Letter from Mwanza - No 5

Last week after ‘work’ I took a taxi into town to meet Jane, and to use our membership, kindly bought for us from Jenny, to the Isimilio International School’s swimming pool. It is a fine 25m pool and can be used by non –students after about 4.30 pm each day during the week, and during the weekends. A couple of lengths seemed more than adequate to refresh and get some exercise, and so I got out. Along came a young athletic sort of fellow who started doing exercises I never knew existed, and a former rugby international I should know something about that sort of thing! After these contortions he dived off into the pool. Well that doesn’t seem too impressive until you realise this was in a shallow end no more than 2 feet in depth and done in a style and speed that was something to wonder at. He then proceeded to do every know stroke up and down the pool for 30 minutes. I was exhausted just watching so needed another dip. I was thinking about some humorous remark like “fancy a race “ or some such ridiculous comment, but settled for asking him how he managed to swim so well. Without even panting after 30 minutes hard swimming he told me he was practising for the Beijing Olympics, and was one of five Tanzanians selected to go after successfully completing his trials in January. He is hoping to compete in Manchester in April, so if you watch and see a fast Tanzanian freestyle swimmer doing well it isn’t anything due to any advice I might have given him. After our chat he proceeded to do another 30 minutes of swimming this time doing some dolphin-like movements for a couple of lengths in between usual strokes. He works for an airline – Community Air, as a pilot I think. This airline that started last year helped bring down the price of internal air flights, but recently stopped operating. It was partly owned by one of those government ministers dismissed after the Richmond electricity supply scandal. We are told they are about to start up again soon.

“Ditch the ‘Mheshimiwa’ title, Museveni tells EA Legislators”.

In a recent article in “The African” newspaper the Uganda president seems to be saying something interesting…………..
“In East Africa we are still thinking in old fashioned ways believing that, politicians and rulers are the most important people in society, this is no longer the case in the modern world.” He was said to have gone on to say causing ‘pearls of laughter’ that what most politicians do is “feel important and nothing else”. He was speaking outside Uganda when he continued with “I hope you members (of the East African Legislative Assembly) are not like the politicians we have in Uganda, their job is simply to doze in parliament, they cannot even clap with their hands, they are so lazy that they do it with their feet while snoozing,” he maintained. “So you either work to solve people’s problems or leave it to those who can because the days of enjoying the ‘Mheshimiwa’ title (like Honourable) are gone for good and leaders are today valued for their productivity. After all what Africa needs now is not leaders, we have had many leaders in the past and still do now, but problems keep increasing, we now need people to solve problems not ‘waheshimiwa’ who are too full of themselves,” he said amid applause.

Interesting – I hope he didn’t speed away from this meeting with a huge entourage of security men and a massive courtage of cars!!!

Kwa heri for now
Donald