Things we take for granted

Life moves on at a steady pace. You wake up, go to work, go home, cook, go to bed, you wake up...and so it continues, day in and day out. What breaks the tedium of daily life, are the little unexpected things that happen each day. Things you never planned on, or previously gave much thought to as you took them for granted. Things like power, the internet, water, services, directions. We are used to flicking a switch, turning on a tap, getting in a fundi (expert) and the problem is sorted. Things here are very different. Sometimes it's funny, other times just pure irritation.

Take for example, the problems with my oven. I like to cook, create in the kitchen. However, this has been a little bit of a problem as I haven't managed to get my oven working properly. The first time I tried to use it, we couldn't get the gas to stop making its shhhhhh noise as it continued to come through the pipe making the kitchen smell like a gas tank. When I fiddled with the knob, it came off in my hand and a big dollop of blue tack fell on the floor. Now, I might not be very technically minded, but I do know that blue tack is not a good choice of repair material for an oven that gets hot. The fundi came to repair it and I was promised that it would work properly. But, whereas before only the grill worked, now only the bottom oven worked. I called in the fundi again and it was supposed to work. The week before last, after a long day at school I decided to make pizza for dinner. I prepared the bases, grated the cheese, and thirteen matches later, the grill would still not let itself be lit. By that time I was seething. I was not in a happy place. When I turned the oven switch off, I heard the shhhhh sound. Gas was coming out after it had been turned of! Siobhan quickly lit a match, we opened the oven and moved the match around like a magic wand. The bottom oven ignited with the oven switched off. Desperately, we moved the oven switch around to try and turn off the gas. Another huge dollop of blue tack fell onto the floor and the knob remained in my hand, loose, no longer a part of the oven. I was so mad that all the fundi had done was just stick it on with more blue tack, that I went to bed at 7.30pm. The story doesn't end here. I wrote a long letter of complaint to the head of campus, the fundi got called in and he said that my oven was so old it was irrepairable and he had told them that many times, but the maintenance manager at school kept telling him to try and fix it anyway. Mister Chucky, the school purchasing man who is in charge of maintenance while the maintenance manager is on leave, appeared at my classroom door. "We have brand new ovens in the storeroom, so we'll take away your old one because the fundi says its dead." I gave him a grim smile of thanks. If they had a new one in the store, why the hell did they keep trying to resurrect my broken one? But, the story still does not end. My new oven is half electric, half gas which I much prefer. I hate baking with gas. It has two gas hobs, two electric hobs and an electric oven. The fundi installed the new oven, and connected the gas. However, he did not connect the electric part, so now I have gone from four gas hobs to only two, and still no oven! I happened to mention the fact that I still have no oven last week, and the maintenance manager said, "Oh, I must organise an electric fundi to go out to connect it." If I never mentioned it, it would probably have never happened. But, that was four days ago, and the electric fundi still hasn't come. So, I still don't have an oven. My gas ran out yesterday. Payday is only on Tuesday, so I guess we'll be having BBQs in the meantime. I guess, at least we have food, some people don't have that.

We have many power cuts and not having a generator does make it a challenge. Without power, there is no internet, Siobhan struggles to do her homework by candlelight, and I can't fill my sausage orders as I now have an electric sausage machine. So, the next time you flick on a switch and you have instant light, think of us. Actually, I'm thinking of buying a rechargable battery-powered light. We definitely need to do something, because usually when there's no power, we just go to bed and there is only so much sleep you can have. I have finally given in and invested in a small TV. There's no point in Siobhan having a Wii if she can't play it. Of course, one does rely on power for that to work. Which brings me to water. To get water into our tank so we can have water in the bathroom to shower with, we need to pump it. When there is no power, the gardener can't pump the water, and the result is, no shower when you are hot and sweaty. No power also means you can't turn on your hot water cylinder to heat up the water, so even if yu had water in the tank, it would be cold. To save on electricity charges, we turn on the hot water cylinder only an hour before we plan on having a shower or a bath. I am becoming quite frugal in my old age. It could be something to do with paying for a child to study at hotel school.

Last Friday, my gardener, Kabelo, called me over to the garage when I got home. "Look Cindy, ducky, ducky," he said pointing at the garage. He opened the door and there was a large black duck with a red thingie above his beak, pooping. "No want ducky," I said in my best Swahili. Kabelo laughed and said, "No, ducky not for you, ducky for me." "But I don't want a ducky by my house," I replied, wrinkling up my nose in distaste. Kabelo smiled and I had a feeling I knew what was coming. "My ducky, my house. Friend give me ducky, but no money. My mother dead last week so no work. Want ducky. Friend give me ducky, but I give friend TSH 15 000. Cindy give me TSH 15 000." I sighed. Kabelo loves tapping me and my neighbour, Patricia, for money. He always has a valid reason. She's started to write down the dates and the amounts we give him in a little book. Lord knows why, as we'll never see the money again. By the way, TSH 15 000 is the same as US$15. I'm such a walk over. Like, I can really afford to just give away $15. So, I bought my gardener a duck.

