Farkwa, Tanzania, Sunday September 21st

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There was no time before mass to have breakfast, and a bell rang in my head reminding me that in my childhood, our Catholic neighbours would never have eaten before mass. Rosie and the boys were not going, although Sebi might go to the 10.30 session with the older children if he felt like it. We headed off with Fidelisi and Inyasia, with Ticha soon catching up as we walked down a track lined with frangipanni and smelling sweet as people rushed in from all directions on their way to church.

Inyasia in her Sunday best

Almost no-one walked the full length and up the wide steps to the space in front of the church, preferring to skit up the rough unofficial shortcut and in the door. The front of the building is flat, a stepping stone façade in white with aqua trim. Inside, it was light and bright, with a font on each side and a strict seating protocol of men on the left and women on the right. Luckily we had sorted out the collection money and we both had some, and we each had a family member to be with. Whenever ladies arrived, they would just genuflect beside the full pew they wished to sit in, giving those already in it the hint and time to squeeze up and let them in. The choir of young people sat in front of us ladies. People had definitely dressed for the occasion, with bright and beautiful kangas and ketangis being most popular, some with religious pictures on them and others featuring knives and forks and high heeled shoes! A few people were in western dress. The congregation was a veritable feast for the eye on my side and as dull as dishwater on Keith’s.

The church itself was painted in white and aqua, with a definite Italian feel to the framed paintings of the Stations of the Cross, and a simple country feel to the windows that had different coloured large crosses against a background of opaque glass. Statues of Jesus and Mary looked benignly on the crowd from the front, just before the step up to the altar. Father Godi entered in a bright green robe with a gold edge trim and cross design on it over white, and his two altar boys wore the same colour in a less fancy version.

The choir started to sway to the jazzy drum beat on the electric organ and the choir master conducted as the voices leapt into life. The singing, in several parts, sometimes harmonising and sometimes sounding like one very full voice, rose and filled the building. Soon the singers were dancing on the spot in a joyous explosion of sound, free to feel the power of the music and yet tightly disciplined and well rehearsed. One of the choir members, a student in form four, later told me that she loves to sing in the choir. She sings for God and she feels Him with her when she does. Religion is a given here, with people being nominally either Christian or Muslim. Not everyone attends or practises all aspects, but so many students talked about their life in the church as being important to them. Ramadan, which runs for the month of September and includes daily fasting, was being respected at school. Muslim students were allowed to go home for the day at lunchtime to sleep, in recognition of the need to be awake for night meals, when the fast would be lifted. In the school allocation of duties for the teachers, one teacher is named as Patron of the Muslims and another as Patron of the Christians.

The service continued with readings, two addresses, with clapping after one, some public notices, communion, the offering and the benediction, and was carefully orchestrated and nearly equally divided between the choir and Father Godi. The sermon was delivered in the body of the church, with Father Godi walking up and down, and looking right into the eyes of his congregation. The baptism and wedding anniversary was announced, along with the visit to Australia of Father Willi, a son of this church. Men lined up to take their collection to the front first and the women followed. A lady in front of me gave a small bag of tomatoes, which she placed on the floor beside the plate. It was a very long service and I could see Keith tuning out and his head beginning to nod.

The organ was still playing to finish off the last number when Fidelisi jumped up and raced out. Keith had not followed, so he came back and grabbed him by the arm to make him leave. Inyasia was more dignified, but we made a speedy exit too. Lots of people were doing the same, and racing off to other activities, with no-one seeming to want to stand and chat in front of the church, and Father Godi not having had time to appear at the front of the church to greet people, and I have no idea if that would have been part of church life here.

Most of the children attended the second mass, with Sebi going and misbehaving and having to be taken out by Hawa, and brought back in later for a while.

We knew that tomorrow would be market day and, on Rosie’s advice, we planned to go to it with her fairly early, before people got drunk and silly. Alcohol is made locally and takes only two days from start to finish. As in all places, its misuse leads to problems. It is sometimes used as a ‘payment’ or inducement to recruit labour and to keep people working. Drinking breaks punctuate jobs such as harvesting and building, with a ‘happy’ work crew going home at the end of the day with nothing in the hand.

The new plan meant that I would not be at school early to take the lesson that Madam Simbee and I had discussed, and having not seen her at church, I decided to walk up to the school and explain. Madam Simbee lives in one of the houses for staff on the school grounds. Ticha recommended ringing first to check she was at home. Walking about unnecessarily does not seem to be on the agenda here, with the advent of the mobile phone making it even less likely to happen. She was at home, and looking forward to my visit.

Keith came too, although he was pretty tired, but I imagined that we were just delivering a message and would be back within half an hour, when he could have a rest. When we arrived, we were greeted by Madam Simbee and Madam Josephine, the teacher who lived with her daughter in the other half of the house. Madam Josephine’s husband, Stanley, their four year old daughter, the son of another teacher and a little girl from the village were also sitting in the lounge room. A pack of cards left higgledy piggledy on the low table.

