Volunteer Amani
26th Mar 2007Another send off and trips to Maruvango and Usa River Well how are you all? Sorry for my long absence! It has been quite a month! I have fallen somewhat behind with my diary of late so will try to bring you up-to-date over this week! The whole Amani staff spent the rest of the end of February recovering from the all-round massive effort put into mid-February`s Grand Opening! The latest news unfortunately is that it will now be at least May before the official move into New Amani Karanga! I know the move will eventually happen but everyone now is beginning to wonder just when! There is still so much work ther that needs completing, but it will be well worth the wait! The start of March was again a very busy period with one of the Tanzanian staff getting married to an American guy. I was very kindly invited to the Send Off and Wedding Celebrations which happened on a Thursday and Saturday respectively. The Send Off was in Marangu which is a good hour`s drive or so away from Moshi so the staff clubbed together and hired a dala dala for the journey. The weather in Moshi was sweltering that evening and the drive was rather uncomfortable as it was so hot and sticky and everyone was in their best clothes. That was soon to change though as the weather took quite a drastic turn for the worse as we approached Marangu. The heavens opened and to say it rained was an understatement! I felt so sorry for the bride and groom, plus the brass band and drummers who we picked up along the way, and who were riding in an open-top pick-up truck! They tried their level best to play the traditional music as we rode through Marangu but I just felt sorry for them! I was half expecting the trombone and trumpet players to stert blowing bubbles or drown through water in their instruments! When we did finally arrive the weather was no better. The venue was the grounds of a really nice hotel but as we pulled up we coulkd see all the amazing preparations, the dressed stage and seating area literally awash with water! There was no way that we could even get out of the dala dala! So we waited and we waited and we waited! The rain did eventually subside enough to be able to leave the dala dala and make a dash for the Hotel lobby where all of the invited guests began to assemble. I couldn`t help feeling sorry for the supervisors who were desperately trying to make the best of a bad job, and were trying to reposition a very holey awning which had so many holes that it seemed a bit pointless! Needless to say all of the seats placed for the event were soaking wet and also stood in puddles of water! In true African fashion the guests began to make the best of a very bad job and started to make a dash for the seating to find the best seats which had no drips above them! Slowly but surely the guests found their seating, including us. It was about this time that I suddenley began to realise that it had become progressively colder and by now it was absolutely freezing!v Yes I mean freezing! I had lost the feeling in my handsand feet! The event finally got underway and was very similar in format to my previous Send Off at the Moshi YMCA. It really was another quite spectacular event with lots of brass band music, introductions, opening of champagne, presenting of cake, both traditional and of the roasted goat variety, presents and many of the guests. The MC for the evening was really entertaining and made a real point of including us `wazungus` in the proceedings! It was quite embarrassing at times as there was at least I would say 200 guests! Highlights of the evening were the food and the traditional dances of the guests to present their presents. The pick of the bunch were the Mamas who were so entertaining with their dances using their very practical presents as props! They all mimed the actions of their gifts whilst dancing, which was really entertaining as they all had household items as gifts! The head cook, another Mama, plus all of the food servers were also brilliant dancers too! It is something I have really noticed over here about the native people, they love music and love to dance and all of them have such good natural rythm! The catering for the event was excellent, but my friend and colleagues best made plans to keep an orderly que for the buffet fell apart when a huge group of Mamas and children made a huge rush for the que! I can`t say that I blame them as even I by that time was getting very hungry. For many of these local Marangu people this food was really special and they weren`t going to miss it! A large group of Mamas sat by me also made sure that they got theie quota of beers too. They didn`t think twice about opening the bottles with their teeth either! After several hours of celebration the event drew to a close and it was ended with an open dance for all. All too soon we were climbing back into the dala dala and heading for home. We were all very grateful to have attended such a wonderful event despite the weather. I slowly began to warm up and by the time we reached Moshi the temperature was noticably sticky again! A taxi ride later I arrived home very tired but pleased to have been invited to my second Send Off Party! Now for the wedding which was to be the following Saturday and that is another story! Yes the wedding where do I start?!! Another pretty amazing day of celebration which started a little closer to home in Moshi town`s Catholic Cathedral. The proceedings really