Cars and condoms

I have decided that the veritable Murphy should be hanged, drawn and quartered, and his body parts put in a black plastic bag and dumped in the sea next to Dexter's victims.  Murphy and his stupid laws drive me crazy.  They always happen when you don't want them to.  Take this week for example.  My car has been going swimmingly well.  But frigging Murphy knows full well that I'm traveling to Dar for my book launch this weekend, so what does he do, he creates havoc.
My electric window which I'd just had repaired at a cost of $70 three weeks before, refused to wind back up.  I pressed the button and the little motor inside the door hummed and buzzed like a constipated bee.  Luckily, the fundi repaired it and only charged me $10, but I'm a little too scared to use it as I can't afford to be in Dar the weekend with a car with a window that can't close.
Then some kind parent points to my back tyre with beautifulk tread and shows me a bulge.  Lovely.  Not a good idea to drive to Dar with a bulge sticking out of your tyre.  There's not a place in moshi where you drive in and get a tyre repaired or replaced.  No, you have to find a car spares place, negotiate a price for your tyre, load the new one in your boot, then find a fundi on the side of the road who changes tyres.  $130 for the tyre and thank the good Lord, only $3 for he fundi.  My other tyres are all Goodyear.  The new one is called Goodtime or something like that.  A Chinese copy of Goodyear.
Tyre all sorted, my wallet screaming with hunger pains, we go to El Rancho Thursday night to celebrate my promotion starting August of Head of Primary/PYP Coordinator.  I click my key remote to unlock the car to go home.  Click, click, click.  Nothing.  the car stays locked, the blue light on the dash of the alarm stays flashing.  I manually unlock the door with the key, as we used to do in the good old days.  Alarm goes off, sending the waitresses scurrying around like ants.  I try and start the car with the alarm blaring, but it has a special cut out feature.  Good if it's a robber, bad if it's you.  I search for some button to turn off the alarm, but it remains elusive.  I look for wires to yank, but they are too well hidden.  Whoever installed the alarm did a blastedly good job.  The waitresses are now sitting on El Rancho porch, laughing at me and my attempts to turn off my car alarm.  I want to get home.  The MSG in their food is already having an effect on my stomach.  I can feel it bubbling and rumbling and I know without a doubt, that I need my bathroom.  My hair stands up on my arms.  "We;ll walk," I say to Siobhan who glares at me and lifts her heavy backpack onto her back as she's only just returned from a very wet camping trip on West Kili.  I lock the car, the alarm blissfully stops, but the blue light still flashes that it's on, and we walk home.  Luckily, it's just around the crner, but Siobhan grunts and curses and cries, but I pretend not to hear her, just trudging on ahead, selectively deaf.  I sort of sadistically pray that the alarm will keep going off during the night and wipe the smiles and laughter off the waitresses faces.  But it doesn't.  All it does do is give me a sleepless night as I spend all night tossing and turning straining to hear my alarm going off inbetween the sounds of yapping, barking, howling dogs.  Our usual nightime lullaby.
Of course it rained all night long, so the next morning we had to wade through mud to negotiate our way to school.  Mr. Chucky, the school purchaser, took my keys and managed to get the batteries replaced, so thank God now it works.
On my way walking to El Rancho after school to fetch the car and try out the key, I came upon a pile of five used condoms on the side of the road.  Yes, I'm afraid I did count them as I found them intriguing.  they offered up so many questions.  How did they get there?  Was it one man who had sex five times or a gang bang?  Where did they come from?  Did some man just throw them out of the window as he drove past?  Because he couldn't have had sex there, as it's the road which is quite busy, and next to the road is a gravel path, the little stones would have been a passion killer for any woman, and then a deep ditch, so why were the condoms on the gravel?  Intriguing, definitely food for thought.  At least someone is practising safe sex.
Well, had better pack, I'm leaving for Dar-Es-Salaam in an hour.  Siobhan wants toasted hot cross buns, so I have to do my mommy-thing.  Wish me luck for my Book Launch on Monday night!  Have you bought your copy of The Case of Billy B yet from Amazon.com?
love
Cindy

