10. The Emaciated Mzungu Memorial Trench

10. The Emaciated Mzungu Memorial Trench
8th September 2013

Today it is raining, for the first time since my return. (Was that really three weeks ago?)

“That’s not rain”, a Tanzanian Crocodile Dundee would say, “This is rain!”, unleashing from behind his back a vast torrent, whence river and road became indistinguishable. Twice a year in Tanzania, the oceans and lakes and jet stream and sun get together, and for a few months fill the skies with surprised rivers, who had expected to be more terrestrial. They very quickly establish their fluvial rights, however, and pour down to earth, rushing in every direction in search of their familiar banks.

In the process, they make something of a mess of the roads. Months of sun will have hard-baked the dirt roads, but also fractured them. Then stones below the surface get dislodged by over-burdened traffic, and the fissures get wider. The more traffic on the road, the more the need for its integrity, but, ironically, the more the crunching and the cracking. Thereafter comes the rain, and the grateful river of water surges down the rifts, dislodges future silt, and leaves behind swirling furrows crossing the roads this way and that. During the rain, the dirt roads are all-but impassable, but when the sun comes out, it serves to dry the furrows into ruts and bumps that challenge even Land Rover suspension. And there aren’t many Land Rovers.

The front drive leading to our mission house was a case in point. The house, (as you will by now have seen on You-Tube), is tolerably comfortable, and the sitting room looks out over the steep valley to the hills beyond. Many times I have sat on the verandah, gazing emptily towards the dry river bed far below, wondering what to say in the next blog, but distracted by tantalising thoughts of distant sausages. It’s a beautiful valley, but as a result of its steepness, the rain leaves the front drive less a road and more an assault course. Being circular, the rain cannot simply run down it, and so reluctantly hacks it into furrows, as it charges down the hill towards a tumultuous reunion on the valley floor.

Water, however, despite its destructive capacities, is very biddable. It only turns your front drive into a ploughed field because it is trying to get out of the way, and if you give it the option of getting out of the way more easily, it readily accepts. Thus the Emaciated Mzungu Memorial Trench.

The story went like this: More than a month in to my stay in Berega, I was a wizened, puny vestige of my former self, with no opportunity to exercise, (other than lifting an occasional heavy pan of inedible yellow things, in order to discard them on the compost heap). On our visit to Dodoma, however, I saw a pick-mattock for sale, and pounced on it. A mattock is a beast of an instrument: Where a hobbit would use a hoe, a cave troll would use a mattock. It goes without saying, of course, that a pick-mattock is better for trench-building than a grubbing-mattock, because the pick-end enables removal of bigger rocks, whilst the mattock-end can hack out a trench, oblivious of roots and rubble. The entire tool, with handle, weighs about twelve kilogrammes. Having, with the pick, wheedled any stones out from the path of the mattock head, you then unleash the mattock onto mother earth, gashing a deep furrow in her flesh.

At the top of the drive, I planned the route that the water will take when the first rains arrive in November. Passers-by on the road stopped to admire the efforts of the emaciated mzungu, manfully standing up to the might of Nature, and pummelling the would-be trench into existence. Being out of condition, I had to rest after each blow. I would have rested half way through each, had it been an option. By the end of two hours, a few inches of trench were already demonstrating their proclivity, by directing a litre or so of mzungu sweat down the hill. From the boys of the village, flocking incredulously around, a polite murmur of what I took to be awed appreciation sniggered between them and the gathering mosquitos.

The path of the trench I sketched out by two parallel lines running down the side of the drive, and onto the thirsty lawn below. The first half-metre, mattocked to perfection, is a veritable Suez. Sadly, however, I did not get much further with the trench before I left Berega, and Sion has now taken over. As a result of his blow by blow assault on the un-mattocked section, an Emaciated Mzungu Memorial Trench is now being grooved into the erstwhile random surface of Africa.

