Sunday Morning in Longido

April 3, 2011

I love Longido on a Sunday morning. There is a certain calm in the village. The pace slows. A lot of people go to one of the many denominational churches here on the weekend: Lutheran, Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, Pentecostal, Catholic, Evangelical, and there is a mosque. A lot of different churches are here for a relatively small number of people.

Bougainvillea  are colourful and abundant

 This calm is so welcome. The staff are finally able to have some down time after working steadily to fulfill a contract with World Vision. It was ‘a first’ and the staff only had two days notice to put a plan together to feed 42 people three meals a day for 10 days. At the same time the guesthouse was full with guests. And, on one of the days,  the Youth Wing of the ruling CCM Party asked for lunch to be catered for 60 people who turned out to be 73 people. What a learning experience! The staff rightly feel proud of what they accomplished – providing excellent cheerful service as a team and dealing with unseen pressures at the same time.

The simple outside kitchen where large pots of food can be cooked

 TEMBO Canada made the work of meal preparation possible by providing funds to construct a simple outside kitchen. This is the typical way of preparing food in Tanzania – over fires outside. Simple shelters are a must, especially during the rainy season, between February and May. While the guesthouse has two propane burners in the small kitchen, preparing a variety of food for dozens of people was simply impossible. The outside kitchen was built in a day and housed three wood and charcoal fires that were able to cook huge pots of rice, meat stews, and vegetables, and an oil pot for deep frying a lot of tilapia fish that were a real treat for the evening meal.

Marinated talapia drying before being deep fried

 It should have rained last night but it didn’t. There was light activity in the sky in a distance but it never came close enough to us. This morning it is sunny and there is a pleasant breeze. There have been good rains this week. The water tanks are full with water harvested from the roof and the underground tank of clean mountain water is gradually increasing in depth.

Fortunatus was scattering seeds when I arrived 10 days ago. They have shot through the moist well drained sandy earth now. We’ll be having fresh green beans on our plates here in no time, and a lot of other nutritious green vegetables, potatoes, onions, carrots, and peppers.

Perfect conditions for growing vegetables now that there has been rain