away annoying young ones and older males surveying the scene from high up in trees, knowing we were probably as remote as we had ever been was quite awe inspiring. 

We sat and watched for an hour, the maximum amount of time you’re allowed to stay in close proximity. The comparison with humans is remarkable. The behaviour, the relationships, the reactions – all so familiar it was almost eerie. We took a lot of pictures, you can click here for the rest of them.

Gombe is less than 20km from Kigoma, the region with the world’s third largest refugee camp. People are pouring across the Burundi border fleeing what the UN has said could be a second ‘Rwandan style genocide’. It's a truly terrible situation.

Tanzania is a country of such contradictions. The country we live in is one of the most beautiful we've ever seen...and yet, its home to so many marginalised, hungry, homeless, helpless. As we come into our last few months here, this has been one of the hardest aspects of life to get our heads around. A friend of mine, after hours of 'solving the world' over a cup of tea, used to always laugh and say ‘Sure, what do I know anyway?!’. I suppose I thought after all this time I might know something, have some understanding of how all these contrasts and complexities can exist.

But so often, you find yourself thinking, what do I know anyway?

Invitation for Quotations

About two weeks ago, any Guardian (the Tanzanian version) readers will have been treated to a very special advert on Page 3...

After weeks of getting everything finalised, the water project Paul is working on was ready to start looking for a Contractor. To give the best chance of finding the right company, and to adhere to Tanzania's transparency laws, a small fortune was paid for prime location in the country's "most read English language" newspaper. It's a big milestone in the project and if anyone reading this is interested, please address quotes to PO Box 1195, Shinyanga...!

Old New House

Last April, when we thought we would be heading to another part of Tanzania, we moved out of our first Shinyanga house. We had paid for a year up front so were delighted when Koen and Jacqueline, a Dutch couple who also work with ICS, moved in and covered the rent. When we came back to Shinyanga in July, we found a house until December but arrived back in January homeless with out stuff stored in two different friends' houses.

So we have spent the past couple of weeks asking around and trying to find a house - not the easiest when every landlord seems to want a year commitment. However, in bad news, Koen and Jacqueline told us last week that they are leaving Shinyanga. They have become good friends and often bare the brunt of our frustrations and venting so we'll miss having them around. It does mean, in a true 'every cloud' scenario, that we can have their house - our house - back again. 

We've been moved back in for a few days and it's a little weird. Most things look the same. Even Alice's homemade wooden Christmas tree is still in the living room. To avoid repeating ourselves, here's our first blog about the house from October 2014...it's nice to be home!

Happy New Year!

After a busy but great time back in Ireland for Christmas and New Year, we arrived back in Shinyanga on Monday. A month is a long time but it flies by when you're catching up with family and friends, trying to get your head around Christmas shopping and eating as much turkey as possible! Thanks to everyone who made time for us, said hello, fed us and told us they read our blog...

Not particular fans of New Years resolutions, ours should probably be to keep the blog updated more regularly. Being busier here is great but it does mean less time to sit and type our general musings but we'll try.

As always, it will take us a few days to settle in and get used to being back...although things like haggling with airport taxi drivers is far more normal now than it used to be. Paul has a busy few weeks ahead as ICS go through the Tanzanian tender process to find a contractor capable of installing the water supply infrastructure. Alice will continue to work in Buhangija and has already been chatting to ASMK (the local NGO we partner with) about some potential future projects.

If you have any (inevitable) unwanted Christmas presents or are in the middle of the (also inevitable) January clear-out and would like to support work in the Shinyanga Centre for Children with Albinism, Swords Baptist Church are hosting another fundraiser later this month. The money they raised last year fixed the well, restored a rain water harvesting tank, renovated classrooms, installed a clinic and has paid for our nurse, Mama Felicita for the past 8 months...looking forward to seeing what this year will bring!