Trade Aid is a UK based charity aimed at poverty alleviation in Southern Tanzania by creating educational and employment opportunities for the local community and assisting in the development of a sustainable tourist industry in Mikindani. As part of this, Trade Aid take on volunteers to work with the local community. Tim Crouch is one of these volunteers and her he writes about his experiences in the beautiful coastal town of Mikindani. For more information on the work that Trade carries out, see: http://www.tradeaiduk.org/
As the sun sets over Mikindani, the smoke sits in the valley and
the sounds rise; after another day in paradise I can't help
thinking about the overload heaped upon my senses whilst in
Tanzania. The sights can always be captured by camera and many of
the most delicious smells can be recreated in the kitchen buts
it's the sounds that make Mikindani so special and it's the
noises that will stick most in the mind. Words can only scratch the
surface of the overload Mikindani places upon the sense of hearing.
The day always starts early in Mikindani and with it so do the
sounds. At first light you hear the scraping, scratching noise of
women sweeping, invariably just out side your door, a sound that
rarely stops before it has accomplished its two aims of cleaning
the street and waking Mikindani's inhabitants. Only after this
sweeping has woken them up, do the cockerels start to crow. Being
in Mikindani, you are never far away from some livestock, be it
cows, goats or chicken and so you never feel far away from the
farmyard. There is a theory circulating Trade Aid in Tanzania that
animals in Tanzania are bred not for their meat (there can be none
more gristly on earth) but for their capacity to break eardrums.
The first real human voices come following the early morning school
bell, a rock hit against the redundant rim of an old car wheel
signifies the children's long and noisy walk up the hill to
school. During the day office work is accompanied by the dulcet
tones of the women next door calling their various kids for various
reasons from various corners of Mikindani. When the children finish
school in the afternoon, again accompanied by a ring of the school
“bell”, the noise starts off as a distant cheer and
culminates in a crescendo of young voices shouting their delight at
returning home after a hard day in the classroom. This shouting
just puts them in the mood for some more shouting when the games
start during the afternoon, a din that doesn't stop until early
evening when again the various mamas call their various offspring
this time purely for the reason of feeding time.
As you walk out to the road you are hit by the same diesel fumes
encountered the world over but the amount of noise produced by such
a tiny volume of traffic is a phenomenon unique to East Africa. The
combination of decrepit engines and wildly elaborate horns produces
a sound that will eclipse anything produced in a New York traffic
jam.
As we sit down to dinner the call to prayer from the mosque chimes
in for the fourth and therefore penultimate time that day. After
dinner we walk down the hill with the food for the dog, the fourth
resident of the Trade Aid house to the sound of his whimpering at
the smell of the leftovers we are carrying. Just as we lay in bed
trying to get to sleep the women of Mikindani have one last blast
this time to round up the men of the town before allowing all of us
to slip off until the next day when the sensory overload will start
all over again. I for one will miss it like crazy.