Roll on holidays

Schools out on Friday!  Yippee-dee-doo-dah or however you write that.  I should be more organised with an hotel booked but I'm not.  All I know, is that my big book signing/book launch which kicks off the start of my African Book Tour is at A Novel Idea, Slipway branch, Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania on Monday 29th March at 6pm.  I haven't even decided yet, whether I'm driving to Dar on the Saturday or Sunday, or if after the book signing, we'll hop on a ferry and spend a few days in Zanzibar.  Apparently, after 3 months of no power, the power is finally back on in Zanzibar.  So what to do?  At the moment, I have no idea.  I'm so caught up in writing Not Telling, the story is so consuming, I think about it constantly.  I'm not sure how it ends yet, I'm hoping the characters will decide for me.
Hopefully, this week will fly.  I'm definitely ready for a holiday.  Quite a few people around me have been hit with malaria of late, so it's definitely in our area.  I might have to get some of that mozzie spray to keep them away.
I really have to start working on the planning for our drive down to Cape Town in June.  I have to get a carnet de passage, to allow me to drive my car through different countries.  The problem is, is that they like to keep your carnet at the border here which is going to be a problem as I'm going to be driving through a few different countries and coming back another route.  Hopefully, I'll be able to make them see sense, but I'm not holding my breath.  Money will probably have to change hands to make it work.
Well, breakfast for me and then I'm doing some more work on Not Telling.  Have a chapter to finish, and this one has to end in a twist so I need my wits about me.
Have a great week!
luv

Cindy

No power, no shower

When will the big rains come?  I've heard so much about them, how the roads turn to mud, water run-offs overflow and houses flood, but the positive is that the rains fill the dams.  And, for a country that runs on hy7dro-power, they need water.  the last couple of weeks it's been like it was when we first moved here.  Almost daily power cuts, always from about 6pm at night going through to about 11.30pm.  I don't bother with candles anymore.  as soon as the power goes out, the battery on my laptop goes dead and it's dark outside, I just go to bed.  I can't be bothered with straining my eyes with poor candlelight anymore.  Last week, when we did have power, my body is already so tuned into early nights, that I was so tired at 8pm I went to bed, only to wake up at 10.30pm, work on my new novel until 1am and then go to bed.  Unfortunately, the disadvantage of no power during the day, which does happen sometimes, is that the gardener can't put on the pump to pump water to the house.  Which means when I want to shower at 6.45am, not having been abloe to shower the night before as there was no power for hot water, then there's no water to shower with, even if there is power.  Highly frustrating.  Going to work feeling dirty, trying to clean your dirty feet with spit on a facecloth is no fun.  it puts me in a bad mood all day.  But I do tell the kids in the morning, no shower so don't cross me, and they tend to listen to that and take it on board and behave.

Siobhan spent the past week practising like mad for her song in the Variety Show on Friday night.  If I hear Taylor swift's Fifteen again I just might scream, and if I haven't had a shower, I just might kill.  I really want to work on my new book, Not Telling, as I am on a roll.  However, since I accidentally knocked diet coke over Siobhan's macbook, it no longer works.  although we have a television, we have no cable, and our dvd player has stopped working, says 'Disc error' everytime you put a disc in.  The internet says that it's because of dust on the laser, so i have to try and clean that, because Siobhan is unable to entertain herself quietly.  All she wants to do is watch movies or TV series and she can only do it on my laptop.  Which means I can't write my book.  And it's my fault she's in this predicament, as I spilt the coke.  When I tell her I need computer time, she plays her guitar and sings.  Loudly.  I can't concentrate then, so just save my work and hand her my laptop to watch movies with and go to bed.  Teenagers.  I'm so grateful when teachers give her homework to do, as then I can get some of my work done, although she sings when she does homework as well.  Unfortunately, she doesn't have an off button, or volume control.  But I have to say, she did a fantastic job at the Variety Show.  She does have an awesome voice.  Her first act was an Indian dance group.  That was pretty good, they looked like a group of Bollywood dancers, only thing is, not an Indian in the group.  She's taking Indian (Bollywood) dance lessons every Friday afternoon, and she is very talented, I must say.  Takes after her Grandmother, that's for sure!  When the lights dimmed and she stood in front of the microphone to sing, I started shaking so much and held my breath, I was so nervous.  She oozed confidence, and was fantastic.  I was so proud of her, and when the song ended and everybody started cheering for her and applauding, I started hyperventilating from holding my breath for five minutes during the song.  I found it embarassing when everybody came up to me to congratulate me on Siobhan's amazing voice and singing.  Like seriously, what I have I done?  I just popped her out and she definitely hasn't inherited my singing voice!

