tomintanzania

Sunday, 15th April

With today being Sunday I figured I’d treat it as a rest day before the final push came along. My last few days are always hectic as I have to finish all the jobs, empty my house of the things I brought out, distribute everything I’ve bought whilst here, say my goodbyes and also get ready for my return journey.

The final three primary children who are being sponsored came to visit me. Two of whom Imogen supports and so it is a slight shame they came just when she was gone, but it was good to see them all anyway. Again I laid out what they can expect during the year and they all good some goodies there and then.

Nyemo and Stefano with their grandmother. Two more of the sponsored primary children.

Moussa, the 11th primary child to receive sponsorship. Having given him the football it then transpired he didn’t like the game. Ooops, trust me to find the one kid in the country who doesn’t like it.

Every time I come here I always kick myself for not bringing The Lion King. This trip I remembered. The kids were transfixed and even though it was in English they still laughed at all the right places.

Kenneth is a student at a theological college and was after some support. He walked off with a few shillings and a phone.

I had promised some of the guys I would play pool with them, so over we went to the nearby town and we hogged a table for 10 games on the trot for a grand total of 80p. I bought this tie as a bit of a joke but Teck took a shine to it and wore it for the day.

More football shirts were distributed

Plus some uniforms

In the evening I was invited to David’s house for dinner as it was his daughter’s 5th birthday. I gave her a bag of English sweets – she enjoyed the refresher lollipops, but the blackjacks might make her wince.

Monday, 16th April

The day was spent in town getting seeds and medicine for the rehab centre plus a hundred and one small things. I also organised getting 3 mattresses shipped back to the village – many people just sleep on a sack on the floor of their house. Not very comfortable. One went to Joel the shopkeeper, one to Amini who has malaria and his mother is very sick with breast cancer and the other to Teck who shares a sack with his brother Alan. When I asked Amini about his mattress he said ‘ah it is amazing, I slept so well, I went to bed very early just so I could lay on it’ and when I asked Teck the same question his face lit up with a huge grin. The three mattresses only cost £100 in total, so hardly big bucks to make a difference. I also bought some walkmans and a couple of radios for children who had requested them.

In the seed shop, buying up a chunk of their stock.

Handing tapes out to the children with tape players. It may seem like a slightly frivolous use of money buying tapes, but for blind children with little stimulation is important for them. Plus they are cheap as chips – 20 tapes and 3 tape players cost £23.

Giving the final load of toy cars out.

Tuesday, 17th April

Another day in town. This time I was visiting a sign maker to have something made for the chicken projects. I also met up with Christoph worked at the rehab centre until he and the other sighted helper stole tools and went to prison. In spite of that, he is still a good guy and now works driving local buses around town. I meet him every year and give him support in the shape of food, medicine and other items for his family.

Christoph with some of his bags

In the evening I make the children work for their supper. Tomorrow I will be distributing many items to the school and they all need dividing up. The least fun task was taking 3x15kg sacks of powdered soap and splitting it in to 100 smaller bags. That stuff is nasty. It gets in your skin, down your throat and in your eyes.

Child labour at its best. It would have taken forever for me to have put 1000 or so items into the bags.

A job well done

Wednesday, 18th April

I have covered today in a Day-In-The-Life which can be found here

Thursday, 19th April

First visit was to the village doctor to hand over all the pairs of glasses my sister and I had gathered. I didnt count them but there must have been around 100 pairs. I then headed to town for my final visit. I was due to visit the blind again at Milembeli at 1.30pm with a teacher from the school who is the top dog when it comes to local blind leaders. He is always late though. I had finished my business in the morning in record time and then found a nice hotel with wifi I was starting to feel reluctant to leave. We ended up setting off at 4pm.

100 or so pairs of glasses

The trip to Milembeli went well. We handed out some of the completed uniforms and visited the tailor to check on the progress of the remaining ones. Some children also got windup radios and one of the leaders got a phone. I also had some chats with the adult blind about what assistance they are after in the future.

Some of the MileMbeli uniforms and back left is the tailor.

Idi and his wife Amini. Easy names to remember. He wanted help towards starting a brick-making business. He had already raised $150 of the $300 he needed, so I boosted his total by a further $75.

