Missing Microsoft

Saturday really was one of those days. It started off with Tim, Lewis, Esther and Silas having to go on a drinking water hunt as we were almost out and hadn’t been able to get any in the village on Friday. We didn’t have any tap water either on Saturday – in fact we hadn’t had a decent water supply since Wednesday so both our stores were getting low! During the time they were out, I had to make an alteration to Naomi’s new African dress. Many of you may not know how sensitive Naomi is to certain clothes and things against her skin and although her new African dress looked lovely and fitted her well, the material felt rough against her skin and I knew that she wouldn’t tolerate wearing it at all.

Necessity is the mother of invention they say and this was the case here! We were unable to wash the dress and get it dried before the evening and it was too hot and the dress too close fitting for her to wear anything underneath it! Fortunately, I had picked up a tiny sewing kit from the hotel we first stayed in when we arrived and I had also brought with me a muslin square, which was soft against her skin. I managed to cut the muslin square in half with a pair of children’s scissors and then anchor it to the inside of the dress with a few stiches! fortunately it worked and she was able to wear it without complaint on Saturday evening and then all day yesterday. Well done Mummy, I would say!

We had been invited to the Bishop’s house for dinner on Saturday evening, who lives in Dodoma and so we set off a little earlier so that we could buy some drinking water (Tim’s trip had again been unsuccessful in the morning) and to have a quick drive around the university of Dodoma where Tim had been the previous day. We were able to buy five twelve-liter bottles so we are all set for the time being!

We arrived at the Bishop’s house to be greeted by his Australian wife, Irene, who made us feel very at home and the Bishop arrived back soon after. We had a tour of his large ranch which he is building for his retirement and I was very impressed at all the natural energy sources that they have in their house. They have solar panels on the roof and convert waste into a gas that can also be used to light lamps. The sun was setting as we were walking around and it was a truly magnificent sight. We watched the sun dip below the horizon and the sky turn dark before going in to eat antelope for dinner!

Tim drove us safely home, but as we pulled into the yard, we could see a man lying, asleep on our porch. At first we thought it was one of our friends waiting for us to return but we soon realized that this was not the case. As we looked at the man, I could not see any signs of breathing and I was absolutely convinced that he was dead. All sorts of things raced through my mind, like what on earth do we do now, how do you call the police in Chamwino, as well as “Oh no, Naomi’s seen him, if he’s dead, she will be really upset!”. Tim rang Lewis who had just gone to bed and both he and Lewis approached the man from opposite directions. They soon realized that he was a drunk sleeping off his drink and, indeed, we could smell the beer from inside the house! We crept round the side to the back door and went in that way and thankfully our ‘body’ was gone by the morning!

Our story of the drunk man on the porch raced through the village and by the time we got to church yesterday morning, many of the people that we saw, knew about it already! We had a moving service at church; Tim and I were given some wonderful cloth to wear and the children were given money, bracelets and a necklace. The presents were kind and generous and we felt very touched.

Yesterday really was a red letter day though as by the time we got home we had running water inside the house! It wasn’t coming out of the taps in the sink but was at least coming out of the low tap in the shower room but we were then able to fill up the buckets and, ultimately, fill up the bins. We were very happy!

We had a surprise power cut yesterday evening but it on the plus side, it enabled us to go out and watch the stars with the children as there was no moon. The children were all fascinated by the star watching and were delighted to see a shooting star. Tim is good at pointing out things like the Southern Cross, Saturn and the Milky Way so it gave us some meaning to what we were looking at.

We are leaving Chamwino on Thursday and staying two days in a place called Morogoro, which is about half way between here and Dar es Salaam. We will return to Dar on Saturday and leave on Sunday morning. I can’t believe that we only have three nights here and that we will be back in the UK in less than a week! Time has flown by.

– Louise

[Note: I’ve lost track of the days a little, but this blog entry recounts the events of last Friday…]

When I started my sabbatical, I made a pact with myself and the family that I’d turn the phone and email off and completely forget about Microsoft for a few weeks. What use is a sabbatical where you’re pining to be back at work, after all? I’m usually pretty good at this, incidentally – when we take a family vacation, I have no difficulty leaving work behind, even though I usually wind up bringing a few technology gadgets along. Our Kindle readers have been a boon here, for example – we have read several books each so far, and I like being able to relax with the New York Times crossword and being able to read a variety of newspapers. I love that I can buy an electronic copy of that day’s newspaper from the middle of a rural village for less than it would cost me to buy the print version in the USA or UK.

