Sunday Morning

I asked what time church started on Sunday and with a shrug of the shoulders I was told that I would know when it was starting because I would hear it. First of all I heard the church bell being chimed and as I looked out of my window I could see small groups of people starting to make their way towards the church. Then the singing began and so, not wanting to be late, I headed off to join the service. I need not have worried as the large church was practically empty.

As the choir continued to sing and dance at the front of the church more and more people arrived. The youngest children sat in the front pews, dressed in their smartest clothes and behind them sat the older children from the school and the adults. Four different choirs came up to the stage, one after the other, to sing the songs they had been practising all week. The choirs had between 5 and 10 members each and as they sang they also danced and the congregation joined in.

These songs were interspersed with Bible readings and prayers and with different people coming to the front to speak. Wherever in the world you go to church there is always a collection and in this church that involves people walking up the aisle to a table at the front and placing their offering in a plastic bowl that is covered by a piece of material. This was followed by the sermon and, like the rest of the service, it was in Swahili so I have no idea what was said…

The service had lasted for nearly three hours and after a final prayer, and accompanied by one of the choirs singing a final song, the leader of the service and the preacher got up to walk to the main door of the church. Several of the adults sitting around me got up from their seats and beckoned for me to follow them. As we got to the door we shook hands with the leader and preacher and then before I knew what was happening I found myself as part of a growing line of people shaking hands with everyone as they left the church – it was a lot of hands to shake!

One of the choirs

The congregation

A Sad Day

Last Monday morning we woke up to the news that there had been a death in the community. We were first told it was the wife of one of the members of the church choir and then later in the day it emerged that she was also a nurse at the hospital. She was 37 years old and although she had previously been unwell she had recovered and was back at work. She worked a normal shift on Sunday and then died suddenly during the night. No one I spoke to seemed to know the exact cause of death.

At 2.00 p.m. on Monday afternoon people gathered in the church for a memorial service before the body was taken to her home village for burial. Many people, young and old, came for the service. Inevitably it started late and there was a time of hymn singing and prayers before the family arrived. I recognised the husband from the previous day’s church service as he walked in with his three small children the oldest of whom is probably about 10 years old. The coffin (which had been made that morning) was then carried into the church and placed on a table at the front and covered in a white cloth.

There were more hymns and prayers, a bible reading and a short-sermon before people were invited to file past the coffin to pay their respects. The women had all come with a ‘kanga’ (a typical East-African piece of material) draped around their shoulders, which I figured was a sign of respect and mourning, as they do not normally dress like that. Some were overcome with grief and used the kanga to cover their heads as they cried and wailed.

As the coffin was carried out of the church one of the ladies began singing a mournful song, which the other ladies echoed. They continued singing as everyone filed out of the church and stood quietly and respectfully outside as the coffin was lifted into one vehicle with the close family and the mourners who were going for the burial got into a second vehicle. As we stood there a light rain started to fall, which somehow seemed appropriate given the mood of the community. Once the vehicles had driven away the singing came to an end and people drifted away to go about their ‘normal’ daily tasks. 

I have blogged before about the fragility of life in Africa and this was another stark reminder of how death is such a part of life on this continent and of how one family’s life can be changed forever in a moment.

The First Week

Since leaving the UK for Tanzania there has been a whirlwind of activity and adjustments as I have got used to living and working in this unique community. It is good to be back in East Africa again and I am enjoying a beautiful part of the continent and being involved in a grassroots project that is really impacting people’s lives.

I am in the far south of Tanzania in a very remote and consequently very poor region. The improvements to the road infrastructure that have been made in the more populated areas of the country have not happened here and a journey of less than 100km can take over 4 hours by road. The people are therefore quite ‘cut off’ but this project is providing services and training that would otherwise not be available to them.

The main activity is a secondary school with about 800 pupils (exact numbers seem hard to come by…). There is also a 100 bed hospital, which serves the local community and people come from all over the region to receive treatment. There is a nursing school, which is currently training about 100 students and there is a vocational training school providing training to about 250 students in tailoring, carpentry, metal work, welding (I’m not sure how that differs from metal work) or car mechanics. All of the students and most of the staff live on-site and so all the infrastructure to support a community (electricity, water, food, accommodation, etc.) is also present. 

Here are some photos to give a bit of a flavour of my first week here: 

The team I came out with - two South Africans, five Germans and me!

Flying over the local area

Dr Matamora - the Director of the project

The new Finance Office - constructed out of 3 shipping containers...

...but still a work in progress

Training with the Finance Department

Food being prepared for all the students

New Year: New Assignment. Next Stop Tanzania

It's been nearly two months since I left Chad and the time has come for me to head off on my travels again. On Wednesday of this week I leave for Tanzania, initially just for 3 weeks but with the possibility of returning for a longer period of time later in the year.

