Farewells

Again – two blogs for the price of one.

It has been a hectic week packing up and saying farewell. One exciting piece of news was that our church in Chesham had raised at their harvest supper an enormous sum for the Hunger Fund here. Although wonderful it did give us the problem of how to get the money out of Dodoma’s ATMs before we leave and what to do with it, We felt the best thing would be to use half to distribute through the Anglican Churches in Mvumi, by increasing the number of families supported each month by 38, and by extending the support until June next year. The remainder we have asked to go to the Diocese Secondary School to help the poor families of children at the school who are sponsored because they are intelligent but don’t have money to pay secondary school fees.

To mark our departure from Mvumi our church invited us to a special meal after the Sunday service. Because a lot of money has already we past few months for the Hunger Fund and to complete the building we left small sums for each of the choirs and Sunday School, plus a cloth for the altar.

Our friends invited us to a farewell meal at the Dodoma Hotel on Sunday. This included a cake with the inscription ‘Thanks for all the fish’ which is a reference from ‘the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ which had to be explained to some.

And then we left on the next leg – the 8 hour coach ride to Dar es Salaam with our six suitcases and other various bags. Will we all arrive safely in England……….?