I broke my pact in the last few days. But it was for a good cause. If you have read earlier blog entries, you’ll know that we were driven to Chamwino by an entrepreneurial fellow named Alpha, who happens to also be an assistant to the Minister for Education. On the journey we were casually chatting about my role at Microsoft; I remember him asking me whether I gave presentations and airily replying that it was a daily part of the job. Step forward about ten days and I got an email from Alpha out of the blue letting me know that he’d roped me into delivering a presentation at the University of Dodoma:

“I spoke to head of IT department and the Vice Chancellor at University of Dodoma, they are very interested to welcome you to give a lecture especially on licensing issues and other related as you see fit. Also, senior officer from Ministry of Finance would like to invite you for a presentation at the head office in Dar on your return, for a lecture as well. When do you think you can manage at University of dodoma? They will do at your convinient time, Sir.”

Oh boy!

I know very little about software licensing, incidentally – it’s not my area of expertise at all, and as a topic it competes with the actuarial profession for lack of excitement. But I’d heard a little about the University of Dodoma from other prior visitors to the region, and since I didn’t have a lot of choice I suggested a date and a more familiar (and engaging) topic, offering a presentation on three trends that are shaping the future of computing.

Inevitably, the resources available to me here in Chamwino were very limited. Resources I don’t have with me: my work laptop, my archive of previous presentations, any demonstrations, access to the Microsoft corporate network, long trousers or other business-appropriate clothing. Resources I do have with me: the email address of a few folk in my team, a few distant memories of what I work on when I’m not in Africa. Fortunately my colleagues and team members came up trumps when I sent them what most be one of the most bizarre emails they must have ever received asking for a few presentation resources I could draw from.

I arrived a few days later at the campus with vague directions and a rough indication of who I should ask for when I arrived. Compared with the village of Chamwino, the contrast could not have been more acute. The university is vast in every way – spread out over an area of maybe ten square miles, with as many as 60,000 students projected to be studying there by the middle of the decade. Each faculty has a self-contained campus area, including halls of residence, laboratories, lecture theaters, libraries, catering and administration offices; the informatics faculty alone has 2,000 students with plans to grow to 6,000 when the building phase is complete. By comparison, the 1991 computer science intake at my alma mater, the University of Nottingham, had only thirty students!

Amazingly, the photo above shows just the Humanities and Social Sciences faculty

The campus was mostly built by Chinese labor, it seems – but it is clearly a flagship achievement of the Tanzanian government. Before I arrived, I wasn’t sure what to expect – they had confirmed that they had a projector, but I wondered if they would proudly show me a dusty old-style overhead acetate projector! In fact, the facilities are state-of-the-art – the lecture theaters are well-equipped with banked seating and as sophisticated audio/video projector units as you’ll find at Microsoft.

The presentation went well – I started by explaining what an ‘evangelist’ does at Microsoft and telling them a little about what the culture is like in Redmond; I then talked through three major trends that are shaking up the computer industry (cloud computing, new device form factors and HTML5, for those who are interested), and closed with some very humble suggestions from a mzungu on how Tanzania might be able to capitalize on these trends and leapfrog other nations rather than simply trying to catch up. It was hard to know exactly what level to pitch the presentation – did they know all this, perhaps? – but it was well-received, I think. Afterwards there were lots of questions and the principal of the faculty provided a summary of his reflections, before the dean delivered a short presentation on the “Microsoft Innovation Center” they have just opened in a temporary facility. Later, he gave me a short tour before I had to leave.

 
The UDOM Microsoft Innovation Center.

I came away feeling excited for the future of Tanzania; while the work our church and other similar organizations are doing in the area to improve basic infrastructure, health and education is a good start, the future prosperity of Tanzania can only be assured if its population can become self-reliant. Having world-class higher education facilities is a key step forward: the open question which the dean acknowledged is whether they can attract a matching caliber of lecturers who can justify the facilities. I look forward to working with them on an informal basis in the future to sponsor and support them.

