TIA Tales- Pets & Vets

As I prepared for the craft fair this weekend I spent a lot of time in town and when you wander the town you are guaranteed to cross paths with both street people and street dogs. These require two entirely different stories, i am certainly not comparing the two, but it suddenly occurred to me that our little furry friends easily warrant a TIA Tale column for their mad existence out here.

For a start most local dogs are what we call ‘shenzi’ (Swahili for a bit of everything, mismatched, also used to describe a rubbish car or dodgy fundi- another great Swahili word!), there isn’t really any breeding here and few Tanzanians keep them, in fact many are really afraid of them.

Anyone who lives here will have heard the street dogs howling at night. It’s the eeriest sound, like baying wolves. It starts with one or two and then it spreads in a wave of sound until the howls go up in unison across the whole area.

The pet dogs are largely imports and most frequently imported as guard dogs – so Rottweilers and Alsatians are popular options. Our two blondes aren’t quite in that league; we have a lab and a small fluffy thing, both of which are more likely to lick you than bite you. Anyway, the pet options are increasingly popular and this week several of my friends – in one of those odd moments of synchronicity – have decided to set about bringing in a dog.

The problem, though, with doing things against the tide out here is that you make your life pretty difficult – and it means pet owners frequently have crazy tales to tell.

There’s the problem of feeding them – local shenzi dogs will pick through rubbish dumps, or if they’re fed in the house they get treated to rice and dagaa (tiny little fish that smell absolutely revolting!). If you want to get dog or cat food like Whiskers or anything fancy then you may well need to visit the big cities (Dar or Nairobi) and stock up, or pay through the nose!

But that’s nothing compared to the dangers they face out here. In the uk my cats would bring in mice and the odd bird, here the birds could take them and they’re more likely to catch a rabid bat, poisonous snake or aggressive lizard!

Plus there are ticks. These things are seriously gross. They latch onto your pet and then suck, slowly. Over a few days they get so bloated that they go from little English wood louse shape to a perfect swollen round, and then they fall off, fully satiated. If you try to pull them off before they are ready they often take their revenge by popping all over you! They can also offer tick bite fever. Imagine my friend’s delight when she looked in the mirror one morning to discover she had one on her face! She said at first she thought developed a huge mole overnight!

And when they have these encounters there’s no such thing as the veterinary clinic to pop to! We do have a vet, we have a couple actually, but it’s all mobile, and they work with what they’ve got – and that often means using you as an assistant!

A friend of ours from a nearby gold mine needed his dog to have an operation not so long ago and we volunteered to host it and the vet at our house as getting the vet to the mine site was a bit too much of a distance. I came home from work that day to find our kitchen table in the car park with the dog – split neck to tail – bleeding all over it. Rather than apologizing the vet simply waved me over and asked me to hold onto a particularly bloody flap of skin whilst he removed some apparently no-so-vital part of the poor animal’s insides! This is by no means an uncommon story around Mwanza. We replaced the table!

You can’t even imagine how many neutered dogs seem to still go on heat, or even have puppies in some cases!

It’s all pretty basic. Medicines for animals are frequently human meds and any luxury bits, like those comedy cones to stop dogs biting stitches, need to be provided by the owner!

I have to end this blog entry with a reference to The Hero Dog. This was a little shenzi dog who had a nasty accident, I assume with a vehicle because one leg was partly removed and what was left was horrifically mangled. We’d see her, hopping in three legs, and try to avert our eyes. It was disturbing. Poor thing. Many of us talked about getting a vet to put the poor thing down, but she was a wily street dog and we could never find her when we wanted to. She disappeared for a while and we all assumed she’d died, and then suddenly there she was, still hopping, but bravely going on, finding food and somehow, against all odds, surviving. I admit I don’t know where she is now but I’ll never forget The Hero Dog.

Vet or pet stories to share anyone? Please feel free to add your comments! Thanks for reading.

The write time – facing forwards

Turns out I’m a butterfly writer and am working a dystopian fiction novel – who knew?! It seems there is a term for everything in this industry, and why not? We are supposedly wordsmiths so I guess it makes sense.

Butterfly writers leap from project to project, and style to style, always having to filter ideas because there are just too many of them! I never realized it was a ‘condition’ but now I’ve been diagnosed I’m developing coping mechanisms! One of these is to set monthly targets.

This month I am going to:

• Maintain positive relationships with editors from Destination, Travel News, Salt n Pepper and What’s Happening.
• Approach a minimum of 5 new UK-based magazines (I’m going for the big guns now!) with viable pitches for features
• Write another chunk of the book
• Blog every week
• Enter more writing competitions

Since I last wrote an update I have been on a serious rollercoaster of success and disaster, confidence and absolute despair at my total hopelessness as a writer. I never expected this journey to grill me the way it has, but the more I integrate myself into the world of writers the more I seem to hear this as a common story. Thank goodness that writers, by nature, share, is all I can say! – otherwise I might well think I was losing the plot (sorry, writer joke!) entirely.