The great news is that my order of books arrived on Friday from the US.  they only took two and a half weeks to arrive, so now it's all go for my big book launch of The Case of Billy B in Dar-Es-Salaam on the 29th March.  Which reminds me, I need to search online for some cheap and good accommodation.  Not sure if that goes together or not.

Spent all of yesterday in the sun, so my face looks like a toxic tomato after it's been dropped in nuclear waste.  The day started off as a bit of a nightmare, but improved considerably as it progressed.  I was supposed to make a batch of Hertzog cookies for the South African stand at the Arusha campus's International Day.  I was going to be baking all Friday afternoon, but then remembered that I didn't have a beater to make the meringue.  My friend, Mags, leant me her one, and the plan was that I was going to make these cookies after the Variety Show.  Unfortunately, the show only ended at 10pm and when I got home, there was no power because of a power cut, so I set my alarm for 5am and went to bed.  But because I was scared *I was going to oversleep, I woke up every hour to check the time.  After mixing up my short pastry, I realised that I don't have my rolling pin, it's in storage in Cape Town, so I cursed heavily.  I made the dough softer so I could squish it into the patty pans with my fingers.  Next problem, was that I had no time to let the cookies cool down as I should before lifting them out the patty pan, as I had to be at school at 6.45am to leave on the bus with noisy kids for a swim gala in Arusha.  More cursing, broken cookies glued together with apricot jam.  Siobhan woke up and asked me why I was complaining to the cookies as they are inanimate and can't respond.  My answer was a glare and more cursing.

My swimmers swam like they were being chased by crocodiles and made me so proud.  As usual, I failed to take precautions against the harsh African sun, and ended up being burned to a crisp.  Then went straight to International Day and immediately downed a big bottle of ice cold beer even though I hate the stuff.  It was nectar and didn't even touch sides.  My friend marina, brought out an ice-cold bottle of South african white wine, and I thought the gods were finally on my side.  Unfortunately, no corkscrew, which put a bit of a spanner in the works.  With the white wine rapidly warming up under the hot sun, I quickly skedaddled down to the French stand where this guy Michel, who has a French cheese and wine shop in Arusha, was standing selling expensive glasses of his frightfully expensive nasty French wine.  "Hi Michel, howya doing?  Could I please use your corkscrew to open up my bottle of wine."
He wrinkled up his nose as if he was a mole who had come across something unpleasant buried in his mole-hole.  "No," he said in his frightfully put-on French accent, "I vill not let my cockscroo touch a piece of shit bottle like that."