– Tim

– Esther (age 7)

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— Naomi (age 8½)

A busy day yesterday with grocery shopping, a meeting of the Chamwino Connect organization that provides a bridge between Seattle and Chamwino, and some teaching at the pre-school. It doesn’t sound that busy, but everything takes so long here: just walking the half-mile to the village center involves endless stops for lengthy greetings of almost everyone we meet. While the pace is slow, I don’t think it’s because people are laid-back as much as because people have a different set of priorities. Relationships are so important here: getting tasks done takes a backseat to showing hospitality and giving due attention to each person.

While we were in the village, we decided to eat lunch at “Mama Chapati”. Others call her Mama Amina (following the common convention of naming a mother after her children: mother of Amina); but we have bought breakfast from her almost every morning since we arrived and so within the household she has again been renamed based on the number of chapatis she has ‘birthed’ each morning. She is an amazing woman – essentially a one-woman restaurant for the village.

It is hard to believe how basic her resources are. Each day she rises before dawn and starts serving breakfast at 5am; she finishes serving dinner at 7pm, feeding maybe fifty or more people a day, in addition to special requests like our chapatis and feeding and caring for her family of four children. She does this every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It’s unclear whether she is widowed, divorced, or whether her husband is just not on the scene, but we haven’t seen anything much in the way of support.

She manages to prepare all these meals from a ‘kitchen’ that is no more than a couple of saucepans and some smoldering charcoal, crouched on the concrete floor of the backyard behind the house. Her tap (faucet) is made out of a bucket. Yet she serves delicious meals – rice, beans and meat, along with very welcome ice-cold sodas, all for about $1 per head.

Have a look at the photos below of Mama Amina’s kitchen, along with some images of our family enjoying the sodas along with our friend Lewis.

– Tim

Two anecdotes from your correspondent this evening: one lighthearted; the other a little more thought-provoking.

This time of year is notable in this part of the world for the circumcision rituals that take place in each village. In times past, both male and female youths would be circumcised in their mid-teens, without anesthetic, but as best as I understand it, the government began to push for female circumcision to be ended towards the last decades of the twentieth century and now males alone are circumcised as young children at the age of four.

The ceremony takes place over the course of a week and includes a great deal of singing that can be heard across the village. Once the “pruning” is complete, the circumcised children are sent into a special building where they will live for the next few weeks until the wound has healed, with no contact with their mothers or other women allowed.

As a rite of passage, it remains an important facet of Gogo culture, and no man is considered worthy of the title until they are circumcised. This leaves me and the other males in the household in a slightly awkward position. I am rather hoping that none of the local residents somehow find out about my surplus and decide to take matters into their own hands. As I mentioned on Facebook, a souvenir is supposed to be something you bring back from a trip, rather than something you leave behind!

– Tim

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I had a reality check today. We had used the huge cardboard box that the fridge came in for the children (ours and the villagers) to draw on and it was spotted by the young man who lives behind our house. He asked Lewis if he could have the box to use as a mattress as he was sleeping on the wooden bed frame without anything at present. It appears that he is an orphan and cannot afford to buy a mattress for his bed, so wanted the now dusty and colorful box as a mattress instead. We gladly gave it to him but it was so humbling to realize that something that I regarded as trash was essential to this young man.

However, during our time here, we have met with many people who are keen to improve the education for the children here, giving them the hope of a better life in the future. We met with Mama Pendo (mother of our friend Pendo in Seattle) on Sunday, who travels around the villages to persuade families to send their children to school and who is petitioning the government to build houses for girls to stay in so that they can finish their education without the distractions of home, boyfriends and unplanned pregnancies. It was wonderful to meet a kindred spirit who has a passion for families too!

We spent a long time chatting with her and gained much from her wisdom. There are three primary schools and one secondary school in the village; many children attend primary school but only a few are able to complete secondary school. Schools, it appears, are terribly short of basic equipment like books and we are now thinking about how we can improve this for the schools in the village; we will continue to talk about this with Mama Pendo and others in the village to see how this could best be done. I did my Health Visiting dissertation on Community Development and it is great to see this in action here!

