Bongo Flava

A strange week. Very Bongo Flava.

For anyone not quite hip to the groove (me, last week), “bongo flava” is, of course, the 80s rap-disco-reggae type music that Africans seem to lu-lur-lurve. Personally, I think it’s just weird-as – everything in, all at once, making no sense. Exactly like this week…



Bongo Flava Event One: Shona drove our “dead” neighbour to the mortuary.
Put yourself in Shona’s shoes at 8am on Thursday morning – Shona thought she was simply driving into town to run some errands…

“Firstly, let me say, what I love about living here is that every day is different. Unlike at home, where you can plan your daily routines, here, as every hour passes there is a chance that an unexpected daily event will be thrown in your path. One such experience occurred last Thursday.

The usual busy day was planned with the morning to be spent ploughing through the job applications for the house-mum positions (all 76 applications!) with Lucas, followed by a trip to town to pick up and pay for cement, steel, wire, and nails.
I received a call from Daz on the job explaining that our truck was needed to take a sick neighbour (grandfather of some of our workers) to the hospital. Hamna shida [no problem] - as I could coincide this with my trip to town.

This was followed by second call from Mudi saying “pole [sorry], but we are going to be a bit longer bringing the truck down from the job for you to use in town as “that man, the grandfather, he is dead”.

The news of death here is still passed on far too easily for my liking and I find it doubly upsetting that I am actually getting used to it. The truck arrives with Mudi and two of our workers Joseph and Peter, and we head off to the home of “that one who is dead”. This is when I learn that we are actually taking him to town to Mt Meru Hospital and are in fact, a funeral procession.

I drive to the grandfather’s ‘boma’ [home] to be greeted by wailing mamas and a large group of men standing around. We unceremoniously back up the truck, then wait. The wailing women all move away from the house and the men bring out a mattress which is plonked into the tray of the ute. I try to make myself invisible behind the door of the truck as I’m not sure if I should be wailing or assisting with the mattress. Then a dirty, crumpled blanket, containing the body is carried out. Unfortunately, the blanket is not quite bit enough to cover the dead man entirely.

The mamas proceed to decorate the truck with bougainvillea and as eight men jump into the back with my unusual cargo, I am instructed to turn on the hazard lights. Mudi heads back to the worksite at this point leaving me to finish the neighbourly job.

We drive to town slowly as I am aware that every bump on our very rough road may well send the body bouncing. After a few wrong 20 point turns we arrive at Mt Meru Hospital to an area a bit like a drive-through bottle shop. A few of us wait with the body while others go inside. This is quite an uncomfortable wait as I want to show respect by shaking hands and saying “pole” but the smell of the mattress and the body is unbearable – I mean really bad.

Soon after I am presented with a piece of paper which strangely is written in English and gives all the grandfather’s details including his age which they guess at 105. I am then instructed to go to the mortuary. I drive to the back of the hospital to a very dodgy looking area and again, am asked to back up the truck to the door of quite a nice white building.

The mattress and body are carried out and taken inside onto a table. The room is full of tables upon which lie other recently deposited bodies. To a person like me, who has not seen a lot of dead bodies before, this room is a little overwhelming. I again try to turn into invisible woman and hide behind the steering wheel even though I am actively welcomed inside.

Finally, I drive out somewhat relieved and head to the “dula dula” [local bus] to drop off the men who’ve accompanied me, as I now have a hardware shopping frenzy ahead of me. I pay for their bus fares, for which they are grateful, but they see the mattress (yes the stinky thing is still in the back) as a problem and would like me to keep it in the truck for later. Okay.

I head off the get some diesel and oil from the service station to another unexpected situation. As I am getting the jerry can out of the truck the attendant asks me why I have a mattress. After I explain he quickly backs away from the truck. He then calls over many other attendants and then they all back away leaving me holding the jerry can and very dirty oil can. Finally, one of the men relents and assists me – he obviously is not so afraid of the disease or dead spirit.

I make my way to the hardware and spend an hour or so ensuring that I have ticked off Daz’s list. On paying, I realise I am about one million shillings short ($1000AUD) and I’m forced to if I can make a down payment today and follow up with a final payment later. Luckily, we have been giving Aim Steel heaps of business so they are happy to oblige the very dirty, slightly bedraggled girl alone in the hardware store.

As I drive off to the supermarket to grab a few household items, I notice that my hands are shaking and I think that I had better stop to have a cup of tea. I receive a thoughtful phone call from Daz and text from Corky checking that I am okay, and it is then that I acknowledge that I am in a little bit of shock and may need to sit for a while. I sit in a wobbly haze sipping ‘tangawise [pr: ‘tangarwee-zee, translating to “ginger”] tea’ in the Bamboo Cafe before driving home, stinky mattress in tow. I return home to witness a beautiful storm brewing and gladly stand out in the rain to wash away some of the dirt and dead smell.