Excuse a mois Mr. Frenchy, I thought to myself, this is not a piece of shit bottle but a bottle of good quality cheap South African plonk.  I laughed, mistakenly thinking he was joking, and repeated my request, and he repeated his answer and waved his hand for me to disappear.  His girlfriend told me he was being serious, he meant it, and I should go.  Well Gaston, er Michel, you are so lucky I never grabbed your 'cockscroo' and shoved it up your arse.  Luckily, the Swiss stand were far more friendly and obliging.  It could be because of that yodelling they do on the alps, and they lent me their Swiss army knife with corkscrew.  The South African wine was delicious, far superior to the French plonk that is sooooooooooo expensive, and I was truly tempted to go back and hit him over the head with my empty bottle of South African wine, but I managed to show some restraint.  That and because we had just opened another bottle and had to drink it before it got too warm.  A bus trip back with extremely noisy singing shouting kids and I thought my head would explode.  Mind you, it could have been a combination of sun and great wine.  Dinner at friends, great company, and back home at 1am, a long day, and other than an altercation with some Pool Mommies from Braeburn School at the gala and the french twerp and his precious 'cockscroo' it was a good day.
But, no internet at home because now my phone line is down.  Power, but no phone.  Guess, you just can't win, eh?  But the Stormers won, beat the hurricanes, so our Super 14 Rugby is looking good this year!
Have a wonderful, wonderful week ahead, and remember to stay far away from Frenchmen and their 'cockscroos'!
love
Cindy
PS. Check out the Blog Hop!

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

Parasites in Paradise

The weather seems undecided on whether the rainy season is going to start, or if the temperature will just keep rising until we start to melt. I think I’ve already started to melt, like a huge ice-cream in the summer heat, drip by drip. It’s hard to believe that at this precise moment, there are places in the world where it’s cold and snowy. I’m grateful I’m living with tropical heat, although making a snow-angel in the snow does sound tempting.


Unfortunately, my up and down, but mostly down stomach has started to get to me, and the headaches have become quite stressful. After feeling so rotten on Wednesday, I left school early and nipped over to Doctor Makupa down the road. Blood tests seem to indicate I have a touch of Malaria, but the good doc’s convinced I have a parasitic infestation of Giardia. Now, research on the internet shows that this is a delightful little parasite that resides in fecal matter, which I have obviously consumed through having ice-blocks made from contaminated water, unwashed vegetables or the like. Virtually impossible to pin down the source. The good news, is that I won’t die. The bad news, is that until it’s out of my body I’ll feel crap. Now these little parasites aren’t too keen to leave. After the blood test, the lab techie gave me a little plastic bowl, a kitchen towel and a toothpick and pointed me to the bathroom in the corner. Unsure as to what the role of the kitchen towel and toothpick was, I locked myself in the closet bathroom and attempted to squeeze out something for the lab techie. Unfortunately, hearing the laughter and chatter of the lab techies on the other side of the door put me off my stride and I was unable to perform. Usually, I am able to produce urine samples on demand, but scatological ones were beyond my reach. They took back the little plastic bowl, and instead gave me an old pill bottle with a very small opening and a toothpick and instructed me to fill it in the comfort of my own home. I was perplexed as to how exactly I was going to pop my parcel into a bottle with such a narrow opening, and the function of the toothpick still evaded me. However, as has been happening, straight after dinner my stomach needed a workout and I had to race to the bathroom. I only just made the toilet seat, let alone having time to try and hold the small pill bottle underneath me and aim my fecal matter into the narrow opening. After sorting myself out, I found myself kneeling before the porcelain throne armed with the toothpick, and trying to harpoon the smaller floating bits. I inadvertently discovered what the toothpick was for, when I speared a floater and managed to whisk it straight into the container without messing. Proud of my achievement, I realised that this wasn’t anything anybody else would really appreciate.

Other than that it was another week in paradise. The IB Evaluation team came and went, the one evaluator is at Northside School in Botswana and is going to organise a speaking engagement there for me when I drive down in June. I’m starting to get excited for my big road trip, and after discovering that the new bridge is built between Tanzania and Mozambique, I’ll be returning via Mozambique. Otherwise, things are quite busy at school now I’ve taken on the big inter-schools swimming gala which will be held on the 1st May, and have just been elected as Chairman of the Staff Association. And on top of all that I’m still working like mad on my new book, Not Telling.