I spotted this centipede and pointed it out to some children who immediately killed it and told me it was far more dangerous than a scorpion.

Friday, 20th April

This was my final complete day in the village and I tried my best to keep it as free as possible as I knew I would have plenty of jobs to finish plus I had to pack and say my goodbyes. Sure enough it ended up as a full day of work.

My first job of the day was to deal with the school uniforms. Providing uniforms isn’t as simple as going in to a shop and buying a bunch of clothes, instead you have to compile a list of the names of the children most in need, agree a price with the tailor, ensure the children visit the tailor for measurement, pay for the materials, check the work is on schedule for the deadline, collect the completed clothes and make sure it is clear which belongs to whom, pay the tailor the balance, distribute them and then get a promise the tailor will complete any modifications that need to be made. I have had 61 made in the village plus 25 made in town for an average price of £6 – not bad for bespoke clothing.

Next visit was to Uguzi Primary – one of the 4 schools in the village. I went to hand over Bristol City shirts for their football team. I hope one day a City fan who happens to be in that part of the world pulls over to the side of the road and does a double take at them. I also visited some of the classrooms. Each year I do a bigger project here – two years ago it was building 3 homes for the families of blind beggars in town, last year it was building the chicken projects and this year I’ll be supplying desks and chairs to a school.

To meet the deadline, Mr Fwejeje who is a blind teacher stepped in to help his wife. Making the uniforms not only benefits the children enormously but it is also excellent business for Fwejeje and his wife and the profit will go on to do more good for his extended family who rely on his salary.

The Uguzi football team

How most of the classes look. Not only is it uncomfortable, but learning how to write becomes that much more difficult.

Just one class has desks and chairs. I have £1000 to play with on this project and each desk/bench combo will cost around £30 and can seat at least 3 children.

Mr Kusenha came with 4 of his grandsons to collect his 10 iron sheets. I didn’t envy having to carry them a few kilometres to his home.

The next visit was to the rehab centre to say my goodbyes. I also took a boot load of goodies for them including plenty of medicine plus seeds for their gardens. They also received all the odds and ends from my house like spare clothing from town, loads of toothpaste, and soap. We had a 90 minute meeting to discuss the past projects and what will happen in the future. Two new families have moved in to the centre and they don’t have a project and there is no money left to set them up with one so I told them I’d add it to the rather long list of things to consider for the future when the next load of fundraising takes place. I try my best not to promise things because the money that comes in soon finds a home and if it is already promised for certain things then it will limit what I can do in the future.

The rehab centre with their seeds and medicines

Jared is the rehab chairman. John is the guy who had cancer on his head a few years back. Behind them are Jared’s gardens where he grows things like eggplant and green peppers to supplement his family’s diet and to sell.

Yusuphu outside his chicken project with the sign I had made.

Some of the rehab children with their new uniforms

More albinos with their ASDA factor 50.

Next up I had to help someone with a visa application for the UK – one of the teachers wants to come to have his eyes checked over to see if anything can be done. I suspect he is beyond hope, but it’ll be good having him to stay. Omary then came with his Tanzanian League for the Blind hat on. I gave him all the remaining phones for distribution to blind leaders across the region, plus anything else I thought suitable. After he left I had just enough time to visit the school to hand out the remaining few things from my house and then it was time for dinner. Each visit I have some blind leaders for dinner on my final night. Each year it gets progressively more boozy. 3 of the 8 did not drink but the rest of us put away 8 bottles of wine. We then went to the village bar and I drunkenly announced I’d buy the drinks for everyone for the rest of the night. Fortunately a few of the teachers had hit their limit so the bill was only £12 for about 25 drinks.

The final few shirts from my house

I liked the addition to this card

Dinner with the blind leaders

Which became a rather drunken affair. A few of them even turned down alcohol later in the evening which I see as a success on my part.

