Volunteer Amani
23rd Nov 2006A Special Day Spent In Kingori. I wanted to write a seperate diary entry to tell you about a day I spent visiting the family and friends of a good friend of mine, in an interior village called Kingori near Arusha. It was one of those special days that I will never forget! I had been invited to visit the Lutheran Church and home of a close friend of mine and had to make an early start to meet her at 7.30pm along with her sister and close friend. We took a Coaster bus for about 1 hour out towards Arusha, and got off on the main road just beyond a signpost for Kingori. We then had to take a dalla dalla (Hiace van) down a dirt road to its furthest stop, a village, which took about another 20 minutes or so. The journey did not stop there as we then had a further journey to make which had to be undertaken by car/taxi. After some serious bargaining we were underway again and driving down a road that seemed to get narrower by the minute! The scenery was beautiful, a really wild place close by to African forest. By now we were seriously off the beaten track and the road became single track and rather interesting to negotiate. I was only thinking how impossible it would be to negotiate by car after rain. Luckily the day was very dry and extremely hot! The surroundings were really breathtaking. A really wild and relatively untouched place with houses dotted around made from mud, brick and mud bricks. We finally arrived after a rather bumpy, hot and very dusty journey that again took some time. One of the car doors wouldn`t shut properly and the taxi slowly filled with dust! Our final destination was well worth the drive and I was taken aback when we finally got out of the taxi. There are some moments that are very special in your life and this was one of them. I was greeted by the sight of a medium sized white church built on a small hill with unfinished windows open to the daylight. There was aready quite a congregation gathered inside who were singing a hymn which filled the surroundings with amazing music. The sun was shining and flooding in through the open church windows and outside the church was surrounded by tropical trees with birds singing in them. It truly was a very moving moment almost like a small paradise! We waited patiently to enter and at the correct moment joined the congregation at the back of the church. It goes without saying that I was the only white member of the congregation but that really did not matter. I couldn`t help notice items that had been left at the church steps. Sacks of maize, vegetables, a hen and cockeral and eggs, but more of that later. The service itself was very moving and conducted in Kiswahili. There was a small choir at the front who sang in harmony several times and then the congregation joined in. I was just beginning to feel a bit more relaxed about the proceedings when the order of the service changed and my friend was asked to join members of the clergy at the front of the church. From what I could gather she was asked to take charge of gathering pledges from the congregation towards the building of the church building. I made a donation and was very happy to do so. Then I got the shock of my life when my friend came to me and requested that I join her at the front of the church infront of the congregation! I was asked to say a few words to the congregation in Kiswahili to explain who I was and what I was doing in Tanzania! After my initial panic I was able to say a few words and express my gratitude for being able to visit a Lutheran Church and Service. The congregation seemed to approve as I slipped back to my pew. All my hopes of a quiet visit had been dashed as now everyone in the church knew I was there and who I was! Shortly afterwards the service ended and the congregation slowly moved outside the church. During the service the items from outside had been brought into the church and left at the front. The cockeral crowed several times and a dog even joined us briefly and made a loud bark to announce its presence! The cockeral etc was moved outside with the congregation and placed in the middle of them. A form of auction was then conducted with people bidding for the items. They had obviously been brought as an alternative by people, who could not afford to bring money for a church donation. At this point I was introduced to my friend`s mother and grandmother who had been amongst the congregation. I decided that it would be a nice gesture to bid for something to give to my friend`s mother and shortly afterwards she was the proud owner of a new cockeral which she carried under her arm home! What a great way to support the church and be able to help out someone less fortunate than yourself at the same time! The auction ended and I was introduced to the clergy. We were then asked to join them in a wooden building, a form of open church hall. I was a bit puzzled by the request but slowly realised that food had been prepared which was covered with a table cloth at the front on a small table surrounded by a few chairs. The rest of the congregation filed in and sat on pews removed from the church, down the sides of the hall. I felt really honoured that we appeared to be special guests at a specially prepared meal, and was beginning to get quite embarassed by all the fuss that was being made! The food was excellent and we were joined by the clergy to eat pilau rice with beef, rice with goat stew and fresh orange slices washed down with soda! Even the dog joined us and was very grateful for several bones! The food was soon polished off and people left for home. I was very moved by the whole occasion and by the generosity and friendship that I was shown by the congregation and clergy of the Lutheran Church. The whole service was a complete suprise to me, but in a very nice way, even though my friend hadn`t warned me about the events that unfolded! That, however wasn`t the end of my visit, and I was next invited to visit my friend`s home and family. This involved a 10 or 15 min walk, and again was quite a moving experience, to be shown such friendship and generosity from people who obviously found it a real struggle to earn a living. The visit also again involved lots of food, and I was given African chai (tea), boiled eggs followed by banana stew with meat. I was by this time beginning to get rather full (2 large meals within the space of an hour is even too much for me to handle!) My friend`s mother had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to prepare this food so I wasn`t going to refuse or waste it! During the meal we were visited also by a cat, dog, hen and several small children who obviously found it rather interesting to have a whiteman visit! I sat and listened to my friend speak in her native tongue (Meru) as she was obviously catching up on all the latest village gossip. The conversation was spoken incredibly quickly and totally baffling! I will stick to Kiswahili I think as that is enough for me to handle! Tha day was moving on and soon it was time to bid farewell and start the long journey home. Our hosts joined us and walked a seriously long way with us before they bid us farewell as we continued the long walk back to the village centre. I had been carrying a little girl who I thought was a family member most of the way when it was suddenly realised that she wasn`t! When I put her down and she was asked to return home with her little friend she burst into tears and I felt very guilty! It was decided that she could come a little further with us, and then would be returned home by my friend`s mother. That made me feel a lot better. We walked a seriously long way through some really quite wild and quite beatiful terrain, as this time there were no local cars around to drive us. The day was seriously hot and I tried my best to dodge the direct sunlight, by hopping from tree shadow to tree shadow! The road was seriously long, seriously rough and seriously dusty! We must have looked quite a sight an Englishman and 3 Tanzanian ladies (my friend, her sister and their best friend) all done up to the nines walking down a road in the middle of nowhere! Even so we were passed by quite a few people walking the other way. One of them gave up trying to walk in her totty high heels and decided to walk barefoot for the rest of the way. It was quite amusing to watch the ladies swap shoes every so often to give each other a turn of walking barefoot on a really rough road! I was very glad not to be included in that activity! We finally made it to the village after a seriously long and very hot walk, and I desperately needed water, so headed to the nearest shop. I downed a full one and a half litre bottle of Kilimajaro water in next to no time and felt a lot better for it! We still had some distance to travel back to the main road and another coaster bus ride back to Moshi. I had to laugh when we were squeezed into the back of a landrover along with an amazing number of other people. some whom sat and others who stood! We laughed as the journey began with people`s elbows, legs, belongings etc pointing in crazy directions. The journey was very fast, (we complained), very bumpy and seriously dusty but we eventually arrived back to civilisation and the main road where we soon caught a Coaster bus back to Moshi bus stand. Even this journey was seriously cramped with me having to share one seat with another person! At Moshi bus stand I bid my friends farewell and thanked them for a fantastic day out, before catching a Dalla Dalla back to Njia Panda and home. I arrived thoroughly shattered but really glad to have experienced such a wonderful, truly African day in Kingori!
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