Sukuma's and the FA Cup

Yesterday Sean, Kate, Zara and I went to the Sukuma cultural and museum in Bujora, a village about 10 kilometres from Buswelo. The Sukuma tribe is the largest tribe in Tanzania and makes up about 13% of the population. We had heard that on Saturday afternoons Sukuma dancers perform their snake dance to drums and wanted to tour the museum as well. It took three (terrifying!) dalla-dalla rides to arive in Bujora. We arrived in Bujora at about 1 o'clock, just in time to start our 2k uphill walk to the centre in the heat of the day! Along the way we chatted to lots and lots of people. Tanzanians are really friendly and almost all of them greet you when you walk by, lots also want to practice their English, so getting anywhere always takes longer than you would expect!

Eventually we reached the Sukuma centre to find it almost desserted. After lingering around the gift shop for a few minutes the museum manager arrived. He told us that the Sukuma dancers were performing somewhere else but offered to take us on a tour of the centre, which we accepted. The centre was founded by a Canadian missionary in the 50's, and it's kindof a strange combination of Sukuma cultural preservation centre and mission. There is a big Catholic church built in the style of a Sukuma hut, but much bigger and made from concrete. The inside has been decorated with symbolic Sukuma decorations adapted to fit into a Catholic church (or maybe it's the other way around!). It was really interesting to see, but we were all dissapointed we didn't see the dancers. Fortunately, we found out that starting next Sunday the big one week dance off competition between the Bagula and Bagika tribes begins. We are all going to go on Saturday for the final (and most frenetic!) day. More information about the Sukuma dance competition can be found here.

On the way home we stopped at the Gidelli Lodge to watch the FA cup final. We thought there might be a few people watching, but we never expected the scene that greeted us: every chair and every available surface in the place was occupied by what must have been every man in Gidelli sitting in front of the tiny tv watching the game! Arsenal won in the penalty kick off after two extra times, and the bar went nuts. You hear that football is watched around the world, but to see that kindof reaction to a game between to English teams half way round the world was pretty incredible.