Arusha, Wednesday, January 18, & Thursday January 19, 2017

Wednesday was a day of waiting.  John’s cousin Ron and his wife, Colette, were scheduled to arrive by bus from Nairobi, but they never showed up. This was nothing to be alarmed by, as schedules are usually quite fluid in Africa.  However, John spent a lot of his day going to the bus drop off point to meet them if they came on the 1:30 or 7:30 p.m. bus. I spent my time at Kundayo doing very little at all.  It’s so odd that in past years we used to think we simply had to go places and see things, but now that we have pretty much covered the Arusha scene, I’d rather sit out in Kundayo’s garden area and read or simply float away in my thoughts. Maybe I am finally getting to the stage where I understand what a vacation means.

Later in the evening, John got an email from Ron telling us that they were delayed in Nairobi because he needed to have some rehab therapy on a finger he had broken in Guinea just before he left there. He hasn’t told us how he broke the finger but there is likely to be an interesting story connected to it, as in his past he has been in a Congo jail as a suspected diamond smuggler and was once kidnapped by an Eastern Congo warlord, held for three weeks, and then inexplicably released. There isn’t much in Central Africa that he hasn’t seen, done, or escaped from. The last time we saw him was almost 10 years ago when he flew down to South Africa to meet us there, so we have a lot of catching up to do.

My day was brightened by the announcement that our women’s group would be meeting on Thursday morning.  That meant that I had to get up a tad earlier than usual and have Ray take me to the Impala Hotel to be picked up there at 9:00. Of course, it was nearly 9:20 before Deborah drove in with another woman, Bethany, who was in town for her monthly shopping. Bethany and her husband live way out in Masai land, where he oversees several small rural clinics.  With the recent dry weather here, I imagine that Bethany lives in a hot dusty place I couldn’t begin to cope with. With no crops growing and livestock suffering, rural people—especially the children—are now beginning to suffer from hunger, and it will only get worse if the rain doesn’t come soon.  I have never met anyone in Tanzania who doubts that climate change is real.  Many live and die by the climate, and they have seen the way in which the rains have changed.

The three of us then went to Grace’s house, the very same house in which I first met this unique group of women. Grace’s husband is a doctor specializing in fertility issues, and after many years in the UK, they decided to return to Tanzania, and he now practices here in Arusha.  So, while Mary gets to live in a lovely big house, she is separated from her grandchildren, all of whom are in the UK now.  The splits and scatterings in international families are often difficult for older parents to handle. Other couples we know have married children living in not only other African countries or Canada, the UK, or the USA, but also India, Malta, and various European countries.
I think it’s bad enough having a daughter and grandchild living in Florida!

Since this was the first group meeting since the big Christmas holiday break as Linda was extremely late getting the announcement sent out, there were only ten of us present.  Still, we had a grand time catching up on news and discussing current events both here in Tanzania and the USA.  There seem to be some unfortunate similarities in what the current Tanzanian president, Magufuli, is doing and what Trump says he will do.  There wasn’t a single woman present who supported either leader. However, there is a fear of speaking out against the Tanzanian president, as he has already put critics and political opponents in jail and threatens to continue to do so. The women kept cautioning, “This is only for inside this room,” when they spoke of current events. And, what they see already happening in Tanzania, they fear will soon happen in America.  To hear this from a group of European, American, and African women, all of whom would likely be categorized as “evangelical Christians” back home, was sobering.

Cheryl, a very snazzy older woman I had never seen before, was also present as she is now in Arusha for a short visit to check on a new school her foundation is building. I didn’t get many details on her, but she and her husband (now dead) used to work in Tanzania, and now she wanders among her several houses doing her version of “good.” 

We were supposed to be studying Psalm 104, a beautiful song about the wonders of nature, but as usual the discussion focused on current issues and pressing social problems.  The lack of rain is paramount in everyone’s mind at the moment, so we heard about which mission stations needed food immediately. Bethany had brought along a box full of beaded animals the women in her area had made to sell for immediate food money. A couple of us bought some of these items, which I thought were nicer than average.  However, selling a few craft items will not solve the problem of adequate food supplies and distribution. The government has been very negligent in keeping emergency food stored, and the situation for both the agriculturalists and pastoralists could be extremely critical very soon.

The woman we had all given money to last year so she could have chemotherapy treatments in Dar is still there but not doing as well as we had all hoped.  Another member, whose daughter was murdered last fall, is now in South Africa fighting a very aggressive form of leukemia. None of the personal news, local news or international news was encouraging, so it was only when attention turned to new grandchildren that several of us now have that the mood lightened. As usual, Grace had prepared a light lunch of mtoke (cooked mashed bananas), aubergine stew, curried beans, avocado and tomato salad, watermelon, and banana bread. Of course, coffee, tea, and fruit juice were also available. Since I am officially scheduled to host this group on February 16, I need to pay attention and make notes on what I will be expected to serve for lunch here.

After our gathering ended, I rode along with Linda Jacobson, the powerhouse behind almost everything, along with Cheryl and a very young woman whose husband is doing a two-month medical rotation here toward Njiro.  Linda stopped at Pik ’n Pay, a small grocery store I had never been in before. It carried the usual assortment of basic goods and the prices seemed reasonable. I didn’t have enough cash with me to buy anything more than some shampoo for John and some curry powder for me. Linda picked up some vile looking white yam chips, which she warned me not to buy.  When I asked why she was buying them, she said she was serving them to guests from the States.

Linda insisted on bringing me clear to Kundayo, so everyone in the vehicle got completely jarred to bits and thoroughly covered in dust.

The rest of the day was all downhill until John ran over to the nearby little hole-in-the-wall cookshack and bought us kuku and chipies  for dinner. I am so glad that there is no health department checking on these open air stands because there is no better chicken on earth.