Samson, with a shirt I had given him earlier in the week, had been sketching Spiderman

Saturday, 21st April

Having stumbled to bed gone 3am, I was up at sunrise to finish my packing and clearing out the house. I had various visitors and was given gifts ranging from a music instrument to a tortoise. Not all the gifts came back to the UK with me

The tortoise in a box

Samson on his paper phone

Saying goodbye to the children is always rather moving. I shook them all by the hand and wished the ones well who would be moving on to secondary school by my next trip. I then headed to Dar with Teck. I’ve always done the journey alone but thought it might be fun to show him what Dar has to offer – he has been a bunch of times, but has only stayed in very basic guest houses. On this trip he had his first experience of riding in a lift – I’m still not sure if he figured out we were moving or if the world was moving around us. We then went to a smart hotel for drinks and a Thai dinner was followed by a quick visit to a casino where he was dumbfounded by some of the amounts of money being wagered – on every spin of the roulette wheel there was enough money on the table to buy him a new house and educate him and his 5 siblings.

Teck about to tuck in to his first experience of Thai food.

The next morning, after another 3-hour night, we headed to the airport and said our goodbyes. When I landed in the UK he had texted me saying ‘God be with you Tom on your journey, I’m sad to return back to the village alone but don’t you worry I’m alright. I’ve seen your aeroplane it was white and there is your national flag behind’. Which means after I left him he must have waited for 3 hours at the airport to see the plane lift off.

At some point after I catch up on my sleep and contact everyone who gave money, I will post up exactly where the cash all went but as a rough idea I spent just shy of £3000 on 76 mini-projects documented in these updates, plus around £1200 on child sponsorship and I have a grand still to spend on the school desks and chairs. Thank you to all those who gave money.

 7.40am is about as late as I get to sleep in until.

  

Don’t be fooled by the taps. There is no running water and the cistern is broken.

   

Breakfast consists of a banana

  

It doesnt rain often here, but today it was heavy for a couple of hours. The ducks liked it anyway.  

 

First stop was to Simba. Simba is called Simba because his father had a very hairy head. Simba means lion in Swahili, as any fan of The Lion King should know.

  

Simba is blind and a hard worker so he gets a double tick on my ‘keen to support list’. He got 40kg of maize and 20,000tshs (around $12) to use for his family.  

 

Next is Yusuphu. Another hard working blind man. He is a craftsman who makes simple brushes to sell. He also has a garden growing fruits and veg. An English friend who is a gardener gave me some money to spend here so I gave $60 of it to Yusuphu as a contribution towards a much needed water pump.

  

In return he insisted I dive in and grab a handful of his groundnuts

  

As I walk back to my home I spot this creature on my shirt   

And then see these three creatures at the school.

 

 I am rushing home because I had a phone call planned between 14 children from the blind school and 60 children at a London primary school. They introduce themselves and then ask questions about life in each other’s country.

 

 As the children drink their sodas as a reward for doing well on the phone, Sophia and Christopher turn up. Both are being sponsored at secondary school and I have a gift to pass on from Sophia’s sponsor  

 As I have a house full of children and plenty of sacks to be moved, they get put to work to help me prepare for a later task  

 As I then pass back through the school to go to lunch, I spot these children dancing. You may just be able to make out a radio on the window ledge – I supply a few radios each time I visit.

  

 Time check. Late lunch.

 

 Not a very interesting photo, but this is a scorpion hole. When it rains, they appear all over the place.

  

As I walk to lunch I hear someone has a supply of iron sheets. I need 18 to finish two blind people’s rooves, so I go and investigate. Sure enough there are sufficient and at a fair price so I snap them up.

 

 I have an inner circle of a few guys from the village. They are always keen to help with stuff and this is Enock

  

Lunch of egg and chips  

 

Enock tucks in to rice and meat

 Nasson is front left – his parents moved away from the village several years ago and left him to live with a local carpenter near my house. He gets board and keep and goes to school but has to look after the family’s three cows. He told me 2 years ago he had never had egg and chips before, so today when he was walking past the food place I got to remedy that. His two friends also got a free lunch.

 

 Heading back to the school I spot this boy in a tree.

  

I also swing by to get my receipt for iron sheets. 315000tshs is around $200  

 

A kid shows me this frog. I was told it wasnt dead, but it certainly wasnt moving.

  

As I wait outside a classroom for a meeting to finish, a boy called Gift comes up and tries to convince me he is infact not Gift at all, but a deadly ninja. His smile gave away his real identity though.

