Issa

Issa is my running partner. He has known my colleagues and predecessors for several years and one day I express an interest in the sports youth centre and the street kids project he runs in Saba Saba. I go and visit one Sunday afternoon. Amidst rows of mud shacks selling second-hand clothes, I’m greeted by a dozen teenage boys standing around a worn out pool table. “No I'm not Muslim” I answer after being asked the familiar question which almost always follows my introduction. I like that most people are convinced ‘Sophia’ is a Tanzanian name. At least they can remember it that way. I play a game but am promptly defeated by a twelve year-old boy in less than 10 minutes. I immediately warm to the boys as they are kind and respectful and are in awe of Issa! They show me their gym: Issa’s resourceful creation made of rundown car parts and bits of rusty metal. It reminds me of the amazing Frankenstein industrial constructions listed in www.afrigadget.com, a website Uncle Tim recently told me about. Issa then takes me straight to a board with some ripped pieces of paper showing in faded ink how their squad made it to the semi-finals in 2006 and the quarter-finals in 2008 of a local soda football championship. Now Coca-cola has taken over even that and the boys can no longer afford the entrance fee and equipment requirements. They are not the street children Issa works with but are clearly from humble backgrounds and prefer to hang around here on a Sunday. They normally borrow a local school’s football pitch but depending on the teacher in charge they are often asked to leave even if no one else is using the ground. Issa does not seem put off by this and has plans to register as a charity and turn the main hut into a brick-built room. I ask if I can come to exchange skills once a week: I’ll support their academic work if they train me in sports. Fair exchange is no robbery, right?

I start a daily routine of jogging at the crack of dawn with Issa by my side. He arrives in his worn out fabric pumps at 5:45 am and only the moonlight illuminates our way for the first 20 minutes. There are no people around to shout names and annoying phrases and the air is cool and calm. We part ways after an hour and I arrive for a welcome cold shower and breakfast while the sky is still a creamy peach colour. It’s revitalizing in so many ways and Issa is the perfect running companion: silent most of the way and runs in zig-zags when I need to slow down! He is in amazing shape, runs with a passion, just like he runs his social projects, taking none of the credit and giving all his time to the youngsters who need him so. I wish I could help financially but my Tanzanian shilling salary doesn’t go a long way so I try to think of the next best thing I could do. One morning I ask him if he’d like to run a marathon. “Ndiyo!” he says with his characteristic serious smile. “Right then Issa, I’ll help you set up a fundraising page!”. I explain that back home people often look for sponsors when undertaking big challenges such as a marathon and that this way he’d be raising the money himself by doing something he enjoys. Fat currencies will easily cover the costs of building a proper room for the teenagers to gather, and best of all the entrance fees and equipment the kids need to participate in the local football championship they’ve been longing to play in but have been unable to afford the last couple of years.

Water works

The last good friend to leave is Frouke, a management consultant who’s been working here for the past year. She is strong and smart and her Dutch earnestness makes her someone easy to talk to. Since being here her uncle, a big fan of extreme sports, unexpectedly passed away. Running water is a great luxury in Dodoma and its surroundings. So her family entrusted Frouke with part of his wealth for a charitable water project. After a careful selection process, Changombe B primary school, located just outside Dodoma, was chosen to be the proud owner of a water pump and toilets. She invites Lars, Walter and me to the inauguration of the assets two days before she leaves. We spend the day setting up the event, listening to “big potatoes” (otherwise known as special guests and VIPs) executing their long-winded speeches, then watching a select group of children dance and playing sanitation themed games with the rest of the hundreds of children. My soap and spoon race is a disaster but we have lots of fun. As the teachers struggle to control the overwhelming number of children I’m saddened by how shamelessly they use branches to hit them, herding them like cattle and how easily the children succumb to their assaulting power.

Puppy Love

Nick and Wendy finally arrive from Maine, USA and STT's new team is now complete. Nick is my new colleague and his good humour, enthusiasm and team spirit is refreshing and very welcome by all the team. We share a similar attitude to development and agree to do our best to work ourselves out of a job. Wendy is bright and warm. She is also incredibly brave, having come to work as a clinical psychologist in a local mental asylum. Her stories are jaw-dropping. I wonder how she keeps sane amidst patients greeting her whilst urinating and staff who can’t see anything in her but a funny white person. At a welcome tea party Nick and Wendy meet pretty much all the people I know who still live in Dodoma. Augustine and Marion are not among them. Three weeks later I learn that that weekend Marion was taken ill. She was rushed to hospital, flown to France and tragically passed away on the 2nd of June. All in the space of a week.

