KBO (Keep Buggering On)

KBO, Sir Winston Churchill’s motto, seems a fitting motto for us here after a few interesting weeks of building and semi-normal life on the mainland.

After returning to Kipili from Arusha with our 2 dogs (a horrific journey, hopefully not to be repeated in the near future), things seemed to settle into some kind of a routine. Sadly our male goat died the day after I arrived with the dogs. We think that he must have been bitten by a snake, because the one side of his face was very swollen and he had apparently not had much of an appetite for several days. The poor remaining goat is terrorized daily by Asterix and Madonna, who rush towards the fence at her whenever she dares to graze near our enclosed compound.

Yesterday we bought another 28 large chickens and 11 baby chicks to add to our animal farm. We have already had 3 fatalities. Two chicks died on the boat here from Kirando and 1 was found dead this morning after Asterix had tried to pull it through the fence to eat it. Oh I tell you, it is a real zoo here at the moment.

We are hoping that Tom will be able to bring our 2 cats down with him when he flies down in June. This will complete our menagerie of animals and should make the lives of the chickens, and probably ours too, all the more interesting. I was supposed to fly them down with me when I brought the dogs, but Phoebe, the female, was too smart and we could not catch her to sedate her. I was thus forced to leave both cats behind. I was very upset about this initially, but in retrospect it really has worked out for the best. We have decided to revert back to our original plan and only move over to Lupita when the Manager’s House has been built. With only the 2 dogs to worry about, we are able to put them in our tent at night, and so far there have been no further signs of the leopard.

Chris has spent the last few weeks focusing on the Workshop, Manager’s House and the other Staff Houses. These are really taking shape beautifully. Bearing in mind that none of the staff here have ever done anything like this, we have been amazed at how quickly they have learned to do stonework, plumbing and to pour concrete.

Each day brings with it new lessons and of course, new challenges. Ironically, water has been one of the factors that Chris has been struggling with of late. Our water pump is not strong enough to pump water from the lake up to the water tanks at the top of the island. So after much frustration, Chris has arranged to pump water from the lake up to the first water tank (located a third of the way up), then from here up to a second water tank and then finally up to the Staff buildings. All the moving of the water pump and constant stopping and restarting has ensured that the starter has been well and truly exhausted and today Chris will have to spend the morning fixing it so that he can start the concrete work on the completed foundations.

To add insult to injury, the brand new welders, drill machines, angle grinders and circular saw have needed some repair work done to them before they have even really been used much. There is no point in returning these things to Dar es Salaam as it would take at least 2 weeks to get them back and this would hold up building completely. Thank goodness Chris is so good at thinking laterally and fixing electrical equipment!

Every Saturday for the last 3 weeks, the Lupita teams have finished a little early and played football on their new football field. The whole village turns out to watch these games. After every goal is scored, the village children rush onto the field, swarming the players and screaming with delight. It is too sweet to watch. This Saturday, 1 team will be chosen from the 6 teams and that team will play against the Secondary School football team. It should be great fun.

Our Swahili is improving rapidly. I try to do at least an hour of Swahili every day and am slowly getting through my “Teach yourself Swahili” book. Chris speaks pretty well now and learns from his Tanzanian foreman, Michael, and the rest of his staff. The Tanzanians are so kind and patient with us and never laugh at our bad vocabulary and at times, even worse grammar.

The Benedictine Brothers: Miti, Damian and Vincent have been a wealth of information and support while we have been here. They have made us feel very welcome and have opened up their area of paradise to us, asking us to treat it as our home. They have allowed us to store the goods and materials for the project on their land, to build a Workshop here, put up our tents and to rent one of the rooms in their house, which we utilize as an office. But more than this, they have taught us about the people who live along the banks of Lake Tanganyika; how they live and the things that are important to them. These simple people have much that they can be proud of and there is much that we can learn from them. Below is a little information about Saint Bernard’s, as quoted by Brother Miti (OSB):