It will be completed. We know what we want, we know where we want it, and we have begun. When the rain begins to fall, it may be that we will need to take account of the way water naturally flows, but thereafter it will flow with a sense of purpose, reinforcing the trench more deeply with each downpour. As the perceptive will have noticed, I have just managed to ooze my way into a relevant metaphor: Although I am now back with my own tribe, the journey to safe childbirth for future mothers in Berega’s territory has begun. Careful hands are now deepening the commitment and purpose and direction. Things may unfold differently to our plan, but perhaps not by much. There is no going back to the random inefficiency of the past. It will be completed.

Beautiful examples of the irreversibility are the inspiring activities of Kofia in Guildford and environs. Their thriving website is the hub of both fundraising and spreading of awareness, but I particularly love the fact that they have knitted nearly 500 hats for Berega babies – and arranged a means of getting them there. Part of the vision is that once babies have been delivered safely, (which involves staying warm), they will continue to thrive when they go back to the villages. We want to follow up women back in the remote parts, and help ensure that their babies grow into healthy children. Having a Kofia hat might become the hallmark of a new era of health for this new generation of babies.

Meanwhile Brad, from Hands4Africa, is enthusiastic and inspired by the idea of a combined assault of community development and a community-based maternal/child health programme in Mnafu. It will allow women with no current realistic access to health care to have their babies in safe settings, and to raise their children without the expectation that 10% will die. The plan will now be fleshed out, having now decided that in the first instance, the priorities are bespoke transport, and a health facility at Mnafu. Economic growth and education will follow, in partnership with the development of systems for safe childbirth and healthy under-fives.

The Diocese of Worcester has completed a hugely successful sponsored climb of Kilimanjaro, raising thousands of pounds. A dozen or so people, some of whom had suffered altitude sickness whilst training on the Malverns, nevertheless managed to conquer the mountain. It was salutary to note, when flying home, that the mountain top was nearer to the plane than it was to the plains. I would have paid thousands not to climb it, so utter congrats to those who even tried. Meanwhile, I have been humbled and touched by the support of friends and blog-readers; and of others whose catalysis I will talk more of next time – thank you. We are poised to make a difference where it will really count.

Meanwhile, back in Berega, progress continues. Isaac Mgego, the hospital Director, is mustering forces at that end, ready and eager to begin a new era. Last month we saw reliable electricity become ensconced at the hospital. This month, for the first time in its history, a blood bank opened. It sounds a small thing, but until now, if a woman were bleeding inexorably after delivery, we would first have had to call in a relative or a compatible donor before we could give her blood. Truly life-saving.

By the way, talking of life-saving, those following the tortuous tale of my nutritional nadirs will be delighted to know that my life is no longer in danger. I have eaten more Pork & Leeks and Spicy Cumberlands than any man’s gall bladder should decently have had to deal with. My blood pressure and waist size are creeping up nicely, and the sentinels of my liver have sent out for reinforcements. Furthermore, my exercise tolerance is beginning to build, and my legs no longer look like articulated wooden spoons. Part of the de-wooden-spooning programme is country walking, and so it was that on Tuesday we went to the Peaks, and I once again immersed myself in English countryside. In the evening, pleasantly aching from ten miles of Derbyshire tracks and trails, fields and villages, woods and rivers, steep slopes up, steep slopes down, and even some steep flat places, all leading to deep satisfaction of arriving back where we had started from, I sat in the garden of the Devonshire Arms, and got outside a home-made game pie and a pint of ale, watching a yellow wagtail hop around the stones of a fresh, lively English stream. I was very satisfied to be home.

The next day, the full English breakfast strengthened me for the shock of the bill. A night in an English inn costs more than a month’s living costs in Berega. In fact I do seem to have overdone my response to the rediscovered capacity to spend money, which I was anyway always quite good at. In Tanzanian terms, my income is like the spring rain flooding down across my life, washing this way and that in lavish exuberance. I suspect that Mis (my wife) thinks I need mattocking.