Sunday Drive in Norway (on a Friday!)

 
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Cindy Vine is a South African currently living in Norway.  She is the author of Not Telling, The Case of Billy B, Defective, CU@8, Hush Baby and The Freedom Club.  All her books are available on Amazon.com in both ebook and paperback format.  You can find out more about Cindy and her other books on www.cindyvine.com.  Should you wish to find out about some of the many countries she's visited, you can visit her travel blog www/cindyvinetravels.com.

Why follow the beaten path?

My whole life has been spent off the beaten path.  It was never intentional.  Never something planned.  It's always just happened spontaneously.  I am on the path following everybody else, and then VWOOMAH!  Everybody has disappeared and I trudge through the thick undergrowth, fighting branches with spiky thorns, to try and find the well-used path again.  The problem is that when I find it, my Dorothy Slippers fly me off somewhere else again.  It is an ongoing battle I'll never win.  There is a part of me that wants to conform, wants to do what everybody else does.  But when an idea presents itself that sounds good at the time, logic has no place in this mind.
Take today for example.  I needed to buy quite a bit of groceries as I have some recipes planned for tomorrow that I want to try out.  Usually, I only buy what I can carry in my backpack which is quite limiting when you have big things planned.  But today my backpack was already full of wool I had bought to knit myself a sweater during the long cold evenings.  When I arrived at the supermarket, I decided to be smart and only take a wheelie basket, as you can't fit that much in it.
I should have realised that it is Cindy we are dealing with here.
Soon my wheelie basket was so full that I couldn't force another item into it, and had to carry the bag of flour in my hands while pushing the overflowing basket, having to stop periodically to try and pick up items that fell out.  This proved to be quite difficult, as I had to keep holding the handle of the wheelie basket so that it didn't fall down and knock groceries off the shelf, with one hand, and carry the bag of flour with the other.  I tried my best not to look frazzled.
With all this going on, I forgot to look at my shopping list I had spent a large part of the morning drawing up.
At the checkout, I was pleased that my groceries only filled 4 large shopping bags.  My triumphant smile as I packed them soon turned to despair as I tried to lift them.  It felt like I had gone to a quarry and bought rocks.  What the hell did I buy?  I staggered to the escalator, wondering how the hell I was going to walk the length of the Mall carrying 4 large bags filled with rocks.  As I approached the first escalator, I realised that I no longer had any feeling in my fingers and that I was about to drop my groceries.  Glancing down, I noticed my fingers had changed colour and were either as white as the snow outside, or as purple as an alcoholic's nose.  It was at that point I realised that conforming was not going to work.
I turned around and staggered back to the supermarket, paid a deposit for the shopping trolley, and blissfully packed my grocery bags and very full backpack into it.  Flexing my fingers, I managed to get some of the feeling back.

Where I stay, the taxi rank is at the train station, about 100m from the shopping mall.  As I exited the Mall and began to push my laden shopping trolley through the snow, I became aware of strange looks from the locals walking past me.  It was true that nobody else was pushing a shopping trolley outside, and I did seem to be the only one, but at the time I didn't realise that I was leaving the beaten path again.  Until my shopping trolley got stuck in the snow!
No matter what I did, I couldn't make it budge.  Luckily, a kind Dad with his two young children pushed it from behind while I pulled it from the front.  He first spoke to me in Norwegian, but when I explained that I hadn't yet mastered the language, he explained in English that nobody ever takes a trolley out of the Mall and this was the first time he had ever seen anybody attempt it.
Maybe I have started a new trend.
Cindy Vine currently lives in Norway and is the author of Not Telling, Defective and Hush Baby.  All her books are available at Amazon.com in both Kindle and Paperback format.

