Mission USA

About two weeks into our stay we met Bob, a full-bearded, beer-drinkin’, gun-totin’, all-american Nebraskan who is technically the hospital’s missionary who returned from visiting his family in America. Bob's lived in Tanzania for the last 15 years organising various charity and administrative things, but importantly for us he is closely involved with the ever-changing population of foreign students squatting in the hospital guest house- educating, entertaining and informing.

We learnt a lot about Tanzania and the area through Bob. We’ve loved seeing a new side Tanzania in the company of a local, often the view is from the back of his speeding pick-up, the wind battering our stupidly grinning faces as we wave to locals like we’re the queen. (A man on outreach declared that Rhi looked like the queen and earnestly enquired whether she was royal.)

Some Redneck hicks

Bob is American and therefore likes shooting things with guns. One of our best meals in Tanzania was some delicious Grant’s Gazelle that Bob had bagged, eaten with rice eerily watched by tens of mounted animal heads on the walls, including three buffalo and a wildebeest. On the Wednesday we received our exam results – and were all extremely relieved to progress to final year students – Bob joined us for our celebratory meal in Moshi. We had some fantastic Indian food at the ludicrously named “El Rancho Restaurant”, a lovely establishment which had fledgling aspirations of being a Mexican eatery before the theme but not the name was made Indian.

Bobs generosity and energy seems boundless, I gather he’s been a bit of a father figure to countless medical students over the years, and the Clinical officer and nursing students that he organises sponsorship for too, and we really appreciate what he's done for us. On Sunday we joined him for a surreal day with several of the Moshi ex-pats and volunteers; we were surprised to see a largish group European and North American people at a Anglican service in Moshi. Bob is Lutheran and comes for the English language service and community, but I can claim an Anglican upbringing and the atmosphere felt oddly and pleasantly familiar. The congregation make up a good percentage of the mzungu population in this area. We joined several of them for a “hash” in the afternoon – a sweltering 9km run around the picturesque fields and tracks at the base of Kilimanjaro and my first bit of exercise for a long while. I found the going tough, and as usual I blamed the (modest) altitude, heat, humidity and terrain rather than my physical state and recent sloth-like lifestyle. Immediately after finishing everyone seemed to drink beer, an impressive feat in my opinion and a tradition at hash events all over the world.

*The Swahili term Mzungu, pl. wazungu, strictly speaking refers to a white European, but is used to label (mostly amiably) any white or obviously foreign person – such as this ethnically ambiguous blogger. We’ve had it called to/at us several times a day. The word really means “those who wander around or are tiresome”, a fair description I think. We are usually conspicuously hopeless at most African things and locals are always perplexed when we admit we are just going for a walk without any particular destination.