We're coming to the end of our week's holiday. Most staff have gone to the coast or on safaris somewhere. We elected to stay at home and just veg out. Actually, I've managed to get quite a lot done in my latest book, The Case of Billy B. We also managed to download (well, the school principal downloaded for me as he has unlimited internet) and watch the whole of Season 5 of Grey's Anatomy. Oh my God, it was so emotional, I reckon I cried in every episode. Last weekend they had the rugby sevens here, with teams from all over Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda competing. Kenyan teams came frst and second. I sold homemade boerewors rolls. The rugby was quite good, although the guys playing were quite small and light. I hear that the kenyan sevens side is supposed to be quite good.

On Wednesday, Siobhan and I decided to treat ourselves with a day out. About 40km from Moshi is a hot springs called Chemke. The Swahili for hot springs is 'maji ya moto'. Yeah, it does sound a bit Japanese, doesn't it? Of course, when people give you directions, they are never as simple as they sound. The diploma English teacher, Alistair, said, "Drive on the Arusha road to Boma, turn onto the dirt road next to Mr Price and go straight." For the South Africans who read my blog, Mr Price is not that fantastic clothing chain, but rather a chain of seedy supermarkets selling items way past their sell-by dates. Well, we found Boma, we found Mr Price, the dirt road was harder to find as it is literally, a dirt road, easy to not see. Thereafter we became explorers of the ilk of David Livingstone. The road was not straight. It branched every couple of 100 metres or so, and we had to make conscious decisions about which branch to take. Something a bit, like the road less traveled. Can't remember offhand who wrote that poem, was it Robert Frost? Often, we took the road with the most tyre tread marks, thinking that as it was a popular choice, it must be the right way, but it wasn't. Sometimes the flat straight road, easy to navigate was the wrong road. The right way was the one where you had to drive over boulders and trenches so that your car was at a dangerous angle. We asked for help all along the route, and I became very good with my 'maji ya moto.' Eventually, we came to an oasis of palm trees after driving through a dry landscape dotted with boaobab trees, thorn trees, tiny cement houses, cows, goats, and Masai herdsmen. When we saw the hot springs, all the frustrations of the past week vanished instantly. The peace of the place hit you instantly. The pool, with it's warm water was so clear, you could see the bottom even though it was so deep you couldn't dive down there. As we floated and swam around in the pool, it was like years dropped off. I swear it is the fountain of youth. It was truly a magical place, worth all the hassle to get there. Strangely enough, not many locals in Moshi know about the pool. It doesn't feature in either the Lonely Planet or Rough Guide. It's a secret place, magical, mysterious. And then we came home and picked huge bunches of baby carrots from the garden, which were delicious.

So yeah, despite some of the frustrations, life is good. My blood pressure has gone to its normal 110/80, despite running out of the blood pressure meds a few weeks after getting here. I think that China didn't agree with me, health-wise, and Tanzania is so much better for me. Mind you, been struggling with chronic hayfever the last few days. All the greenery and pollen! But at the end of the day, we have to be satisfied with the small things, and not take it all for granted!