Time for a Rant

I know there are people in the world who have lost their homes due to mortar attacks and shelling.  I know I should be grateful for a lovely apartment and a roof over my head.  I know I should be thankful for running water.  I know I sound like a complete whinge-bag but I can't deal with cold showers.  I really can't.  I need to wash my hair and the thought of a cold shower is making me procrastinate.  So this is a warning.  Until they turn the hot water back on I shall be washing my hair once a week on a Sunday.  I shall of course have a quick shower and clean the other bits each day, but the hair on my head shall be reserved for a Sunday.  That way I can spend Saturdays psyching myself up for what has to happen on a Sunday.  I cannot wash my hair before school during the week as I used to, as I cannot deal with icy cold water on my head in the cool of the morning.  I cannot deal with icy cold water on my head when I get back from work in the evenings when the air is already chilly.  Sundays I can sleep in and muster up my courage for that cold shower.
They say that cutting off the hot water is a way of saving gas supplies for the winter ahead.  Russia has cut off the gas and Ukraine has to be careful to conserve what they have.  I understand all this and it makes sense.  But that doesn't make it any easier to wash my hair in cold water when temperatures are already starting to drop.
Food prices have gone up and the Ukrainian currency is not doing so well.  My heart goes out to the average Ukrainian who must really be struggling financially.  How are they able to buy food?  Does the rest of the world even care?
The mood has changed in Ukraine since before the summer holiday.  It is far more somber with fewer smiles.  I guess people are really worried about the future of their country which is understandable.  Nobody knows Russia's big plan.  Rumours and conjecture abound.  It is not a happy place to be as you really don't know what might happen next.
On Friday I went to apply for a short stay Schengen visa at the Latvian Embassy.  My Schengen visa is only valid from the end of October and I need to go to Latvia for a school visit in 2 weeks.  This proved to be an exercise is frustration.  I'd thought downloading the English application form off the embassy's website and filling it in beforehand would be proactive.  Big mistake.  After taking my number and waiting to see the embassy official, I got to the window only to be told it was the wrong form and I had to fill in another one which happened to be all in Ukrainian.  The same form, but with one word different on the top of the first page.  After filling in the new form I had to get a new number and start the waiting process from the beginning.  Thanks goodness all my documentation was correct but then the next problem arose.  The official asked for the fee to be paid in Euros and I only had Ukrainian money.  Nowhere on their website did they say only Euros was acceptable.  They directed me to a bank down the road to change money.  The bank said they sold Euros.  As I got to the front of the queue both tellers put up signs in Ukrainian.  I asked them what was written on the signs.  "Wait ten minutes," they said as they chatted to each other.  After ten minutes they took down the signs.  When I asked to buy Euros the teller said, "Sorry no Euro."  I tried another four banks and none of them had any Euros.  The sixth bank had Euros but said, "We don't sell Euros to foreigners.  You have to have a Ukrainian passport to be able to buy Euros."  I couldn't budge her from this stance and I trudged back to the embassy to tell them I couldn't get Euros.  But first I had to take another number and wait...

The embassy official became friendlier.  "I know it is impossible to get Euros," she smiled.  Inside I seethed.  If she knew it was impossible, then why did she sent me out on a futile exercise?  "But instead of trying the banks, try the money exchange down the road in the subway.  They will definitely be able to help you."  I thanked her with a fake smile on my face and left to find the money exchange.
"You not Ukraine people.  Nyet, nyet, go, no help.  You not Ukraine people."  You guessed it.  That was the response from the money exchange place.  I guess that foreigners are no longer allowed to buy foreign currency or change Ukrainian money.  So I walked back to the Latvian Embassy, my mind doing somersaults as it tried to come up with a solution to the problem.
The embassy official became even friendlier.  "Don't worry all your documentation is in order so if you spend the weekend finding Euros then you don't have to take a number and queue Monday morning, you can hand in everything and pick your passport up on the 8th."
Feeling a mixture of forlorness and ire, I called a taxi to take me back to work.  Luckily I managed to change money with another teacher when I got back to school.
So hopefully Monday all goes well as I head back to the Embassy.  But today is Sunday.  And I still have to wash my hair in a cold shower...
Cindy Vine is a South African author and teacher currently working in Ukraine.  She is the author of The Case of Billy B, Not Telling, Defective, CU@8 and Hush Baby.  All her books are available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format.  http://cindyvine.com 

