It is as if the weather knows we are going...….today the winds have picked up and storm clouds have been scudding across the sky. Reports of heavy rains from around the country, including from M who left us today to head down to Dar es Salaam for his flight home. His plane, if all has gone smoothly should now have left African soil. Which leaves us girls to pack up the remnants of our Tanzanian life ready for our departure on Tuesday.
For the moment we are enjoying the cool winds blowing in from the sea and our last weekend in Peponi. It's definitely been a second home, this place, and we are all very comfortable spreading ourselves out throughout the grounds.
Our hair is longer, our freckles have multiplied and our walking pace has definitely slowed to the leisurely time relaxed pace of the locals. Despite the hard bits, which I've been pretty frank in sharing, I think we emerge from this time as a tighter knit family, knowing that having done this, that most things in life will feel easier in comparison. At times I have feared we may have pushed ourselves a little too far, but we have managed not to disown each other completely!
Africa gets under your skin, or more accurately onto your skin.....B's knees will take several long soaks in a bath to be clean again - even after a weekend in the sea/pool there is still a hint of that red soil. I spent my childhood listening to tall tales from my father about his childhood in Malawi. A different era, when it took weeks on a liner to journey down the coast of Africa to Cape Town before onward overland journey. For us it is only a matter of hours to get on a plane, raincoats in hand and emerge sweating into the heat of the equator. I suspect that longer journey eased the transition from Northern Europe to Sub Sahara far more effectively than modern airline travel. We are, after 5 months finally acclimatising - no hiding our pale skins, but perhaps not so awkwardly plastered in sweat, less impatient in expecting things to happen on time.
We have been adopted into a tiny corner of this vast continent, in a truly beautiful country. Images and smells we shall carry away with us (quite literally on the smell front by the time we reach Oz!). Those first overwhelming weeks of bombardment have faded- the roaring motorbikes, scarily piled with heavy loads and passengers crisscrossing the bikes, goats, cows and brightly dressed women. I still envy the elegance with which huge stacks of firewood or buckets of water rest on their heads, the ease in which babies are strapped tightly with strips of cloth. Smells pervade of dried fish, stinky drains, rubbish being burnt on the tip, hot spices and bubbling pans of oil at roadside stalls mingling with sweetness of oranges peeled ready to suck. Children still jump up to shout 'hello, how are you' but mainly now only if I am out with our own children, my regular stallholders greet me as I pass and the boda bodas know now not to bother asking if I want a ride. We are becoming a familiar presence around town. Even the bats, with their constant noise, we now tune out - though it will be a relief to stop wondering if I am going deaf - the background noise of fans and bats mean I struggle to hear conversation unless I am directly in front of the other person.
Could we stay - ultimately yes, though Muheza is not the right place for our family for much longer than we have had. We could do Africa for longer if we had an expat lifestyle, with a house more suited to family life, an international school and our own vehicle, that's for sure, though how we'd fund it I've no idea. But right now, England beckons - we have sorely missed our family and friends - and we are looking forward to the summer ahead.
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