Old church in Mlalo

Old missionary house

Way up

Last hoouse with electricity connection

"Our Power line"

The last building is this lutheran church!

On August 21st the director Calvin Lyaro, Anderson Mmbandow, head of technical department, and the technical consultant set off for Mlalo, to install the new transmitter. For three weeks Alphonce was installing the cable bringing up electricity to the transmitter. Now the line was ready and nothing seemed left to do except placing the transmitter and the new antenna, suitable for the assigned frequency.

Driving to Mlalo had been fine. The road to Tanga is paved well, and the narrow road climbing up to Lushoto is paved as well. It is lovely going up the mountains, because each turn you can see more of the big savannah plane. Slowly you get the mountain vegetation and deep valleys. It is also getting remarkably cooler up there. After about one hour we came to Lushoto. A small old town in a valley between the mountains. Right at the start you pass a factory producing the chemicals you need to treat cow skins to get leather for shoes. The old house, once built by the National Bank, you find a nice restaurant, where you can eat good and cheap. There we found Chakusaga, our contact person with the diocese. He told us, that the electricity of the person got cut, where we wanted to connect our transmitter. So the director went to the power companies office to ask, but they referred us to the local office in Mlalo.

After seeing the bishop for a brief meeting, we continued our journey to Mlalo. We arrived after about 2 and a half hour bumpy road there. Since it was about six o clock, we hurried to find the local pastor, our contact person there. He told us that the person, where we wanted to get electricity from, until we would have our own meter, has got a half a million fine for selling electricity illegally to us! So my director rented a car the next morning and clarified the matter with the power companies office in Lushoto.

We used the time to go up the Seguruma mountain to replace the antenna with a suitable one for the new frequency assigned to us right now.

The way up goes through a housing area with some fields in between. At the end there is a small Lutheran church.  That is where we left all the cables 2 years ago. And we were lucky, nothing was stolen since!

After that we followed a narrow, steep trail leading us through a light forest. Up the forest you just find some low bushes except some Eukalyptus trees someone has planted on the top of the hill.

Arriving at the transmitter hut we started with the work immediately. Anderson prepared the sticky lock, while we took down the receiving antenna.

Fortunately we had two pipe wrenches to take off the old antenna, and screwing on the new one.

But bringing up the antenna had been more difficult. While we were pulling up the antenna mast, we supported it with our ladder. At a certain angle the ladder slipped and the antenna started to fall down again. Fortunately the ladder could be returned quickly enough, that nothing was bent.

Then we tried it another time. This time the antenna came up finally. Thank God!!

We would have been glad to put even the transmitter - but without electricity it does not work!

So we keep on pushing getting electricity, to place the transmitter as quickly as possible!

Replacing the antenna