got off to the usual African slow start, with me being on time and the rest of the guests assembling slowly outside the church. I began to get a little worried when 2 brides whom I didn`t recognise turned up before the bride who I work with arrived. I was soon to realise that it was infact a joint wedding for 3 brides and grooms all in one go! It is now the 24th April and I come back to my blog diary at least a month behind! My apologies I will now try to catch up and inform you of all my latest news but it is going to be a big job as there is rather a lot of it! So, where do I start? I guess back to the wedding! My one recollection of the whole event is that it was very `long-distance` and it was rather hard to even see the bride and groom because of the photographers and video man, who insisted on recording everything at the expense of the congregation being able to see! That coupled with the extreme heat amongst a very large congregation, plus all the prior rushing around, took its invetable toll and I began to fight back a snooze! I thought that I had got away with it it until a few days later I found out that I had been captured on film by that dam video man! The rest of the service went well from what I can remember and from what I could see of the proceedings and then it was on to the reception at a local hotel which was within walking distance of the church. The reception was very much similar to the Send Off in content with a very enjoyable evening had by all! The usual brass band and the Mamas dancing with even more presents were again the highlights of the evening as was the buffet and the dancing cooks who served it again! The reception this time was a little more personal with close family and friends only present. I was beginning to feel very sorry for the bride and groom who were beginning to look shattered by now! I knew that the groom in particular was really suffering as he had malaria over his wedding period, poor guy! All in all it was another great evening, a real spectacle of presents, food, dancing and celebration and as usual, I arrived home shattered but truly amazed again by the whole wedding experience! Towards the end of the month I was lucky enough to visit the village of Maruvango, Kingori again, the home village of my close friend. We went early again by bus from Moshi bus stand and were met by my friend`s brother in his white VW Beetle, at or drop off point. We then had a really entertaining, very dusty and bumpy 20km ride into the interior of Kingori to reach the village again! It seemed quite surreal being in the back of a VW Beetle in the middle of Africa! It must have been quite a sight as we sped along and as usual stopped for fuel and to pick-up additional passengers along the way. A petrol station as you know it does not exist in remote places like this so we stopped at the now familiar petrol stop, and were filled up with petrol by a very pleasant young local, from plastic containers using a jug and funnel! The good old-fashioned way! Our early start was for a reason, so that we would arrive in time to make the morning church service. After a very bumpby, dusty and quite hair-raising ride at times, we finally drew up to the church where the service had just begun and slipped quietly out of the beetle and into church. This is a really special place for me and again the service was to be remembered if only for the fact that a child from the congregation decided to go `walk about` and almost had one of the alter candles over at one stage! The service was ended with the now very familiar Lutheran auction where numbers of chickens, cockerals and vegetables were bid for! It was so nice to be made to feel so very welcome again by the local villagers and family members of my friend. We soon ajourned to the house of my friend`s parents where we took lunch. I forget sometimes how the culture here is so very different to my own and still find some of the village customs quite hard going! Good examples were the seating arrangements in both the church and my friend`s parents garden! Strictly men together on one side or one place and women in another! It is quite hard to just sit there and watch the women do all of the hard work including the preparation and serving of all of the food! In Africa men really do have the better deal believe me, and it is really not the done thing to be a `new man` and help out! Needless to say the food and the company were excellent again, beef pilau and fried bananas if I recall, all washed down with sodas! The conversation flowed as best it possibly could, bearing in mind this is a Meru speaking village, where Kiswahili is the second language and only a few villagers know a little English apart from my friend and her brothers, whose English is really quite good! All too soon it was time to leave again by VW Beetle, this time with 6 adults, including the driver and 2 children squeezed in! The African knack of squeezing just one more person into an already full vehicle never ceases to amaze me! I know because very often I have been that one last person! The other day I was stood in a daladala with such a low roof space that I was almost bent double and just happened to have my face level with a rather over-sized Mama`s behind. I found it very hard not to laugh as we bounced along the road as did a number of the other passengers who looked at me knowingly, but dare not say anything!
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