  

 The goods for this afternoon’s task – all 100 kids at the school will get a bag consisting of a toothbrush, toothpaste, sweets, biscuits, a pen, a comb, powdered soap, a bar of soap, pants, socks, shoes, a tshirt and a pair of trousers. I’ve been gathering the items over the past 3 weeks. Total cost of this project is 1,000,000tshs or around £400/$600.

 

 Distribution started off crazy. I told the guy manning the door to let the kids in 5 at a time. So we could finish them and move on to the next batch. He thought I meant 5 at a time every minute. Gah.

 

 Akram doesnt go to the school but he was passing and I thought it’d be sweet to kit him out as we had some very small clothes as well 

 My mum gave me this foot measuring device. Although I had been told all the shoe sizes, some were incorrect so I took their measurements and will get their shoes the next day.

  

 More measurements  

 

Meanwhile a kid uses chalk to draw a picture of me on the window. Not a bad likeness, but too much hair.

 

Back home I am visited by this woman. She is deaf, can’t talk and one of her feet points backwards. For reasons I cover elsewhere, I have brought a halt to helping uninvited visitors to my home. However she was sent by a friend’s wife so I made an exception and she got a bag of clothes, wash stuff and other goodies.

  

As always, the house is full of children. On the spur of the moment I brought from England this balloon powered rotor and it provides much amusement

  

At 6pm I clear the kids out as the leaders from the Tanzanian League for the Blind have come to discuss their work. I’ve been involved with them for years and various faces might be recognisable from previous ADIMLs. They have 4 of the 5 million they need to build an office (5 mill is around $3200). They are a good organisation who receives funding for projects from overseas but they get nothing for their own admin costs, like having an office. I agree to see what I can find but my budgets are now pretty much empty. I will make a contribution of some type though.

 

 Once the leaders go, the kids return. Each night it is never the same kids eating, yet there always seems to be 11 of them. It is a struggle to make 1 chicken go round so many tummies, but we manage it, just.

 Time check. 2.15 you say? Actually 8.15. Here the day starts at sunrise at 6am. So the way they tell the time is 6 hours out from how we tell the time. It used to confuse the heck out of me.

  

 I then visit the girls at the school to give out Khangas – these are large pieces of cloth they can use for bedding, skirts, dresses, bags and so on. It really is a multi purpose piece of kit.

  

 I go home and update my accounts. These are two of my larger budgets, but I have been given plenty of smaller pots of cash too. Total expenditure on projects this trip has been around £4500/$7000.

 

 Final yawn  

Final time check

Monday, 9th April

The plan had been to go to town early in the morning as we had a lot to do, but when you have five people in your house rattling off their problems and another five waiting outside… well, it isn’t always easy to escape. To be honest, the numbers of people were now becoming a problem. In the past I have, as much as possible, limited my assistance to the blind as there are a finite and manageable number of them. When it comes to the wider community, there are so many people in need that it can become a flood. We dished out what we had so everyone walked off with at least either clothes or exercise books and pens for the children. When we eventually got to town, we had missed the start of the clothes auctions when the kids clothes go on sale. This was annoying and morale was dipping. I ended up shouting at a guy to stop bothering me, he kept grabbing my arm wanting the equivalent of 4p and just kept at it. That’s the only time I’ve become very annoyed with someone this trip – usually it happens several times per visit to Tanzania, so I guess that is an improvement at least.

Some of the morning visitors

To cheer us all up we took 3 of the guys from the village to the smart hotel for lunch. Annoyingly the wifi was down so my wordswithfriends moves went unplayed and my dragons were left hungry. We had a good lunch though – the guys were then let loose with my camera and spent an enjoyable 30 minutes posing at every landmark in the hotel. It was fun to see the faces of the bemused staff.

Not posing at all, right?

We arrived back home to find a queue of people outside our door. Amongst them was one girl I remember well from a previous trip. She had come with an aunt who was pretending the girl was someone else so as to get a double dose of assistance. She was sent packing. After we had cleared the people out we decided that from now on any random villagers who come to us for help will be refused. We will only help those we have associated with in the past. It seems the best way of managing the resources and our time.