I’ve decided to do a book give-away on my Facebook Fan page, so if you haven’t yet become my fan on Facebook, now’s the time to do it. The poster is below.

Otherwise, have a great weekend and new week ahead. Been snowing on Mount Kili but not affecting us down here.

Love

Cindy

Welcome to my BookWorld!

There are times in my BookWorld when I feel as if I am finally getting somewhere.  I've managed to start to put my idea of a Book Tour into fruition.  I had this idea, seeing as I'm driving down to Cape Town from Tanzania, I may as well stop at bookshops along the way, and do a sort of an 'African Book Tour.'  The notion sounded rather romantic I thought.  Well, I have finalised my launch of this African Book Tour, it will be held at A Novel Idea in Dar-Es-Salaam on the 30th March 2010.  They are talking about getting in television and newspaper reporters, and while this sounds exciting, I am quite nervous.  I've never done anything quite like this before.  My book signing in Nanjing was small potatoes compared to this and they are treating me slike some kind of a celebrity, which frankly, I find quite frightening, being the quiet and reserved type of person that I am.

No sooner had I fanned my face as it was overheating with excitement from the Dar-Es-Salaam news, than I discovered the most amazing exciting thing ever on Amazon.com.  Someone has put up a great review for The Case of Billy B, which I have copied here.
5.0 out of 5 stars I had tears in my eyes, February 13, 2010

By Readers Favorite "Readers Favorite" (Hawesville, KY USA) - See all my reviews

Based on a true story, this is a fictionalized account of one boy`s history of child abuse. Born with a cleft lip, ignored by his mother for the first six months of his life, she walks out on him and his father. His Army father is now faced with the task of raising Billy by himself, trying to keep a roof over their heads, and feeding and taking care of Billy while trying to further his Army career. Finally, realizing there was no other choice, he leaves the service and vows that he and Billy will make it.

The women he goes out with only have one thing on their mind... Marriage. Billy`s dad finally becomes consumed with two things in his life,beside Billy, Sex and Vodka. Unable to hold a job, he is always on the move. Ending up in Michigan, he meets up with a woman who runs a day care center. Infatuated with Chris, she is very abusive toward Billy, becoming a very real threat in their lives. Not only does Billy suffer the abuse of Stella, his father is not much better. Mentally, Billy has withdrawn into himself and has seen and endured more then any child his age should.

One has to read this book with an open mind to see and visualize the sheer torment that this young child endured. Called a freak and a misfit, can there be any help for this struggling father and his son? As he and Billy are continually stalked by Stella, it seems Billy becomes a pawn in the game of survival. Can Chris save himself and provide a stable home for them.

I had tears in my eyes reading this just wanting to hold Billy and show him that there was love in this world and no need for the suffering he was going through. The ending of the book left me with open minded and cries sequel. This book is highly recommended, but be prepared for coarse language and sexual content. The book contains material not suitable for those 17 and under.
 
Besides all the good The Case of Billy B stuff, I've been working flat out on my new novel, Not Telling and also managed to publish a new hub on Hubpages.com Common mistakes make by women during sex, as a follow up to the one I did called Common mistakes made by men during sex.
 
This week is going to be a busy one as we have our evaluation visit from the IB.  Hope your St Villainstine Day was awesome!
love
Cindy

