Guest blog # 4 Pippa Simkins

Dodoma

Last Sunday I travelled from Zanzibar via Dar Es Salaam to Dodoma with my brother and his family where they live and work. Dodoma has been Tanzania's national capital since 1973, which may surprise some as it really is in the middle of nowhere with a desert-like climate and with not much to recommend itself, save for its central geographical location. Nevertheless I found the journey from Dar Es Salaam an eye opener and my time here has enabled me to experience some of the differences in everyday life that a white missionary family have living in a place like Dodoma.

The 7-hour car journey from Dar Es Salaam was dusty and hot and I was glad of our air conditioning. The further we got from Dar the dryer the landscape became and the poorer the housing and livelihood - in Dar there are quite a lot of concrete housing but in the countryside there were generally mud brick housing, skeletal looking cows, and little sign of water or agriculture. It really made you wander what people lived off and how they could manage to survive. Here are some more interesting facts about Tanzania which may help you to understand the poverty here;
Ø Only 6% of the population have graduated from primary school
Ø The average wage is about 80,000 shillings a month (£35)
Ø The average life expectancy is 45years.

At the beginning of the week my brother gave me a tour of the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) base in Dodoma where he works. In Dodoma there are about 14 expats working for MAF (not including women and children) - from engineers and pilots to personal and accounting staff. I got to be introduced to many of the staff and see the hanger where the airplanes are as well as see the accounting office where my brother works. There are 2 compounds here for works - during my stay I stayed in a guest house at compound A with a group of Canadians and I have been walking daily the 1 km to compound B to spend the day with the family. I enjoyed these walks – opportunities to see the locals in this fairly wealthy area of the city (though still many half built houses!) Today I saw people on their bicycles with baskets carrying chickens and a man carrying a huge bundle of charcoal on his head! There are a couple of shops (though not what we call shops – open air shops where clothes hang in the trees, or a sofa is sitting on the dusty side street).

I was also taken around the market this week, which sold many things I had never seen or eaten before. I brought home plantain bananas, which the house lady cooked for me – tastes very similar to potato and looks a greener version of a banana. I also bought home a red grain which is milled into a kind of flour which the Africans cook to make a porridge. One of the house ladies also cooked me ‘Ugali’ (maize meal – looks like white mash potato but tastes more like rice) which I enjoyed and also a local dish called ‘mboga’ (pronounced ‘umboga’) made of coconut milk, and vegetables. This is commonly eaten with Ugali or white rice and the stable diet for local Tanzanians. They also like to eat a donut type bread which is round and small and deep fried called ‘mendazi’ It is quite a novelty being able to walk in the compound in MAF and see bananas and mangos growing off the trees!

You are probably wondering by now what I mean by a house ‘lady’. Each MAF family has a house lady or two working for them in the daytime that do much of the household tasks (which are many more here due to issues around sanitation. For example you have to sterilise all fruit and vegetables, iron all clothing in case of mango fleas and boil milk/filter water before it can be drunk. It is beneficial for locals to be employed in this way as MAF adhere to local laws regarding pay and they get a more decent wage than elsewhere - it also helps to reduce the high unemployment levels here. Spending time with the local Tanzanian house ladies has enabled me to learn some Swahili words here, here are a few that may interest you;
Ø ‘Jambo’ or ‘Hujambo’ means hello
Ø ‘Karibu’ – welcome
Ø ‘Kwaheri’ – goodbye
Ø ‘Asante’ – thankyhou
Ø ‘Moja’ – one
Ø ‘Mbili’- two (pronounced ‘umbili’)

Staying in Dodoma has given me an insight into what an expat life is like here and also enabled me to have contact with some of the locals – I went to visit one of the house ladies houses’ which was an eye opener. Her kitchen consisted of a few pots and pans – no sink or oven and she had a hole outside in the ground for a toilet. My brother Daniel and his wife are helping to support this Christian lady to look after some of the street children (which she herself has a heart for doing so) – she currently houses about 9 children (2 being her own) and Daniel and Libby along with their sponsors have enabled many of these children to be clothed, fed and educated – as well as building an extra room onto her house for them to sleep in.

It has been wonderful to spend time seeing my family and I’ve spend a lot of time playing with my nephews and nieces aged 7,5 and 3. I will miss them when I move on to Moshi on Monday. Seeing some of the poverty in a non touristy part of Africa has once again left me with all sorts of real questions and feelings; the suppressed guilt of seeing poverty, wondering ‘why me’ for being placed in the richest part of the world and also wondering how I am going to take away from this experience – how can I use my money more wisely.