Relentless dust

The short rains are due and a dust with a consistency of smoke hangs in the air and covers everything in a thin film of brown. It hasn't rained since before we left 4 months ago, and despite the crops surviving due to the centuries old mfareji (irrigation ditches) the untended shrubbery has withered into the dust. The nights are cool, the days gradually heat as the ferocious sun slow cooks anything not safely in the shade, but a cooling afternoon breeze - laden with dust - blows through as the sun dips.

The 'home-coming' to Arusha and the village of Sinon was filled with mixed emotions. Bleary-eyed we staggered off the Ethiopian Air (rubbish airline) flight at Kilimanjaro airport and found that Heather's backpack had gone astray en route to Tanzania. It was a minor miracle that our other bags did arrive considering the amount of plane hopping required. Whether it went to another airport coded similar to JRO (Johannesburg, Jordan?) we don't know, but it has safely made it to Arusha now and Heather can change her trousers.

The Kesho Leo mamas were at Edmund Rice school doing sewing lessons, so we popped in there first. We knew they would be pleased to see us, but I wasn't sure if males and females hugging was culturally appropriate. But when the mamas rounded the corner where we were standing they almost knocked the wind out of me with crash tackling hugs and tears. And Heather, she was nearly trampled as the women virtually piled on top of her weeping and wailing and holding onto her. The greeting with the labourers was a little more subdued - just big smiles and lots of 'pole' (sorry) and hand shaking and some gentle hugs.

The developments at the Kesho Leo site have been incredible - the permaculture farm has come on leaps and bounds under the superstar guidance of the new volunteer, horticulturalist Eve. The building is also racing along as the Stratti brothers and Robbie work like men possessed to get is built by Christmas. Corky and Ben have also been doing an incredible job with the Volunteer Village renovations. Some of the labourers are now almost skilled tradesmen and the 'dollar for dollar' matched savings plan for capital purchases has already had some men buying cement to build better houses for their families. So despite some tensions that exist at times between FWS and the Stratti team everything is racing along and spirits are high. A pair of actors from the BBC came to the mama meeting yesterday to teach acting games to the kids and children.

Plenty to ramble about, but at the moment we are just preparing ourselves to get back into the routine of work and try to avoiding getting as malnourished as I recently realised we must have been - and to pray for the rains to come and dampen the intoxicating oppressive dust.

Back to Africa

Is that the title to a movie? Surely I've heard a title similar to that before.

Tonight is our final night here in sleepy Biddaddaba valley before our ever-changing return to Tanzania. How many return dates have I had? 26 July, 20 September, 24 October, 23 October - the final change only being a minor aberration in airline timetabling, while the other two were probably the most dramatic events that have befallen me in my short life.

I have been very busy being the best farmer I can be. Developing rapport with each of the olive trees, with each row, each bay, each grove, each variety. From the short time I've spent working with the trees I have no doubt that each one of them has received as much time, money and energy as many children do. Indeed the passionate investment in each tree makes their future so important to the investor.

Perhaps I've gone a little mad spending too much time on my own up on the hill or in the shed, feeling fatherly towards olive trees is a little odd. Then again I've also developed a liking for trousers (khaki) in place of shorts and tucking my shirt into my trousers. So I'm either growing up (or getting old) or pretending to be Rob. No doubt part of my coping has been to be out in the grove 'with Rob', being Rob - knowing some of the things he knew - but mostly wondering what he wondered about during those long days of repetitive activity on the tractor or walking in the grove. Did he ponder, contemplate, dream or scheme? Or was he focused purely in the moment, on what he was doing, on each tree, on the rolling hills as the sunset over the valley? I suppose you can tell a lot about a person by the ramblings or lack thereof in their mind when they could otherwise be being mindless.

So Tanzania, yes, I've scarcely thought about it in the past couple of weeks, it will be wonderful to do the Tanzanian handshake with the labourers, to do the rounds of morning greetings, to sit on the back of the ute as we rattle along the potholed roads, banana trees waving in the cooling evening breeze. Everyone used to speak of those moments of 'wow, I'm in Africa, look where I am and the adventure I'm having'. Perhaps that was tinged with an edge of invincibility - we existed in a story book where everything turns out for the best. I wonder if that edge will be there when we return?

But I mustn't forget to remind mum and Christian to spray the thistle, and prune the suckers, and use mainly dam water for irrigating, and to be careful on the tractor, and to buy Kocide for a December spray, and to...........