Never say that the ants have gone

Who the hell was Murphy anyway?
Never say the ants have gone
One would have thought that by my grand old age, I’d know how the world works. One would assume that I’d know all about Murphy and his ruddy laws. But, a wise old man once said, never assume as it makes an ass of u and me. Quite clever that, and probably quite true. I announced to the world that my problem with ants was solved. The blighters were gone. Vanished, forever removed from my home. This was obviously a misconception on my part. The ants has just temporarily gone on vacation. Obviously, the messenger ant read my missive about the ant problem being solved, alerted his cheery general, who then sent scouts to inform the ant CEO, that I was gloating at their demise. The ants were recalled from their holiday at the coast. They were lined up in squadrons, regiments even, of every possible type of ant on this planet, and dispatched forthwith to my humble abode. They arrived unheralded and unannounced on Saturday afternoon. They approached from many different directions. The big black ants with fat obese bodies, managed to squeeze their way through the gap between bath and tap, and congregated in their hordes around the edge of my bath tub. Others decided to use their bodies to make pretty ring patterns on my toilet seat. A few stragglers wandered around lost and left out on the bathroom floor. But not to be outdone, the medium sized black ants, twelve abreast, marched in formation along the wall from outside to congregate on my kitchen sink. A few squadrons ended up on my kitchen bench top, and still others practised their camouflage techniques, to blend in with the black beads Siobhan had accidentally dropped on the floor and neglected to pick up. Then, there were the little brown ants. The poor cousins, the ones that come out of the holes in the woodwork, who marched solemnly along the door frame to hold union meetings on the margarine tub, and feast on the droplets of Fanta Siobhan messed on the counter top. The ants were back! With a vengeance! But, quicker than a prostitute slips on a condom, I opened the cupboard where aerosol cans of ant spray stood at the ready, and I went ape. Completely wild, spraying everything that moved, including Siobhan who was trying to beat a hasty retreat out of the kitchen. And so began the Pink Pather’s theme tune, “Dead-ant, dead-ant, dead-ant dead-ant dead-ant.” Rambo had nothing on me. I swept from room to room with my weapon of ant destruction, until like Agent Orange, I too was consumed by the vilest of tastes in my mouth, my nose streaming from the poison, and I had to stop. The moral of the story is: “Never say that the ants have gone.” That is tempting fate and we don’t want that, do we?
Weddings, yes, there are some people who still want to get married. Weddings in Tanzania are completely different to anything you have ever witnessed before. The first wedding I inadvertently dropped into, I was completely taken aback and not too sure what was happening. You see, I was driving into town, and getting ready to go around the circle, when a long column of cars covered in ribbons and flowers and followed by a pick up truck filled with cutely dressed men in waistcoats and bow ties playing saxophones, trumpets and anything else you blow, beat me to the circle. Then, while I sat impatiently waiting, sitting spellbound in my car, the cars drove round and round the circle while the blow musician men played jazz-sounding music. The lead car stopped, I must add – on the circle, and a bride in a bridal gown befitting a member of the royal family hopped out with her groom in tow with his black tuxedo fitting snugly on his muscular butt. A photographer hopped out of another car and followed closely behind the loving couple, avoided tripping over the marigolds in the flower beds and snapped happily away as the couple posed – on the circle. Africa definitely has a vibrancy unrivalled in many ways. Since then we have seen many weddings, not always on the circle, but always accompanied by the fanfare from the pick up truck filled with horn-blowing musicians.
We are quite spoilt here with game parks in such close proximity to where we live. Sunday, all new teachers were taken to the ArushaNational Park on the side of MountMweru, the second largest mountain in Tanzania. We went on the back of the school’s truck which is used especially for non-existent roads. I made the mistake of sitting at the back of the truck on the back seat. Never sit at the back of a truck when you know you’ll be driving through potholes a fraction smaller than the super bowl. Many times we went over a bump and I literally left my seat and jumped about 20cm into the air. Despite my ample buttocks and extra padding, the landing was never soft. I discovered that I had a coccyx and that if you land hard on it, it shoots pains up your spine. Another discovery, was that the muscles holding my head onto my body are not as developed as they should be. My head bobbled like a baby’s mobile in the breeze. Muscles I never knew existed are aching. Luckily, I avoided bumping my head on the bar perfectly positioned at head-height at the back of the truck. Others were not so lucky. Some were walking around school today in a semi-comatose state, but that could have been the celebrating our safe return afterwards. We did drive past a cement truck that had overturned completely. There was no sign of what he’d hit to make him spin completely upside down. It was like he was trying to do a stunt which had back-fired. But, back to the animals. Lakes filled with pink flamingos, large herds of buffalo, zebra, duikers, water buck, giraffe munching thorn bushes wherever we went – I’ve never seen so many giraffe, vervet monkeys, hornbills, crowned cranes, black eagles, colobus monkeys and warthog running everywhere. Thick tropical jungle, grass plains, lakes, waterholes and a volcanic crater and the cherry on top – a lone hippo out of the water mowing the grass on the side of one of the lakes.
Man, Africa is a blast! Last week, a traffic cop stopped me and asked me for my driver’s licence. I have to admit, I’ve been a little remiss in filling in my driver’s licence application and paying the bribe to get it issued to me without being present. To make matters worse, my South African driver’s licence was in my other wallet which was at home. I gulped nervously, imagining a huge fine or bribe coming my way, and said with a watery grin, “Jambo, nzuri?” Which is Swahili for hello, how are you. Lesson one, always practise the little Swahili you have, it melts the hearts of those in authority. The cop smiled, and asked again for my driver’s licence. I replied that I’d accidentally left it at home. He then laughed and asked me if I thought I was a good driver. Obviously I said yes, and he indicated that I could go because I was a good driver. Phew! But, the minute I got home I put my licence into the wallet I use over here. No use in tempting fate. Like I did with the ants.