Dishing out more shirts at the school

I stumbled upon a chameleon and ransported him home and kept him as a pet for a few days, feeding him insects. He was released in a scene that could have come straight from Born Free.

Tuesday, 10th April

For the past few years I have visited a nearby town called Hombolo. There is a school there which houses a unit for the blind kids who cannot get in to Buigiri Blind School. They are often overlooked and life for them is particularly tough. The 11 of them are the only borders in a school of 800 children. I wish I had done a little more for them this trip but they all got some sweets, biscuits, juice, games and sanitary stuff. In the past they have received uniforms, shoes and clothing but we just did not have time to make those plans this time. I’ll try and figure something out for them between now and my next trip.

Hombolo also contains a wine factory. It was due to this that so many of the Buigiri teachers wanted to join us. As a thank you for all the help they give my sister and I in doing our work here, we hired a minibus and took them all out for the day. We tried different wines and then visited a bar in another local town on the way home. I think it did us both a lot of good getting away from the village for a day.

Some of the children from Hombolo school.

Myself and Imogen at the factory

Meat. Glorious meat.

Wednesday 11th April

This was Imogen’s final complete day in the village. She is a primary school teacher in the UK and so we arranged for her to sit in on a class and observe. We then headed to the rehab centre for her to say her goodbyes. She has a child there named after her and Imogen has taken quite a shine to her – I thought she was measuring her up at one stage to see if she would fit in her suitcase. Back at the school we were able to distribute some of the completed school uniforms and we got to meet many of the young orphans from the village who are being sponsored by friends in the UK. For £50 a year each child gets a school uniform, clothes, shoes, sweets, foot, pens and exercise books. I’d like to support more but now 12 are being covered and it is a real stretch for the teacher here who administers the money. Not least because some of the grandparents or guardians don’t comprehend things like we might do and so they will bang on his door telling him that he is stealing their money when in fact he is just rationing it to ensure it lasts the whole year and is used correctly. Some people really don’t help themselves. I laid down the law to them and told them exactly what they would be receiving in the year as some think that I’m sending out tens of thousands of pounds to buy them big houses and cars. They all seemed to understand me, but time will tell this year if the system is working.

A couple of people who sponsor kids here gave me presens to bring out. Martha received a wind up radio and a necklace. Her face lit up when she opened them and she had the biggest grin when my sister showed her how the wind-up radio worked.

Imogen chatting with Imogen’s mother

Samson and Nasson with their uniforms in the bags

Some of the school girls with their uniforms as well as with letters written by children from a London Primary School

In the evening we had a bunch of the blind teachers over for dinner as a send off for Imogen. The duck from the witchdoctor was slaughtered in front of my eyes, which whilst not being particularly fun to watch was strangely captivating.

It is amazing how intuitive an iPad is to someone who has never used such technology before.

Touching glasses to say cheers with blind people is not easy. I’m amazed my glass survived the clash.

Some of the guys very kindly gave Imogen some presents including a traditional finger piano, some local shoes, a Tanzanian flag and a necklace. She was tearing up. It is always very touching when people with very little find give you gifts.

Thursday, 12th April – Saturday, 14th April

Tanzania is famous for its safaris. Even the word ‘safari’ is a Swahili word meaning ‘journey’. The Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater are the very best parks in the world but are in the north of the country. It is too far to go for a couple of days and Imogen was keen to squeeze some animals in before departing so we headed to Mikumi National Park for a couple of days. It is only about 5 hours away from Buigiri and a bus goes from outside the school to the gate of the park – perfect. As much as I love being in Buigiri, it really is essential to get away regularly and recharge the batteries. Although it did come as a bit of a shock to find that the morning game drives start at 6.30am. Still, it is far nicer waking up knowing you are going off to see lions and giraffes than having to deal with someone banging on the door with aswollen leg or other problems. Not that they use the leg to bang on the door.