Ten Things you Learn as an Expat

Being an expat can be addictive.  The excitement of living somewhere exotic, the adrenalin rush when you venture out alone for the first time, all help make the bungalow and white picket fence back home seem a little boring.  There is no excitement in knowing everything.  Life back home can be a little too predictable.  Here are ten things you learn as an Expat:
1.  How to make friends
The Expat Community is usually a very friendly bunch of people, all having a similar experience to you.  They share similar interests, love exploring and especially love sharing the knowledge they've gained about your new city with you.  Your fellow Expats will tell you about great restaurants that serve real food, where you can buy Marmite or some other favourite food from home, places you really need to see, etc.  You get my drift.  Your fellow Expats are a useful resource and within a very short while (like immediately) you will become a friend and be absorbed into the Expat Community.  Back home you might live next door to someone for ten years and never say a word to them.  But as an Expat, everybody who you can communicate with becomes a friend.  Many of the friends you make as an Expat will become lifelong friends that you keep in touch with over the years, even when you move off to a different exotic location.
2.  How to adapt
Adapt or Die is what comes to mind.  You might have to change what you eat, what you wear, and bite your tongue about what you believe.  Knocking the country that has taken you in temporarily is not a good move.  You can knock it after you've left.  Look on everything as an adventure and go with the flow.  Having lived in many different countries as an Expat, I find that I can adapt very quickly.  Remember that you are earning good money in your adopted country which is why you are there in the first place.  You are earning far more than the average local.  Try not to flaunt it.
3.  How to keep in touch
As an Expat keeping in touch with everybody becomes of prime importance.  All these people, even if they have moved on to other countries or gone back home, become your support network.  Facebook in this regard is brilliant.
4.  How to get around
You soon learn how to get from A to B.  Google Maps on my phone is a Godsend.  Whether it is on foot, by Metro, bus or taxi you will find a way to get around and explore.  And this skill will help you survive when you visit other countries on holidays.
5.  How to plan great holidays
At any gathering of Expats it won't be long before the subject of holidays comes up.  Have you been to...?  Expats know how to plan great holidays.  Exploring your host country is only for weekends, longer holidays are for exploring other countries.  And when people share what was great and what not to go and see, you assimilate all that info to create your own great holiday.  Living back home you can't afford holidays that.
6.  How to cope on your own
Expat living brings out your survival instincts.  If you can't do something by yourself there is no Daddy or Mommy to step in, you have to use your words and ask if you need help.  There will always be someone there who will help you when you ask.  You might also have to become a creative thinker and work out solutions to problems by yourself.  I've got through with Plan A, Plan B and Plan C.  On rare occasions I might have had to go as far as having a Plan Z.
7.  How much your family back home means to you
Absence makes your heart grow fonder.  There are no truer words than that old adage.  When you are away from your family you realise how much you love them and miss them.  You treasure Skype conversations.
8.  How to take risks
Living as an Expat is all about taking risks, leaving your comfort zone and trying new things.  You mght be required to try strange foods, take new forms of transport, find your way home when you are hopelessly lost.
9.  How to communicate with signs and grunts
Not everybody in the world can speak English.  No matter how eloquent a speaker you might be, to a local it might sound like gibberish.  But no matter, before you start picking up useful words and phrases in the local vernacular, you will quickly learn hand signals and gestures accompanied by grunts and sometimes even charades to demonstrate what you want and need.
10.  How to live a great life
Expat life is great if you set it as a goal to make the most of the experience.  Don't fight against things you don't understand or what seems cock-eyed to you.  Go with the flow.  Think of everything you do as a memory you are creating.
Cindy Vine currently lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine.  This is the 11th country she has lived and worked in.  Her children view themselves as global citizens.  Cindy Vine is the author of Not telling, Defective and CU@8, all available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the Apple iStore.

Surviving the first week

One week has gone by so quickly and I am still alive.  It's hard to believe that after all the visa hassles I finally made it to Kiev.  My apartment is quite nice, spacious if a little dark because of all the trees outside blocking the sunlight.  And brown walls, brown carpet, brown furniture doesn't help brighten it up.  I do have a green chandelier though.  The apartment is very reminiscent of the Soviet era.
At school I was thrown straight into the deep end with three PYP information evenings
three nights in a row.  That was the easy part.  Walking to and from school has been a challenge.  Especially in the rain.  After the first night walking home, I started cheating and taking a taxi home.  A full day's work and all you want to do is put your feet up and relax, you definitely need to get home as quickly as possible.  As a person who's walking has been limited to a day spent browsing shops at a mall, I have had to dig deep for my morning walk but the fresh air is quite enjoyable.  Or so I keep telling myself.  It is only a 30-40 minute walk though.  I can do it.
Not to many people speak English here, or if they do they are too embarrassed to try.  Haggling with the toothless old vegetable sellers who frequent the entrance to the metro is an interesting if entertaining experience.  Lots of grunts and gestures.
The bakery across from the school sells the most divine bread and pastries.  To date I have been good and avoided the pastries.  The school lunches are interesting at best and very Ukrainian.  I've had a delicious borscht and some other strange things that I was unable to identify.  Some tasted good, others okay and the long green things impersonating green beans but which tasted like fresh seaweed, I just could not do.  My taste buds huddle up and start shivering at the thought.
Being alone is well, lonely.  To come home to an empty apartment is not nice and I really miss my kids and family, especially Siobhan who was always a loud presence.  I find I talk to myself quite a lot and even start discussions about what I should eat for dinner.  The problem is that I have now started answering myself.  I wonder what I'll be like after a few months?
As I can't get the TV working (I need to get the landlord in anyway as the door to my little balcony where the clothes drying rack resides is jammed and doesn't open) I have been watching the TV series and movies I had saved on my hard drive.  Movies and series I had been saving up for just a time like this.  At least my internet works now.
It seems that walking is the norm here, and I looked up on Google maps and found a little supermarket about 1km from where I live.  The range of salamis and smoked meats and cheeses is extraordinary.  However, I did not find Gladwrap, tin foil or toilet paper.  The toilet paper that seems to be used here is definitely recycled paper and resembles the roll of paper that goes into the supermarket till machines.  It is rough and hard on your bum.  I was hoping to find some nice soft 2-ply but to no avail.  I haven't given up yet.  The meat looks fresh and good but what type it is is a mystery.  I think I bought some pork chops, beef mince yesterday, but the red steak/stew meat I have no idea.  It looks a little red to be beef...
Friday night, stopped off at a little bar/restaurant on the way home with some colleagues and had a very large pint of draught apple cider that was delicious and refreshing.  Yesterday there was a beerfest in town, but with rugby on and the rain pelting down, I decided to rather find the supermarket in between showers, and buy some washing powder to do some much-needed washing.  Two weeks worth as I had a pile from the week I was holed up in a hotel in Pretoria waiting for my visa.

