This is about as far from my comfortable little Northamptonshire idyll as one can get.
No neat and compact house; no tidy garden with azaleas and daffodils, no rolling fields of yellow rapeseed.
Nary a supermarket and not a post office in sight. Nor, for that matter, any electricity, running water, television, refrigeration, microwaves, Internet or telephones. And it's sublime!
I have come here to Longido in rural Tanzania to work on a Maasai literacy programme with MondoChallenge, a charitable organisation based a short drive away from my home in Woodford Halse.
World away
A house in Longido
Longido, however, is a world away from the life I know, and teaching English to the Maasai has virtually no parallels with my normal work as a media consultant. But already it feels like home…
This mountain village is a dusty speck on the map of Tanzania. Home to two thousand Maasai, spread out in bomas across the plains between Ol Tipesi to Kimakouwa, Longido lies between the cities of Arusha and Nairobi, on the far northern reaches of the Maasai steppes.
Mountain of God
A view of Mount Kilimanjaro snow-capped peaks
From the Open Air Boma School at which I teach at the foot of Mount Longido, I have a clear view of the snow-capped peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Meru and Oldonyo Lengai, an active volcano on the shores of Lake Natron known as the 'Mountain of God' because that is where He apparently resides!
Never before have I gone to work with such a view. This breathtaking panorama has remained virtually unchanged since the dawn of time. It makes me feel small and insignificant in the grander scheme of things.
The students at our little school are mostly Maasai and Chagga. Their ages range from about 11 to around 55; proof that one is never too old to learn! (It's not customary to note birthdates in this region, so ages are often anyone's guess.)
Their tribes and native languages are different, but their common desire to learn unites them and it's truly humbling.
I remember with shame my pathetic excuses to avoid attending school a few (OK, several) years ago. I think I even once feigned laryngitis, (although everyone, as I remember, was delighted to have a bit of peace and quiet for once, and in the interests of authenticity I had to sustain the charade for several days). Yet here they are, genuinely eager to come to school to learn.
Roughly-hewn
No computers - just a blackboard
Our Boma school building was built by fellow volunteers like myself and is a quaint construct of roughly-hewn desks and a thatch roof supported on log posts.
Its only concession to conventional teaching aids is a makeshift blackboard; no froufrou computers here! Where would we plug them in?
But it does have a magnificent view of the savannah flatlands and it's frequently the teacher who is distracted, never the students.
Sneaking suspicion
The Maasai Women's Market
We also run a small school at the Maasai Women's Market, a thatched stall on the road to Arusha at which the Maasai women sell beadwork, jewellery and curios which are all their own handiwork.
They turn up for class every day in all their beadwork finery (and Maasai ornamentation is highly decorative and colourful), with their exercise books and a good deal of cheery enthusiasm, but I'm developing a sneaking suspicion that their primary goal in attending school is to teach me Maa; I have found no evidence of a burning desire amongst these ladies to champion the Queen's English!
It's a fun battle and they'd have got their way by now if the Nilotic tongue weren't so damned near impossible to master.
The Maasai live in "bomas" (enclaves) around the village. This is a very community-oriented society and families live together in cluster dwellings circled by a fence of thorn bushes
It's the women who build the houses, in fact! The same women who attend our class. They also carry the water, make the clothes, raise the children and live peaceably in their polygamous society. Men in the western world wish they had it this good!
It's a curious paradox, really, because contrary to all my expectations the women here are also strong-willed, feisty and highly entrepreneurial, running the curio stands and market stalls that provide the sole monetary income of many of these families. And they're happy, too!
Warrior
I have become firm friends with one Maasai family in particular, the Olengunin's, who together have taught me a great deal about their way of life.
My young Maasai guide, Lesaloy, is an Oleng'unin and has lately been inducted as a "morani" (warrior). Along with the rest of his age-set he is one of the protectors of the village, a position which he takes very seriously.
His knife and spear -he carries two - are not just for effect; all morani have to kill a lion in the wild (and endure circumcision without anaesthetic!) in order to prove their mettle. At home we get our driver's licence and worship at the altar of legal inebriation. Go figure!
Teenage bride
There are so many Oleng'unin brothers and sisters that I can but marvel at the stamina and virility of Olemarle, the patriarch, who - at a sprightly seventy-four years of age - has recently fathered a brand new addition to the family and is about to take another bride, a pert and pretty 15-year old. There are already no fewer than four Mrs Oleng'unins: good ol' boy!
Both parties seem genuinely delighted at the prospect of the impending nuptials, and I do mean that sincerely. And who am I to question a way of life that has endured this long?
People tend to refer to this lifestyle as 'primitive', but in effect the Maasai simply distil life down to its very barest essentials. They don't get fat and soft and complicated like we do in the west and they don't moan or whine about their lot in life. It's very refreshing.