Barking dogs and power cuts

This past week has flown by in the blink of an eye. First it was Monday, and then it was over, and now here I sit on a Saturday morning, woken up by my neighbour’s loud generator , knowing that it means that we have no power. Luckily, I charged my laptop last night while I was waiting for said neighbour’s barking dog to stop. That dog is driving me crazy. Granted, it doesn’t do that yappy thing every night, but when it starts it just can’t seem to be able to stop. Maybe the neighbour has a switch and instead of turning on the generator, he turns on that bloody dog. It’s not a deep booming powerful bark. It’s a high-pitched yappy bark that operates on a level of sound that penetrates your brain. And it’s non-stop. The other night, it barked like that until 5am. I couldn’t sleep and could hear the damn mutt’s bark getting more croaky and high-pitched as the hours ticked by until its throat was obviously so sore from barking continuously, that it stopped. In fact, it was probably still barking, but because it had strained its voice from overuse, it lost its bark. Imagine the dog barking, but no sound coming out. I hope the dog grows those nodules on its voice box that famous singers get. But last night I was tired. I’d just returned from a three day camping trip with 56 ten year olds, had nipped over to a friend’s for a BBQ and was home ready to go to bed for an early night’s sleep at 9pm.  I hadn't slept at all the night before as my room was next to the kitchen and the camp cook decided that the only way he'd be able to feed 80 people pancakes for breakfast, was if he stayed up all night to cook them, so I had him banging around the kitchen all night, and of course, the smell of cooking pancakes wafting through my window...
However, on my return home, it was to find that bloody mongrel across the road having one of its non-stop yappy sessions. No way would I be able to sleep. For some reason, that particular yappy bark seems to carry, and it sounds like it’s right in my garden, which it isn’t as my dog is fast asleep. At eleven pm I was debating whether or not to take that dog out permanently by chopping off its head with a machete, or using my bare hands to strangle the life out of it. Instead, I wandered down to my front gate and shouted extremely loudly for the dog to shut up. Unfortunately, the askari who is supposed to be guarding the house was asleep next to the gate, hadn’t heard me creep up but woke up with a fright when i suddenly started shouting next to his sleeping form which I hadn’t noticed in the dark. I think he might have pissed his pants. The dog stopped for a total of five seconds after I shouted, and then started up with more urgency than before. I am at my wits end as to why it was barking as it was overcast and there wasn’t a moon. Just for the hell of it, i guess, well i might just terminate it, just for the hell of it. So take the infuriating dog with the boom boom boom and African rhythms coming from the Glacier Hotel down the road, sleep was not going to be easy. At half past midnight, I finally staggered to bed and attempted unsuccessfully to sleep. Finally, utter exhaustion set in and I slept dead until the bloody generator. What does he use to run it? Rocket fuel? Why does it have to be so loud? Maybe, he has his blasted dog running on a treadmill to generate the energy to run the thing and the yappy barking was the dog’s protests!

After some school issues that didn’t involve me other than me having to spend a total of seven hours after school in meetings Monday and Tuesday, I went on camp for the rest of the week. We stayed on a farm in West Kilimanjaro. Spectacular views of the plains and the mountain on the way there. I was lucky, my tent had broken poles so I got to sleep inside the guesthouse. A real bed! The first night, we were supposed to be having vegetable curry and chicken curry. I looked at the bony bits of emaciated chicken, and thought great! Can’t wait! Thanks goodness the kitchen at school had forgotten to pack in the curry powder and tomato pastes, so I had to drive around until i came to a big town so I could buy the necessary ingredients, and some potatoes as they’d forgotten to buy those for the BBQ the next night. As I’d taken along my potjie, I bought some pieces of beef ‘steak’ which could have been anything hanging up from a peg on the ceiling, and thought I’d supplement the chicken curry by making a beef potjie. I knew the meat would be as tough as an old boot, so I bought a can of coke and after browning the meat and onions, boiled it in the coke, then let it cook slowly with some veggies for three hours. Oh my God, it was delicious, the meat so tender, unbelievable! I was in charge of dishing up the veggie curry, and discovered that it’s not only my daughter that doesn’t really like vegetable. Next to me was Katy, serving the rice.. She’s the 18 year old sister of a girl in my class who has Down’s Syndrome, and she came along to keep an eye on her sister. She was brilliant, a credit to her family! Anyway, a little Indian girl in my class, only child in her family, treated like a princess, had brought a backpack filled with food for the three days. Her mother had not trusted our cooking, obviously. This of course was banned, bringing your own food and keeping it in your tent, as it’d attract safari ants and the last thing we wanted, was the little princess being chomped by safari ants in the middle of the night. The other teacher from our other campus confiscated her food, which of course up set the princess making her cry and wail and sob and want to call her father and go home and ask, “why, why, why, why can’t I?” over and over again like a stuck record. “Because i said so,” didn’t work with her either, neither did the explanation of why she couldn’t keep a three day’s supply of cooked food unrefrigerated on the ground in her tent. I asked her why she wouldn’t eat our food. She said there was nothing there she liked or could eat. I looked at the sobbing little girl in front of me with an incredulous expression on my face. “What?” I asked, sarcasm dripping from my tongue, “Don’t they have rice in India? Or curry? They don’t have curry in india?” Katy next to me started laughing so much, she dropped the serving spoon in the bowl of rice, but the little princess nodded and said, “Yes they do have curry and rice in India.” She dished up some, enjoyed it and came back for seconds. Later, we did sneak a look inside her backpack and found it contained rice and some kind of a curry, probably vegetable!

