It's a nice day for a White Wedding

Franatee writes:

On Tuesday (22 June) my work mate and I headed out to Hedaru and Ndungu (in the Same area in the Kilimanjaro region) to finish off animal husbandry training and assessments of the income generating projects our organisation had been responsible for.

It was a bit of a drive and we arrived at Hedaru by about 11am. I was not much use at the training which was all in Kiswahili but as usual I did the obligatory stand up and introduce myself in Kiswahili thing at the start which was well received by the villagers. Gotta up my game with the local language!

During a break I got to see a wedding taking place at the church next door to the training venue. It was pretty cool.


The church hadn't finished being built and there was a make shift set of steps at the entranceway. There were a lot of missing doors and windows which made the church rather open-air. When the bride and the massive wedding party arrived they look about half an hour to walk down the aisle. It wasn't a long aisle. They were doing this kind of boogie-step thing which meant they moved about 2 centimetres with each step. I guess it meant no-one missed their chance to see the bride! While the wedding party walked down the aisle the MC was saying things in Kiswahili "walk slowly," "here she comes," "isn't she a mrembo (beaut)" etc.

We finished up the training (having to drop a lady off at the local hospital part way through – she was okay just high blood pressure) and the wedding festivities were still going! As we drove off we saw the bride and groom in a cart on the main road with the guests running alongside.

The following day we travelled to Ndungu to assess the income generating projects. On the way we journeyed through an area called Gonja. I've never been to Samoa but I thought it looked a bit like how I'd imagine Samoa would, but minus the ocean. Our journey was interrupted while we waited for a tree which had been cut to fall on the road was moved and then we were off again, completing the journey to Ndungu.

Ndungu felt very isolated and was a bit windy (not as windy as Wellington). We completed the assessment then visited one of the fish ponds our organisation had helped set up. It was next to a school. As I looked at the pond five little local children came to join me. They were very cute and I got the obligatory "mzungu! How are you? Good morning" (it was late afternoon ;-).

My colleague and I headed for home feeling pretty tired. We cut through the Mkomazi game reserve and I'm pretty sure we saw my first armadillo as well as a mongoose. We weren't really stopping for sight seeing but I had to take some shots of the baobab trees. The park has some low bumps and unfortunately we took one of them too fast. It was a bit scary. We got thrown around a bit and I hurt my neck. Now I get why airlines have that brace position thing going on. We reached Same, grabbed a quick bite and headed back to Moshi. Another day of work done.