A new home

So, yes its true, we are in our new house! It happened on the 31st July… a mere 14 months after we left our little house in Sheffield! It has been a long, in parts difficult, but overwhelmingly exciting time since then. It has been fantastic to arrive in Mbeya, to meet our new colleagues, get accustomed to the work and our part in it, and now to finally get our own home we are able to really begin to feel at home here. Thank you to all of you who have made it possible for us to come this far, and to make this far off place our home.

So our house – our home. It is a little, 1 bedroom, kitchen/lounge, bathroom house. It is small, but it is perfect for us right now. It has a large veranda that extends along the whole of one side of the house, which we know will really become one of our rooms as the weather warms up over the coming months. The house sits on a ‘compound’ with our landlady’s house (a lovely Tanzanian lady whose children have all grown up and moved out), and it looks out over a garden/’farmyard’ full of banana trees! On our first evening here Mama Gwamile brought us round 2 perfect bunches of the mini bananas they have here! It was a lovely welcome and Liz was particularly happy! It certainly is quite a change from the cooking apples I was accustomed to growing up with in the garden!

The house is also perfect for us starting out here in a new culture. Mama Gwamile already has a mlinzi (guard) working on the compound at night, and a outdoor help (Mama Oscar) so we don’t have to worry about the stresses of being employers just yet! Mama Oscar is going to do our washing for us and the neighbours are bringing us milk twice a week straight from the cow! We got our first 2 litres this morning and it was still warm! It was then up to us to boil it this evening (to kill off any nasties), and skim off the cream from the top to freeze for a cake experience later in the week! It certainly is a long way from just nipping down to Tesco’s for a few pints when you run out! You can buy long life cartoned milk here, but it is so expensive and so will be left for those emergencies!

Many things here are a little different, and take longer than at home. Many things around our house are not functioning 100%, and we know they will take a long time to be fixed (if they ever are)! Water and electricity (thankfully not together!) are the 2 biggest problems… leaks with the former – due to bad parts and poor workmanship – and lack of the latter… getting the electricity company to visit your property is VERY difficult indeed! Though, our house is livable and for that we are very thankful. We will endeavour to get some good pictures and put them online soon. If you would like to see where our house is, in relation to Mbeya town… the office… the market… etc, just check out our map here.