Why the Road Needs Work

The school site sits about 2 kilometers off of the main road. Most of the road is bordered on both sides by farmland. During the dry season, it's simply a bumpy ride. During the wet season, a couple corners are a complete mess. This is one of the corners...


If you look on the right you can get a sense of just how deep the mud is (about shin-deep). Luckily (really!) the base underneath all that mud is pretty firm, so it's slippery but you don't really sink in. At other times, though...until we got the new car we were hesitant to go out there after a big rain, but the new 'Cruiser does fine. Where does all this mud come from, you ask?
Well, most of it comes from here. Don't let this peaceful scene fool you--that mud is also shin deep and unbelievably sticky. Even I, who would be overstating things by calling my farming knowledge "rudimentary" know that you don't plow the rows down the hill. Which the farm does. Which allows all the water and dirt to flow very efficiently down on to the road.

The people who live out near the school site are long-term TZ residents who have worked very hard to restore their own lands and have tried to talk to the folks who manage the land about changing their farming practices, but with no luck. We are hoping that perhaps we can work something out. Currently, any fix involves putting down rock and murram to fill in the worst spots, but it's a band-aid approach that needs to be repeated yearly. It would be better all around if the farming would change the direction of the planting, along with a bit of road work.

Tutaona (we will see). Our new mantra here in Tanzania.