– Louise

– Naomi (age 8½)

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An early start today – the church service starts bright and early here at 7:30am, so we were all up just after 6am to prepare and put on our Sunday best clothes. We swallowed down some breakfast and raced to the church, only to find it completely empty. We’d fallen for that classic mistake of bringing our mazungu mindset with us; here, of course, times are at best approximate and clocks or watches are entirely unused – particularly at these equatorial climes, people determine their appointments by the height of the sun above the horizon. We hung around outside the church for about forty minutes before the service actually begun, but it was a very pleasant time – Louise took some very artistic photos of the church and surroundings, and we both had the opportunity to meet several new people and practice the endless array of possible Swahili greetings with them.

The service itself was wonderful – we were worried that it might drag for us, given our very limited vocabulary, but there were five different “choirs” who performed every style of music on instruments ranging from guitars and keyboards to the traditional Cigogo zeze and marimbas. We managed to record some of the songs and will share them when we have better access to Internet. The ceremony also included two infant baptisms: on another day that left us sweltering, we were amused to see the children smothered with blankets and hats – after all, it is ‘winter’ for them here in the southern hemisphere. The service was truly a highlight of our trip so far – we felt very fortunate to be present.

During the section of the service where announcements are read out, we were honored but unsurprised when Pastor Daniel invited us forward to be welcomed by the church. After introducing and greeting us, he gave us the opportunity to say something in response; knowing that this was likely to happen we had previously asked our helpmate Lewis to translate some prepared words into Swahili the night before, and so I was prepared! Although I barely knew what I was saying, I managed to speak for a couple of minutes, bringing tidings and prayer requests from previous visitors from our church in Seattle and thanking them for the warmth of their hospitality. Although I’m sure I butchered a few parts of the speech, I think it was well received! It was certainly fun to be able to connect with the people of Chamwino in their own language instead of the rather painstaking process of communication that involves interpreters.

As the service came to a close, we were invited outside and I was asked to stand with the pastors and catechists to greet the congregants as they left. This is another rigorous process of handshaking and greeting as nearly two hundred people filed out, each offering and being offered a word or two of blessing. Rather than dispersing, everyone joined together for one last song in the bright sunlight: a lovely way to end the service.

The rest of the day was a little quieter, but not much – we had lots of visitors coming and going through the afternoon, in addition to the nearly thirty children who congregate outside the house each day in the hope of us lending out a beach ball or frisbee, or Louise doing a craft activity with them. Hard to believe we have been here in Chamwino a week already – and that in a month today I will be back at my desk in Redmond. It seems a long way away right now.

– Tim

– Esther (age 7)

Today has been a much welcomed ‘rest day’ in Chamwino. After the madness of this past week it was lovely not have to be somewhere by 7:30 and to have very little planned. I was feeling very weary last night and this morning and managed to sleep in this morning despite the cockerel’s best attempts to get me up at 6:30am. Seriously, if this cockerel survives these next two weeks without ending up as my dinner it will be doing very well!

Lewis, our wonderful guide, mentor, cook and all round superstar kindly took all of the children to collect chapatis for our breakfast this morning as they were all keen to see how they were made. They all walked into the village center and watched the lady cook the chapatis and even Silas could give me a brief but accurate account of how they were made. Poor Lewis got more than he bargained for though when he offered to take the children as Silas decided he needed to use the toilet and couldn’t wait. Lewis took him into the shop lady’s bathroom but this really was only a hole in the ground and Silas rejected it, hoping that he would make it home but he didn’t and so Lewis had to take him into another person’s house, where Silas didn’t quite make it. Tim and I were mortified when they got home and we realized that Lewis had had to clean Silas up but Lewis seemed to take it all in his stride. Thank goodness he is a father too and knows many people in the village!

Just after lunch, the salon lady came to plait our hair, starting with Naomi first; poor Naomi didn’t like it at all as it pulled her hair which she is very sensitive to and she was unable to read as she didn’t have her glasses on. Fortunately, the lady was fast at braiding it and she was soon done. It looks good on her (and on Esther and I too) but I was hoping that we could have it done once and it would last a  week or so but I don’t think it will last too long at all.

