Procrastinating Packer

After four years at the foot of Kilimanjaro I am moving on.  The time has come and now once again I have to pack up my life.  Easier said than done.  For I am the ultimate procrastinator, the person who says "I'll do it next weekend."  Unfortunately I am starting to run out of weekends.  The movers have dropped off the boxes which are stacked against the lounge wall staring at me, willing me to assemble them.
But as I am about to start I decide it's very necessary for me to check my email first, see what friends are doing on Facebook, maybe have a shower and wash my hair.  Procrastination.  It's my worst enemy.
It's not like I don't want to leave, I do.  I am over power cuts, slow internet, ants, geckos, barking dogs and all the other things that wear me down.  But it's the people who are hard to leave behind, friends and co-workers and the mountain which looked so beautiful yesterday evening as the sun's last rays turned the snowy top pink.  Four years is quite a long time, you make connections and leaving them behind is never easy.  This however, is the lot of the international school teacher.  It's a transient world with people coming and going all the time.  Something you never get used to.  Some connections you'll keep for a lifetime and others you'll make empty promises about keeping in touch.  But of course this has nothing really to do with the packing and sorting I should be doing now.  Best to get started I guess.

Not everyone will like what you do and that's okay!

The curtains go up, the music starts, the audience begins to laugh and applaud, and I run off the stage crying.  Granted I was five years old at the time.  And today if I was in that audience I would also have laughed.  Five year olds dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts, topless except for balloons cellotaped in strategic places, must have looked quite hilarious.  Especially when some balloons popped as the curtains opened.

It took me years to recover from that experience and get over my stagefright.
Writing a book and publishing it is a bit like going out on stage.  You put yourself out there for everybody to see and comment on.  You stand there completely exposed, at the mercy of your audience.  Sometimes the balloons pop and your audience see more than what you bargained on.  Occasionally they find mirth in something that should have been serious.  Some love to tear everything to shreds, not quite distinguishng the fine line between being critical and just being a bitch.  Others identify with your characters and love what you do.
Here's the thing.  You can't please everybody every time.
We are all different, unique, with different experiences which shape our opinions and perceptions.  We don't all like the same things.
For me cucmber in a salad is a fate worse than death.  I always gingerly fish them out when I happen upon them.  Other people might like cucumbers so much, they even, horror upon horrors, eat it before it even goes into a salad.  Standing in the kitchen nibbling on pieces of cucumber while they prepare a meal.
You don't have to like what everybody else likes.  Not everybody has to like what you do.  So it stands to reason that not everybody has to like what you write and that's okay.
Cindy Vine lives at the foot of Kilimanjaro and is the author of Not Telling, Defective and C U @ 8.

Never eat chocolate with a hole in your tooth

The days already seem to be flying past faster and faster.  I guess when you are busy, the minutes go by so quickly they almost pick up a speed wobble.  When I was in Cape Town recently, I was eating a chocolate bar, one of those nice ones with toffee and biscuit in the centre, and my filling came out.  I thought I'd get it seen to when I returned to Tanzania, dentists being much cheaper here.  Every week I say to myself, this week I'll make an appointment with the dentist, but that never seems to happen.  The time just flies, the week is over, and I still haven't made a dentist appointment.  Yesterday, while eating some chocolate I suffered from serious toothache.  The moral is, don't eat chocolate until you've made the time to fix the hole in your tooth.  But life is a bit like that.  We make time for hanging out with friends, watching our team win a rugby match, but we don't make the time for essential things like dentist appointments.  Learning to prioritise is a skill, and I can't wait until I learn it.  However, as I'm getting old now I'm beginning to realise that it might be one skill I might never learn.  Time is running out.

This weekend though, I did make the time to write two new hubs and make a video of Part One of The Great Mountain to Mountain Safari - the down trip.  The hubs are completely different from each other - one is about a Thyroidectomy and Weight Gain and the other is Part One of my Mountain to Mountain Safari, with excerpts from the book I'm currently working on.  So, I guess I should feel as if I accomplished something, worked on Sunday, went to TWO BBQ's on Saturday, but still no dentist.  I seriously must make the time to make that appointment.  It's that or no more chocolate.

Have a great week ahead!

Love
Cindy
http://hubpages.com/hub/Driving-from-Kilimanjaro-to-Table-Mountain

http://hubpages.com/hub/Thyroidectomy-and-Weight-Gain

xxx

Heading back to Kilimanjaro

All good things come to an end.  Our holiday in magical Cape Town is over.  In the morning at 6am, we start our long drive back to Kilimanjaro.  The car is packed, just recharging the camera batteries, putting our clothes for the trip into day packets and then we need to seriously sleep.  Correction, I need to sleep.  Siobhan will sleep along the way.  I've made sure that there is enough space for her chair to go back.  Our car resembles a packed Zimbabwean bus minus the chickens and goats tied onto the roof.  Behind the front seats there is a solid wall of clothing, linen, toys, kitchen utensils, and other crap we think we desperately need back home in Tanzania.  The challenge that lies ahead, is going to be getting across the borders of 4 different countries without paying duty or bribes to corrupt customs officials.

This is the first time we haven't done too many touristy things in my beloved mother city.  Sorted out Tony's flat, saw him settled (his first night there he returned home from a club to find two dead bodies, a shot up car and a horde of policemen in the road near his block of flats.)  That took up a good part of the holiday.  Then we also raided our storage facility and decided on what to keep in storage and what we wanted to take back with us.  Have to say, we are taking back enough clothes to clothe the whole of Moshi.  Siobhan always loves fashion and has been very frustrated having to wear the same clothes twice a week for the past year.  The big thing, is that we are taking back summer clothes which we had a sad lack of the past year.
Had my first sem-run-in with customs today.  Had ordered some of my latest book to give family and friends here, thinking it would be cheaper to ship to South Africa from the US than it is to Tanzania.  Boy was I mistaken.  Not only is shipping more expensive, but the customs here grab hold of the box of books, and won't release them until you pay duty, vat and a clearance fee.  I managed to b-s my way out of the duty when I saw they had opened the box up upside down.  I knew that the invoice was always on the top of the books, but seeing that they had opened up the box from the bottom, I told them the books were a gift from my publishers.  "See," I said holding the back of a book up next to my face.  "This is me, I am the author."  After scrutinising my face and the author picture on my book, they agreed that I was indeed the author, so didn't have to pay duty.  But I still had to pay vat on the value of the books.  I made up a ridiculously small sum which they accepted, and paid their $3 handling fee on top of that.  Total outlay $10 to collect my books, even though I had to fork out a lot for the shipping.  Never ever will I ship books to South Africa again. 
When I got back to my car, which was already packed to the brim ready for tomorrow's trip, it was surrounded by custom's officials, some with cute golden labradors.  "This is not a South African registered car," one very astutely pointed out.  "Is it from Zambia?" he asked pointing to the Tanzanian flag on the number plate.  Granted, he might have been fooled by the 'I love Zambia' sticker on the back of my car, but Zambia?  Obviously the education system had failed him and I knew then he was not one to be trifled with.
"Tanzania," I said pleasantly with one of my winning smiles.  "As you can see, I came to fetch some of my things to take back to Tanzania with me."
"Passport," he sneered holding out his hand.  Now seriously, how many South Africans drive around South Africa with their passport.  In fact, many South Africans don't even have passports.
"I don't have it with me, it's with my things at my brother's house in Rondebosch."  I quickly replaced my winning smile with a perplexed look.
"Oh, are you South African?" he asked, lightening up a little.  My South African accent is so thick, you can cut it with a knife, this guy was very slow.  I nodded, trying my best to look demure and intimidated at the same time.  "Okay, you can go then.  But you better keep your passport with you, as other cops might stop you and ask what with you driving a foreign car and all.  So, what is it like in Tanzania?  Is it peaceful?  Are you working there?"  First he was so aggressive and now he wanted to make chatty conversation.  I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a pleasant grin.  The labrador he had on a leash lay down and rested its head on its paws.  It obviously found my car boring, probably because I wasn't a drug smuggler.
Goodbyes to friends, but we'll be back in December when the weather is better.  The World Cup was awesome, I was one of the millions proud to be a South African.  Hopefully, our rugby boys will improve the weekend.  Not sure when I'll have internet access again to update you about our travels.  But, I'm recording all the information and am really excited about The Great Mountain to Mountain Safari, the book I'm going to write about this mammoth trip.  Have done quite a bit of work on it already.
Thanks to my brothers for looking out for me here, getting my car sorted and serviced and letting us stay with them in Cape Town.  Thanks also to my Mom and Jem for helping to sort out Tony.  Ten days minimum of travel lie ahead.  Hopefully, not too many adventures, but they are always good to write about in a book!Sayonara!
luv
Cindy