Life in the slow lane

Life meanders along slowly. Another day, another dollar. A little frustration, a big frustration. All punctuated by your interactions with fellow humans. The commas are the humorous interludes that join everything together and keeps you sane. Well, sort of. I mean really, how sane is sane? Is it not just a matter of somebody’s perception?
The internet woes continue. I have realised that there is no way that I’ll be able to market my books online. Not from here, at any rate. Not until the promised fibre optic cable arrives in Moshi. Apparently, it’s in Dar. However, knowing how things work in Africa, instead of getting cheaper and faster, I reckon it’ll probably get more expensive. Somebody will be wanting to make a mint out of the better service. Finally, after nearly seven weeks, we managed to get internet at home. That proved to be an uphill battle, as we had to rely on the school secretary to arrange everything. While she is a sweetheart, she is not the most efficient, and organised of people and has a tendency to see no rush in getting things done. For a start, she lost our application forms for the internet and neglected to communicate this to Patricia and myself. Patricia being my next door neighbour and the school’s Diploma Coordinator, who is also convinced I got the better house and garden. She is right though, although I keep telling her they are the same to make her feel better. Patricia is struggling to adapt to our African ways of doing things, having a sense of urgency that nobody understands here. As a result, she can be very negative at times which I have dubbed being in the ‘Patricia Zone.’ So, if ever we get frustrated, we say we are in the ‘Patricia Zone.’ She finds that highly amusing, but I digress. The secretary lost our forms. When we asked her why she never told us, she replied that she was waiting for when we next came to her office to tell us. Jeez, that could have been months! Finally, the fundi (Swahili for expert) arrived, but alas, he was unable to do anything, because for two weeks we had power cuts during the day. Well, we still have power cuts during the day, but at that time the power cuts just so happened to be every time he came to our houses to do the internet. Murphy’s Law. I tried to download an antivirus program, as the one I got with my laptop had expired. No such luck. Downloading anything chomps through your prepaid megabytes, so that you run out of money on your internet before you have downloaded anything. On the positive side, it is about four times faster than the school internet.
The school has open internet time on a Friday between 5 and 10pm, where you can plug in your laptop and upload upgrades for free. All week I waited for Friday, excited that finally I’ll be able to put Skype and an antivirus on my laptop. It’s amazing how such minor things can make you excited. It doesn’t take much, does it? Anyway, I started downloading AVG no problem. It took ages, as the school internet downloads stuff at about 7kb/s which is painfully slow. Two and a half hours later, and I’d downloaded 89% of the antivirus. Then there was a power cut. The three minutes for the school to turn on the generator, meant that I lost everything. There are no words for the anger and frustration I felt. It was like I had wasted two and a half hours of my life. Okay, I did get Skype, but still have no antivirus. Several bad words poured forth from my lips. However, I did get to have a good long chat with the principal, and his house is just off campus but he has the school internet. Unlimited of course, as you do when you are principal. He told me how he downloads all his movies and TV series using BitTorrent. He just sets it all up at 10pm and lets it download all night long. So, he’s promised to download season 5 of Grey’s Anatomy for me and Season 3 of The Tudors. When he’s done with that, I’ll get him to download Bones from series 3 on. It’s amazing, TV series one couldn’t be bothered with before, become the highlight of your life. Something to look forward to and chat excitedly about with anybody else who’s watched them. I’d brought Bones season 2, Grey’s Anatomy Seasons 1-4 and The Tudors Seasons 1 and 2 with me from China. I’d bought them awhile ago, but had never been bothered to watch them. With no TV, Siobhan and I quickly became addicted, racing through the episodes, as even if you have no power, you can watch until the battery goes dead on your laptop.
The power cuts and frequency of them are becoming a bit annoying. Although, there are times when it is exciting, and you feel like you’ve gone back in time and are living in the thirties, something like Out of Africa. It is often difficult for Siobhan to do her homework, because you can only work by candle light for a little while before your eyes start to take strain. I might have to invest in a little generator. I bought a small TV yesterday for Siobhan’s birthday. I’d bought her a Wii in China, and she hasn’t been able to play it since she’s been here. I’m going to wait awhile before getting cable. We’ve also added two puppies to our household, two little sisters, Labrador German Shepherd crosses. I don’t like male dogs because they pee against the car tires and the smell of their hormonal pee is nauseating.
I had my first visitor, Linda, who worked with me in Nanjing and is now working in Khartoum. It was great seeing her again. Poor thing though, she got up the Friday morning at 3am to fly here, only to find that her plane had been cancelled. So, she arrived a day late. Then when she was due to leave here again and fly to Zanzibar, we went to the airport and a gut feeling told me to go inside the airport with her and not just drop her off. A good gut feeling, because her flight did not even appear on the board. When I asked, I was told it would appear later, but I asked around some more and was directed to the Air Tanzania office, who told me that her flight was cancelled, and she should return the next day. Although friendly and apologetic, the Air Tanzania staff did not seem concerned in the slightest about the inconvenience they had caused to Linda and some of the other passengers who had been waiting inside the airport for over two hours. They had forgotten to put up the flight on the board with a cancelled message. Why am I not surprised? Anyway, it give Linda and I the chance to polish off the last remaining bottle of a South African Red.
Because of Eid, last weekend was a long one. We decided to head out to the Marangu Falls, which is on the side of Mount Kilimanjaro. Absolutely spectacular and breathtakingly beautiful. I’m taking my class back there on Thursday for a field trip. We’re doing a unit of inquiry on Explorers, and I’m going to drop them off in groups of 4 accompanied by an adult, with a compass and a grid, and they’re going to have to find their way down to the waterfall, map their route plotting landmarks and their coordinates. Basically, just practise being explorers. Tomorrow, we go on a teacher outing to the Arusha National Park to check out the wildlife. We probably haven’t explored as much as we should have. We have been out to the TPC Sugar Plantations twice for BBQ’s with some South Africans, and to watch some of the trinations rugby games. I’m so proud of my Springboks winning the Trinations! The outdoor life and BBQs with friends does make this an awesome lifestyle. Even with the internet woes and power cuts. I could never live in a place like China again. Mind you, who knows what lies in the future? I’m off to Mumbai in November for a workshop. I think all the humanity over there might be stressful, so many people everywhere, as life here is relatively carefree and unstressed. Like today my stress is, should I buy my meat first before going to the market? Should I have a second cup of coffee? This kind of life is addictive. Like Grey’s Anatomy, Bones and The Tudors. I hope the principal remembers to download the episodes for me!
Otherwise, all is well. Both Siobhan and I have been struck by a particularly virulent strain of flu which swept through the school, decimating numbers. I had 8 kids away from my class on Thursday, and 5 kids away yesterday. I have been soldiering on at school, but Siobhan has spent the last three days at home, sleeping, coughing, blowing her nose and making bead necklaces. Well, I guess that I had better get myself towards myself, feed the puppies, have that coffee, shower and get dressed. I’ll try and update my Facebook with my latest photos. Last time, it wouldn’t upload the photos, the internet is too slow. Mind you, it depends on how many people are using it at school, as that is what slows it down and why it is so much faster at home. Keep an eye out for my Facebook photos, I’ll post the link when I manage to get them on!
And the ants appeared to have left - until last night when they reappeared on my kitchen sink!