I had several possible assignments to choose from but this one appealed to me the most. I was approached by a former MAF pilot, who is now working for a German organisation (Wort und Tat or Word and Deed), who support a number of community-based projects in different parts of the world. One of these projects is in the Tunduru District in southern Tanzania, where they run a health clinic and a secondary school and work to improve agriculture and increase access to safe drinking water for the local community. You can read more about their work here.

I have been asked to help with the financial aspects of this project: to work with the local staff in building a budget and ensuring their systems for recording income and expenditure are robust. Although I am not an accountant I have been involved in managing and overseeing finances in a number of my previous assignments in Africa. I hope this is sufficient experience to be able to make a positive impact...

I am looking forward to returning to Tanzania (I worked there for about 3 months in 2009) and to being a bit more involved at the 'grass-roots' level of a community development project. Despite being in a fairly remote part of Africa I am told that there is access to the internet. I hope it will be good enough to enable me to update this blog over the course of the next few weeks, so watch this space!

Party time

Yesterday we had our team Christmas Party, which also doubled-up as my farewell party. We closed the office early and invited the staff and their immediate family to the compound for a lunchtime gathering. As this is Africa the 1.00 p.m. start time ended up being closer to 2.00 p.m. but that was actually earlier than I thought it would be...

Whilst we waited to begin the children enjoyed playing.

We then ate together.

Followed by the presentation of a farewell gift to me (photos of MAF in Chad in a typically Chadian leather frame) and the obligatory speeches.

And we finished by taking a team photo.

It was a lovely way to finish up my time in Chad. I'm going to miss these people...

Last week in Chad

As the title of this post gives away I have now entered my last week in Chad. I will leave N'Djamena next Sunday evening and arrive home on Monday. There are always a mixture of emotions when I finish an overseas assignment. Inevitably I am looking forward to being home and to reconnecting with family and friends but I am also sad to be saying goodbye to the people I have met - the colleagues I have worked with and the friends I have made. I always wonder if I will ever return or if our paths will cross again.

On Sunday I went to the International church for the last time and today was my last Ladies Bible Study meeting. There are a surprising number of ex-pats working here in a variety of roles - for mission organisations, for NGOs and for commercial companies and it has been good to meet and to get to know a number of them. Some, like me, come for just a short period of time although a surprising number are here long-term spending months and sometimes years learning the local languages and making Chad their permanent home.

In about an hour's time I will head out to the airport to meet a new family who are joining our team. This will be my last airport pick-up although I don't feel particularly sad about that as it is not one of my favourite things to do. The airport pass I get as part of my work gives me access to the baggage reclaim and immigration areas of the airport. Neither area is large enough to cope with the number of arriving passengers and so it is always a heaving mass of people pushing and shoving and shouting in a variety of languages. There is always a great sense of relief when you finally make it back out to the car park again.

Friday will be my last day in the office, although we are planning to finish early and have a special lunch with all the team and their families as a way of saying 'Welcome' to the new family, 'Goodbye' to me and 'Happy Christmas' to everyone.

On Saturday I am thinking about spending the day at the swimming pool at one of the hotels. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have done that here but as I will be returning to winter in the UK it might be a nice way to spend my last Saturday in Chad.

And on Sunday I will leave Chad for the last time. Or maybe not? My future plans are unknown but I have learnt to never say never as you really don't know what could be next...

Tragedy

It seems that almost every day of the week I hear of some difficult circumstance involving one of our Chadian staff - sickness, accidents, loss of or damage to their home and, all too frequently, sudden death. We only have 9 staff members so there are a lot of tough things for them to deal with and some of the situations seem more tragic than others.

Yesterday morning  I greeted Dieudonne as normal and asked how he was. He replied he was fine but then he hesitated and proceeded to tell me that the day before his neighbour had gone fishing with his six-year old son (and that's fishing as a means of earning some money, rather than as a leisure activity). The father and son were on the river bank sorting the big fish from the small ones when a black snake came out of the undergrowth and bit the boy on his leg. The father quickly killed the snake but within five minutes the boy started shaking and very soon afterwards he was dead.

Dieudonne was visibly upset as he told me this and asked if he could take the day off to attend the funeral. People here live very close together so he must know the family well. He has a son of his own who is just a little bit younger than this boy and I am sure he can imagine what it would be like to lose a child so suddenly.

My limited French only stretches as far as 'desole' (sorry), which is clearly an inadequate expression in such tragic circumstances.

I'm not sure I really have the words in English either.