Kitwana Chuma

Back in Arusha, I established my two-room office in the new Town Hall building in the main street not far from the provincial headquarters. I was allocated a pleasant bungalow a few hundred yards away, from which I could walk to work each day over a footbridge across the river, if I did not need my new car, a grey Peugeot 203.

I had brought the faithful Kitwana Chumu with me from Dar es Salaam as my PR assistant and proceeded to recruit locally a young Chagga typist called Robert and a bright 17-year-old ex-Standard 8 Mwarush youth called Loanyuni as our local guide and interpreter. Alfred Musa, with whom I stayed in Machame, was a Standard 12 student on holiday employed temporarily. Robert could be sullen and temperamental, but he was a brilliant typist who could take dictation straight onto the machine and he rarely made a mistake.

It was a wonderful feeling to be back upcountry again with a small independent command and no one breathing down one's neck. Best of all, it was fun to be opening a brand new office and carrying out an unprecedented task to which I could devote as much or as little time and energy as I pleased. We started with virtually empty rooms and had to build up the office from scratch. I enjoyed choosing carpets and furniture, and getting a typewriter and stationery. After a week or so we were all set and ready to go. The arrival of our telephone marked the kick-off.

My director in Dar es Salaam and the PC gave me a free hand. The original ideal was to have a PRO in each of the eight provinces, starting with me as a kind of guinea pig in the key Northern Province. In the event, so far as I can recall, I was the first and last provincal PRO and a short-lived one at that. Though I had a successor for a few months, the experiment was not extended.

Some European farmers grew wheat at nearby Oldeani, including the Irish Olympic hurdler Bob Tisdall.

Also at Oldeani was the quaintly named Paradise Bar where Frank Reynolds (the DC Mbulu), Kitwana Chumu and I once spent an evening admiring the epicene beauty of Iraq youth. The combination of wild scenery with a good climate gave one an extra elixir of life and I felt a daily joie de vivre seldom equalled elsewhere. The clear starlit nights, the crisp morning mists, the gaiety and charm of the people cast a spell over the denizens of this enchanted land.