Masai and the mystery of the appearing ants.

I have a new ant situation. Every evening, under my wash basin, lie corpses of dead ants. Nobody has sprayed them. There are no live ants around. So, where are these ants coming from? Every day, my housekeeper dutifully sweeps up the ants. When I get home from school, there aren't any dead ants. But, when I go to bed at night and wake up each morning, there are piles of dead ants. The ants have to be coming from somewhere, right? Something has to be killing them. I don't really believe that in the evening when Siobhan and I eat dinner, live ants are marching the corpses of their brothers up the stairs to my bathroom to try and make me feel guilty about the murders I committed a couple of weeks ago. Ants don't do that sort of thing, do they? And so I bring you, the mystery of the appearing ants. Maybe the series of CSI New York I watch every night is starting to affect me.

This week I took my class on a field trip to a Masai Village. I spent a good couple of hours typing it up on my portable hard drive, but for some reason blogger won't let me paste it on here like I've always done. So, I wrote a hub about my visit to the Masai. You can read about it here. http://hubpages.com/hub/A-visit-to-a-Masai-Village I'll be putting the photos from the trip on Facebook as well, although at the moment, it is virtually impossible to upload photos anywhere. I'm not sure if it's internet speed or the bandwidth. It just takes forever. Maybe I must try and make my photos smaller files.

We went to a BBQ Friday evening, and another at the TPC sugar plantation Saturday afternoon. Both times I took sausages, now I have orders up the ying yang. The supermarket in town, Aleems, where I buy my groceries stocks boerewors which he buys in from Kenya at double what I'd sell it for. Now he ants me to supply his shop. He'll even do all the packaging for me, which was my headache part in China. The making of the sausages was simple. The packing of it was time-consuming. However, people have been saying they want to buy directly from me and not Aleems. I have to say, the new electric Kenwood sausage maker I have is so fast, it's only the thorough washing of the meat I have to do beforehand which takes the time!

Tony celebrated his 18th birthday on Friday. His first birthday without me being present. I think it was probably harder for me than for him. Siobhan is flat out busy with schoolwork and babysitting. She charges 10 000 shillings for her services, which is roughly US$10. I've told her to save it for our Christmas holiday. We're going to go to Pangani which is on the coast of Tanzania, just a few hours drive away, and then after a week of lying in the sun, take a dhow across to Zanzibar. A few days in Stone Town, then we're taking a ferry across to Pemba Island, which is a remote island off the coast of Zanzibar. A week lying in the sun there, and then back to Pangani, pick up my car and back home. We have a 4 week Christmas break which is rather nice.

Hopefully, this coming week I'll get my internet at home. I ambled down to the lady at the office on Friday to ask what was happening with my internet, which I was promised over a week ago. She said that after they installed my landline, which was supposed to have been done the same time as the internet, they lost my form. So, she smiled, telling me that I obviously had to fill in a new form. "When were you going to tell me that they'd lost my form?" I asked, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice. "I was waiting for the next time you walked down to my office." I just smiled, it was pointless giving a reply and perhaps explaining that it might be weeks before I next walked down to her office.