It was very kind of them to pose for me

Moo moos

Impala

The place we stayed was very friendly. It was a little tatty in some places but not having to use a hole in the floor as a loo meant we were delighted to overlook a few of the drawbacks. We went out on 4 game drives and saw lions, a leopard, giraffe, zebra, elephant, hippo, a croc, impala and a whole host of smaller animals. At the camp we had to be wary of wild animals walking around the place, which was rather exhilarating. We saw a wild cat square off with a bushbaby and two giant porcupines. We shared two of the game drives with a group of Evangelical preachers from the states, one of whom was a missionary based near my village. Whilst I’m not saying I believe in what they believe in, the first two drives had been pretty poor from an animal perspective but then when we went out with them and they led a prayer circle asking God to reveal the animals to them… well, where ever we turned we saw things – the highlight being a leopard, whose sighting we used to trump some kids back at the camp who were proudly telling us about the lion cub they had come very close to. Backatcha. The preachers were all very nice indeed and I took the details of the local guy. Well, one of them was loud and abrasive and it was clear the others were just tolerating him. When another guy put on a stocking-thing on his head to keep him warm, the loud guy started calling him a Jihadi and then he told a Latino preacher that lions like dark meat so the rest of us would be OK. It was crazy to hear that stuff, let alone from a man of God. It added another strata to the whole safari experience.

Nom nom nom.

The bushbabies were so tame

When it came time to leave, Imogen really landed on her feet. The big boss owners who run about 10 parks nation-wide happened to be staying with their family and they offered her a lift to Dar – which would have been a 5 hour journey involving her having to handle bus stations with luggage on her own. They not only transported her, but took her to dinner, made sure she got to the hotel OK and arranged her transport to the airport. People can be so kind out here.

Thurday, 5th April

Our departure to town was almost thwarted by another continual stream of visitors. One of whom was Zenadea, a blind student teacher from a town around 5 hours away. She had asked me for a talking watch and I told her to come in the morning – but she came with a small entourage who all wanted watches. I brought many out with me, but a whole load did not survive the flight and it turns out a bunch of others from Ebay are rather unsuitable as they make silly noises after telling the time and they are far too easy to change the time accidentally. I gave her one good, one ok and one bad watch. Having only promised her one to start with I thought this was fair but she was insistent she got 3 good watches. I managed to get her out the door without having any upgrades though.

Zenedea (left) with one of her entourage

John, one of the many visitors. He is one of the good guys. He has a club foot.

I remember Sarafina from when she went to the blind school. Now she is at a nearby secondary school but has no contact with her family. I am paying her school fees with money from my old school but she also needs to find around 100pounds to pay for accomodation and food for the year. It is up to her to find it, which is very tough on a child. I have supplied this with money from the same pot but have told her that this is a one off and next year she is on her own with the living costs.

The day in town was meant to be a chill out day for us as we were spending the night at the good hotel there to catch up on sleep and eat a decent meal. We spent most of the day running around various shops and buying stuff online. The evening was most enjoyable – gin and tonic, cold beer, wine, Chinese food, Wifi, Peace and quiet. Heaven.

Chinese food, Tanzanian style. I enjoyed it. Imogen not so much.

Friday, 6th April

Our leisurely start became more leisurely than we could have hoped for as the man we were due to meet in town had found himself stuck on the slowest bus this side of Timbuktu. A 4 hour journey took him double that and it was rounded off by his neighbour vomiting on him. When he eventually arrived we set about our business – we would be visiting MileMbeli which is an area of town where a group of the blind beggars live and where I have visited many times. They are well organised with an elected leadership and it makes working with them a breeze. The leaders had selected 25 of the most deserving families to receive a small food package. With Easter two days away we decided to give them rice. You get less for your money than with maize, but it is easy to transport without needing to get a truck from somewhere. Each family received 3kg of rice, 1.5kg spuds, 1kg of bean plus vegetables, fruit, biscuits and sweets. All the children also received school books and pens. 21 of the children were also fitted up for school uniforms and they will receive these later.

The bags of food and recipients at MileMbeli

Imogen feeling the pressure a little. She coped brilliantly all trip though.

Hullo

After distribution it was a bit of mad scrum as various people wanted to have a word in my ear about direct assistance for various projects. I’m receptive to hearing ideas and in the past have built 3 houses and repaired some others for families there, assisted with someone’s teacher training fees and provided support in other ways. However the one man who was most persistent has already received more than everyone else and so I am reticent about reaching into my pocket again for his family. He wouldn’t leave me alone though and eventually I had to say in Swahili ‘enough, just leave me alone’. I think he got the message then. Requests came for things like a mattress, building another house and starting a shop. The one guy I wanted to speak to, though I didn’t get the chancem, is one of the leaders called Idi. His wife is Amina. So hard to forget. He used to be a mullah and he is blind. As a leader he could have had more access to me in the past to make requests but he decided others were more worthy and so put their issues before his own. So I’m keen to help someone like him. When I return towards the end of my trip I will be sure to take him to one side.