Of course I have nowhere to dry the washing, so my clothes are spread out on the furniture in the lounge.  Apparently the central heating is switched on by the government mid-October regardless of the temperature, and it stays on until about April next year.  You can't adjust the settings and temperature, and while it is minus temperatures outside people walk around in shorts and t-shirts inside their apartments.  I suppose when that happens my washing will dry quite quickly.  I found an iron in the cupboard so guess I might have to finally learn how to iron.  Something I have managed to avoid my entire life so far.

Well I guess it's time for me to use some of that heavenly bread I bought and make myself some breakfast.  I want to do some writing today.  My goal for yesterday was watch rugby, find a supermarket and do my laundry.  I reached all targets.  Today's goal is to write my blog, pack away my hopefully dried clothes, do some school work and work on Hush Baby.  Sundays will definitely have to be writing days as there is no time during the week and when I get home I just want to chill.
Have a great week ahead!
Cindy

A visit to a Tanzanian Hospital

All I can say is that I am pleased I wasn't seriously ill or dying.  If I was I would have died trying to open a file.
My appointment with the visiting dermatologist from the UK was at 10am.  I was told to open a file first.  Nobody actually explained the process of opening a file to me, and believe you me, there is a process!  At 8.30am I stood in a queue that moved forward painfully slowly as there are always people who join the queue from the side, and always join it in front of you.  After fifteen minutes the queue dissolved and expanded sideways into a mass of people all pushing and shoving to get to the front.  After elbowing my way to the front after what seemed to be an unusually long time of jostling, I was told to go to the next window.  Another queue just as wide as it was deep.  Have I ever mentioned how I hate waiting?  And I couldn't even read my Kindle because I had to stand the whole time and try and keep my place by using my elbows to keep out those trying to push in.  Luckily, I perfected the skill of elbowing during numerous train trips to Shanghai when I lived in China.
When I finally got to the front of the second queue, I was told to go back to the first queue.  I nearly burst into tears.  My chest started closing and I could feel a panic attack developing.  By this time it was 10.15.  I had been queueing for an hour and forty-five minutes and had achieved nothing.  Like a sheep I joined the next queue, in my heart knowing it was a waste of time.  If I didn't have this strange growth jutting out of me I would have left.  A kind nurse in another queue asked me if I had a piece of pink paper.  Of course I didn't!  Why would I have a piece of pink paper?  Apparently, they only help people with a pink paper.  You have to first get a piece of pink paper from the department you are visiting, in my case, the dermatology department.  Nobody had thought to tell me this.  Two hours of my life wasted.  I hate that.
The nurse called someone to take me to dermatology, two car parks and three buildings away.
Now clutching the piece of pink paper, I once again joined the queue.  Some people who had been queueing almost as long as me took pity and let me go to the front and push my piece of pink paper through the little window.  I saw why the whole process took so long.  No computers in sight, everything written by hand.  Painstakingly.  Cindy was written down as Cinci.  At that stage I was beyond caring.  It was already 11am.  I had been there since 8.30am.  After handing in my paper I was told to sit down and wait.  At last I could read my Kindle.  After fifteen minutes I decided it might be a good idea to try and find out what happens next.  I once again rejoined the queue at the second window where it appeared you had to pay.  Of course, being a foreigner I knew I would get charged a lot more than the locals.  Another nurse who had been in the queue at 8.30am came into the waiting area.  "Oh Mama you are still here!  I have been and gone, been and gone and am already bringing in a new patient!"  My smile was a little sickly.  It was 11.20am.
The nurse saved my life.  I was ready to slit my wrists if I had to wait any longer in a queue.
She shouted over the crowd, got those in the front to pass back my new file, and escorted me back to dermatology where I could pay instead of at the main hospital area.  $38, not too bad.
The visiting dermatologist was wonderful!  She removed the offending growth, gave me a check-over, froze a few strange spots, gave me a lecture on using sunblock and told me if I didn't use it I'd get wrinkles by the age of fifty.  Um, well actually....
My specimen was put into a very official-looking test-tube filled with formalin.  However, the dermatologist told me that I should not be too impressed, because at the very best there was a less than fifty percent chance of getting the results back from the pathologty lab.  They lose it, or the power is out and the machines can't work, or they forget about it.  So maybe we will never know what was growing out of me!
The whole visit lasted four and a quarter hours.  Isn't life here grand?