The week that was

It’s difficult writing in retrospect, when there’s so much going on to write about at the moment. The last ten days or so have been like a mad crazy rush, an avalanche of things that you had to just run ahead of to avoid getting trapped under the weight of, so it’s good to take the time to sit now and reflect on the week that was. While I sit and listen to the birds singing and lions grumbling somewhere to my right. Yep, you heard right. Lions. It’s 6.45am and I’m in a safari lodge in Zambia.

It seems so long ago, but the madness started with a Mexican Party, a surprise one for Theron, our school’s PE teacher. Actually, maybe before that even, earlier in the day, very early, like 5.30am. I offered to second Maggie, the school’s drama teacher, who is one of these mad types who enjoy running. She was training for the Brisbane marathon which she’ll be running in on the 4th July. So, I drove slowly behind her while she jogged in the dark, ready to jump out and protect her virtue if she was attacked. Not sure how I would do that, but the thought was there. Maybe drive over the attacker or something. Maggie is so little, she’d be able to cower between the wheels and avoid getting crushed. But, I digress. When it got lighter, I’d drive ahead and wait for her with a bottle of water at the ready, reading a great book on writing by Anne Lamont that my friend Diane gave me for my birthday. Maggie powered up the steepest of hills, peed next to the side of the road and will win any marathon. She finished about 31km in 2 hours and 50 minutes, a lot of that uphill. Definitely, a super woman, but not somebody I’d like to emulate. Staying in the car reading was more my kind of thing.

The Mexican Party was a riot, with everybody donning moustaches, drinking heaps of punch and feasting on guacamole and tortilla chips and the tenderest of tender beef fillet expertly barbecued on hot coals. There was that donkey paper mache thing, I know the name for it but it’s completely escaped my mind, which we hammered the shit out of blind-folded to try and knock the candy out. David, the art teacher, had done such a wonderful job making it, it was hard to smash. But Maggie went to her house and fetched a knobkierrie after we broke a broom handle trying to smash it, and that worked.

Sunday afternoon was a superb spread at the Bryce-Benetts in Marangu, and all these events were interspersed with me frantically working on the Yearbook. We got home to no power, which only came on again the Monday as we were leaving for school. Power on Monday and then no power again on Tuesday. When we left for school Wednesday morning, it still hadn’t come back on. I tried to phone TANESCO to find out what the situation was with the power, as we were the only house powerless in the neighbourhood. The twinkling lights of our neighbours made me roar with jealousy, rather like the lion I just heard this second. TANESCO were singularly unhelpful. The first five times I phoned, some little man said something in Swahili and put down the phone. The sixth time, he called someone who could speak a little English. “Can you see anything funny happening on your pole?” The man asked me.

“It’s dark, I can’t even see the pole,” was my somewhat short response.

As I just know the name of my street and not the plot number, I couldn’t direct them to our house to sort out the problem. “Just drive along until you see a house in darkness with a woman sitting inside with flames coming out of her ears as she’s so mad because she has no power to charge the laptop to finish the damn yearbook!” They never found our house. Either I wasn’t mad enough, or they didn’t bother to look. So we just went to bed. What else can you do when it’s so dark?

Tuesday morning I went for round three with my dentist friend at Mawenzi Hospital. This was supposed to be the last root canal treatment and then the fitting of the crown. I headed up to his surgery at the hospital with much trepidation, remembering the careless way he’d injected me so that half my throat seemed to swell shut with numbness and the bleach. How could I ever forget the bleach mouth wash? I just smell that stuff now and I want to gag. However, no injection, no bleach. He must have read my last blog! He drilled and pasted stuff on the tooth for an hour and a half, and managed to get quite a bit on my tongue so that it felt as if it was covered with hard pimples. The whole procedure – lancing the abscess, removing botched up Chinese root canal, doing a new root canal, and then a crown, cost me a grand total of $65. I don’t think I can get that much cheaper elsewhere. After scraping off the hard lumps on my tongue, I could run my tongue over my tooth and it seems okay. I’m not sure how long this crown will last, as one week later and already half of it seems to have worn away.

The power problem was finally fixed sometime Wednesday by the school’s handyman, who said he’d done a temporary repair job. He saw carbon on the pole, so he thinks there must be loose wires catching alight, so he joined them together with some tape. Charming. I hope TANESCO come and fix it properly, because that’s a helluva lot of voltage to be held together with some tape.

The yearbook was finally completed Thursday morning and I could start the big job of burning the pdf files onto cds. Making the final pdf was another headache, as I had to merge in other pdf files and let’s just say, I am now officially a pdf expert. I can do all kinds of things with a pdf. However, pdf files would not help me plan my big road trip, which I hadn’t yet had a chance to think about.

Thursday night and saying goodbye to a dear friend Diane Bowe who unfortunately heads back to the US with her family. They were only here a year, she helped Americanize The Case of Billy B, took many of the photos for the yearbook, accompanied us on our school field trips, she’ll be sadly missed.

Friday, like the rest of the week, passed in a blur. A goodbye assembly, class party, more yearbook cd copying, then the staff barbecue, and then it was time to finally catch my breath and think about the 4500km I’d be embarking on the next day. We packed our cases, made snacks for the road, headed off to school Saturday morning for a staff breakfast, couple of meetings and finally at 11.45 we hit the road. Unfortunately, not much planning, but Siobhan had the guidebook and read aloud about the places we’d be stopping off at, so that we had an idea of where we could stay.

Today is day five of our road trip. We should be heading down to Livingstone in Zambia, we’re staying at a Protea Safari Lodge, the only guests at the hotel, and they have 40 chalets! So, should head down for breakfast, then check out those growling lions, pack our car and be on our way. I’ll write more about our road trip later. I’ve been keeping copious notes and Siobhan’s been taking excellent photos along the way. Suffice to say, I’m thinking of writing a book on our trip and calling it Mountain to Mountain. Kilimanjaro to Table Mountain, get it? Everything’s been going fine, people are so friendly, and we’re having a blast. Hopefully, I’ll find the hotel’s Wireless Hotspot so that I can send this.

Luvya all!

Cindy

Birhdays and Dentists

There is something about growing older that is quite depressing. Inside you still feel young, the same as you’ve always felt, you can still see yourself sitting under the table at your fifth birthday party crying with embarrassment when everybody started singing happy birthday to you. But outwardly, oh God how cruel is outwardly! Outwardly is nothing like you at all. This fat, grey, wrinkly-person is nothing like you imagined you’d turn out when you were five and sitting under the table crying at your birthday party. It’s like, the aliens invaded unbeknownst to you, and one of the damn aliens invaded your body, swallowed you whole, and that’s why now outwardly you are an alien. A strange fat wrinkly-person. It’s not actually you at all.