Which brings me to our three days without power at home. The electricity supplier has decided that we must all get prepay electricity boxes. Imported from South Africa. However, when they installed them, they only put a little bit of power on, to last us until the next morning, then we have to put more money on the card and recharge the electricity unit. However, when they installed the new prepay boxes, they hadn't yet got round to making the new cards. And, there was no way to put more power into your box without the card. Luckily, it only took them two days to make the cards. The school put on 30 000 shillings to give us a start, and picked up our cards for us. Unfortunately, they didn't indicate which card was mine and which one was the next door neighbour's. I gave both cards to our gardener who had come to school, concerned that there was still no power and he couldn't pump water up to our tank, and asked him to give them to the housekeeper who had access to both properties. Unfortunately, she didn't check the numbers to the meter, so the cards didn't work. She left the card on my table, and obviously, my card on the neighbour's table. Siobhan and I sat in the dark waiting for the neighbour to arrive home after seven, so that we could swop cards and get our power connected. We were determined not to light candles another night.

Other than stomach cramps and a touch of what I suspect is amoebic dysentery, as everybody has been hit by that, I'm okay. Siobhan has been battling a cold and tonsilitis since before we left Cape Town. I keep telling her to go to the nurse at school, but hanging out with friends is more important. Today her throat is so sore and I can see her tonsils are swollen, so think she has reached the antibiotic stage. Hopefully, she'll go and get it sorted tomorrow. Okay, have some homework sheets I need to get organised. Have a great week!
love
Cindy

Back to the sausages!

This is definitely my kind of life. You don’t have to dress up here and totter around on stilettos and wear make-up plastered all over your face. The dust will destroy any look you are trying to go for, would stick to the make-up and stilettos will cause you to break a neck walking on the uneven dirt roads. So here, you dress for comfort which is what I’ve always done. It always seemed so out of place in societies where women dress up to the nines and are all out to impress. Me, I could never be bothered to impress anyone. This is me. Take it or leave it. But, when I went to Arusha this weekend, I didn’t only buy an electric mincer/sausage machine. I also bought a handy dandy mirror on a stand. Having no mirror in the house, I had resorted to brushing my hair in the morning by looking at my shadow on the wall. I figured out, if I turned the light on and stared at my shadow on the wall, I could easily see any stray tufts of hair sticking up in strange places at odd angles.
Back to my electric mincer. What an absolute pleasure, so much easier than a hand machine. I still have a big box of sausage casings I bought in China, that went by ship to Cape Town and then flew via KLM to Moshi, Tanzania. I think my sausage skins have travelled more than a lot of people in the world. Bright and early this morning, hardly able to contain my excitement, I headed to the market area on the Dar es salaam road, to track down some pork. I bought a little guide yesterday of Swahili phrases, and practised before hand how to ask for pork. Nyama ya nguruwe. I can do beef and goat as well in Swahili. As most of the little supermarkets in town are owned by Indians, none of them stock pork, and I really needed pork for my sausages. I found the area where they sold the meat. Nothing like most people had ever seen before. Tiny little dark rooms with a serving hatch, door and dead carcass hanging from a hook. No refrigeration at all, just blood splattered floors and walls from long ago kills, and a big wooden tree stump as the chopping board. No meat saws or sharp knives. No aprons or hair covered by a hat. Just a man with a machete, which he wielded with frightening force, splintering bone and sending shards of it in many different directions. I looked at the scene before me and debated whether or not to go ahead and buy the meat. People were queuing up to buy meat. They all looked healthy, so I thought, yeah, let’s give it a go. Be a risk-taker. I ordered 3 kg of pork and asked for it to be without bone, and used sign language and sound effects to explain that I was going to use it to make sausages. No problem, he slashed at the carcass with the machete, chopping it cleanly in half, the bottom half falling on the floor marked with year-old blood stains, and thankfully took down the remaining part still attached to the meat hook for me, which he chopped a huge chunk of boneless meat from. The scale was the old one with weights. I’m sure I’d seen one like that in a museum before. I first asked for mutton and he said I had to buy it from the butchery in town. Very pricey they are, as the mutton is imported from Kenya. He asked if goat would do and I said sure. So, he directed me to another stall that sold only goat meat. Same procedure there, and that guy directed me to another stall that sold beef. I was pleased I’d worn my trainers as I trudged up and down rocky sandy paths.
You’ll be pleased to note that I washed the meat thoroughly and got rid of all the bone fragments and other strange bits, before I minced it, added the boerewors spice and stuffed the casings. Siobhan and I had a BBQ and cooked a small piece of beef, pork and goat steak I’d put aside, as well as my boerewors sausage which was freshly made with all three kinds of meat in it. It was delicious, one of the best I’ve ever made. It’s now four hours later and we still feel healthy, so obviously the meat was okay. Will see how we are in the morning, before I offer any to other people.
We had a bit of an alien invasion on Wednesday night. Siobhan went to her room and there were all these brown things hanging down from her window sill. Closer inspection showed that it was made of sand and white eggs, and fat worms were moving around, waving themselves like tentacles. Very creepy. It definitely looked like a scene from one of the alien movies. I took photos and showed the maintenance guy at school who thought they were some kind of termite trying to set up a colony, which means they must already be living in the wall. Our bedrooms are on the second floor, so tunnelling inside the wall was the only way they could have brought the sand up. Paulo, the maintenance man drilled little holes in the window sill and went crazy with the spray, resulting in Siobhan and I both waking up with chronic hay fever at 4am! I told him he should have put us up in a hotel, and he replied that the inside spray was only poisonous to the insects. The outside poison he’d used was the one very toxic for humans. Charming.
Saturday, I also bought more veggie seeds. We ate some home-grown spinach last week and again tonight and I’m really getting into this home-grown organic vegetable way of life. I’m beginning to feel like a farmer, and I love it! Had a bath this morning to scrub my feet. Unbelievable how filthy they were. Showers don’t clean them properly, especially when you have a shower like ours that gives a slow trickle of about 10 drops a time! We had no power Thursday and Friday night, so no hot water. Power cuts are a way of life here and you get used to it. We have candles handy, and I bought a flashlight in Arusha so that I can find my way to the front door if I get home and there’s no power. Nearly broke my ankle the other night as didn’t see a rock and completely missed the step. Life is definitely never boring.
Finally had my car fixed. It was doing this annoying thing of not starting reliably and sometimes being dead that you couldn’t start it at all. My guess was the starter motor which proved to be right and luckily just needed minor repairs. However, now that that is sorted, I’m struggling a bit to get the car going in the mornings. The engine turns no problems, but it seems to be struggling to make a spark. Eventually, after about 10 minutes if takes. So now I’m thinking, probably the points. Think the gap isn’t right. The poor gardener, Kabelo, washes my car several times a week but it is all in vain. I live down a very bumpy dusty road, and the minute I drive 10m from my gate, the car is already covered in fine red dust.
I’m really loving working at the school, it’s very laid-back and the kids are great. The management here are terrific. The internet is a bit sporadic, and I’m waiting to ‘hopefully’ get internet at home the coming week. The guy who installs things is in no rush, and I might have to fetch him from town. Did I tell you that we live just out of town in the supposedly upmarket area called Shanty Town? Haven’t seen any shanties, so not sure why it’s called that! Oh, and even the local little supermarket down the road has a huge selection of South African wines and bottles of apple cider, so I am in my element! Friday night I went to an Aloha Party run by the student PE teachers from Ireland. I went with the intention of showing my face and staying for half an hour tops, as I needed to be up bright and early to drive the hour and a half to Arusha the next morning. Big mistake. They persuaded me to try their punch which was delicious but lethal. More alcohol in there than anything else. So I tried the sangria which was even better, but made the mistake of eating the fruit. Five big plastic cups of sangria and one of the punch, and I regretted not sticking to coke all the way to Arusha the next day when I drove with a pounding hangover.
Anyway, definitely time for bed. Catchya later, luv you guys!
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

