Spot the differences

Irene had a birthday on Friday.

One of the features of Tanzanian fashion is that vibrant, bright (to us garish) colours are preferred. This applies to birthday cards where bright flowers are popular. Irene had several bought in Tanzania, and one sent from England – can you spot the difference?

Mvumi has changed over the years, but in many cases this has been slow and differences small. The first qualified doctor was appointed in 1938; an Australian called Paul White who is best known for writing the series of ‘Jungle Doctor’ books for children popular in the 1960’s. His first book, "Doctor of Tanganyika" published in 1942, describes his experiences in Mvumi, and includes several black and white photographs.

The first church here was St Peters, originally a whitewashed building. It is still standing cleaned to its original stone (but behind a modern building) in front of the former doctor’s house and girls boarding school which are now used for storage by the Secondary school. Still standing too is the Baobob tree – but this is hardly surprising as they live for over 1000 years and are revered by villagers, to the extent that some are used as shrines for pagan beliefs.

For many living conditions are also the same. Most villagers, particularly the poorer ones, live in a traditional houses made of a wooden frame and mud bricks supporting a flat, twig and mud covered roof, Windows are small, which at least helps to keep the houses cool and the mosquitoes out. If they are wealthy they aspire to a house of concrete blocks with a corrugated iron roof.

An end of an era was marked when Corrie left the Hospital. Paul White was the first Doctor here – Corrie is the last western doctor (at least for the time being). For many years the Hospital was managed by medical missionaries who knew that one of their roles was to train and develop Tanzanians to take over the running of the Hospital. This is now complete. However, although there are Tanzanian ‘Doctors’ at the Hospital they would not be recognised as such by western Hospitals as they have only 3 years basic training.

There was also a difference to our cooking arrangements on Irene’s birthday, In the morning we had one of our regular electric power cuts. Irene was desperate for a cup of tea and soup for lunch, and so Mama Asante was delighted to cook over a traditional, Gogo, fire.

Next week we are to have a farewell meal with the Mamajus choir from St Andrews church. We will also need to decide what to do with our 3 remaining hens. Since the last update 2 weeks ago there have been about 28 more eggs, and we had Jet for dinner (two dinners). Her value was about £2 so the net cost for 178 eggs is £44 – 25p each.

PS – although Irene is a year older it’s hard to ‘Spot the difference’ with her!!!