Birthdays creep up on you, camouflaged like a leopard hiding in a tree, and in a flash leap out at you and grab you while you are picnicking under the tree, minding your own business and getting on with your life; unaware that the leopard was looming above, stalking you. Birthdays are precious, when people wish us or celebrate with us, it reminds us that we are loved and we exist. When they forget it’s like we’re not really here, invisible, a non-entity. A figment of your own imagination. Birthdays are also a reminder that we are getting old. Forty-eight still sounds okay, like you’re in your forties, but forty-nine sounds so old, much older than just one year later. God, forty-nine means that you are nearly fifty, and fifty is well, antique. Unless of course, you are over fifty and then fifty might seem young.

This past weekend, I celebrated my ‘Not quite fifty’ birthday at a friend’s house on a sugar plantation with Kilimanjaro looming in the distance. Surrounded by friends, I felt loved, and that is what life should be all about, shouldn’t it? Food, drink and good company, celebrating your wrinkliness.

Last year I had an interesting experience with a Chinese dentist, before you get your mind in the gutter; it was an interesting DENTAL experience. Suffice to say, that the week after my fifth root canal appointment, the front half of my tooth broke off and was consumed with my bread roll. It might still be inside me as I never checked to see if it passed out. Too afraid to go back to the dentist, I struggled bravely with half a tooth, careful not to give a wide smile to anybody, lest they notice the peculiar tooth. In January, I suddenly started getting soft tissue infections in my left cheek which were extremely painful. The doctor down the road kept giving me antibiotics which didn’t do much. The infection would flare up and die down with a life of its own, so I saw no point in taking the antibiotics. Then a month or so ago, I started getting a boil on my gum above the half-tooth. One would pop it, and a few hours later it would redevelop. Sometimes I would feel another soft tissue infection, but would ignore it rather than going back to the doctor to get the same antibiotics which were more like suppositories, they were so big.

Unfortunately, Sunday night the soft tissue infection returned with a vengeance and the permanent pustule on my gum turned into an abscess. It was time, I decided, to seek the advice of a dentist. I had heard rumours of a good one in Arusha which was 90km away, and a good one in Marangu which was 30km away. I had no idea what the directions to either one were, so I asked my housekeeper who told me I should go to Mawenzi Hospital, which is a state hospital here in Moshi. Siobhan agreed to take the day off school to accompany me. It took us a good half an hour to find the hospital, the grubby dilapidated buildings spread out amongst tall shady trees. Walking across the muddy grounds, surrounded by women in brightly-coloured kangas, some carrying babies on their back, and men in their work clothes sneezing and coughing, I felt like we were in for a truly African experience, and we were not disappointed.

The dental area we were directed to, had rickety wooden benches jam-packed with people waiting their turn. It was going to be a long wait and luckily I’d brought a book to read, which Siobhan grabbed from me. We had to pay up front for the visit, a huge sum of 1000 shillings which is less than a dollar. For that I saw the dentist who looked not old enough yet to wipe his nose, and had x-rays. The dentist’s surgery had the required reclining chair, only this one was standard 1960 issue, and a table with stainless steel instruments and flies. He spoke English, which was a blessing, and instead of asking me what my dental problem was, asked Siobhan how old she was. “Fourteen,” she replied.

“Ah,” he sighed with a smile, waving his little dentist’s mirror in the air, “Then in four years time I want to engage you.”

“My tooth,” I said pointing to the half-tooth, cutting short his marriage proposal.

“Infection,” he said prodding my abscess and letting a stream of pus squirt out, “You need x-ray.” Another thirty minutes waiting for a wizened old man with a surgeon’s green mask over his mouth, to escort me into the x-ray room. To my surprise, they had an x-ray machine, a simple one mind you, but a device which could take x-rays all the same. The wizened old man shoved the little x-ray card far back on the right side of my tongue, causing my gag-reflex to take over. I tried to control it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop gagging and I thought I might throw up.

“No twisty!” The old man said sternly, “No twisty! No twisty! Bitey! You bitey!”

When he removed the x-ray card, he said I could go. “But aren’t you going to do the other side? The one with my half-tooth and the actual problem?” I asked, wondering if they put the x-ray card in one side to take the image of the other side. He didn’t respond, just forcibly pushed me back in the chair, pulled open my mouth and stuck the card on the left side of my tongue.

More waiting and then back in the dentist’s chair. “You have lesions on the root canal. Bad job, they not take out packing. Packing go bad, make tooth bad, make gum bad. All bad. Two options. One, take out packing, clean, make new root canal, put on crown. Two, pull out. Extraction. I think, save tooth is best.” The dentist smiled flashing his perfect teeth. “You can come here or go somewhere more comfortable.”

“Do you have the equipment to do it here?” I asked nervously. The dentist just smiled and waved away the flies that were sitting on his surgical instruments. “Are you qualified? Can you do it?” The words slipped out of my mouth.

“Of course,” the young dentist laughed at me, “It’s what I studied to do.”

I made the appointment for eight this morning, he said if I had an appointment I wouldn’t have to wait. I lay back in his dentist’s chair. No small talk after he’d asked where Siobhan was and why she hadn’t come along. “Open,” he instructed, brandishing a syringe with a long needle, and before I could blink stabbed me three times, spilling some of his anaesthetic in my mouth, so half of the back of my throat felt swollen and numb. It was like my breathing passage had just been divided in half. The numbness spread quickly and even my left nostril was numb, so I could only breathe through my right nostril. As the whole half of my face was numb, I couldn’t tell what he was doing, but I do know that people waiting outside for their turn would come in from time to time and have a quick chat and watch me, and the dentist would chat to them in Swahili and laugh, all the while working on my tooth while looking at his visitors. He obviously could perform a root canal blind-folded.

There was no little nurse with the sucky thing to suck up your spit. Instead, there was a plastic bucket with a green bag in that you had to spit into. The first time I spat up blood, not sure if that was from the initial injection or what. The dentist had a cup of bleach which he poured into my mouth from time to time and then I had to spit out. It smelled just like the stuff we used to bleach our white washing, and burnt the inside of my mouth. It was awful. I can still smell it on my hands where some accidentally spilt.

Now the numbness is wearing off, I feel that I have been in a fight, and someone has punched me in my face. But, only one more appointment to finish it off, so next Tuesday at 8am I’ll be in the same chair, with the same dentist waving the flies away from his shiny, and hopefully clean, stainless steel instruments.

A truly authentic African experience. Surely, some tour company can include this in their brochures for insane sado-masochistic hypochondriacal adrenalin-junkies?

Why do bananas all ripen at the same time?

I have these banana trees outside my kitchen window. For weeks I was watching one particular hand of bananas grow bigger and bigger, and a week ago the gardener took it down and presented it to me. He also accidentally chopped down that tree, but that's another story. I guess as he didn't have a ladder to reach the bananas, he showed initiative by coming up with a cunning plan to get them. Siobhan researched banana milkshakes, I hauled out my best banana bread recipes, but the bananas remained too green to use. We had to wait for them to ripen. My housekeeper placed them in a big dark box last Thursday. When I peeped into the box today, they were all ripe, ready to be eaten immediately. It was an enormous hand of bananas, there have to be close on 100 bananas there. At home it's only Siobhan and I and seriously, there are so many banana bread loafs you can bake and banana milkshakes you can drink. Why did they all have to ripen at the same time? Couldn't some of them be original and creative, and ripen later on in the week?

Problems are a bit like bananas. They all arrive at the same time. They aren't considerate and don't spread themselves out a bit so that you have time to solve each one independently and give it the thought it deserves. No, that would make life too easy for you. Like bananas, your problems all ripen and arrive at the same time.  They're also a helluva weight to carry on your shoulders.   If you have problems at work, or lots of stress, you can be sure that you'll have problems at home and your kids will play up. It's a bit like a chain reaction. Someone up there has a wicked sense of humour.
Anyway, there's nothing I can do about all my bananas ripening at the same time, and there are some problems you can solve, and others you just have to learn to live with, and cope as best you can. Those banana problems are out of your control.

