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...........