Rundell Ramblings: 2013

Sunday, 20 January 2013

New Year Travelling

Back in October we learnt that Auric Air, a Tanzanian airline, was adding Mpanda to its flight routes. So when Theo was due for some immunisations around December we decided to take advantage of this and fly to Dar for a New Year break.

It was so nice! We flew from Mpanda to Mwanza on this 12-seater aeroplane, hung out in Mwanza for a few hours and then took another internal flight to Dar, which arrived in the late evening. In other words : We got to Dar in less than 12 hours! This felt like nothing short of a miracle as every other time we've needed to travel between Dar and Mpanda the journey time has been counted in days, not hours. It makes a surprising amount of difference to how remote we feel living here as well as being very promising for having visitors!

We had a great break in Dar; catching up with friends (it was especially nice to see friends with children close to Theo's age), relaxing in the pool at our guesthouse, eating food that isn't available in Mpanda (chorizo, bacon, pesto, cheese...)`and stocking up on light (sadly internal luggage allowances don't allow for massive amounts of shopping) supplies such as certain herbs and spices. It was a nice relaxing week and, thanks to the flights, we returned refreshed rather than exhausted by a long car journey!

Regional Dedication

Not too long ago, the new Katavi region was formed from parts of nearby regions with the capital here in Mpanda. This was officially recognised here in November 2012 with a week long exhibition held in the grounds of the water department offices. One of the main features was a concourse with stalls for many local or national companies and government departments.

After hearing of the event, our team leader, Richard, persisted in trying to get a stall for the project and we were eventually confirmed with a stall and moved in early in the week. Thus began a frantic week of explaining what we're doing here in the new Katavi region and handing out copies of alphabet charts and short collections of proverbs in the Bende and Pimbwe languages to hundreds of visitors to the exhibition. We also had Scripture portions and other booklets, CDs and tapes from our colleagues in Mbeya in the South-West of Tanzania to sell - many people thought these were great and, when people who spoke one of the languages came past, they often bought a book or two. Many people were very interested in what we were doing and were impatient to get books in their own language! The Bende people were particularly enthusiastic and we were very encouraged to see that a Bende group had set up their own stall with various traditional Bende items on display along with almost continuous dancing and drumming!

Another highlight was the visit of the prime minister of Tanzania, who was the special guest on one of the last days of the exhibition. We were particularly excited since the prime minister comes from the Pimbwe language area. He visited several of the stalls, including ours, where he stayed for rather a long time, looking at the Pimbwe alphabet chart, offering observations and asking insightful questions. By the end he seemed satisfied with all our answers and liked our choices for the Pimbwe alphabet,which was very exciting!

Meeting the Prime Minister

Though tiring and voice-hoarsening, the exhibition was an amazing opportunity to present what we're doing here to loads of people in a short space of time and it was incredibly encouraging to see people's reaction and eagerness to read books in their own mother tongues.

Christmas

Our first Christmas in Mpanda is over: the decorations are packed away and the leftovers are all eaten, which can only mean it must be time to blog about it!

We actually had a great Christmas this year! We were fairly intentional about our celebrations, having brought out some of our decorations (supplemented by an excellent Christmas care package from Cat's family - thanks again!), a small Christmas tree, Theo's presents and a fair amount of culinary Christmas essentials such as mincemeat, a Christmas pudding and a Christmas cake back from England in October. We also made sure to spend time with some of our ex-pat friends over the break doing Christmassy things together like making a gingerbread house, eating mince pies and watching various films that mean Christmas to all of us (for the Americans this included "It's a wonderful life" and "Elf", for us it was "Mary Poppins" - not set at Christmas but always on TV around this time! ). We also started a family tradition of having an advent wreath (made by the simple method of sticking candles in our door wreath that would make no sense to our neighbours if we did put it on the door!). Every Sunday during Advent we lit a candle, sang a new verse of the song we picked and read some passages from the Bible according to what each candle represented (God's people waiting for Jesus' return; the prophets; John the Baptist; Mary and then the centre Christ candle on Christmas Day)

Christmas Day was also lovely! It was actually the first time we had woken up in our own house on Christmas morning since we got married and we really enjoyed opening our stockings and presents with the three of us together. We had the morning as a family and then had our good friends Tim, Jeana and Micaiah over for a traditional Christmas dinner - they had managed to get hold of two ducks for us via their neighbours' friend as well as making us some sausagemeat with their meat grinder, so we had roast duck, sausagemeat stuffing, roast potatoes and roasted vegetables - our little oven was bursting at the seams! We also introduced them to the traditions of Christmas crackers, sung grace and mulled 'wine' (juice) as well as the tradition of Christmas dinner not actually being quite ready until mid-afternoon (like I said, the oven was ridiculously full and the ducks took FOREVER). As far as I know, a good time was had by all! Thanks again to everyone who sent us Christmas supplies, presents and cards - they all helped make our first Christmas in Mpanda a really special time.