We could relax a little after we had finished giving all the items out

Although Peter Gabriel (great name) still collared us. Next time I will ask him to sing a tune.

We didn’t get home until 8 and only a few stragglers were waiting at my home. They were in need of uniforms for their children so I made arrangements for their children to be fitted once the current batch of 45 were completed.

Saturday, 7th April

We had a fairly busy day scheduled and it didn’t help that things were going a bit crazy with people coming to the house. We had 16 separate arrivals and in many cases they had their families attached. All received something, whether it was food or clothing. The strangest request came from a man called Robert. I have known his new wife Lucy from MileMbeli for years but she has only just recently moved to Buigiri. She is a good person but for some reason Robert triggered something in both my sister and I and we were wary. His main request was to help him set up a hairdressing salon which he needed around £100 for. Lucy is totally blind and Robert has low vision. Not exactly a winning combination for hair cutting. I refused their request because businesses are very hard to succeed with. You need to be able to ensure that when you have your business capital and your child needs taking to hospital, that you don’t dip into it. Or when your brother dies and you are expected to finance the funeral because you are the one with the business, that you can refuse. I did however agree to help his wife get medical treatment for an illness and I agreed to fund their child at school for three months, but with the knowledge they would not be getting further support. I bet after the 3 months is up they try and contact me to get more help. I will say no though.

Lucy and Robert. The next Vidal Sassoon?

We eventually left the house at 10am to visit Kusenha’s family. He is blind and had a good job with the electricity board. They gave him a healthy retirement package but it disappeared over the years, mainly in the direction of various wives who came and went. Now he has nothing but has managed to build most of his home… with the exception of a part of his roof. He is after a few iron sheets to finish the job and has been asking me for the last couple of years. I agreed and will supply these before the end of my trip. Next stop was Joel’s shop. He is a blind man who is a hard worker and I set him up with a small shop a few years ago. I wouldn’t do so again now knowing what I do about running businesses here, but that would have been a mistake because he has succeeded well. Every time I visit he has more and more stock and he only takes a small part of the profit out of the business to support his family. People like him I am always happy to continue supporting and so I agreed to buy him kerosene and other items to give him a little boost to his capital.

Kusenha (back right) and his family. You can just about make out the missing iron sheets.

Joel’s shop

We bought some things from Joel to give out at our next stop.

In the afternoon we held the annual dance competition at the blind school. This was split into two categories – traditional music and Bongo Flava music which is Tanzanian hip hop. The winner from each section received a radio and soda and everyone who danced got biscuits and a juice. Then I did a quiz for the totally blind children as they find it difficult to compete at dancing. They had to answer questions ranging from ‘what is the name of the football team I support’ to ‘what is the capital of Angola’. It is amazing how knowledgeable some of them are. The winner eventually received a talking watch and the runner up a radio.

Dance competition mid flow.

The victorious dancers and quizzers

In the evening I hit up Club Buigiri. A few times a year, for special festivals, a sound system is dusted down and a building appropriated. It is a part of village life I have never witnessed before. Imagine one large room lit only by a light bulb at one end, perhaps 200 boys/men aged from 13-25 and around 10 girls, all dancing extremely well. I decided to take root against the wall. I didn’t want to put them to shame with my superior moves. Plus I am not sure my ‘how big is your TV’ and ‘I’m loading my shopping trolley’ moves would have been interpreted.

Possibly my favourite tshirt I have seen here. Chances are someone donated it to a British charity shop and it found its way here through them.

Imogen has been distributing caps to albino kids emblazoned with her school’s logo.

