A trip to Isanzu

Thursday July 23rd The day started slowly, bibi was cooking rice for breakfast, and Michael catching up with his washing. As the house floors looked very dirty, with lots of puddles of wax and scraps from tea, I decided to do some sweeping - and for once, no one else had the grass broom! Once that was done, I found a twig one for outside, happy to relieve Michael of that chore to spare his sinuses, but it took ages, 1½ hours! Bruce was collecting & chopping up firewood for bibi, but as they don’t store it till it’s dry, the fires are terribly smoky and inefficient. Bibi reckons it’s the smoke that’s damaging her eyes, every so often they get very sore & weepy & she can’t see very far. Some passers-by were amazed to see us working, so bibi told them, “They’re the children of the household.”
One day she said if I was Michael’s mother, then I was her daughter & Bruce her farmer! She’s even offered us a piece of land to build a house on! Michael wants us to build a BIG house with four bedrooms so all our children can stay – but we said we like little houses, or could build a big one so he & his wife & children could live in it with us, but he didn’t seem so keen on that idea! Lots of people have asked bibi to sell them a piece of land but she’s keeping it for the family. If she dies, Mama Joyce will oversee it as oldest surviving child. Each member has their own portion to garden but any one of them can build a house there & live on the shamba, including us!
Whilst Bruce was away bathing, I took a photo of little Michael, Ibrahim, Jeremia and Michael outside the old house. Enock turned up just as Michael finished in the bafu. I sat in the back with the two Michaels and Jeremia, Bruce in the front. It's only about 1/2 hour to Isanzu by car, it's the other side of Nzega. I was glad that Enock was the only driver, the car seemed to slide a bit in the dust as he veered around the obstacles, tooting his horn to clear the way!
Isanzu is a tiny collection of dwellings and a small duka or two. Babu Mathias and Bibi Belta live on a shamba down a short track off the 'main' road. There are several traditional huts dating from the time all the family lived there. Babu is one of Michael's great-uncles.
Bibi was practically jumping up and down to see us, exclaiming, “It’s just like a dream!” over and over again. She was absolutely overjoyed to see Michael again, he is much loved by many people. We were taken inside a hut and sat together in one of the two rooms. The home-made wickerwork chairs only just squeezed through the doorway! After a nice chat with babu we ate lunch together.
They have five children: Rachel is Pastor Jonas Kulwa's wife, Musa is a carpenter, Zahabu is another son, Esther works in Dar and Neema is married. Bibi came from Mwanza originally, so Babu has been to the Sukuma-style Catholic cathedral there. After lunch, we talked about the Sukuma language. Michael found a hymn book and New Testament that had an extra portion including the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed and the Ten Commandments. He read them out & I copied - fun! Then he wrote the Lord’s Prayer on a piece of newspaper, I tried reading it out loud by myself apparently quite correctly - everyone was amazed, they find it terribly hard to read Kisukuma, they’re only used to speaking it, early schooling is done in Kiswahili.
Later on, we sat under a large mango tree chatting before going for a little walk through part of the shamba, which produces peanuts, maize and sisal. There are also mangoes & various palms, including dates & one with fruit resembling large coconuts that contain a large edible seed full of oil. The well was dry but Bruce thinks it just needs digging deeper. Nearby was a clump of straggly rosella plants.
Back at the mango tree, we were shown the long poles in its fork bearing maize cobs - a traditional method of storage. Nearby, sisal leaves and fibre were in various stages of preparation for weaving into rope or making other things.

Pics: left = Baba Enocki, Babu Matthias, Jeremia, Bibi Belta, Michael, little Michael, and Bruce outside one of the huts; right = Jeremia at Isanzu;
On the way back to bibi’s mid-afternoon, we stopped at the attractive-looking orphanage to meet the children plus another staff member. Unfortunately, little Michael didn’t want to get out of the car to play with them.
Back at bibi’s, we were given a large bag of peanuts to shell – I found it quite difficult, only doing one nut to Michael’s five, and my fingers got really sore! After a short break, Michael showed me how to do it properly & suddenly I could almost keep up and didn’t get sore at all!
L = ‘Michael in the bush’ (the bougainvilleas at bibi’s).
Eventually he decided he'd had enough, so after taking a photo of him 'in the bush', we walked up to the large rocky hill in the distance, where little Michael had had fun the day before sliding down the rocks.
It’s a little way from the shamba, down the Tabora road, and is quite impressive – the rocks rise up sharply off the plain behind a collection of a few huts and a couple of dukas.
It was a bit of a scramble to reach the top, but once there, there were lovely views over the surrounding countryside - bibi’s is way in the distance just past a dust cloud on the left of the road, top right!
As dusk was coming, we climbed back down an easier route, returning to the road via a different path to enter the shamba via the short driveway behind the new house, edged by attractive native trees that babu left when he cut down the rest that were growing in this part of the shamba; Michael says they look lovely when they flower in the wet season.
Shelling peanuts continued even after dark, sitting round on stools outside the porch of the old house, where bibi was preparing rice. Mama Lucia’s oldest girls turned up a bit later.
We had quite an interesting and varied conversation – Michael said he’d tar-seal up to bibi’s house & put in pipes running with milk if he became an MP!!! Bibi said her 12-15 goats won’t be enough for the bride price for five grandsons, but I said there were only two really needing them: Michael and Jeremia as they have no parents. Also the other three are a lot younger, although the 3rd Michael (yes, another one!), Mama Regina’s oldest son, is in Form 4.
After a rather late tea with all mama Lucia's daughters, their mother, and a young Uncle John, we had a short time of fellowship together before going to bed around 10. However, I was kept awake by the guys shelling peanuts in the sitting room – still! I thought we’d finished them!