This is my fourth time coming to Tanga, and when I arrived on Wednesday morning, I jumped right back into things here as if I had never left. Steven and my trusty taxi driver, Mr.Kapelo (Kapelo is the Swahili word for baseball cap, and he is never without one) were waiting for me when I arrived, and we went straight into town to the same Sea View Motel where Danielle and I stayed less than a year ago. The same hotel staff lounged on the front porch there and they set me up in the same upstairs room that Danielle and I were in, with a balcony facing the Indian Ocean. After quickly dumping my bags off, I hopped on the back of Steven’s pikipiki (motorcycle) and we went to stop off at the school before it closed at noon. When the kids saw me there, I was mobbed instantly, and shook 60-some-odd little hands (thank God for hand sanitizer). This was the final day of school before a field trip and the closure of the school for the holidays, so the students were crazy. With great difficutly, the teachers managed to get all of the students lined up in front of the school. Steven called up the top three students in each class. As each top student walked to the front of their peers, all the other children clapped and sang “CON-GRAT-ALATIONS! KEEP! IT! UP!!!” Steven promised the top students a prize to be given out the following day on their year-end field trip. Once this was finished, I was mobbed with kids wanting their photos taken (they remembered the game from earlier this year) and every one of them said “Goodbye Madam” before walking home or climbing into the Dalla-dalla for a ride home.
The Kindergarten Students lining up to hear the top students in their class.
Following this, I went to Steven’s home for a huge lunch prepared by his wife, Grace. Stevens two boys, Lewis and Allen, ages 4.5 and 2.5 were actually happy to see me this time and they tried to make me laugh by saying funny things and showing off. After a huge meal of all my favourite traditional Swahili foods (rice, chapatti, beans, mchuzi sauce, fresh mangoes...), and still running only a few hours sleep since Sunday night, we went off to Saumu’s school to surprise her.
Little Allen, Steven's son, Age 2.5
As soon as the taxi pulled into the courtyard of the school and a few students saw me, they started shouting for Saumu. She came slowly walking out of the girls’ dormitory and came up to give me a big hug. She is a few inches taller than the last time I saw her, and for the first time ever, she had grown her hair out, so her tiny rasta braids were sticking up in every direction – still gorgeous as ever. She said school was fine, she was finished exams and now just playing and practicing for the upcoming year-end assembly on Sunday. I met several of her teachers, one of whom (the French teacher) spoke to me in a confusing mixture of Swahili, English and French when I told him I was from Canada. It is one thing to mix English and Swahili, but my brain can’t keep track of all three languages at once. The elderly headmaster of the school spotted Steven and I there and invited us to his home to greet his wife, Mama Kimbute, the woman who I have dealt with mainly in getting Saumu settled in school. Off we went, with Saumu in tow, to their home close by.
This woman’s home really deserves a blog post of its own. We were welcomed into the living room, where one of their hefty grandsons was sprawled out asleep on the couch with the one available fan pointed directly at him. He very rudely did not greet us. On two of the three walls there were two GIANT (maybe 4ft by 6ft?) brightly colored posters of Jesus. On the last available wall there was another massive poster of similar dimensions with a very phony looking couple sitting in an obviously fake field of tulips with an idealized cartoonish home in the background. The text on the poster said “Lover, only for you.” The coffee table, which held a giant bouquet of fake roses, was made of dirty glass, with four crystal unicorns acting as support posts. Manky old stuffed animals, including a Barney the dinosaur backpack, were hung from the walls. Fake flower garlands lined the entire top perimeter of the room. I tried very hard not to laugh as I sat there waiting for Mama Kimbute to come see us, as Danielle and I visited Mama Kimbute at a different home last year and the whole ordeal turned into a nightmare - we waited hours for her to show up only to eat some gross food and have her forget who we were by the end of it. Steven must have also remembered this because he started laughing to himself and quietly said to me, “You remember the last time, we were waiting so much for Mama Kimbute?” Luckily, Mama Kimbute came out to see us and after exchanging the usual pleasantries, we asked if it would be okay to bring Saumu to stay with me before the school officially closed. She agreed on the condition that Saumu come back for a rehearsal for the year-end ceremony. She spoke of future plans to expand the school and do some improvements around the school yard, but was happy with the success of the school thus far; she said all of their students have passed the Standard 7 exam and have been able to go on to Secondary school. Hopefully Saumu too, will pass this exam so she may continue on to Secondary school.
We took Saumu back to school and let her stay there for one more night to pack her things and get ready to come stay with me the following day. I finally got back to Sea View and was about ready to go to bed at 5pm, but didn’t want to eat alone on my first night here, so I walked up the street to find my friend Saphia, who is still working at the Rusha Roho restaurant. Of course, en route, I ran into Salim, the local tour guide guy who took Danielle, Saumu and I on that boat trip to the white sand bar last year. He is a little too chatty, so I kinda kept walking and he followed me around blathering away about going to Zanzibar and new business plans etc etc. I got to Rusha Roho and Saphia spotted me right away. She must have been the happiest of everyone to see me and her face lit up when I walked in - “Ah, Kite-leen!” We sat outside and chatted for a while, catching up on news and commiserating over our lack of boyfriends. She took me next door to greet Mohamed, the manager of the NGO I first volunteered with here in 2008. Mohamed spent quite some time filling me in on future plans for a 200-acre “Eco-Village” he is planning on building just south of Tanga on the road to Pangani. It sounds like an incredible project, but I won’t believe it until I see it. Again, we exchanged all the usual pleasantries, asking about each other’s families and such, until I was finally free to duck out of the stuffy office and go back to visiting with just Saphia. I invited her for dinner and later that evening, the conversation about boyfriends and the severe lack of good men in Tanzania continued over some good Indian food until I could hardly keep my eyes open. Finally, at 9:30pm on Wednesday night, after a hectic day of seeing pretty much everyone I know in Tanga, I got to sleep in a bed for the first time since Sunday night, under a mosquito net in the sticky heat.
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