This week, first week back at school, and the week has just flown. It doesn't matter if you have three children and they all live in different countries, when one gets a problem, the others will all present you with their problems. It's Murphy's Law. Worrying about them does make time fly, and everything else which would normally be stressful, seem minor in comparison. That's the positive I guess.

I've had a few good reviews of The Case of Billy B on Amazon.com and that makes me feel great. My new book, Not Telling, is chugging along nicely and is starting to get very exciting. I literally can't wait to see what's going to happen next. My protagonist has taken control of the keyboard and I'm struggling to keep up with her. She's gone off in directions I wouldn't have envisioned in the beginning, but it's all good. I'm having fun and honestly, it does take my mind off all those bananas ripening at once.

Siobhan went hiking this weekend up to Mandara Hut on Kilimanjaro and is now all fired up to do a level two climb in November. She's arrived home exhausted and fallen asleep on the couch. I have to wake her up soon as I know she has Geography homework and she'll want to eat dinner.

We've managed to get a rowing machine and it's changed our lives. We row 100 rows before walking into the kitchen and on and off all day when we think of it. Hopefully, we'll be slimmer and trimmer for our big overland trip to Cape Town in June, which reminds me. I need to start planning that.

My roast lamb with lemon and rosemary smells divine, so I better check up on it. Have a great week ahead!
love
Cindy

Long Weekend

It seems like only yesterday I was sitting here typing up last week’s blog. Tuesday, meeting day, and we had a pre-meeting meeting and the expected bomb was dropped. Our PYP Co-ordinator has resigned. Then the real staff meeting. I’m now the chair of the Staff Association, which means I have to try and make sense of all the issues raised. It was only Tuesday and I was already wishing the week was over. Wednesday I was in more meetings and out the classroom, working on the school’s new humanities curriculum. Thursday passed in a flash. Have we even had Thursday already? All I can remember about Thursday, was that we went to the Kili Club for some ice cold cider and steak and chips. The club is so cheap, drinks and food for Siobhan and I comes to under $10! One of the few cheap things here. Friday was no school. Some Muslim holiday that is connected to the moon. The school had to try and estimate if the moon would be doing it’s thing on the Thursday or Friday night, some weeks before. They guessed wrongly, but had already declared the Friday a school holiday. You take what you can get.

Talking about taking what you can get, Monday they announced that all cars in Tanzania had to carry fire extinguishers. I had heard this before and remembered that I did have a can of fire extinguisher foam languishing somewhere in the boot of my car. However, the latest news was not only did you have to have a fire extinguisher, but you had to have a special disc on your windscreen stating that you had a fire extinguisher. It had to be displayed next to your third party insurance and licence discs. Obviously, this is just another rip-off scam from a corrupt government to further empty our pockets. God, at the moment I'm so broke I can't even pay attention. The disc to say you have a fire extinguisher in your car costs $20. Cursing under my breath, I handed over the amount to our school transport manager who was taking all our money and collecting the discs from the fire department. It goes without saying that the fire department was just taking the money and handing over the discs, nobody was actually checking to see if we really had a fire extinguisher in the car. I mean, that would be too efficient, wouldn't it?

My daughter who annoys me no end, was playing the same cd over and over again. I had reached the point, where if I heard the Jonas Bothers whiny nasal voices trying to hit the notes one more time, I would scream. And throw the cd out of the window. We had just reached the half-way point to Arusha, a small town called Boma Ngombe, when a uniformed soldier type with an AK47 slung casually over his shoulder stepped into the road and waved me down.

"Jambo," I said pleasantly, smiling into the glare of the sun.

"Hmpf," he sort of snarled and then muttered something in Swahili.

"Sorry, I don't speak Swahili. Can you speak English?"

He shifted the gun so it sat in his hands. "Fire extinguisher. I want to see your fire extinguisher."

I smiled with relief, happy I'd forked out the $20 for a sticker to put on my windscreen saying I had a fire extinguisher. I hadn't quite gotten round to putting it on the window, but it was lying on my back seat. "Hold on," I reached behind for the sticker, "Here's my sticker saying I have a fire extinguisher."

He stroked his gun lovingly. He didn't even look at my $20 sticker. "I want to see your fire extinguisher. Now."

"It's in the boot," I said as I opened the door and hit him in the stomach. He glared and pointed his AK47 at me. "Pole sana," I laughed, which means 'very sorry.' I was starting to feel a little nervous and wondered whether or not to offer him a bribe as that is the way cops and government officials do business here. Triumphantly, I found my fire extinguisher which had rolled behind my tools, and noticed that the can did look a little rusty. I handed it to the soldier, hoping he'd sling his gun over his shoulder again.

"This is no good," he snarled, "You need to buy a new one. Now." He pointed his gun across the road and I saw a cute little red fire engine parked there. "$45, you buy now."

I took a deep breath and gave what I hoped was an authoratitive convincing, charming kind of a smile. "I have a sticker and a fire extinguisher. I don't need another one. I'm not buying it."

The soldier smiled for the first time. "If you don't buy a new fire extinguisher, you are not allowed to drive your car on the road, so park it over there, next to the fire truck."

How can you argue with a man holding an AK47, even if he works for the government? Meekly, I followed him across the road to the red fire truck which had lost some of its cuteness. I paid the $45 and got a spanking new fire extinguisher with another sticker on it, a different one.

I felt compelled to give my two cents worth, even if the man was holding a gun. "This is just a rip-off, another example of the government stealing money from the people."

The soldier laughed out loudly and nodded his head in agreement. "But you see Madam, your fire extinguisher was a foam one. Foam is now illegal. You have to have a dry powder extinguisher. I can show you the regulations, but they're all in Swahili, so I'll have to translate."

"Don't bother," I snarled through my teeth, my friendly demeanour having evaporated like spilled diesel at a gas station.

By the time I got to my car on the other side of the road, the armed soldier had let two Tanzanian drivers go past without checking their fire extinguishers and pulled over another expat driver with a pale skin. I wonder, if some government minister managed to get a job lot of these dry foam fire extinguishers at a cheap price, and is making some money on the side with this new 'regulation.' It seems that only expats are required to have these fire extinguishers. And I have to wonder, if my fire extinguisher is in the boot and my car explodes in ball of flame, will I have time to jump out the car, open my boot and get my fire extinguisher? And if I'm in a head on collision, will I be able to get out of my car to get it? What is the point? In my eight months here I have never seen a burnt out car wreck, so fires are not common. Seriously, this is a crock of shit. But when a guy tells you to do something with an AK pointed at you, you do it.

Saturday, we took a drive with some friends to the Sanya Juu area, to the Light of Africa orphanage. Amazing place, lovely houses for the orphans all built by different universities in the UK. The playground was designed by the architecture students at Bristol University. The kids were pleased to see us, we took some rice as a gift, balloons and bubbles. Some of the kids are so tiny for their age, many have AIDS, are AIDS orphans or have just been abandoned by their parents. Quite a few kids with severe cerebral palsy there. Definitely a worthwhile cause to support. After that we went bundu bashing, illegally entered a game reserve through some dirt track so we didn’t have to pay the $20 per person entry fee, and had a picnic in the middle of nowhere. We’d forgotten to bring picnic blankets and chairs, so we stood around in the heat drinking and eating, decadent things like quiche and banoffee pie. Several Maasai with their herds of cattle passed us. Guess they were also doing a spot of illegal traffic through the park. On the way out we saw a couple of wildebeest and a herd of zebra. Rain looked imminent, Mount Kili was hidden behind very black angry looking clouds, and as the first drops of rain fell to steady the dust, Mount Kili popped out of the clouds showing a fresh fall of snow reaching three quarters of the way down her slopes. I don’t know if it was all the banoffee pie she ate, or a virus, but Siobhan started running from both ends after dinner. Cannot be the delicious mutton curry I made in a potjie, as I didn’t feel ill!