I had a long chat with Stanley, who is studying accounting and who speaks good but very soft English, with Madam Simbee and Madam Josephine coming in and out and another four children arriving to squeeze onto the couch. With Keith visibly wilting and not contributing to the conversation because he found Stanley hard to understand, I said to Stanley that perhaps we should deliver our message to Madam Simbee and be on our way. He said that he thought she was preparing lunch for us, and so we explained that we hadn’t expected that and the family would be expecting us for lunch down the hill. Madam Simbee rang Rosie to explain the new arrangements and we settled in to watch a video of religious singing produced for our pleasure. It featured singing and moves similar to those we had seen in church this morning, with the singers having been filmed in scenic locations, like sitting on a rock overlooking the ocean. The vision jumped from group to group of a choir, so it was a bit of a fashion feast as well, with tailored western suits for men who slung the jackets, like models, over their shoulders, and the whole gambit from traditional to modern outfits for women. It was very serious and included songs about aids and resisting Satan, all with smiles and swaying movements to the beat.

Madam Simbee (left) with Madam Josephine and Stanley

With Stanley’s help, I inquired about the age of each child, which I was thinking would be in the range of four years to eight years. In each case I was wrong, with all the children being much smaller than their peers in Australia would be. My question as to what each one had for a favourite colour brought blank looks, even when it was translated, and Stanley explained that it was not the sort of question that would make sense to them. He said that education is very theoretical here, and a case of learning many things for knowledge. Thus, they may know the names of the colours, and the older ones would know what colour went with each name, but they would not have been required to form an opinion about the colours. This was intriguing. The older secondary students were writing essays setting out a case, and now I wondered if they were setting out the arguments that they had read and learnt in texts or if they were using their own critical thinking.

The little girl from the village lived with her grandmother, where Stanley and Josephine’s daughter was minded while Josephine worked. Stanley said that the girl would start school next year, that he would pay for her and that they hoped to arrange to take her with them as another daughter when they finally left Farkwa. Many children are not living with their natural parents here. There is not much employment, so many of the parent generation are away working while their children stay with their grandparents, relatives or other families who have taken them in. This can go on for years. In some cases the parents have died, and quite a few of the secondary students had one or no parents living. Other parents come and go, so the grandparents are really raising and providing for the children on a daily basis.

We had delicious sweet potatoes and beans for lunch, with the children being given a plate of potatoes to eat on a mat on the floor.

Hand washing is routinely done using a minimal amount of water before each meal.

None of these children are Madam Simbee’s, but she has a sweet and welcoming nature and they obviously felt very much at home here. Madam Simbee’s two student lodgers were not in evidence. She encouraged them to study hard when they first came, by saying that whoever did worst in his tests would have to do more work for her out on her small farm. She is a Sandawe, and so a local, and was raised by her head teacher uncle after her parents died. He was extremely strict when she was a child, and she learnt to run to complete his requests, for fear of being knocked on the head. She also had to be very studious and perfect at school, since she was from his household.

At last I made my time change request and it was no problem at all. Her students had told her that they had not completed their set tasks and so there was no new lesson planned for the 11 o’clock slot. Without knowing it, and simply because she is a sensible teacher, Madam Simbee was at the ‘cutting edge of education’ in negotiating tasks with her students.

Stanley walked with us down the hill, and assisted in buying a new zip. A gentle and perceptive man, he was a delight to discuss language with and to learn about the cultural uses of words. It was a pity that he would be returning to Dodoma, where he lived while at university, and that we would probably not meet again.

At last Keith could collapse on the bed, while I did the washing so that it could dance in the breeze and be dry in less than two hours. All was quiet while I wrote some notes, with Jarvah asleep and Sebi playing somewhere within the range of the family buildings. After a while, Rosie realised that she had not heard him for some time, and he was missing. The children in the family are regularly asked to go to the shop, and often they take Sebi and quite often Rosie buys biscuits for them. No-one had been sent on an errand and all the older children were accounted for. Sebi does not obey his parents when he doesn’t feel like it, but disappearing from the home area had not happened before. Concern, and then panic was rising. Phone calls were made all over the place. I suggested to Keith and Rosie that perhaps he had gone for biscuits by himself, since he is very fond of them. It seemed absurd, but eventually a call was received from a relative who had recognised him at the shop, several hundred metres down the hill, and he was brought back. We were all so relieved to see him, and Rosie took him in for a serious talk. He had thought that he would just go and get some biscuits. Rosie was firm that he must never go away without asking and that biscuits have to be bought with money, and are not something to just ask for.

The drama over, we settled to sitting and watching the three kids in the goat nursery, who seemed born to climb on everything and whose sudden leaps and friskiness even took them by surprise.

The foundations of Ticha’s house have eroded a bit and Rosie described the river of water that rushes past in the wet season, despite their efforts in building a bank to divert it. The goats, out for the day to forage down the hill under supervision and to have a drink, were brought back. They jostled around their pen before they entered. Two roosters re-ran their battle for supremacy while an enormous pink pig seemed about to escape his pen, so great was his interest in everything round about and the weight of his body on the fence.

I assisted the cooks, picking small stones out of the rice to be boiled for dinner, while teenage chickens skittered in and out, cleaning up any grains inadvertently shaken from our baskets. Preparations for the next day’s market were already underway, with livestock being driven and carried down the road and quite a few cars and trucks rattling past.

The new soccer ball is being pumped up. It got a puncture after a couple of days, probably due to striking an acacia branch with sharp thorns.

This shelter contains the main cooking fire for the group of houses Tichiano's family occupies. Most cooking and food preparation is done in and near this shelter.

Jarvah having a riding lesson on a bike that is a little big for him, with his cousin Adam (left) and his brother, Pius.