Soon after the tea party, Courtney comes to stay with me. She is a bouncy black and white terrier collie mix: Nick and Wendy’s third family member. While they migrate south for a week to study Swahili in Iringa, Courtney is left in my care. Though still with racist hang-ups and a nocturnal barking disorder, she is astoundingly clever and wonderful company, always game to play ball and warming my feet wherever I sit down. She wins me over effortlessly and I enjoy taking her out for walks despite having to assume the village clown role as I do so. One morning I take her to the local duka to buy some bread and canine breakfast treats. When I turn around to head back home I find we’ve been suddenly ambushed by four rough looking doggos. Two of them bark jealously and scratch they scruffy fur posing no serious threat besides a parasite menace. This, however, is the last of my troubles for I am really frightened by the quiet muscular dog growling (but not barking) and staring intently at Courtney. I try to shew them away to no avail. I notice the scary dog also has a loose chain hanging from his neck and realize she must be an escaped convict or guard dog. Courtney we have a situation here. Courtney is mute. She has either lost her voice after so much moonlit barking or she too is afraid. I hear myself anxiously swearing out loud and throwing kicks in the air but they don’t move. Crikey... all I wanted was to enjoy a nice cup of tea with some bread, not fight off fierce dogs first thing in the morning! A timely rock lands near one of the barking dogs and two men who have spotted us come to the rescue. Next time I’ll try swearing in Kiswahili!

A view of Dodoma

One Sunday, just before my friends Claire and Erin leave Tanzania, they invite me to climb Simba Rock with them and a few others. Among them is a young French couple, Marion and Augustine, who married only seven months ago, straight after finishing university. They arrived in Dodoma at the same time as me and plan to volunteer as teachers in Dom Bosco for the next couple of years. In their early twenties, Marion a physicist and Augustine, I think, an engineer, they talk about their wish to help out those in need and their rejection of the superficial life they would probably be living back home. I’m amazed that they plan to stay out here for two years without going back home for a break. Augustine does most of the talking but I’m struck by how much Marion resembles my future sister-in-law Marie, petite, blonde and sweet. And also from Nantes! I invite them to the welcome tea party I am planning for Nick and Wendy’s arrival. I promise to bake quiche especially for them! We are led up the giant rock by Michele, a Congolese priest who is used to guiding groups of school children up this rough stack of rocks and knows the best way to climb to the top with minimum effort. The view of Dodoma gets better and better and the occasional white monkey and lizard crosses our way as we ascend. An arid, brick red, flat landscape with patches of green bush and small grey buildings surrounds us. From time to time, we stop to catch our breath and talk as we admire our surroundings.



A strange view. It could easily be passed off as a faintly populated spot on planet Mars. I wonder if this is anything like the Tanzania Che Guevara or Roald Dahl knew when they lived here. From the summit you cannot hear the crowds of politicians watching World Cup matches at the New Dodoma Hotel. You cannot see that parliament is now in session discussing the budget and thickening Dodoma’s car and sex traffic. You cannot hear the brain bleaching loudspeakers swarming the streets, campaigning for Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) amidst posters of only one face, Mr Kikwete’s face, plastered around town. You cannot see the parrot green shirts, caps and kangas, CCM’s party colours, shading in the pre-election atmosphere in one tint only.

You cannot see the dead dogs, squashed hedgehogs, fleeting digi digis, small umpalas, and sometimes standing snakes on the roads. You cannot see the bodies of the run-over cyclists on the Dar road who die every day in their otherworldly effort to wheel bagfuls of charcoal into the city. You cannot see the traffic police on the outer highways preoccupied with stopping cars for bribes or that this is the only African capital not to have traffic lights! You cannot see the STT vehicle working as a village ambulance, driving to hospital a mother with her nine year-old daughter dying in her arms, or a teacher with a teenage boy after breaking his leg and waiting for hours in excruciating pain for a lift into town. You cannot see the children and the elderly peacefully playing bao.

You cannot smell the incinerated plastic and gruesome piles of garbage dumped in the back roads. You cannot smell the stench of toilets and pit holes. You cannot smell the freshly woven straw from the baskets hanging in the market or the citrus fruit on cartwheels or the sweet whiff of coconut hair oil in crowded churches.

Kwa heri marafiki

Several weeks of new adjustments ensue. The exodus of most friends I have made the last couple of months emphasizes Dodoma’s slumberous atmosphere. Sadly, Amy’s departure coincides with that of the Brigewaters. An elderly British couple who spent most of their youth in Tanzania, they have been trustees of our organization for over a decade. Planning to stay at home with me for six weeks their aim had been to ‘help out’ at work. Unfortunately they cut their visit short after a week when it becomes clear they’re too fragile to continue living here safely. It’s sad and awkward to see them leave so abruptly, but I also feel a tiny sense of relief that they will be better looked after in their home by their loved ones. Suddenly the house feels very empty.

I get excited about bringing the nice garden back to life and hire a gardener to trim the thick bougainvillea bush decorating the front yard. Two hours later I find that not a single trace of its fuscia and coral flowers remain! Besides inheriting left-over luxuries from departing chums, a nice aspect of temporary isolation is time to think and take up neglected hobbies. The walls are blank and I start decorating them by drawing amateur pictures. I move the furniture around, take out some scented candles and make the place my own. In the process I unearth a range of treasures hidden in dusty corners. Like a blue prince facing the fearful dragon before reaching his beloved princess, I face the task of slaughtering a massive cockroach who is happily residing in a beautiful Italian caffetier I’ve found at the back of the kitchen cupboard. But hey, this is one of the easiest things to be overcome before being able to enjoy a cup of fresh coffee here! After considering several death penalties including the flip flop death and the poisoned chalk penalty, I opt for the cauldron sentence. I am told that pouring boiling water to drown the insect prevents the eggs that inevitably squirt out when squashed, from sticking to the surface. Delightful stuff.