Once we were all braided up the children and I went outside to play with the village children. As this week has progressed, more and more children have come to the house. We are recognizing a few of them and are starting to know some of their names but this is very hard. Many of their names are not ones that we know so it is hard to work them all out! The village children are getting used to us / me though and are not running away or looking fearful when I am outside, which is nice for me! On Wednesday, I did some drawing with them which they all enjoyed very much and I will do this again in the next couple of days; I’ve had a couple of them indicate that they would like to do it again, both yesterday and today. Tim has posted some photos of the children with their drawings onto Facebook so you can see how much they enjoyed it.

Today, though, I thought that I would do some relay races (what on earth possessed me, I don’t know) so I blew up a couple of balloons and eventually got 24 children (including my 3) into two reasonably straight lines. African children clearly don’t do lines I discovered! I started off with an easy ‘balloon over the top of the head’ race and they did get the idea of it with a lot of help and demonstration. We soon abandoned the ‘race’ idea though! It was very windy out and just as we were finishing up the balloons escaped and both popped at the same time!

I then tried to do a hopping relay race, which they loved. They hopped backwards and forwards for ages and I discovered that my three really can’t hop compared to the village kids. The village children were laughing at Esther, who was wearing a long skirt, and had to hold it up to hop. We then did a bit of singing – “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” is definitely a favourite – and then tried the Conga round the garden. They thought this was hilarious but the bit they laughed at the most was when I had one of them hold my waist. I think that I must have made a major social faux pas on that one but still, it was funny! Eventually, we tried to send them home but this is very difficult even with Lewis’ help. Certainly my “kwaheri, nyumbani” (goodbye, home) does not work at all!  They do finally go when it gets dark though.

I am struggling for ideas for them though and would welcome suggestions. So many of the things that I have done with groups of children in the past (Simon Says, running games when you say a name for example) are hopeless when there isn’t a common language. We are going to try and get some rope for some skipping and we have a couple of beach balls we can use for throwing ball games but if you have any good ideas then please share them with me! Thank you.

– Louise

Our first big drive today since arriving in Chamwino – into Dodoma, a largish town about 20 miles west of here. We went in search of a refrigerator for the house, a luxury that we think will be much appreciated both by us and future visitors. Food preservation is a major challenge here, given the equatorial climate; without a fridge several trips a day to the local shops are required, and too much food is wasted because you never know how many guests will need to be served at a moment’s notice. Meat is a particular challenge to Western stomachs, of course. The meat you see hanging on hooks in a butcher’s shop may be a rather dark shade of brown after a few hours; our friends Lewis and Imani have been excellent at spotting a recently slaughtered animal and we have so far been blessed with few upset stomachs. Even so, having a fridge will make a big difference and enable us to keep both fresh and cooked food safe for longer periods of time.

Dodoma itself is the official capital of Tanzania and is home to the country’s parliament, although most government and commercial business is still done in Dar es Salaam. Beyond the parliament, the town boasts an airport, a university and a hospital but is otherwise just a provincial town. Nevertheless, it is the regional center and the place to go if you are looking for an uncommon purchase. It is at least a much easier place to drive than Dar es Salaam, although I did have to contend with a pedestrian walking down the middle of the road, bicycles going in the opposite direction to the traffic and the usual challenge of potholes and bumps that loom up into view and require sudden evasive action.

Our first stop was to the ATM to pick up another ‘brick’ of banknotes (as with many African countries, everything is paid in cash in small denominations); we then went down the road to the small corner store that sold white goods. To my surprise, they had quite a number of refrigerators for sale – a few Hitachi models but mostly a (presumably) Chinese brand called Boss. Amusingly, while there were four or five different models on offer at different prices, it was impossible to differentiate them in size, style or specification. When we quizzed the saleswoman, the best she could come up with is “that they probably were incorrectly labeled”! Needless to say, we selected the cheapest of the six identical units and went to pay the cashier, who was sitting behind a perspex window that surely offered only the flimsiest protection against petty thieves.