Sunday and the famous Kili Marathon. Why people feel the need to run in the heat is beyond me. It’s very hot at the moment. For the last month or so you see people jogging down our road, training for the marathon, faces etched with pain and exhaustion. Why the hell do they do it? They don’t look like they are enjoying it at all and frankly, seeing them just makes me feel guilty. Someone asked me if I was running. You gotta be kidding me. I have a car, I drive. Jeez! My friend Debbie and I were supposed to be helping with a water point, but in typical Tanzanian fashion, nobody gives us a time or where we are supposed to be. So, we rocked up at 9, the fun run and half marathon was already over, the last remnants of the full marathon were trickling or rather, hobbling in, grimacing with pain. Yeah, obviously having fun. We hung around, borrowed some medals and posed for photos and then left. Oh, Debbie and I took a short cut to the school’s hospitality tent, not really realising that we were walking across the finishing line and were amongst the suffering runners. Well, we did but we didn’t really care. And one of the officials held out a medal for me. I was wearing my Hash t-shirt, so I guess I sort of looked the part as I was hot and sweaty, and although I reached out to accept the medal for completing the half-marathon, in the end I withdrew my hand. It didn’t seem right to accept the medal. Like, I might be thought to have cheated. Although, I did run quite a bit earlier on. Somehow, a big white hen found itself onto my property, and Smokey my dog was having a whale of a time chasing the clucking flapping hen. Of course, it must have looked a sight, with me chasing the dog, the dog chasing the hen, like one of those kid’s stories. Eventually, the dog cornered the hen and they had a stand-off, both standing still staring at each other, and at that point I decided I better leave to fetch Debbie. On my return, no sign of the chicken except a white feather stuck on a bush, so either it escaped or went to heaven in the belly of my dog.

On that note, happy birthday to Jules and Barry in the week ahead and I wish you all a fantastic week. Only 4 weeks left to the Easter holidays!

Love

Cindy xxx

What a week?

I can't believe it's already Sunday!  Where has the week gone?  Maybe because my week has been so disjointed, it seems to have flown by so much faster.  Tuesday my class and I went through to Arusha for pre-camp planning and bonding.  The camp is this coming week at West Kilimanjaro.  The kids and staff will be staying in tents using the tent toilet which will just be a hole in the ground surrounded by a tent.  I was asked by the other teacher organising this whole trip, if I'd prefer to stay in the two bedroomed guest house with bathroom ensuite.  Hell yeah!  I didn't even think about it!  A nice comfortable bed, proper flush toilet and power so i can watch movies on my laptop at night while everybody else is trying to get comfortable sleeping on the hard ground?  hell yeah, i'll take the guesthouse!
Friday my kids performed some of Roald dahl's Revolting Rhymes in assembly and then wrote their ISA pre-tests.  then break and visual arts.  Easy peasy.  This week Monday and Tuesday they write their proper ISA exams, then Wednesday through to friday we are camping.  Hell, I just love outdoor education.
Saturday, the outdoor pursuits man at school slaughtered his pig and delivered 20kg of meat and fat to me so I can make sausages.  Took me a couple of hours, but chopped it all up, and have to sausage like mad this afternoon.  I put half of it in my freezer for next weekend.  It's so hot at the moment and sausage making is such hot sweaty work.  I'm not really in the mood.
I've revamped and redone my website.  Hopefully, it'll look good when I'm finally done tweaking and adding things to it.  Enjoyable but hard work, and when you're doing that, the time just flies as well.
But the big news is, just to let you all know, The case of Billy B is now out and available as a paperback on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Case-Billy-B-Cindy-Vine/dp/1449980414/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264862309&sr=8-5 Celebrated by myself last night, daughter was at a disco when I discovered it was on Amazon. So, raise your glasses and have a drink to The Case of Billy B!
Yippee!
And, have written the first chapter of my next book, provisionally entitled Not Telling.  Lordy, lordy, lordy, this writing thing is addictive!
Have a great week ahead!
love
Cindy
xxx

Frustration Station

Twelve midday arrived and I had my running shoes on, ready to sprint out of the door. Holidays. Thank God for them. One of the best inventions ever. Fried, frazzled, frustrated, jeez, we all need a holiday. It's been a long, long term. We're plain worn out. And for those who think teachers have it easy because we get school holidays? We need them. Plain and simple. Sanity breaks are desperately needed. The alleged rapist skeddaddled with my $100. I doubt I'll get it back. But then, he also skedaddled with a pair of hiking boots, wet weather jacket and backpack belonging to the school, so I don't feel lonely. Merry Christmas Mister Alleged Rapist. See, I'm a nice person.
The past weekend was sports weekend and Tony was ecstatic he managed to get in a game of rugby.  Siobhan was in the winning junior girls' netball team.

TanzaniaMonday and everything that can go wrong went wrong. Actually, it couldn't have been that bad as I've already forgotten all that went wrong, only that it was one of the most frustrating days I've had since I arrived in . Amazing how quickly we forget what it was that frustrated us so completely. All I remember, was that I was very frustrated. One of the things was, that my friends from China, Andrei and Arden and their two boys were delayed for three hours on the runway in Bangkok, so they missed their connecting flight in Nairobi. So instead of arriving in the morning they arrived at night. The good thing was, was that the airline arranged visas and a luxury hotel for them to camp out in for the day in Nairobi.

Luckily, the school's real Kilimanjaro guide, arranged for some other guides to take them up the mountain, so the day was saved. But there were a few nail-biting moments for me. So, if you are planning a hike up to the summit of Mt Kili, give me a shout and I'll arrange it for you. It is quite pricey though as the park fews are quite dear. You'll be looking at just under $1000 all told, including tips. You have a guide, porter and cook going up with you, so you won't feel lonely on that big pile of rocks.
Andrei is an animal. Yesterday morning, he was up at 5am (as he is every mmorning)and ran for two hours, came home had a cup of coffee and a shower, hopped on his bike and cycled to Marangu which is an hour by car away, the last 10km being up a steep hill, and then waited for his family to join him to climb the mountain. As I said, an absolute animal. Not human at all. How he does it, I have no idea but I get tired just watching him. Arden and the two boys were initially going with him just until the first hut, then were going to return today, but she texted me saying that it was so fabulously awesome, that they were going to go on today until the next hut and return tomorrow (Saturday). What a relief that they are loving it, after all the drama!

