9. We are your parents

The evening before I begin my ascent of Kilimanjaro, I have the same aftertaste of Mbege in my mouth. I drank it this afternoon for the first time in four years, and discovered that I still can’t abide it. But the very taste has brought my memories of those first days in the village into sharper focus.
I spend a couple of hours wandering around Moshi, allowing the sights and sounds to prompt a thousand forgotten experiences. It is a pleasant way to spend the evening, for I concentrate on remembering the early days of our stay in Tanzania. I don’t allow my reminiscences to get ahead of themselves, so they do not reach the bad patches. Tonight of all nights I need to avoid bad memories. The climb begins in the morning, and I need my sleep to be as undisturbed as possible.
As I return from my walk to my guesthouse, I pass the office of Bumaco Consultants, and remember the visits I used to make there when things were getting desperate. It was the office of Mr Kwayu, the chairman of our school’s Parents Committee, who we would often turn to for help. It feels strange to stand there again in front of its faded sign. I try the door, wondering if he will be there, but it is locked. Everyone has gone home for the evening. I decide to do the same, and head down the dusky street towards my guesthouse.
* * *
Mr Kwayu had been away at a seminar when we first arrived in the village, but his wife had introduced herself to us and kindly asked us for dinner. She collected us in their pick-up one evening, just after darkness had fallen. To reach their house we drove along a series of long and bumpy dirt tracks that rocked and swung us in the car. The route was illuminated by the headlights to only a few metres and we drove for twenty minutes in this cocoon of dusty light. There were hints of men’s silhouettes beside the road, occasional voices heard above the churning engine, suggesting some vast night community that we were passing through like a beacon. We rattled our way across a delicate wooden bridge above the river Makoa and eventually arrived at their small, proud concrete house. It was guarded by spiky metal gates, which seemed incongruous in the middle of the bush but were in fact testament to the night-time danger of the place.
Inside, a thousand children swarmed through the rooms.
‘Surely these aren’t all yours?’ said Pat.
Mrs Kwayu smiled, a little bashfully. ‘Ah, no. Many are nephews and nieces, staying with us. Some are friends’ children. This one is ours.’ She patted a passing boy on the head. ‘And this one, I think.’
‘You think!’
Mrs Kwayu just laughed. Her face, which normally wore a rather sad, tired expression, was transformed by a bright smile, but soon afterwards returned to its normal, slightly troubled countenance. She seemed so worn out by her extended family that she could no longer tell which children were actually hers.
It was hard to understand the cause of her fatigue, however, for most of the work was done by the oldest boy, Frankie. He had to open the gates to allow us in, carry all the large plastic buckets of water from the pick-up to the house, and then slave away in the kitchen over our dinner, under the shouted direction of Mrs Kwayu in the living room. In contrast, the youngest member of the family, called Shirou, was utterly spoilt and seemed to have free reign to run rampage over the house. He was an adorable two-year-old with big saucer eyes and rampaged with the hyperactive energy of an overexcited puppy. When he wasn’t rushing up to repeatedly shake our hands he persisted in running around the room headbutting all the cushions, and then rolling about on the floor wailing like a banshee, until just as suddenly stopping and climbing calmly into his mother’s ample lap for a cuddle. My repertoire of silly expressions and face-pulling, that could usually be relied upon to keep a young child mildly amused for thirty seconds or so, was met by such unlimited rapture and hysterics that I begin to wonder if this boy was in fact extremely sarcastic.
The children did not join us at the table for our dinner of chicken and rice, apart from Shirou who munched away in silence. We talked to Mrs Kwayu about the grocery and clothes shops she ran in Moshi, and about our school, which her daughter Isaria attended. Most importantly, we learned that the house that we would be living in was being cleaned and painted and would be ready for us to move into in the next day or two.
By the time we were helping ourselves to sweet coffee from the flask on the table I could hear my bed calling me from the Aishi Hotel. The hot weather and early mornings had been taking their toll, and I was relived when Mrs Kwayu said she’d better be driving us back.
‘Before you go,’ she added, ‘you must understand. Once you have been invited to an African house the door is always open, so you should call in whenever you want to. We are your parents in Tanzania, now.’
‘That was a sweet thing to say,’ I said to Pat once we were back in our room.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but you’ve got to wonder, having seen how she kept Frankie working in the kitchen, whether being her son is really an attractive proposition.’