AMDG Monthly Report:  December '06

                When school closed for a long summer holiday we decided to take the opportunity to travel and see as much of Tanzania as possible.  Considering how much there is to see in Tanzania, we have been busy.

                Our first stop was Loyola, the Jesuit high school in Dar es Salaam.  Whilst there, we were lucky enough to be invited onto a school trip to a couple of national parks.   We arranged to meet them a few days later and continued on our travels to Moshi, a town in the foothills of Mt Kilimanjaro.  For financial, not physical, reasons we were unable to climb to the top of Africa's highest peak but after a day's climb we made it to 3000 metres; barely half way.  From Moshi we headed onto the small town of Mto wa Mbu, where we were to meet the school trip.

                Mto wa Mbu is a small town in the Great Rift Valley that acts as a stop-off point for many tourists as they travel onto the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Parks.  When the school finally arrived (we had been waiting for 11 hours) we were reminded by the pupils' energy that school trips are always exhausting.  However, travelling around the beautiful Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro National Parks and seeing wild animals easily made up for a bad night's sleep.  The youth hostel we were staying in is very close to the Lake Manyara National Park; this made transport easy but also meant that at every meal time we were visited by a pack of baboons.  Throughout our stay they became more daring to the point that at 4 one morning they broke into our room and stole 4 loaves of bread from right next to our bunk bed (cheeky monkeys!).  It is fairly unsettling to be woken up by screaming baboons less then a metre away from your head, but John was able to throw a few plastic bottles at them and chase them out the room.  We spent our final day walking around the town with two of the American volunteer teachers from Loyola.  We tried hard to avoid the touristy parts of the town and opted instead to go around the back streets playing cards & drinking the local brew called 'Mbege' with the townspeople ("It ain't half the stuff," John).  That evening, on our way back to the hostel, we passed a game of football on one of the most picturesque pitches we have ever seen.  It was surrounded on three sides by a banana plantation and in the distance on either side we could see mountains of the rift valley.  When they asked if we wanted to play, Dermot couldn't refuse.  However a combination of a complete lack of football skill and playing in sandals meant that he was probably the worst player on the pitch.

                After the school trip we went to the Jesuit Novitiate in Arusha to recover.  We were greeted very warmly by the scholastics there. On our first night they insisted that we were the first to get our food and that they sing to us as we did so.  Having spent a few days here we decided to go our separate ways back to Dodoma.  John enjoyed the tranquillity of the novitiate so decided to stay there longer before heading straight back to Dodoma.  Dermot wanted to see the new James Bond film so decided to spend a few extra nights back in Dar es Salaam.

                 However whilst in Dar on his own Dermot ended up getting robbed.  He got on what he thought was a registered minibus.  As soon as he got on he saw that it was practically empty, not packed as they normally are, and knew that something was going to happen.  After being taken to a completely different part of the city he had his money taken and was kicked out.  Thankfully he wasn't hurt and was able to make it back to Loyola in one piece, but it was an experience he could have done without.

                When we were both back in Dodoma we were surprised to see how much it had changed.  The first time we have seen any decent rain since arriving came the night before we left on our travels.  By the time we returned, three weeks later, the whole area had transformed from a semi-desert to being completely green.  Our first week back was spent cleaning up the house we will eventually move into.  It hasn't been used in nearly a year so, considering how dusty Dodoma normally is, it was filthy.  We spent a week helping one of the parish workers clean it so now we will be able to move in shortly.

                Christmas here was different to what we have been used to.  For a start it is far too hot and sunny for us to feel remotely festive and our many Christmas lunches were definitely not something we had had before.  As we are still staying in the Jesuit community, we were with them as they toured a variety of parishioners and nuns.  Our first lunch was at a community of nuns and we feasted on a variety of different meats but politely declined the intestines.  We moved from there to a parishioner's house where we felt obliged to eat the specially prepared grasshoppers and rice.  We continued our tour of houses, unable to eat but still finding room for drink, until we finished at the community of nuns who run St Ignatius Primary School.  Every time we go there for dinner we always seem to end up dancing round the table and, true to form, Christmas was no exception.  It is a ritual we are slowly getting used to.

                We would like to finish by wishing the best of luck to all those volunteers who are going away with XVP early in the New Year.

Dermot Dooley, Jonathan Taitt.