Lost luggage, again!

The last few days in South Africa were hectic! The awesome family lunch at Quay 4 on the Waterfront on the Sunday, then Monday and Tuesday trying to get the Hermanus Rainbow Trust website done on Siobhan's macbook. After all the time and effort put into creating the website in iweb, the host guy couldn't figure out how to upload a mac website onto a non-mac server. Of course, we couldn't help him either. And, to make matters worse, the silly man had deleted completely the existing website, so now there was nothing. A void, an empty space. A, "This page has permanently vanished" message. No possible bloody way could I leave my Mom without a website, so we managed to upoad Wordpress onto the server, and I started making her a Wordpress website, just so she has something there. Worked until late Tuesday night, then got up at 5am to continue on the Wednesday, as we were supposed to be leaving Hermanus at 10am the latest. I wanted to do a little shopping first, and hadn't even packed our bags yet. Well, only finished the website at about 10am and then had to pack. Trying to pack a lot into a little is something I have perfected over the years. I managed to pack one big suitcase, two big backpacks, two draggy carry on bags and one gym bag. For us, that was hardly anything. We were no sooner getting ready to go out the door, when my Mom's housekeeper came running out with a pile of freshly ironed washing that we'd forgotten to take. I had to try and stuff it into the hand luggage, which proved to be a big blessing.