It was so great seeing them again and getting our parcel of TV series from Kerri. I miss her so much and wish she could have been smuggled over in one of their suitcases.
Wednesday and Tony went with Andrei and Arden and their boys to the Arusha National park. Luckily, his ranger course from last year paid off as he was able to identify many of the animals. All Andrei wanted to see apparently, were flamingoes. Which he did. Thousands upon thousands of them. When Tony pointed out impala and kudu, Andrei said, "Ah, that's just deer!" No Andrei, no deer in Africa! Then of course, ANDREI insisted of getting out the vehicle to get closer shots of herds of buffalo. Tony told him to stay in the car as the buffalo were wild and dangerous. Andrei's comment, "I eat buffalo for breakfast!" Maybe that's how he could run and cycle before climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Anyway, a tour guide with his landy filled with tourists arrived and told Andrei and Arden and the boys that they face huge fines leaving their vehicle. So apparently, still clicking madly with their cameras, they slowly inched back to my car. The next thing was Andrei hanging out the window by the skin of his foreskin, trying to take photos of the perfect wildlife shot. Arden and the boys are back tomorrow. Andrei should summit tomorrow night, and then will be back on Monday. he's never been 5800m before, so here's hoping that the altitude doesn't get to him.
Tuesday, we head off to Pangani on the coast, so I might not be able to get on the internet over there. I've just have my phone connected to the internet, but whether it'll work, only God knows. Andrei, surprisingly enough, is planning on cycling as far as he can to Pangani. It is 400km away, so we've agreed, he can leave two hours before us, and where ever we encounter him along the way, that's where we'll pick him up. He's not too haapy, but has agreed to reach a compromise. We did promise he can cycle the last bit to Pangani though. Men. Do they ever grow up!
Hopefully, I'll send a last Christmas email before we leave.
Have a simply fantabulous weekend! And, if you're traveling, do it safely. It still doesn't feel as if Christmas is upon us. Although, I did succumb and buy a small plastic Christmas tree when I was in Arusha yesterday.
love you lots!
Cindy

When a gecko drops on your shoulder

Is it an omen that bad luck is headed your way?
I am a naturally superstitous person. I believe in signs to show you if good luck or bad luck is headed your way. If you are thinking of taking a trip and all of a sudden keep seeing posters advertising airlines, then I take that as a sign that I am meant to take the trip. Granted, I have on occasion misread signs and maybe manipulated them so that I could do what I wanted to do. Those instances have always ended in disaster. Never manipulate a sign. I never walk under ladders, step on cracks and become agitated when a black cat crosses my path. When I hear an owl hoot at night, I wonder who's ill and who's going to die and it affects my sleep. I'm not paranoid or weird, well, I don't think so. So, when a gecko fell on my shoulder, I had to wonder if it was some kind of a sign.
The dog was scratching at the door. It was past her dinner time. I slid back the bolt and pushed open the door as I always did, to get her silver food bowl outside. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to warn me of the horror that was to come. Then I saw it drop out of the corner of my eye and then felt it. A gecko dropped from the top of the doorframe onto my shoulder, and as I jumped backwards and screamed loudly, it bounced off my shoulder and onto the floor which was nicely decorated with dog's muddy paw prints. We do seem to be having a bit of a rainy season the last few weeks. Maybe that's why we've had regular electricity. I waited for the gecko to roll over and run off to hide in a crack somewhere. But it lay there, looking like a rubber toy. Being a curious person, I knelt down to look at the gecko and was immediately hit by the putrifying smell of decomposition. The gecko had already proceded to decompose. It was very dead, no more, already headed off to a higher world where everything is bright and beautiful. When feeding the dog in the morning, the gecko must have stupidly been hiding in the doorframe, and when I closed the door, I gave it a mortal wound in its belly. The gecko's little intestines were exposed, and a closer look showed that they were moving. Was the poor creature still alive, I wondered, and then a maggot fell out. Maggots burst from the unfortunate gecko like candy from a pinyata. It had to be one of the grossest things I had ever seen. Even grosser than the sight of a hundred Cape Vulture tearing apart a bloated dead donkey on the side of the road. On a slightly smaller scale of course. I frantically called my son, reminded him repeatedly that as he was eighteen he was now officially a man, and ordered him to remove the offending object, the decomposing beast. And then it hit me. Was this a sign? Was a dead decomposing gecko filled with maggots dropping onto my shoulder a sign of something bad to come?
I approached Thursday with a good deal of tepidation, expecting something bad to happen at any moment. Nothing did. Maybe a dead decomposing maggot-infested gecko dropping onto your shoulder was not a bad sign after all? Thursday proved to be an exceptionally good day. However, the gecko effect had yet to arrive. As Friday loomed, I had a sense of forboding. I couldn't believe that there would be no run-off effects from the dead gecko. Something bad had to happen. And, it did. Straight after school, my son casually joked that the man who lived in the cottage in the bottom of my garden had been arrested for attempted rape. My jaw dropped. That man, was supposed to be taking my friends up Mount Kilimanjaro on Thursday! I had already paid him a $100 deposit! How was he going to take them if he was in jail? It was the gecko I thought, feeling rather venomous myself. The gecko had brought this bad luck. It's falling on my shoulder was a bad omen after all.
I did some investigation. My neighbor was a fraud. He was not a licenced guide, would not have been able to take my friends up, and as Mount Kilimanjaro is quite treacherous as every year climbers succumb to altitude sickness and join that gecko in a higher place, an inexperienced non-guide guide could have been a disaster. I had never questioned him as I took all he'd said on face-value. I believed him. Gullability has always been a problem of mine. Now, left with the problem of my friends arriving Monday, and expecting to head up the big rock on Thursday, I started to feel anxious. I contacted someone who worked with me whom I knew definitely was a guide, and he's speaking to some guide friends and hopefully my friends will get sorted out. It does seem like the $100 I paid on their behalf has gone. The neighbor had asked me for the deposit saying that it was the busy season and he needed the money to put down as a deposit on the overnight huts. Another lie. He owed the sport's coach money, and interestingly enough repaid his loan the same day I paid the deposit. Was I ripped off? Probably. Have I ever been scammed and conned before by unscrupulous people I had blindly believed. Absolutely. It's what led me to write my self-help book, Fear, Phobias and Frozen Feet. Yet, here it has happened again.
I have to ask, is it me? Do I have to stop trusting people and believing what they say? Must I become suspicious of every word that emanates from their lucious lips? That's not me. I am like a dog. Trusting, loyal, faithful. Step on my tail and I bite. I put all the blame on the gecko. That sad decomposing maggot-infested gecko, who put his life on the line when he hid on my doorframe when I closed the door. But then, maybe the gecko actually did me a service. He gave his life to protect my friends that might have met their demise on a treacherous mountain with an inexperienced guide. That poor gecko, is actually a hero. Now, I must find out if I can grab that guy's furniture, store it in my garage, hold it hostage until I get my $100 back!
And the coolest thing! The house we're going to be staying in at Pangani once belonged to Ernest Hemmingway! I hope some of his writing genius will be rubbed off onto me!

As the holidaze approach

Hard to believe but true, just over a week and we have our December break here! I can't wait! Arden and Andrei and their twin boys, friends from China, are coming to visit the holiday. And with Tony here, I've got a full house. Arden's a vegetarian and I'm trying to think what I can cook for her on her first night here next Monday. As an avid carnivore, it's hard for me to be creative and think veggie. Any ideas, comments and suggestions on what I can cook for here would be welcome!

Public holiday here today! Independence day, so am enjoying not going into work. Need to make another cup of coffee and some breakfast though!

Tony has already settled in, Siobhan did well in her report, so bring on the holidays! Next week Thursday, the day before school closes, I'm off to Arusha for the day to plan our class camp at West Kilimanjaro with my colleagues in Arusha. We'll be going to 3rd and 4th Feb. I'm hoping there won't be too much hiking, I don't own suitable hiking attire! Well, that's my excuse anyway!

So, have to start seriously thinking about our holiday and doing some finer planning. I've booked our school house at Pangani on the coast, for only $15 a night. Problem is, I have to figure out how to get Andrei and Arden there as we won't all fit in my car, and how to get them back to catch their flight on the 1st January, as I plan on staying at the beach for another week! Gotta soak up that sun. Mind you, been raining every afternoon. It's our mini rainy season which is good, as it's provided water for the hydro-electric scheme here which means the last couple of weeks we've hardly had any power cuts.

Have sausage orders so need to get onto that now, and finish proofing my second draft of The Case of Billy B. I have an agent interested in taking me on. Hold thumbs that it works out!

A big sports weekend coming up, with schools from Dar-es-Salaam and Arusha coming this weekend, so I'll be a little flat out helping!

