I woke up on the second full day in Hanga feeling a lot better and thinking about my family. By this time, I really missed them, and was beginning to look forward to going home. I still had the whole day ahead of me, a travel day, a day in Dar Es Salam, and then 20+ hours of air travel before I got home.
But I did still have two Father’s Day cards in my bag, which I hadn’t opened yet, and Father's Day was the following day. One more day... I had saved them because I knew that by this time I would need something to look forward to. That turned out to be especially so after being sick. In the meantime, I also consoled myself by proudly showing photos of Jen and the boys to anyone who would look.
I began to take offense when people kept referring to Jen as “he, or him” until Brian informed me that there is no gender specificity in Swahili. They simply refer to people as this one, or that one. So when they speak English they tend to get their pronouns mixed up.
We had our breakfast and began our day with a ride in Fr. Angelo’s Land Rover to see their water storage and Formation house. The water storage was a giant tank drawing water from a natural spring atop the highest nearby hill. The water is piped to the entire village of Hanga, and then there is a separate tank and pipe for the abbey itself. The views from there were terrific, so we hung around a while and snapped a few photos. The road we used was littler better than a path through the brush.
The formation house was something different. When the students graduate from secondary school, if they want to pursue a religious life, they may attend the formation house to prepare them for application to the monastery. It is a two-year school, and as we arrived the headmaster greeted us at the gate. We toured the church and the large farm they run there which allows them to be self-sufficient for food. While we toured the grounds we came a cross a guava tree and picked and tasted a fresh fruit. It was kind of like a peach, though I didn’t like it as well. Some of the students did though. Also growing, we saw bananas, mango, papaya, maize, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and a lot more we didn’t even recognize. By 10:00am, the headmaster invited us in for tea time.
Tea time consisted of tea or coffee, ground nuts (peanuts), chicken, guava, popper bananas (tiny bananas), guava, papaya, mandazi (fried dough- yum!), and more things I’ve forgotten already. It was a huge meal, yet somehow not meant to replace lunch, and an hour later we struggled to eat a polite amount of food at the lunch table.
Somewhere on that dirt road/path, we drove past an old-timer lumbering along with a walking stick. Fr. Angelo brought the Land Rover to a stop next to him, and I opened my window to say hello. As it turns out, this was brother someone or other, the oldest and most senior monk of the Abbey. I was later told that he was the only living member who had been to Rome for Vatican II, and was 94 years old. He was a charming old guy though, and made a few witty quips in excellent English through the window. When Fr. Angelo mentioned his age, he leaned in and said to the boys in the back, “Ah yes, but I am still kicking the ball.” (meaning he still played soccer sometimes with the students)
We had free time for pretty much the whole afternoon, so Brian and I strolled through town meeting locals and perusing the shops. I found a couple of blankets at one that I bought as gifts, and we walked down a hill to see the local stream. It was more of a trickle, but okay. People were all really nice, and the kids were always dying for you to take their picture. They don’t even care if you show it to them, they just want you to take it. If you do, they erupt in cheers and song. Some of the kids were very poor, and it was pretty freaking sad to see it. I found one clutching a wad of old plastic bags wrapped into a ball and tied into that position with twine. This was his makeshift soccer ball, and when I mentioned it, Brian told me that they are more common than real soccer balls in some parts of the country. I remember wishing we had brought more to give out.
At 4:30 we went to visit the secondary school for a registration event they were having, just so we could mingle with the students. They loved the chance to practice their English, and the girls were smitten with our strapping Delbarton boys. It also helped that we gave out t-shirts and candy.
The schools here are difficult to conceive. They are small, crammed with kids, dirty, ill-equipped, and without electricity. Most of them have a room or closet somewhere that is piled high with used textbooks that people have donated, but the topics don’t fit with the curriculum used in Tanzania. They teach more practical things than molecular biology. Things like nutrition, horticulture, cooking, and basic reading writing and math. So the donated books often end up sitting somewhere taking up space and going to waste.
We stayed till dark, and then rushed back to the guesthouse for dinner, not wanting to get stuck walking though town in the pitch black. That night after they killed the power to the place at 10, Matt (a student), and I went out to see if we could get an exposure of the night sky. We couldn’t, but we spent a half hour out there staring at it anyway. I have heard people talk about the incredible stars that can be seen in the absence of light pollution, and I will tell you, the Tanzanian night sky more than lives up to the hype. As you might imagine, none of the descriptions I’ve heard of it do it justice. So I will not attempt to do it here either, you’ll just have to go see it for yourself, and don’t bother taking your camera.
Dinner on the final night in Hanga was in a different room which they had decked out for us in balloons and streamers. God knows where they got them, but all the balloons had corporate logos on them. A fancy dinner was served, followed by some lovely appreciative speeches and another cake ceremony. I got the honor of cutting it. Again. And I did a lousy job. Again.
Brian also gave a really good speech. I don’t know if he prepared it ahead of time, but it was really well done, and even I was inspired!
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