A little Liverpool in Tanzania

Towards the end of my stay in Dodoma I was asked if I could help with the purchase of church benches for a satellite parish in the village of Miyugi. The village is extremely poor and the Jumuiyas (small Christian communities) are unable to afford benches. My parish, a good friend and Erin’s family agreed to fund benches. The whole time we were in Tanzania, our names were ‘reinterpreted’ – in Erin’s case with a regularity and lack of concern for gender which caused much hilarity. The plaque on her (Ferris) family’s bench now proudly reads the ‘Perris family’, while my parish is in the interestingly named ‘LiverSpool’. The vagaries of names aside, it is nice to think that there remains a connection between us and Miyugi!