Living in such basic conditions one has to make adjustments. After nine months of drought, the long rains have finally come to the plains but still one cannot be profligate with water.
Water is more precious than gold in these parts and even though the water tanks are full at the moment, there is no facility for plumbed water.
Bathing is an economical affair; a bucket of water heated on a coal burner. But it does the job and I feel grateful to have the luxury of heated water at all.
When I get home to Northamptonshire a bath full of water will seem like wanton extravagance!
Toilet trouble
Washing my waist-length hair is a non-starter, though, so I recently had my hair braided Swahili-style, in a hundred tightly-wound cornrows. It took two days to do and looked great for the first 48 hours, but the braids hurt and tug at my scalp and it now just looks like a family of mice ploughed my head in haphazard fashion. Getting them out will be another ordeal entirely!
The other ablution facilities at my gesti are pre-Thomas Crapper. No porcelain conveniences these! So much so that I find myself going into hotels and restaurants when I am in Arusha just to experience the novelty of a commode and to hear the chain flush!
It's amazing the things for which you find new appreciation so far from home….
A nice cuppa
The thing about life without modern conveniences, as I have found, is that - despite all the obvious drawbacks - the singular benefits of not having them ultimately far outweigh the disadvantages.
Without the distractions of television, telephones, computers and email I have rediscovered the lost art of conversation and enjoy long debates and discussions with the Maasai and with my fellow volunteers over steaming cups of chai tangawizi (a delicious infusion of tea with ginger-root and sugar) and piping-hot bowls of maharagwe (a dish of boiled pulses).
OK, I may have over-romanticised that last bit just a tad; in truth I have had my fill of beans and rice and chapatti, but I am mindful that I am fortunate to have food to eat, to say nothing of eating three times a day. Many people in this remote corner of the globe simply don't.
The Maasai, in accordance with their belief that Engai (God) gave them all the cattle on the earth, eat only the meat and fat of sheep, cows and goats, and drink their milk and blood.
Yes, blood. It's highly nutritious, you know.
A former vegetarian, I consider myself brave to have tried goatblood (in a cup of sweet tea), but can report only that I found it to be an 'acquired taste'… one I have yet to acquire.
Livestock is auctioned and goats slaughtered and barbequed every Wednesday at the Maasai cattle market.
Psychotropic
It used to distress me, I must confess, but lately I am learning to adopt a much more circle-of-life philosophy.
From the school I can see the morani gathering in their hundreds with their cattle.
It's a riot of colour; Maasai shukas (a toga-like garment) are red and purple and orange and the warriors' braid-and-beadwork headdresses rival my mouse-plough-plaits in their prettiness. I never felt so plain as I do standing next to a Maasai warrior!
The sale of a cow is often celebrated by a visit to a 'kilabu', a shebeen selling 'pombe' (local brew), an astonishingly potent libation made of bananas and millet. I haven't tried it myself, but by all accounts it is fairly psychotropic stuff.
The skies here are something worth mentioning: vast and wide and high. Even Kilimanjaro, that venerable colossus, is dwarfed by this vast expanse of blue.
By day the sky is so clear one can see all the way to Kenya and far across the reaches of the plains to the south, and at night the sky is so star-studded one can watch it for hours and never get bored. Beats the heck out of my normal vegetative pose in front of the telly!
From my favourite perch up on the ridge of Mount Longido I can look down over the purple jacarandas and all the way across the flatlands to Arusha in the distance.
Man and beast
The plains are teeming with wildlife, and now, in the season of migration, it seems that all the fauna of the world has somewhere to go. I get up early every morning to go walking in the bush, usually with my guide but often alone, and frequently happen upon families of giraffe and zebra and buffalo who look at me with curiosity for a minute or two before going back to their normal activities.
There is a live-and-let-live philosophy at play here between man and beast, although not necessarily between beast and beast.
At night the bush comes alive and over the sound of the winds beating down the corridor of the African valleys, I have sometimes heard some hapless creature fall victim to something faster and more powerful than they.
Incredulous
"What do you do there when you're not teaching?" many of my friends ask me incredulously.
A lot! All the things I've been threatening to do for years, in fact.
I go on long walks. I sit still in the bush and watch the wildlife. I sit with my new friends and talk. I listen to them singing. I don't feel any compunction to be anywhere at any given time and I'm learning new things at a startling rate.
"But how can you live without electricity or television?" they chime.
Very well, in fact. It's not as comfortable or as convenient as 'real life', I'll admit, but it's stress free. And it's fun!
And now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a five-mile bushwalk. We've heard that there are elephants on the move and that's gotta be worth the trek.
Signing off from Longido and bidding you "karibu" in Africa; you could be doing this, too!