I had contacted South African Airways previously, to query why we had 20kg each from Cape Town to Johannesburg, and 30kg each from then on. The lady on the phone was very unobliging, and advised me to go on a wild shopping spree at the duty free in Johannesburg to make up our weight allowance. Fat lot of help that was. But, when we arrived at Cape Town International at 4.30am, the check-in man looked so tired and bored, he'd obviously pulled an all-nighter, and checked in our big suitcase and the biggest backpack. I had the one I usually carried on my back, and Siobhan hiding around the corner with the two carry on suitcases and sports bag. The check in man never asked about hand luggage or said how much our two big bags weighed, as I was worried they were over the 40kg we had between the two of us. The flight to Johannesburg was uneventful and we managed to get away with our heavily-laden hand luggage which was way over the 7kg we were each allowed. When we arrived in Joburg, we went to the baggage collection - our bags weren't there! I went to advise them at the lost luggage office, but then they looked at our baggage slips and said that they'd been put in to fly direct to Kilimanjaro with us. I did think that this was a bit strange as we were changing from the domestic to international terminal and still had to check in for our international flight, but stupidly, didn't take it further. When we checked in, the check in guy there asked us for our luggage and we checked in ALL our hand luggage with the exception of Siobhan's school backpack and our laptops! It was only 37kg! Which of course means, that we were very lucky to get away with carrying 37kg of hand luggage on the plane when we were only allowed 14kg! Never have we traveled with so little hand luggage. Both Siobhan and I had no idea what to do with our hands. The plane was delayed 45minutes, which meant that we didn't have much time to make our connecting flight in Nairobi.

The plane was so empty, Siobhan and I each had three seats to ourselves, so could really spread out, relax and watch the onboard movies. The Air Kenya plane was old and the fittings onboard really showed the age, but it was a pleasant enough flight, even though the pilot had problems with take-off and landing. His take-off was a little hair-raising and definitely reminded me of why I hate flying. It is such a long way to fall if something goes wrong. We arrived in Nairobi and it was all confusing, we weren't sure what we were supposed to do, or where we had to go. Eventually, we found that we had to head to the gate next to the gate we'd come in through. Twenty minutes after arriving, we were boarding Precision Air to Kilimanjaro. Siobhan was very concerned when she saw our little plane had propellers on the wings! They looked more like lawnmower blades! The plane was full and I wondered how they'd fit in our total of 77kg of luggage on such a small plane. There was no room on board for hand luggage and I was relieved that we didn't have any. I shouldn't have wasted my time worrying how they'd fit in all my luggage, as obviously they didn't. Our large suitcase and big backpack never arrived, and still hasn't. there is still no trace of it and at the moment, each airline seems to be blaming the other for losing it. As I like to travel braless for comfort purposes, all my bras were in my big suitcase. So, I have been braless ever since I arrived in Tanzania. What a good impression I've been making!

For such a small plane it was a great flight and flying past the top of Mount Kilimanjaro was one of the most spectacular sights I've ever seen. There's not that much snow at the moment, but still, seeing it at dusk sticking up above the clouds - simply mind-bogglingly awesome! Everything had gone so smoothly, I should have been prepared for what happened next. As we had to fill in swine flu forms and our arrival forms, they asked me for our yellow fever cards, which of course we didn't have. I had checked before with the Tanzanian Embassy in South Africa, and on their website, and as Cape Town was not in a yellow fever area, we didn't need them. we would need them when we left, but I thought I would get them later. Unfortunately, I didn't factor in the fact that we stopped in Nairobi for 20 minutes which IS a yellow fever area. Therefore we needed them otherwise they'd deport us. The school principal tried to bribe the official, but for once he was above bribery, and we had to pay $50 each to get a yellow fever injection. Siobhan started crying, and the guy then momentarily had second thoughts, but decided he wanted to make us safe. Yeah, right. He showed us that the vaccine bottle was unopened and the needles were new, and put on one glove to make it semi-hygienic. Luckily, we haven't felt any ill-effects. The rest went quite smoothly, we paid for our visas and then had to queue up for the immigration official to take our photos for the visa. I asked him to try and make me beautiful and he laughed. However, when he saw the photo he'd taken of me, he sent me to another immigration official to take another photo as he said the other guy's camera took more beautiful photos.

Then we went to collect our luggage from the baggage collection area, and only our luggage we'd checked in at Johannesburg was there! Most of our clothes, lost! Four days later and still no sign of our things! I should have been suspicious of everything having gone so smoothly with our luggage! I reported the missing baggage and the official demanded a communication fee. I told him I only had rands, so he said he wanted R200. I said I only had R100, which he took and gave me no receipt. Obviously a bribe. When I asked for a receipt, he said he'd have to walk to the control tower to get the receipt book, and that it was getting dark and I wouldn't want him to do that, would I? So, I then countered, okay, will give you the R100, but if you don't find my luggage I want R200 in return. Looks like I might have to drive to the airport to collect!

Otherwise, have settled in quickly! The management here are great, and we have the biggest garden ever! The house is basic but comfortable and I'll do it up a bit in time. We definitely have enough room for guests, so, book your visiting times! The school itself is well-organised and very laid-back. The best place ever to raise young kids. I wish I had come here when my children were younger! For those of you teaching, enjoy the start of your new school year or term! Keep well, and keep safe!
love
Cindy
xxx