The point of my long-winded story is that I really thought I could handle such a diverse day but the ‘dead body’ bit just really took it out of me.

Everyday is different here and I love it, but I am smart enough to know that I need the support of the fws team here and at home and contact from my beautiful family and friends to handle these differences.

PS I also had malaria last week – so that could have accounted for some of the emotion and weariness.”



Bongo Flava Event 2: The heavens – and Daz – cried.
The drops are right on time this year, despite there being no guarantees of rain in the wet season anymore. We also found something else out about guarantees this week. Daz has undertaken extensive research into the plywood to use as the Kesho Leo floorboards. We looked at importing it from China, Kenya…and then found some locally grown that came in thicker sheets, was considerably cheaper (due to not carrying import tax) and boasted good stocks (enough to cover our entire project ensuring we wouldn’t be held up midway, waiting for the Chinese ply to be shipped over). At decision time, my concern was the eco-friendly issue – we could guarantee the Chinese and Kenyan ply was ‘green’ (forested under international Forest Stewardship Council – www.fsc.org), but the Tanzanian held no such guarantee. Eventually, I came up with the idea of planting enough trees on our land to offset our use of the Tanzanian ply. We all agreed and felt good. Knowing wet season was soon to be upon us, Daz also took the step of questioning the supplier about the resilience of this ply in the rain. In reply, Daz was given a verbal guarantee that it would hold up in any rain, no problem at all. Imagine his distress, when after laying 50 of these sheets as the Kesho floor, the heavens opened, dumped precisely two minutes of delicious, dramatic rain and then just as quickly sucked in the rain clouds and let the sun beat down, leaving Daz to stand alone, bewildered by the buckling, warping, soggy, cracking Kesho Floor. He was devastated. And angry – how could the seller lie to him about the quality of the ply like that? A guarantee, apparently, is not always a guarantee. It’s potentially a pretty devastating blow – our whole building is made from plywood…Way forward? Well, fortunately, Daz only purchased 100 sheets, so we’ve decided we’ll leave them down as a temporary ‘working floor’ for now, while we erect the walls. We’ll end up using them for a livestock shelter (unless we get our money back on them – we’ll try that first!), but in the meantime they can carry on in the rain as much as like since we’ll be replacing them with hardwood timber for the Kesho floor. We’ll need to import the Kenyan ply for the Kesho roof system to ensure it’s structurally sound, and then we’ll research into some alternative ply for the walls. Personally, I feel content with these solutions because it’s a difficult undertaking to build a structure in a developing country in the first place (we’ve done well to get as far as we have without any setbacks!) and secondly because the Kesho early-learning centre and communal dining room should always have boasted hardwood floors anyway, if you ask me! Daz sees it like this;
“I freaked out when I first saw what two minutes of rain did to that plywood – after all the time I’d spent researching it and trying to ensure we got a weather-proof product…now I just remind myself that we’re in Africa so all of those things you can rely on at home – people’s word, refunds, warranties – don’t exist here and I just have to continue doing my best. Of course, I’m pretty stoked that I went with my intuition and just bought 100 pieces to see how they went - imagine if I’d ordered the whole lot! Everything will all work out okay…”