The biggest challenge was getting the fridge delivered, since our car was already full of passengers. The shop offered to secure delivery from a taxi driver for Tzs 30,000 – but when the taxi driver came in and saw that the purchasers were pale-faced wazungu suddenly decided it was impossible to deliver it for less than Tzs 50,000. We left our Tanzanian friend Sospeter in the store to haggle with another driver without our distracting presence and went off to purchase other supplies. We were delighted to find a grocery store that was well-stocked with a wide range of products and purchased cheese, long-life milk and even Ribena cordial. We then headed out to find a restaurant that was recommended by an old friend of Louise’s who happens to live here (what are the chances?) and then headed home.

We got home to discover Sospeter had arrived safely with the refrigerator; we plugged it in and quickly stocked it up with the chicken and cheese we had purchased. Ten minutes later, the power failed and so I write this from a dark house where the chicken is slowly spoiling and will likely need to be thrown out tomorrow! Never mind – such is the adventure of life here.

– Tim

Good evening! I am writing this by candlelight as we are having a power cut! Fortunately the computer has enough power I think to allow me to write!

We are now at the end of our second day in Chamwino although it feels like we have been here for much much longer! We are all very much enjoying our time here and have felt very welcomed by the village and church community. It is a poor village with mud houses, no paved roads, intermittent running water (barely any since we’ve been here) and just the feel of a village in poverty, from a monetary point of view. However, what they lack in resources they have much in love, generosity, excitement and cheerful dispositions. They have welcomed us with open arms and shown us such kindness that I have been humbled.

Tanzania is a beautiful country and our drive from Dar es Salaam to Chamwino was beautiful; we had a wonderful time in Dar es Salaam by the beach and it was a really good way to start our trip. I had a debate with myself whether or not we should have come straight here but it was the right thing to do to have a few days at the beach, to recover from our journey and to prepare us in a small way to living here.

I know that Tim has written about our first few days so I won’t revisit them, suffice to say that I am incredibly grateful to Mitch and Alpha who were our guides in Dar and to Lewis who is our guide and helper here in Chamwino. Before we arrived, I felt very relaxed and peaceful about our trip because I knew that we had so much help already lined up for us. The help has been very valuable and has enabled me to enjoy our stay much more that I would have otherwise done.

This morning we woke to the sound of the cockerel and general outside noises about 6:30am and went to the little nursery / pre-school for 8am. We spent a couple of hours there with the first of the two daily classes listening to them learning English and then teaching them a couple of songs in English, which they all enjoyed! Our children did very well as we asked them to tell the students a little about their own school experiences which they did. Our new friend and interpreter, Imani translated for us all! He does an excellent job as interpreter and somehow manages to remember everything that we say!

One of the words on the board that the children had to identify was ‘key’ and they were asked what the plural of keys was. One little boy put up his hand and said “monkeys!” It was so lovely and completely understandable as to how he got there!

For the rest of today, we were at home with many visitors, including a wonderful lady who did our washing for me! I don’t mind washing by hand but because we hadn’t done any washing since last Tuesday there was a very large pile and so I appreciated Mama Baraka doing it for me! In Tanzania, it is the tradition that you are called “Mama …”  when you have your first child so I am now “Mama Naomi” which makes them all laugh!

Our children are doing amazingly well. They have got the greetings down to a fine art! They have to say “shikamoo” which means “greetings dear elder” and they accompany this with a nod of the head and a hand shake! They are doing this faithfully every time they see an adult and I was joking to Naomi that she would be saying it at home when we return! They probably said it nearly 30 times today alone. Tim and I don’t fare as well because we have to make a judgement on whether or not this person is older than we are, whereas the children just greet all adults in the same way. Tim said “shikamoo” to one lady today who replied that she wasn’t that old!

Our children continue to make friends with the village children who congregate outside our door from morning till night! They are very patient with the children who want to stroke their hair and ask them many questions in Swahili!! I did some singing with the children this morning and got them to stand in a circle to sing ‘ring a ring a roses’ and Esther had 4 boys fighting over which of them was going to hold her hand! Why am I not surprised? Tim took a video of me singing with the children which I am sure he will post on the blog at some point, so i will end here with an apology for the terrible singing!

– Louise