Sunday, 8th April

I had kept this day as free as possible because it was Easter Sunday. We had been invited to spend lunch with the family next door. It was very kind to be invited for Easter lunch not least because my cook had the day off and so my sister and I would have to have knocked something up over charcoal. We had a real feast. Before lunch we went to church, I warned my sister it was long. Fortunately I also knew that despite being advertised as starting at 7, it doesn’t begin until gone 8. We left shortly before midday. There were 3 choirs to cheer things up a bit though and the service also involved a fun section when Imogen and I had to walk to the front and introduce ourselves to the 300 or so people present. I sent her up first and she spoke in English expecting the priest to translate, but he didn’t for some reason. I went up and spoke to the congregation in Swahili and got myself a round of applause. I think Imogen felt a little hard done by.

One of the choirs at the church.

Our delicious lunch: chicken, salad, beef, rice and potatoes.

Our mother gave us £20 as an Easter present and we found a shop in town that sold out-of-date Mars bars for 20p. So We supplied all the children at the blind school plus others with a taste of England.

We had few visitors to the house because it was Easter, but those who came got the last of the clothes. The food had also finished. We have distributed 1680kg of maize by this stage, plus a few hundred kg of rice and other foodstuffs.

Handing out Mars Bars to the kids

And what Imogen gave me.

We have also been dishing out toy cars. They are flimsy and don’t last long, but they provide much amusement during their short lives.

Good morning Tanzania

Standard wake up time out here due to the chickens and monkeys outside

I get a text from a local friend who is checking there is enough maize for a project for later in the day

More hungry visitors

I hop online to check emails. I am still amazed that I can get the internet in a village of mud huts

My next visitor is an old woman. I supply lots and lots of food here. This is maize.

This is my sister who is joining me for a few days. The baby belongs to a woman in the next pic

These two had popped around to get some food.

My sister took this stealthy pic of me on an iPad and a boy from the village on my iPhone. I suspect we are both playing Angry Birds.

A cab comes to pick us up to take us to our next destination

Meet Mamma Happy and her daughter Maggie. Mamma Happy is blind.

This is their new home. I supplied the iron sheets last year and was visiting to see the items as well as to discuss providing more sheets.

Here they are again by the room they need covered. I agreed to supply 8 sheets (each sheet is around $10)

And here is my ugly mug again

Our visit brings out the curiousity gene in the local kids

After visiting her house, we find a bar for a cold soda. I live on Coke here

Sunburn and time check

We arrive at our next job a little early.

We are supplying 40kg of maize to 12 families, so nearly half a ton in total.

I get involved but am a weakling. That is a 40kg sack and skinny locals shift them around like they are feathers

We notice a nearby swing type thing

Job done. Ready to be delivered to the blind families.

So time for another drink

Hey Imogen.

We then go for lunch. Goat and chips is on the menu.

We are joined by Omary and Masaka, two of the local blind leaders

Imogen is formally introduced

Nico is an orphan and blind and goes to the nearby blind school. He has come to collect some batteries for his radio.

After lunch we go home and test out our travel shower. It somehow works. If you bend over to knee level.

Imogen with a bowl of groundnuts kindly supplied by our neighbour.

These are the nuts the neighbour has just harvested to dry in the sun.

Mamma Happy and Maggie come by to give us a gift of a sack of beans. We return the favour with some clothes, food and sweets.

Another visitor looking for food

And even more

The house is always full of children. They love our gadgets.

Our next port of call is to Masaka’s son Daodi. He is a renowned witch doctor. Many people still believe in witchcraft and he is a man in demand. As I have supported his father for many years he is always extremely hospitable to me and welcomed us to his home.

We then paid a visit to Masaka’s livestock. I set him up with a small poultry business and he has grown it to now include goats and a cow. He agreed to name the cow after my sister. I already have a goat named after me.

Daodi had 3 wives and 30 children. Some of them performed traditional Ngoma music for us.

Daodi then presented me with a very large and a very much alive duck.

We returned home for a dinner of goat and rice.

Once again, there are many mouths to be fed.

I pass through the school and spend time with the kids. I allow them to ask me absolutely anything and had all kinds of questions. It also enabled me to get some honest feedback from them about past projects and so has given me ideas for the future.

Time check

I join some of the teachers for a drink where we make plans for the coming days.

My two sodas cost 1200tshs, or around $0.80

Then it is home to a much needed sleep.