Bongo Flava Event Three: Shapeshifter – the people’s chui.
Our gorgeous employee Agnes, who cooks dinner for us each night, accompanied me into town last Monday to do our weekly market shop. The ute, packed with fresh vegies and a few exciting luxuries (biltong, yoghurt, cheese and peanuts), was travelling through the slums serenely when Agnes surprised me with a question. “Rebecka, I want to talk to you about these jobs you are giving widows and single women – the jobs as “house-mothers” of Kesho Leo…”
“Yes, Agnes, I’d love to hear your thoughts on our idea. What do you want to say?”
“I just want to tell you that is very important that you get good mothers – who can love the children like they are their own, honest mothers who will not cheat you, and will not be jealous…”
“I agree Agnes, it’s very important. How do you think the women might be jealous?”
“People in this village can be jealous. They don’t want to see others get ahead, get a good job, or a good house or get some more money…”
“Ah yes, I see what you’re saying… Well Agnes, do you know I’ve been thinking about this a lot. When I saw that 76 single mothers came to our Kesho Community Day and we only have jobs for 8, I started thinking. Do you know what my idea is? I think we might run a fortnightly “single mothers group” for all the women who don’t get jobs with us, maybe we can teach them some good business lessons, we can maybe loan them a small amount of money to start a business and then they pay us back… what do you think?”
“Ah I think this is very, very good. And I think they will be very, very happy… and not jealous.”
“Good, if you like it, then I like it”
“Because you know jealousy is a big problem…”
“Ye-ees”.
“Even the chui [leopard] in our village – you know how we have a chui in the village?”
“Ye-ees”.
“Well, it is not a real chui. It’s a people chui. I don’t know what it’s called in English, but in Swahili we have a word for it…maybe like a witchdoctor. It means that someone bad, who is jealous, can turn themselves into a chui to hurt you. And you don’t know it is them because they are a chui…”
“Oh…really? I see. Yes, actually, we have this word in English – it’s called a shape-shifter [like in Charmed, everyone]”.
“Ah, a shape-shifter?”
“Yes, they change – or ‘shift’ - their shape...But Agnes, in Australia, we don’t believe in this shape-shifter”.
“No, in Tanzanian we don’t believe in this one either – we believe in Jesus Christ”.
[I think Aggie took my “believe” to mean “worship” as there is truly no doubt in my mind that Aggie really, wholeheartedly believes our village chui is a shape-shifting people-chui].





Bonga Flava Event Four: Corky, fws environmental engineer shapeshifts into an African-hut builder.
He’s an outdoorsy country boy (Dorrigo, Northern NSW), but of late, he’s become accustomed to tinkering on his laptop under the roof of the volunteer house. Researching, he calls it. Well, we humoured his touch-typing for a while, but this week it all came to an abrupt end when we settled on the materials we’d use to build our African-hut style volunteer village. Corky bravely left his laptop inside, took his roughly drafted plans out to our 1-acre backyard and picked up a stringline and measure. No sooner had he marked out the boundaries for each hut than a pick found it’s way into his hands. It might not be the first time he’s wielded a pick, but it’s definitely the first time he’s built an African hut. Here’s what he has to say on the matter.

“I always knew that it would take me a month or so to get my feet on the ground with Kesho Leo in Tanzania. What, with a two-week permaculture course in Western Tanzania to learn a few of the finer details of sustainable living and agriculture. Then with catching up on all the progress that the rest of the fws team had already made, followed by the interesting networking process to start tracking down local contacts who’ll be able to help me along with our work over here.

But sure enough, now that that has all happened, the tasks have piled up quickly. There is just so many things to do, that it is sometimes difficult to know where to start. Is it most important to find my local Farm Manager who I’ll counterpart with, and who will eventually be responsible for managing our small farms, fish ponds, biodigester, livestock, compost toilets and rainwater systems (and I might add that the idea of lateral thinking, experimenting with new ideas and sustainability are concepts often not covered by the Tanzania education system)? Or, is it most important to start getting some fruit trees planted to beat the rains? Or maybe we should get the volunteer accommodation up and running, as when the four of us currently living, working and socialising in each other's pockets suddenly becomes 11 people in January, it would be nice to have somewhere for us all to live with some decent toilet facilities and reliable water…

But all of it is great fun, if a little overwhelming at times. The sourcing of building products that meet our sustainable needs (not easy in a country where people are happy to tell you what you want to hear), products that meet our expectations of quality (probably harder than sustainability to find), and fundhis (tradies) that meet our standards of trust (we seem to be doing pretty well by sourcing them for our small, close-knit community) and ability (which we can work on). With plenty of advice from Daz who has been through all this for a couple of months and some great help from a couple of our local staff, things have been charging forward over the last week.

Once we tracked down a supplier of mud bricks that seem to be of higher quality, and that meet our “sustainable” needs by making them from river sediments that will be replenished each wet season, the bargaining begins. After 30 minutes of chatting and bargaining, I was able to convince him that we didn’t need to pay an extra $0.02 per brick for him to have them carried up out of the small gorge where they were working, and that $0.08 per brick was actually a good price for him, considering we’ll need about 10,000. But walking away from some good bargaining like this leaves some mixed feelings of victoriousness and scabbiness. Yeah, it’s nice to come out on top, but surely $0.02 per brick extra isn’t too much, but then $200 is a donation that someone has made to fws, so it becomes valuable pretty quickly!

So yes, it’s great to get out in the paddock, starting construction of the compost toilets, working with the local fundhis to learn how to make a mud brick house with a mixture of Western and local techniques. Yeah, it’s been a bit long for me on the computer, and the blisters appeared pretty quick, but I’ll work on them.”

To which Beck replies, “Well maybe you should...toughen up, skirt”.

Take care

Beck