My life is a B-Grade movie

Have you ever watched a movie and thought, "What utter rubbish!  That kind of thing doesn't happen in real life!  No way Jose, that's not real!"  Welcome to my life.  Even I often believe that my life can't be real.  That this is some kind of a weird dream I am living.  One day I will wake up and sigh and say, "Thank God it was only a dream!"  I pray that day comes soon.

There are those people who go through their schooling knowing what career path they are going to choose.  They succeed at everything education, relationships, parenting, career.  They have a gorgeous house in the suburbs, go on great family holidays every year.  They are always happy and smiling, a bit like in those toothpaste commercials.  I am not one of those people.
Whether my life was pre-destined to be as chaotic as an untweezed eyebrow or whether I subconciously create the little dramas and adventures that populate it I'll never know.  I just know that some of the things that happen in my life are as unbelievable as a plot of a B-Grade movie.
It always amuses me when people say, "You need to put that in a book."  The problem is that I don't write fantasy or science fiction.  I write realistic fiction.  If I write about some of the stuff that happens to me, my readers will say "far-fetched, can't be true, improbable."
For example, take the events of the past week.
When my mother said goodbye to us at the airport after our holiday in Cape Town, I told her to get her cough seen to.  The next night she was rushed to hospital unable to breathe after a coughing fit.  Diagnosis: Pneumonia.  Now remember this is summer in South Africa.  While much of the world is freezing, it's the hottest time of the year in Cape Town.  How do you get pneumonia in summer?  My mother was released from hospital the Monday, re-admitted the Thursday and put on antibiotics intravenously.  Friday night her blood pressure starts dropping dangerously low.  Friday night on the other side of the world on his way to work at the Ritz in Naples, Florida, my son gets knocked off his bicycle by a woman failing to stop at a stop street.
We now have two dramas, two plot-lines in this B-Grade movie.  Remember, I am living in Tanzania.  My mother and my son, both in hospital.  Only one of them on the same continent as I.
My son luckily only has torn ligaments in his knee, a sore head and a bone cyst on his elbow.  He will live although his bicycle is a total write off.  The woman pays his medical expenses and buys him a new bicycle.  Despite advice to the contrary, my son wants no more than this.  He figures it's immoral to make someone pay for their mistake.
Already some of you are thinking, two dramas on one night, how improbable.  But I swear to God it's true,
My mother makes slow progress and is eventually discharged the Tuesday afternoon.  On Wednesday she decides, despite being told to stay in bed and have complete bed rest, to amble over to my brother's house.  He happens to live next door.  My brother has a very big dog.  It's paws are the size of side plates and it slobbers everywhere.  I think it's a bull mastiff.  The dog was so happy to see my mother, it jumped on her knocking her flying.
Back in hospital.  Cracked vertebrae, effectively a broken back.  Remember, she hasn't yet fully recovered from the pneumonia.
Doesn't sound real, does it?
But it gets more bizarre.  My stepdad has had several back ops.  For the last couple of months he's been getting a lot of pain from a pinched nerve.  He's scheduled to have an operation on his back on Tuesday to fix the pinched nerve.  The same day my mother will be having an operation to repair her broken vertebrae.  How romantic.  A hospital honeymoon both flat on their backs, sharing a ward together.
Seriously.  I mean, seriously.  Does anybody's life get more B-grade than this?

