Almost Half Way Through Now

Hello everyone again. Firstly again, thanks to everyone that messaged. It’s great to hear from you all, especially from Kirby, Grandpa and Carol. Glad to hear you are all well and are enjoying reading the blog.

This week has been a funny one really, not that much has happened. Started on foundations for the staff house, that is pouring cement into the trenches, laying bricks etc… The school building itself is now completely finished, they put in the foundation stone yesterday and we were invited to the opening presentation, I could honestly say my own graduation ceremony was more interesting, I was only glad my Swahili is not enough to understand it all, because then I really would have fallen asleep, actually, I’m making it sound worse than it probably was, the heat got to me a bit that day and I had loads of work to do on camp which mean me not wanting to be there.
Last night the Mvae Camp came to stay with us for the night, so me trying to be a good host set about getting a huge bon fire made of the trees we cut down last week, picked up a crate of beer, and ordered in three chicken to kill and eat with them. However, the chickens never came, great… “Karibu Tanzania!” Despite that, the night went so well, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. As for interesting event of the evening, we kick started the bon fire with a flaming arrow, yeah, ok, a bit fraught of danger, but we’re in the middle of nowhere, what else is there to do! Also, strangely our jeep was left on camp that evening too, I assume the driver was staying somewhere locally, so we thought we would have a play, I managed to get a film of the state of its complete lack of dampers… I mean, I would rock it a bit and then it would continue to rock for couple of seconds after just as violently as it was before, it really is a joke! Oh, on the subject of the jeep, I have fallen in love with defenders, one of the roads that gets us into Singida at the weekend has been blocked by a huge three lorry pile up… I might have mentioned it last week, well yeah, the crash got bigger and it’s still there. Well, anyway, the defender decided to go off road, which is a complete understatement considering the state of the roads our here, so when it did, my jaw dropped, and my hands clenched onto the nearest thing as I have honestly never seen a car at those limits!

Other than that, this weekend we have all decided to take it off, so we are heading up the Mount Hanang, which you should be able to find on any good map of East Africa. 3,417 meters high, we plan to sunit it on Sunday. So I will be back in Singida on the Monday to update you on that one, perhaps some photos this time, sorry none this time round.

Also, as for the hair thing, I chicken out, I would do it if I knew I would go completely bold, but we only had the equipment to get VERY short hair, I didn’t want that.