This is Part 1 of a 7 part series on my experiences
in Tanzania while volunteering with a U.S. based NGO to build a library and
community resource center in the village of Nyegina, near the shores of Lake
Victoria. To read other parts of this series, please use the term “Tanzania” in
this site’s search function.
I looked
through the streaked and pitted windows of the van I was sharing with six other
volunteers from the
Midwest as we headed four hours north from Mwanza’s primitive airport to
Nyegina, a small village outside of Musoma. We had joined Tanzania Development
Support, a U.S based NGO that was partnering with other in-country
organizations to build the first phase of a library and community resource
center in this village.
We were
traveling on the B-6, one of Tanzania’s national roads. It serves as a lifeline
between Mwanza and Musoma in the remote northwestern part of the country,
connecting people and goods with the scattered villages that lie along its long
and dusty 220 kilometers. This two lane road’s shoulders weren’t broad enough to contain the scores of
people as they walked from village to village. Vying for the narrow space were
donkey-pulled carts and herds of goats and cattle. Women of all ages were
carrying water jugs, firewood, and
vegetables. Countless numbers of gaunt riders were hauling either sugarcane, baskets with chickens inside,
construction supplies, chairs, or various other odds and ends on their
wobbly bicycles.
As we made our way, the numbers of
people, equipment, and animals were increasing. They soon overwhelmed the
shoulders and were forced use of the road’s pavement itself. Our van’s driver
weaved and dodged in and amongst this mix of man and beast. Other drivers from
the opposite direction did the same. Their hulking trucks and smoke-belching
buses rushed by us with only inches separating their side view mirror from
ours.
Like many of
the country’s roads, this one seemed to be under perpetual reconstruction.
Where the repair was underway, the whole road was closed, not just one of the
lanes. The locals created parallel dirt tracks into the adjoining scrub land.
After running for miles, these tracks eventually connected back to the stretch
of main road not currently under repair. From the look of things, these rough
detours have been in use for some time. They proved to be very dusty and bumpy
affairs.
They also
proved to be hard on our bottoms and on the van as well. One of our tires blew
and shredded as we neared the western edge of the Serengeti. Standing in the
shade of an acacia tree, we observed this part of the world while our driver
worked in the heat to change the tire. More of the women and young girls we saw
earlier filed past, looked at us puzzled as they continued on their way,
carrying large water containers or bundles of wood on their heads. A young
shirtless boy was shepherding his herd of fly-covered cattle in a nearby
field. Beyond him we saw matted, mangy looking wildebeests off in the
distance. Nearby, people were washing themselves and their clothing in a small
fetid puddle that had formed in the roadside ditch. Others were making their
way back to their basic mud brick and thatched-roof homes, ignoring the trash
and garbage that blew through their yards and the surrounding fields.
Dusk arrived
early at this equatorial location. The setting sun turned into a muddled and
dirty yellow, its light filtered by the suspended dust and dirt from the
roadway’s traffic. In the din, our van’s weak headlights illuminated the hand-painted
sign announcing our arrival at the Epheta Center, located directly on the
shores of Lake Victoria in Musoma’s Makoko neighborhood. Dr. Kurt, professor
and president of Tanzania Development Support, greeted us at the locked gates.
He arrived several days earlier along with ten university students from the
U.S. They were part of a work/study program through the university where Dr.
Kurt teaches and would be helping us with the library’s construction.
This residential compound is surrounded by masonry walls topped off with shards of broken glass. It is operated and maintained by the Capuchin friars, serving as a quiet retreat for priests, nuns, and lay persons who from time to time need rest and reflection, spiritual or otherwise. For the next several weeks, it would serve as our home and for the rest and reflection we would need while we help build the new library and learn of the needs of the people of the Musoma and Nyegina region.
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