Seeing red

There are times when living the expat life can be a bit of a challenge.  Things happen that make you ache with homesickness, an ache that moves through your bones and goes right to your core.  An ache that makes you want to hop onto the internet and book a ticket home right away.  Today was one such day.

Like other places I’ve lived in, it’s an isolated incident that makes you want to hop onto a plane.  Most of the time life is quite humdrum and pleasant.  In Thailand it was the touts pretending to represent a travel agency who scammed money off me; in New Zealand a burglary that left me with just the dust where my furniture and belongings used to be; in Korea it was being nearly killed every time you tried to cross the road; in China it was the pushing and shoving, hoiking and spitting, and the globule of mucous left for me on my motorbike seat; in Angola it was my daughter’s camera being confiscated by the police because she took photos of some butterflies.  In Tanzania I have to say it’s the racism.  Not by the majority, but by a handful who target you because you have a white skin.

You see, a white skin seems to indicate that under that pale covering you are an ATM desperate to hand out cash.  You get charged more at the market than locals, parking attendants only demand money from you when you park in town, cops will pull you over and demand money for not having the right fire extinguisher, etc.

I parked on the main road, just around the corner from the market where I bought a small kerosene stove.  When I got back to my car, I was immediately surrounded by a group of young men all shouting at me, telling me I’d parked illegally.  Earlier on I’d had cars parked in front of me and hand barrows filled with pineapples parked behind me.  They had since moved on leaving my car the only one there.  Glancing behind me I saw that I was quite a few metres away from the corner so that was acceptable; I was the right distance away from the kerb, so that wasn’t a problem.  Their accusations that I had parked illegally made no sense whatsoever.  They crowded around me as I inspected where I’d parked, pushing me and poking their fingers at me, shouting, yelling.  One told me they’d put a thing under my tyre so I couldn’t move.  I guessed they meant a clamp, but when I peered between their legs I could see nothing on my tyre, no clamp.  At first despite their aggressive approach, I was calm and pointed out that I had not parked illegally at all.  Another pushed away some dirt with his foot, exposing a yellow square roughly a third of the size of a dollar note.  My front tyre was about 10cm in front of the yellow square which had been hidden under dust.  Obviously, I had to pay each one of the eight young men before they would let me get into my car and leave.  They had never met someone like me before.

I can be pleasant, I can be kind.  Try and rip me off and I undergo a complete personality change.

With my blood boiling I started yelling back at them, telling them I hadn’t parked illegally.  I threatened to call the police.  They told me to go ahead, calling my bluff as I didn’t know the number of the police station.  I opened my car door telling them I was going to drive to the police station.  Five of them crammed themselves into the back seat and one hopped into the front before I had time to lock the doors.  “We’ll go with you to the police,” they said.  “The police will confiscate your car and lock you up in jail.  You need to pay us the fine now for parking illegally.”

My blood pressure rose and I literally saw red.  After jumping out my car I ran around to the kerb side and physically pulled them out of my car with adrenalin-induced strength, still shouting and yelling at them.  They started crowding me even more, telling me that I was in Africa and I’d parked illegally and paying them the fine was the African way.  The way they did things in Tanzania.  This made my blood pressure rise several notches more.  “I too am a born and bred African,” I shouted back, “And stealing money from people or trying to bribe them is not the way we do things.  You are just criminals, tsotsis!”

I locked my car and stormed off to get help from the curio shop down the road.  The gang had my car surrounded, if I tried to drive away I’d end up knocking someone over.  A young man with a backpack approached me as I hurried back to my car with my dreadlocked saviour from the curio shop.  “They are corrupt; just jump in your car and drive!”  So while the curio man and the backpack man distracted them, I drove off fuming.  Nobody besides the backpack man and the man I’d called from the curio shop came to my assistance.  They all stood around staring, like they were watching a play.

Luckily, I calmed down further along the road when I saw that Nakumatt, the Kenyan supermarket, finally opened.  There had been rumours of its opening for months.  Whether it was the lovely clean air-conditioned shop or the stocked shelves I’ll never know, but I decided not to jump on the next flight out.

If life was always smooth sailing it would be boring.  We need the annoyances as well as the happy times to keep us sane.  Unfortunately what happened to me is quite common in developing countries where you have people so desperate for money that they resort to crime and corruption to get it.  That doesn't make it right, but it does put it in perspective.