Have a great weekend, well, it's almost here!

love

Cindy

Things to look forward to

Isn't it amazing how we break up the humdrums of our lives with things we look forward to? Holidays, birthdays, a special evening out...something small which will break the endless routine of sleeping, eating and going to work, with the weekend the punctuation at the end of our work week sentence. Although some of us find ourselves working weekends as well!

Lately, I've had quite a lot to look forward to, and this has made time speed by as if I'm caught up in some kind of a time-storm. The 50 000 words in 30 days challenge from NaNoWriMo, the completion of the first draft of The Case of Billy B, the performances this past week of our school production of Cats, and the arrival tonight of my son Tony at 7pm. Next week Wednesday the 9th December is a public holiday, then the weekend is a big sports weekend with schools coming from Arusha and Dar-es-salaam. On the 14th some friends from China arrive for a visit, then I have a day off school on the 17th December to plan our class camp on West Kili with my counterparts on the Arusha Campus, then school finishes on the 18th December, then off to the coast on the 22nd December, then Christmas...Oh my goodness, all these milestones to make time go quickly.

The school's production of Cats was simply astoundingly outstanding! The talent of the kids was amazing, we had limited resources to use, no costumes made, limited quantities of stage-paint, but you wouldn't have said so watching the performance! The creativity to make something out of nothing went from costumes to the set design. I was so proud of my class, they did an excellent job with Mr Mistoferlees, but even more so was I proud of Siobhan. She has definitely inherited her stage presence and love of performing from my Mom. I don't think that it's just because she's my daughter, but she stood out from the crowd, her voice was sweet, powerful and pure, and you could see from her facial expressions and movements, she was really into her part. My baby, I am so proud of you, even though your daily singing of songs from Cats sung at the top of your voice while I was trying to concentrate and focus on writing The Case of Billy B drove me scatty.

I'm not sure about any of you, but I still count sleeps. last night, was the last sleep before Tony arrives. I haven't seen him since the end of July this year. Now, that might not seem much, but he is only 18. Hopefully, he'll remember to claim his luggage after the domestic flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, before checking it in for his international flight to Kenya. I always used to do that stuff now he has to be independent. Can I let go and trust him to manage?

I just wish that Kerri could come and visit as well. It's hard when your kids grow up and leave home and become independent. It's like, your role on this planet is over.

Anyway, have to go and buy some things, see if my fisherman's pants I ordered from a local tailor is finished and buy some meat to make more sausage.

love

Cindy

Writing until the cows come home

Why NaNoWriMo where the challenge is to write 50 000 words in a month is in the same month as report writing, I'll never know. I think the gods must be angry or something. But, I'm giving it a go and trying to write a minimum of 1000 words a day on The Case of Billy B. The report writing, I've done a little bit here and there, came up with a great bank of comments that I can cut and paste from, but it still takes time, time I'd rather be spending on getting The Case of Billy B completed. Writing this book has been a challenge, and I've had to dig really deep to be able to do it. Luckily, Charlies Campbell in the US has been helping me to Americanize everything. (Note my use of a z instead of a s) The book is set in America, and it is really difficult setting a story in a place you've never visited. So, if you're feeling generous, send me a ticket to the US!

Procrastination. My first draft of my reports are due tomorrow. I'd promised myself that I'd spend all day Saturday doing them. Saturday has come and gone. However, I did manage 1700 more words on The Case of Billy B, and I did go into school and prepare some worksheets, homework sheets etc, for the relief teacher when I'm in India. I fly to India on Wednesday for a workshop on The Exhibition. So, this morning when I woke, I told myself, at 9am sharp I start on my reports. And here I am, blogging. Mind you, it is only 8.05am! I still have 55 minutes left to do my blogs and hubs and whatever else I can think of, to delay the start of my report writing. The sad thing, is that once I start I'll fly through it. I know that, so why don't I just do it, why do I keep putting it off? Sometimes, there is no logic in our actions.
The heat is increasing and I love it. I feel sorry for all my friends in China who are getting ready for an icy winter. I'm definitely a sunshine person. The hotter, the better. I've booked for us to stay in the school house at Pangani for Christmas, only costs $15 a night and is right on the beach. 4 Weeks holiday, what bliss! Tony is coming for Christmas and I'm looking forward to seeing him. I'm hoping that by that time, I'll be on revising and editing The Case of Billy B, and getting it ready to go off to the publishers. As I finish each couple of chapters, I send them off to Charlie Campbell in the States, and to Rob Stark in London. Both give me suggestions which I haven't looked at yet. When I come to the editing, I'll look through their corrections and suggestions and revise, revise, revise. Goodness, I must be besotted with writing. How did I move from having a blissful holiday on the beach to talk about editing? It's the reports. They've screwed with my brain.
Last weekend, the MYP Coordinator here got married to her long-time Canadian friend. They secretly did the church thing, but the Geography teacher decided to let out the secret and organised a surprise traditional Tanzanian wedding for them. We all met at her house which is next door to Jaimala's, the MYP Coordinator, and waited for the special wedding band to arrive. They were late, which is typical in Tanzania, everything works at African time. Their vehicle broke down at the entrance to the school campus. Eventually, they sorted it out and they arrived, their wind instruments blaring, playing the same jazzy number over and over again. They don't appear to have a large repertoire of tunes to play. Traditionally here, the musicians sit on the back of a modified pick up truck, and lead the wedding procession through the town. After dancing around to the same tune over and over again, we all climbed into our vehicles and made a convoy behind the musicians. The tradition is, that you drive round each roundabout in the town three times, which we did. The music teacher had gotten a lift in my car, and decided to jump out every time we slowed down, sprint to the car in front and jump in there, and repeat that until he got to the front car where the wine was kept. He'd fill his paper cup, and sprint back from car to car until he eventually worked his way back to mine. By that stage, most of his wine was already finished. I'm not sure if he drank it or spilt it in his mad dashes!
8.25am, getting closer to my 9am report start. Internet has just been lost, hopefully I'll be able to reconnect otherwise I won't be able to focus on the reports. I know myself, I'll be wondering about the internet and cursing it all the time, instead of coming up with good comments about the kids in my class.
Talking about cute comments, on Friday, one kid told me his brother had got his 'independix' out. But still, after 23 years of teaching, I'm tired of it. I feel a bit washed out, brain dead. I think I'd like to become a child psychologist and work with abused children. But then, I'm too old to change careers. Maybe, after a 4 week holiday I'll feel a bit more refreshed.
Well, let's drink a toast to next weekend in India! I have one day of shopping and have to try and find stage make-up and costumes for the school's production of Cats. Siobhan's in it! It's on the 3rd and 4th of December. Tony will just miss it, as he arrives on the 5th!
Have a wonderful week ahead! Hmmm, awesome view of Kilimanjaro as I look out my window. Looks like it snowed up there last night. The glaciers seem wider. By the way, I have updated my website www.cindyvine.com. There's now a page where you can buy my books directly from Amazon. Fear, Phobias and Frozen Feet has been revised and reprinted and is now available on Amazon, together with Stop the world, I need to pee! So, if you're looking to buy gifts for the holidays or stock up on reading matter for yourself, buy my books!
love
Cindy xxx

