3. Darkness

There was a moment on the aeroplane when I took a mental step back from my immediate concerns about what movie they would be showing and when the drinks trolley would arrive, and surprised myself by posing a far more fundamental question: Well, how on earth did this happen? I found myself flying to Africa for six months with very little understanding of how the situation had arisen. While my friends were progressing from university into smart new jobs, I appeared to have strayed down a different path. It had led me to this plane, where I sat next to Pat and sank into a deepening anxiety attack.

At the airport there had been too much bag-weighing and passport-hunting for me to give much thought to what I was embarking upon, but now, staring out of the cabin window, I had no check-in procedures to distract me from the ugly truth that I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I consoled myself that at least I had good company. Pat seemed the perfect companion for such a trip. He was as ill-prepared as I was but at least he was self-possessed enough to take it all in his stride. He wouldn’t reach the levels of panic that I could feel myself succumbing to. Or so I thought, until I looked across to see him biting his finger nails with a determined ferocity and mumbling under his breath. I distinctly heard the words ‘oh bugger’ and ‘what have I done?’

There was good reason to be nervous. Pat and I had little travelling experience to draw upon, and we were hardly the most practical people on the planet. Having just graduated in Classics and Theology respectively, most of our recent past had been spent with our heads buried in abstract books in the Bodleian Library. Remarkably, it was only now occurring to me that Tanzanian village life might represent quite a change from the rarified atmosphere of Oxford’s dreaming spires.

The TV monitors hanging from the ceiling periodically flashed up a map covering Europe and Africa and displayed with a red trail the distance that we had covered so far. They served as a constant reminder, as we edged our way down the map towards East Africa, that every minute that passed was a minute closer to the unknown. I had written to Dr Jonas Semu, my vague contact in Moshi, informing him of the date of our arrival, and he had said in his reply that he hoped to be at the airport to meet us. It was only now, as we faced the prospect of disembarking in the middle of nowhere at 10pm with no transport or accommodation, that I realised I hadn’t told him the number or arrival time of our flight. The stewardess gave me a strange look as I muttered a prayer of hope that he would be there.

* * *

Touching down at Kilimanjaro airport, we looked from the plane into complete darkness, but this, it turned out, was because the electricity at the terminal had cut out. Most of the passengers were staying on to fly up to Nairobi, so only a handful of us disembarked into the sweltering night. Thick black air enveloped us, ringing with the trills of a thousand crickets, and within moments my shirt was plastered to my body with sweat. Once inside the tiny terminal the only illumination was from men with torches and little electric light generators, which gave the place a foreboding atmosphere, throwing crazy shadows everywhere and generally adding to the air of confusion. Everything was strangely silent, apart from the whirring generators and the large flappy insects that bumbled around our heads and tapped against the glass of the bright lights.

The large-bellied customs man peered closely at our letter from the school declaring us to be voluntary teachers. He appeared to be deciding whether to make trouble for us. When he raised his eyes from the letter, however, they settled on the rastafarian behind us in the queue, who he seemed to find more deserving of his attention. Without another word he waved us through and began to rifle his way through the rasta’s bag.

Beyond the glass doors to the arrival hall a sea of dark faces was barely visible in the gloom. I felt a tightening knot of fear at the prospect of passing through them, into the unknown, until a hand reached out from the mass, clutching a piece of paper which it pressed against the pane. In shaky capitals were scrawled our surnames, and somewhere behind it, in the throng, stood Dr Semu.

Passing through the doors we discovered that not only had he managed to make it to the airport to meet us, he had brought with him a whole welcoming committee, consisting of the school’s headmaster, the vice-chairman of the Parents Committee, and the brother of the chairman. The chairman himself, they informed us apologetically, was unable to come. I was surprised by the big deal they had made of collecting us from the airport, and it was the first inkling I had of the importance and significance they seemed to attach to our arrival at their school. There were handshakes and nervous smiles all round, then we headed out to their waiting pick-up truck, threw our bags in the back, and set off through the night, with brilliant stars overhead and our first glimpse of East Africa the dusty side of the road caught in the headlights.

We drove for an hour, making stilted conversation about the school, and arrived in Machame region at the foot of Kilimanjaro.

‘The mountain is hiding over there,’ said Dr Semu, gesturing towards the darkness. ‘She is shy. Perhaps tomorrow she will show herself.’

We pulled up outside the area’s only hotel, called ‘The Aishi’, where it appeared we would be housed until more permanent accommodation could be arranged. By now the exhaustion from a sleepless night followed by a long-haul flight could no longer be held at bay by our nervous energy, and after a brief farewell from our hosts Pat and I made it up to our room. We managed to rig up our Mosquito nets without too much trouble, but anybody watching would have known we were new to this game: it was only after we had both climbed into our beds and tucked the nets in around us that we realised one of us still had to switch off the lights.