When Mo was small. Part 2 The house in Mbeya

Finding the house.

Another extraordinary meeting - and indeed an extraordinary discovery. I'd chosen a hotel just a few hundred yards from where we thought my family house in Mbeya had been; again judging by google earth, and also by Peter's memory of having stayed near there forty years ago when he was working in Tanzania and had visited the town. The satellite showed a house with a shape like an E but with the middle arm missing. The long side of the E was the front of the house, facing the road. That is what our house had been like. When I was aged about seven we had moved there from Dar. The family lived there until Dad retired, when I was ten.

After we had arrived in Mbeya from the Dar train, and changed our clothes we walked along. There the house was, now gated and with high opaque walls. Peering through the gate I suddenly remembered the front verandah, its red tiles, and my mother sitting there crying. She was holding a letter saying that Great Aunt Ethel had died.
There was nobody about, so we walked up the road a little way and then back again, checking there weren't any other possible places. There weren't.

Mr Omary

Suddenly, a big car drew up beside us. The driver was a kind faced man with greying hair, in a car full of children. He called to us. I started explaining in my halting Swahili, but we soon all switched to English. We all introduced ourselves. His name is Omary. He spoke perfect English and was fascinated by our story and by our photos. Ah! The power of the image.
Omari is himself an interesting man. He told us he was the great grandson of the famous Chief Mkwawa of the Hehe tribe in Iringa. Famous, because he had inflicted a crushing defeat on the Germans in 1891. (Luckily I knew this bit of history!)

Our house, Omary told us, stands empty because it is now the regional State House, only used when the president or vice-president is visiting. I showed Omary the picture of the back of the house, which you couldn't see from the road. He'd visited State House himself and thought it looked right. He told us that the Regional Commissioner lived just behind it, was a very nice man, and might be able to give me permission to go in.

He was very taken with another picture we had: a view of old Mbeya taken from one of the nearby hills. Peter asked Omary if he knew where it was. He guessed it was one of the small town nearby. When he was told it was Mbeya he was amazed. So much so that he offered to come to the hotel the next day and drive us up to a viewpoint where we could take a new photo to set alongside the old one.

Next morning Omary arrived at our hotel, with two small granddaughters in tow. The littlest one managed a shy, lisping 'Shikamoo!' which is the respectful way of greeting an older person. So sweet. We were driven to a high point where we could look back at the house. He is building a house there to take advantage of the viewpoint.

And, sure enough, very like the one in the old photo. While at the same time, quite different.

We took lots of photos and admired the half built house. We could see just why he had chosen the site with its stunning view.

 He drove us back, and on the way dropped in to his current house with its beautiful garden. Like Peter he is very much into gardens. He introduced us to other members of the family but then he had to take us back, because the whole family were due to be at a big funeral of his old aunt that day. They were expecting a thousand people, and his wife was organising the catering.  We were interested to hear that his wife is a Christian while he is a Muslim. And the children? When they are old enough, they choose which one they are drawn to.

I didn't want to go to the Regional Commissioner's house that day because (1) my nose had begun to stream with cold and (2) Peter had slipped on loose earth on the way down from the half-built house and needed to rest his knee. The next day didn't look good  either The hotel, just a stone's throw from the Commissioner's house, was alive with soldiers, policemen and big expensive cars. Peter thought he saw the man himself, recognising him from some pictures in a newspaper. The following day we were due to leave, but we would be back for a couple of days at the end of the week.

Looking for permissions

At the end of the week we walked up this lane to the Commissioner's house - you can see the high fence of our old house on the left - and called to the guards through the gate. It was an afternoon that ended in a perfectly reasonable, 'Sorry, we can't arrange for you to go into the garden or house, not this time. But maybe some other time.' I should have been disappointed but actually and oddly, it was a really good afternoon.




As usual, the combination of my small ability in Swahili with the photographs worked their magic.

The guards at the Commissioner's house told us that he was in Dar and wouldn't return until Monday. They suggested we try at the office. They tried to tell us where it was but my Swahili wasn't good enough. Never mind. We went in the general direction, which was past State House where we found a gardener, full of helpfulness, who pointed us further. I took another picture of the drive, which had been lined with rose bushes when we were there.

Then we found a smart lady in a smart car waiting outside a school. She was quite alarmed when Peter approached and she took some time to wind down the window. But she, too, relaxed and told us where to find the offices. We found the right building (Hurray!) There we were sent from one office to another, with the photos and the Swahili doing their job.

We were finally delivered to a lovely, kind man who looked at my passport and the picture of me as a ten year old, and went off to the Authorities. Meanwhile I enjoyed chatting to a very cheerful secretary who loved the pictures, especially those of the younger me. We exchanged information about the size and make up of our families and I admired her jumper with its Father Christmas and Ho Ho Ho (a present from abroad, she said). It fitted her very cheerful personality.
The lovely man came back looking sad. It would probably usually be possible, he told us, but not this week, and indeed not next week either, because the president, himself, was due to visit. Security was very tight. We said that was a very good reason for a refusal. We also sort of apologised for the short notice, saying that I had arrived not expecting that our old house would be somewhere so special. I explained that my Dad had occupied a position very like that of the Regional Commissioner and that we, too, had entertained very high-ranking visiting dignitaries. We thanked him for his extraordinary kindness and helpfulness, and remarked on how helpful we had found everyone in Mbeya. He looked really touched.

Thank you, Tanzanians!

The whole afternoon had been a set of lovely encounters. To me, they were easily as significant as actually visiting the house. We had thought, as I said to you, Victoria, that we were just indulging ourselves in a sentimental journey. But you were right. It's turned out to be a little more significant than that. We have been so impressed by the interest and enthusiasm of the people we've met in Zimbabwe and Tanzania. We had wondered if we would encounter resentment of the white colonial past. We'd expected people working in the tourist industry to be kindly to tourists. Of course. And they have been. But it's been much more than that. People have reacted so positively to knowing our reasons for wanting to come back to Africa.There is a kind of acceptance, we think, that we are all products of our (complicated) histories, for good or ill. That is not a reason for simplistic political posturing, but rather for preserving and understanding what happened.

The reactions that afternoon, of all those people discovering that this old lady had lived in State House as a child, were of surprise, interest and enjoyment. For me, personally, it is a kind of gift to me of a different relationship with my own childhood and sense of myself.