The march of the army ants

First week of school over, and it’s been great. Some of the new teachers are still struggling to adjust to life in Africa, and they will get there in time. I can already see how they are changing, and beginning to understand that time is not a factor in life here. When the curtain lady says she’ll come measure your curtains at 3pm tomorrow, it might be at 3pm 3 tomorrows away. When the internet man says he’ll be at your house at a certain time on a certain day, it might be that time, that day but the following week. It’s amazing, I’ve lived out of Africa for 10 years, but have quickly adjusted back into African time. If you wait for things to happen, you might have to wait a long time, better to just make them happen yourself.
Last week we went to Arusha which is only about 70km away, to the other campus to meet our counterparts and do some planning. The trucks on the road move at a snail’s pace, and they have all these speed bumps, some quite huge, that even with a 4x4 you have to slow down and crawl over, so it took us over 2 hours to get there. It was much faster coming back, as there weren’t so many trucks. Arusha has far more shops, lots of restaurants, a South African Shoprite supermarket, and I suppose is a little like Shanghai compared to Nanjing. It’s going to be great to go there for a weekend, but I’m pleased I don’t stay there as I’d probably spend a fortune. When one of the American teachers was commenting on how much better Arusha was, so much more civilised, I said that I’m pleased that I live in Moshi as I have something to look forward to each month – a weekend in Arusha. If you live in Arusha, then what do you have to look forward to? Actually, Moshi is not too bad. It’s much smaller, but you can basically get anything you need here, more so than in China. Especially the western foods. So for me in that respect, it’s not a hardship post, as everything is available.
What does make it tough, however, is the lack of internet at home. Yeah, yeah, I’m still waiting for them to come and sort it out. I have a landline but it’s not connected, so it just means someone coming and flicking a switch or something like that. The school has internet only in the staff workroom and it’s so slow, a carrier pigeon will probably reach its destination faster than an email. As most of us are still waiting for the internet at home, it’s not always possible to get on the internet at school as there’s often a queue. So, for those emailing me requesting for personal emails on top of my blog, unfortunately it’s not going to happen until I eventually get internet at home.
Then of course, I have the ants. Large army ant types. The ones that march up your stairs to find a new home in your bathroom. Last Friday afternoon, when I got back from Arusha, my gardener, Kabelo, was waiting for me. “Little dog, little dog,” he said frantically, pulling my arm to follow him behind the house. I immediately thought that someone’s dog had escaped and he’d tied it up in my back yard. Unfortunately, it was not a dog, but a writhing mass of black army ants. “Spray all gone, spray all gone,” Kabelo said waving his arms wildly, “In bathroom, in bathroom!” This was my welcome back from Arusha. Streams of ants, carrying their eggs, all marching up my stairs to make a new nest in my bathroom. I quickly nipped down to the local supermarket a 3 minute drive away, and bought some cans of insect spray, went home and indulged in a spray frenzy, which has given me hayfever. I thought I killed them all. However, Thursday I went to the toilet and happened to glance at the wash basin, which looked like it was covered in black fur. It was totally covered in heaving ants, so that you couldn’t even see the white of the basin. I pulled out a can of spray and completely annihilated the enemy. When I managed to wash most of their dead lifeless bodies down the plug-hole, I noticed that they had succeeded in making their nest in the hole above the plug in the porcelain, so they were actually living inside the washbasin! Persistent little blighters! I sprayed directly into the hole, and like the serial killer that I was, watched them come out of the hole to die. I thought that was that. Ant problem sorted. Last night, Siobhan went into the bathroom, to find the wash basin looking like it was covered in black fur. More ants, more spary. Hope this will be the last for a while. Murder is not really my thing. Although I have absolutely loved watching Bones second series every night. I think it’s better than CSI, and I was devastated when I finished the last episode last night.
Although you can find places selling the pirate Chinese dvds here, you can’t buy the whole series like I did. I think I’ll be starting on Women’s murder Club series next. We still don’t have a TV. I’m not in a rush to get one either. We brought so many movies and TV series over from China, ones I bought ages ago, wanted to watch and never got round to watching, that I first want to catch up on those movies. The PYP Coordinator is from Fiji and a rugby fanatic like myself, so we watch all the rugby together at her house, making bowls of popcorn, and chomping them nervously as we shout at the players on the screen. As if they can really hear us!
There’s a great restaurant in the street next to us called El Rancho. Although the name seems to suggest that they sell Mexican food, they don’t. Strictly Indian, but the most delicious Indian food ever. Siobhan had two girls staying over last night, so we went there. Our 4th visit in two weeks. She’s settled in so well here and appears to be loving it. Usually such a girl when it comes to insects and creepy crawlies, she’s not fussed by the ants, just picks up the can of spray and lets them have it. I have a feeling her American twang is soon going to change to a Princess Diana accent, as her best friend here, who’s mum is with the UN, sounds very Princess Dianaish. The school is putting on a whole school production – Early Childhood to Grade12 diploma, of the musical Cats. It’ll be in the beginning of December, so while I see heaps of work ahead, Siobhan is very excited. She’s practising a few songs for the audition on Wednesday.
Tried to make some sausages yesterday with some beef mince I bought with a little hand machine, but it was quite hard work. It really does need a little bit of pork mince to work properly. Whereas in China, beef was expensive and hard to come by, here it is pork. I still haven’t found pork. Beef is so cheap. 1 kg Beef fillet costs $9. I saw an electric sausage machine in Arusha which I think I’m going to buy. We get a good discount because the owner has kids in our school. I already have people asking me for sausages, and the butchery in Moshi, where I bought my fillet, asked me if I can bring in samples of my sausages as she’d read in my biography on the school website that I make sausages as a hobby. Of course, my scale, vacuum sealer and bags are all in the box sitting in storage that I didn’t send, as the shippers had covered up the M for Moshi with packing tape! I’m still trying to figure out what to do about that, as I am missing the boxes with our linen, summer clothes and kitchen stuff. Oh well, seeing as we’re only going back there next year December, will probably just have to start from scratch again.
I bought a barbecue grid in Arusha and am going to build myself a block barbecue in my back garden. Eventually, I want to build a lapa as well, as it’ll be lovely sitting outside in the garden. I can’t believe how fertile the soil is here. Spinach we planted two weeks ago is already so big! It’s hard to understand how people are starving here, when the soil is so fertile. I think though, that maybe it is just the area where we are. I’m not sure. But everywhere there is an abundance of avocado trees, and the locals don’t eat them! Gosh, if I think how much they charged for a puny little avocado in Nanjing! Here, they virtually give them away as they say it’s animal food. I think that avocado has far more nutritional value than corn, which is a staple here, but I don’t know if that’s true. Just my opinion.
The kids in my class are lovely, and come from the UK, US, Netherlands, India, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Kenya and Ghana. The team I’m working with are very collaborative and lots of fun. Despite internet and ant woes, this has been a good move for us, and I can see why people stay here for years. It’s such a pity Tony has already finished school, as he would have thrived in this sort of set-up. I get one sentence emails from him every few days. The last one saying, “Momsy, am officially out of money, think I did well lasting 2 and a half weeks on R500, so feel proud.” No love Tony or anything. He’s working at The Peninsula Hotel in Sea Point which is 4 or 5 star, and very busy. He’s in the kitchen, and has been doing a few 20 hour shifts, so that’s probably why his money lasted as long as it did. He was too busy working to spend any! He doesn’t get paid for his work though, it’s all part of his training. He just has a few more weeks to go, then he has a two week break, then he starts a ten week theory block. This is definitely making him grow up quickly. He’s met the US rugby team and Springboks, all who stayed at the hotel and he cooked their eggs for breakfast, and one of the Springboks gave him a rugby shirt which he was delighted about.
Have a great week! I’m going to get dressed now, head off to school and hopefully get onto a computer to send this, after which I’m going out exploring with some fellow teachers, checking out some of the markets. Which reminds me. Had better study the town map. For a small town, it’s easy to get lost. As we discovered last weekend when my gas ran out and I had to try and find the gas shop. Thank goodness I have a 4x4, as the roads are well, not really roads! And the view of Mount Kili from Moshi – magical. That old mountain rises above the clouds so majestically, it’s breathtaking.
Luvya all!
Cindy xxx