[Email - To: All]
I hadn't even finished with the journey there this weekend, so this may take some time to type. The lorry we were stuck behind slowed us down again about 5 minutes later, when he found a side road to turn round in - he wasn't very accurate with the steering and mesuspects that ulanzi (bamboo juice) was involved.
Eventually got to Makongati about an hour later, and the remainder of the journey was relatively uneventful, and comfortable - lots of people got off in Kibebe, and a chicken got on, which nearly everyone seemed to have a turn to hold.
The stay at Makongati was relatively uninteresting, so as I haven't got much time I'll leave that out.
Had to get up at 6am for the bus (again) and so didn't sleep very well (again) as I kept waking up and checking the time, from about 2am onwards.
So, when the bus arrived (at 7:45), Lauren, Lize and I were very happy to see a few familiar faces on the bus - both Wazungu (Ilona, Nick, Helen and Wendy) and Mbongo (Bongo, no less). Also very happy to see
that due to the number of us, and the amount of stuff (mattresses, stoves, pans, plates, food etc) we had to take with us, we had another extremely comfortable journey in store (to be fair, I ended up sitting on Lauren's lap, so it was very comfortable indeed, for me.
As soon as we arrived in Kibebe (well, after all the hugs and hellos and unloading of luggage) we went off in search of the hippo that Min had told me about in Iringa the day before. They have a dam in their placement, with a big lake behind it, and a hippo bull (I assume it's a bull, after reading in the Rough Guide that the bulls are solitary animals) walked 15km last week to enjoy the flood waters (did I forget to say it's barely stopped raining the last week?).
Unfortunately, it wasn't there for us to see (and take pictures of) - the Kibebe crew had seen it on Thursday, though. A mite disheartened, we continued on wading through water at the bottom of the dam (not as impressive as I make it sound), and walking on to one of the sub-villages, which was bloody miles away, but Riziki, Sandy and Jumanne (the other 3 Kibebe volunteers) needed to stick up posters there for a community HIV/AIDS seminar.
I wouldn't want to live there - it's a bit hot and dusty (usually) and lots of mozzies - but it definitely takes the prize of most African-looking placement. Ihalimba is very beautiful, but it is just rolling green hills, so looks like England without stinging nettles or sheep. Kibebe, on the other hand, looks like Africa - apart from the watering-hole-esque (arrtificial) lake, it's much flatter, with rocky hills rising out of the horizon, and the plant-life is much more wild looking, rather than just maize and sunflowers. And, until very recently, they also had a hippo - it left on Saturday evening, apparently.
Saturday was great fun - Min, Jenny, Adam, Julia and Helena (all wazungu) arrived from Iringa in the afternoon, so now we were fifteen. I got lots of photos of beautiful scenery too - I don't feel quite so self-concious about carrying my camera around when in a big group of white people and when not in my own village. We were a novelty and the locals were lapping it up. A cow had been slaughtered in the village, too, so we had beef and liver to turn the event into a real feast. Normally I would turn my nose up at liver but meat out here is generally so tough and gristly that anything you can actually bite through becomes instantly appealing.
Having been on placement for a month, too, we were all well up on the best types of food to buy and take to the village, so we've all been experimenting with more interesting cooking. This, of course, leads to several people wanting to showcase their culinery inventions on Saturday night. Lauren's Peanut Butter, Soy Sauce and Coconut Milk Vegetable Pseudo-Curry Extravaganza was a big hit, as was my New & Improved Ihalimba-Style Sweet & Sour Sauce. Sandy has little battery-operated speakers, too, so being able to listen communally to music while all this was going on, rather than solitarily through headphones was a real treat.
And time drifts by again, so tales of Saturday night and this morning's return by daladala might have to wait a very long time...
Phil :)
No comments:
Post a Comment