Another highlight of the camping trip, was the little down syndrome girl in my class falling in love, with a pretty boy from the other campus. The staff were all relaxing on the veranda, when we were interrupted by a little boy, “Miss Croome, you must come quickly there’s an emergency, Jack can’t leave his tent!” Expecting the worst, my colleague from Arusha jumped up and raced to see what the problem was. When she returned, she couldn’t stop laughing, apparently my little DS girl who is 14 and filled with racing hormones had parked herself outside his tent and was waiting for him to come out so she could kiss him. “I love you Jack!” she shouted from time to time. Jack was terrified. But after a while, he did see the funny side and ignored my little darling’s amorous advances the rest of the trip, as she sat adoringly at his feet or stalked him, following him wherever he went.

My group of kids were the expert group on forestry, and we went up into the forest to see the difference between indigenous forest and the pine plantations. They’re quite clever here, to protect the vast natural forest from being chopped down for firewood, as it serves as an important watershed, they have planted 4500 hectares of pine and cypress forest all along the perimeter, so that that wood is used for logging and timber, and the natural forest is left intact. There are large elephants living in the natural forest who apparently come down from time to time and destroy the potato and carrot farms along the perimeter of the pine forest. We didn’t see any wildlife, although we did hear hyena in the middle of the night, their distinctive, “Woowee, woowee,” giving you cold shivers. But one of the other expert groups went to a game reserve and to see the impact of game reserves on the environment (all high brow stuff for 10 year olds) and they saw game and a recently killed carcass of a wildebeest. The guide with them must have told them it was probably a cheetah who had done the killing. Of course, this is the kind of thing kids will brag about to other groups, especially children in the group who only saw trees! So, one of the kids in my forestry group came up to me that evening, “Miss Cindy, it’s not fair, the game reserve group saw a cheetah killing a cantelope!” I cracked up. I couldn’t help it. The visual in my mind of a vegetarian cheetah pouncing on a melon trying desperately to roll out of the way was too much!   

Apparently, while I was away, Moshi had no power for 24 hours. It came on just before we got home from our camping trip. Sometime in the early hours this morning, it went off again. I have no idea when it will be back on again. So, I might head over to school to see if their generator is on and I can copy this onto my blog. That bloody dog has just started yapping and howling. 9am, should I go and buy a machete?

Siobhan is writing her own songs, and composing music to go along with them on her guitar, making it just as difficult for me to concentrate on my writing as that bloody barking dog does for me, Tony is working hard and enjoying this practicum in the hotel, and Kerri is singing in a jazz bar - here's the link she sent me, so you can listen to her great voice.  She definitely could do something with that voice!  Maybe she can sing with Siobhan like the female version of the Jonas Brothers? 



  Here's the link of Kerri singing in a Chinese jazz club.

(I'd like to credit, Diane Bowe, the most awesomest parent who came along on the camp and was the official photographer, with the photo of the whole group of us and my delicious beef and coke potjie.  The trees I took myself!)