Mvumi School Trust

Dodoma has changed so fast, from last year when it felt like a small English market town. Now it is a city, largely because of the new universities. Thousands of people have been brought in. Some seem well-paid and have cars, so there is now Real Traffic. Others have arrived as a swarm of new, and seemingly blind, cyclists and lastly the labourers, often with children, mostly from Dar es Salaam. There is evidence of new slums and more street children.

John H, one of our sponsored students, who has had a dramatic and endearing life and which has already been full of little miracles has performed another of his own. While he waits for his O level results, he and his little sisters have to survive in bad conditions in Dodoma with barely any outside help. Jobs are rare as hens' teeth. But John has found one.

Time flies by here with so many things happening and plans taking shape. One guaranteed given though is the weather. Occasional dark clouds promise rain but never quite deliver. It's dry and dusty now, so sunrise and sunset are particularly beautiful. We are 40 kilometres from anywhere and animal appreciation can be extended - baboons are in town and even a jackal, which can mean a prowling lion...

I was in Nairobi last week: it’s a lot greener than the Dodoma region and refreshingly cool. You don’t even need a mosquito net at night, and the Mvumi dust was the stuff of memory. The shopping malls are a shock to the system. Dodoma is thriving with the occasional throngs of politicians hurtling down the excellent road to their parliamentary meetings mixing with the students from the two new universities, but the contrast between the two capitals could not be more explicit.

I am watching the sunset: a normal pastime here as my office faces the setting sun. I am slightly disoriented as my secretary and a visitor have decided to re-arrange my office. It has lost that dusty, fusty appearance beloved of ex public school masters and I am confused. I have been helped out of an identity crisis by one of them who has kindly put the sign ‘headmaster’ on my desk just in case I have forgotten or it is not clear to those seeing me seated behind a rather large desk, particularly as the African diet has deprived me of a significant amount of my poundage.