A walk to the church and a death in the neighbourhood

Friday April 1st
The day started off quite windy which made it quite cold. It was really gloomy, wet and thundery from early on till about 2 pm. This made it hard for mama to get a fire going in the jiko, so we didn’t have breakfast until 11 am. It was the usual cold rice and hot chai. I first noticed a rather large yellow stain on the big bowl of rice in the middle of the table, and thought that either mama had used the mchuzi spoon to get it out of the pot the night before – or perhaps there was a more sinister reason. I made sure that I selected rice from another part of the bowl. However, I didn’t notice something rather nasty until I looked down at my bowl, ready to eat. There were mouse droppings in the rice! Bruce noticed my reluctance to start eating, and threw one of the offending items out the window, unfortunately drawing pastor’s attention to the problem. I left a small portion on the edge of my plate containing another unwanted addition to my meal! I must admit it was rather hard to eat the rest!
Once the weather cleared in the afternoon, we did our washing and then walked up the hill to the church to have a look around. I was really glad that I had enough energy to climb the steep hill – I had thought of trying a short walk on the flat the day before but a good opportunity hadn’t really presented itself. We went round the back of the new building to where the old one used to be, and found the site completely overgrown, covered in young trees, cassava and passionfruit vines.
The new building has been surrounded by young pine trees to act as a windbreak, but we thought they had been planted far too close to it for safety. They say that the winds can be strong enough to lift off a roof if you build on the hilltops of Bumbire, but you don’t really want the branches close enough to touch the roof or to fall on top of it.
As we turned away from the site, we were amused at the antics of a long-tailed bird we had observed on previous occasions, but never so close at hand. It has quite a small body, but has the longest tail i have ever seen on a bird that size. It uses it to counterbalance itself when feeding on the tops of the long grass stems that can grow to nearly 2 metres high. It flew ahead of us along the church’s drive to the main path along the crest of the hill, but then turned away. We were quite disappointed, but really thrilled to have seen it so close to us.
There seemed to be many birds out and about today. We have often been amazed at the sheer variety of birds in Tanzania, and some are really spectacular or have rather unusual calls.
We had lunch at 3.30 – matoke, fish, rice and supu. Danieli came round later on, and said that he had really bad toothache, and in fact, his face was quite swollen on one side. We had brought some antibiotics with us that Bruce had been given but not used as they had to be changed to another kind to treat an infection he’d picked up in NZ, and so we were very willing to give Danieli the 5-day course. He also complained of his little children (the oldest two are aged 7 and 8 years, the youngest is only 18 months old) coughing at night, till they almost vomited. At first we thought of whooping cough, but as he said they were really well during the daytime, we decided it was probably due to the cold nights sleeping on mats on the floor. Meshaki also had this problem which cost him a lot of sleep at times.
We were talking outside the jiko, and I noticed just how precarious the whole structure looked. Bruce had helped pastor with part of the framework four years ago when it was being built as an alternative to the rather cave-like structure that mama was cooking in. Now after such a short time, it is becoming unsafe, and pastor is worried lest mama gets buried under the building should it decide to collapse. At present, one of the walls is propped up by a strong branch, but that only supports part of the wall, and when the roof is wet with rain and the walls take on water too, it becomes much more dangerous.
We received news from Fideli’s house – his mother was really bad now. She had been unable to move at all the previous day and could no longer speak. Obviously her trip to the clinic had come far too late to save her, and our prayers for her healing and recovery were not answered. Pastor and mama decided to visit and spend some time with her.
Whilst they were away, Fideli’s second son, Meshaki I, came down to let us know that his grandmother had gone home. He’s the boldest of the five, and would often come to the house and, when I was lying sick on the bed, greet me through the net curtain that covered the doorway. When the front door was open, it was possible to see right inside the little bedroom through this curtain, it was no barrier at all. One had to be really quick in the mornings to get dressed before anyone else came into the living room and out the front door!
The Mugaruras returned a couple of hours’ later saying that she had passed away whilst they were there after they had prayer for her. They had stayed to help bathe her body and clothe it in clean clothes ready for the funeral the next day. The church had been open for prayer when we visited it earlier in the afternoon, but now it had to be closed again as there would be no mkesha – an all-night prayer meeting. Danieli went off up the hill to do this. Instead, people would go to spend the night with Fideli and his family.
Pastor and mama had returned to Fideli’s house, at first saying they might stay the night there. However, they came home around 9.15 and we had a dinner of cassava, rice and fish. I was able to eat a good meal this time, my appetite had almost returned to normal. Danieli was still around and about, and brought us two guavas – we decided to eat them for breakfast although they looked rather green.