So, in support of my mission to keep facing forwards, I won’t bore you with the low times. I’m sticking with the positive theme of last week’s ‘Good Stuff’ for this blog so let me start with the really great news: Over the past few weeks I’ve been part of an online writers’ community for people attempting to write novels. As part of the site there is an ongoing assessment of your work – in a nutshell writers can ‘publish’ the first 7,000 words of their novel and then you review other people’s work, giving them marks and feedback. For every review you do you get a point, for every point you get a review from another writer. The marks are collated and the books are ranked. There are hundreds of writers on the site, all competing to get into the top ten – once you get there you get a review by a really big publishing house (and of course you just might get noticed). Anyway, skipping to the important bit… I posted chapters from my second book ‘Creating 2054’ (which it seems is not actually sci-fi with a twist but actually slots neatly into a genre all of its own – dystopian fiction). At the time of writing I’M RANKED NUMBER 11!’ Sorry for SHOUTING I’m just so excited! Keeping fingers crossed for a few more good reviews and a leap into the top ten for later this month of course!

I’ve had my fair share of tough reviews and struggled to pick up ad continue but the lesson for this month is definitely that criticism makes you better. The negative words would follow me about for days, seared into the back of my eyeballs, but they forced to me to sort out the weaknesses and to find solutions and actually inspired a few major changes to the original format of the book (which I’m only half way through but it’s definitely getting there now!). And some of the positive ones have really touched me and served to keep me going.

At the end of this month I will finally get to here about the Bats Blood poetry competition, which a lot of you have supported me in (thank you!) so I’ll keep you posted on that. I’m also awaiting news from a couple of short story writing comps.

In the past few weeks I’ve written pieces about the Street Children’s World Cup; a writer called David Read who grew up with the Maasai and has had an amazing life (he’s 90 now and not quite as together as he was so it was quite a mission but great fun); a piece on the Mara Triangle; on Stonetown in Zanzibar; on the Western Corridor of the Serengeti; and on how to handle criticism! It’s all good and random – I’m keeping in Mwanza style! I think I can safely say I’ve escaped the old routine of school!

More TIA Tales next week.

In the mean time, a huge thank you to everyone who is supporting by reading this blog, by checking in to Melissa Kay on Facebook, following on Twitter, reading my articles or just generally listening to me! Here’s to the top ten and poems on wine bottles. Thanks guys.

TIA Tales – The Good Stuff

It’s been almost four months since this blog began and you guys have helped me reach over 7,000 hits across 32 different countries – incredible! Thank you. But if you’ve been reading the TIA Tales all this time you may well have reached a point where you’re wondering why the heck I bother living here! So today I decided I’d make a change and tell you all about the good stuff, the way I see it there’s plenty to tell.

I wanted to communicate just a little of the joy that I get from all of the elements that make up life in Africa and which are easy to forget when you’re struggling against the many set backs you tend to face here. And as I began to scrawl a list I realized how difficult this week’s blog would be to write because I want so much for you to see it all too – plus where should I start?!

Well, I’m going to start where I started, before I ever even came to Africa. My mum grew up in Rhodesia and used to talk about the smell of the rains as they were about to hit and I knew even then that there was something magical about this continent. Now I am here I have witnessed just what she means. That intense pressure in the air and the zinging, singing scent that is both earthy and metallic, and absolutely new, is intoxicating. It’s especially great when it’s been powerfully hot that day and it feels as though the weather needs to break. When the skies open and you feel that torrential power it’s awe inspiring, it’s like the earth is exhaling. You see, it never really drissles here. Africa is a place of extremes and the weather is no different. It’s either dry and sunny or WET!

The other absolutely magical weather related phenomenon are the electrical storms we get here in Tanzania. I’ve never seen anything like them. They are violent, explosive and so loud that the thunder shakes the house, but the real beauty is in the lightening. Slices of light fork from the sky and momentarily illuminate everything in a mad blue strobe effect, now imagine that reflected in the water of the lake and you have a scene that is beyond any photographers abilities.

Listen to me! I’m English, of course I would start with the weather, but I am not suppose to like the rain. I think I only like it because it is not the norm here. Plus even when it does rain it’s warm.

OK, so rain and storms. I doubt I’ve succeeded in persuading you to move here yet (if you’re one of my readers who doesn’t already live here). What else…

Life here is a mixture, but if you take the highlights for a moment I think I could sell it to just about anyone. I live with a view of Lake Victoria, we take the boat out and zoom between islands, pulling in on little bays and picnicking under palm trees. Out on the water a little while ago we spot otters and as we watched a fish eagle swooped to steal a fish that one was eating. The power and accuracy of those birds is spectacular. We have crocs, the occasional hippo and plenty of huge monitor lizards. The wildlife is endless and I haven’t even started on the Serengeti yet. But we also have rocks.

Rocks? Oh yes! Mwanza is famous for its bizarre rock formations and they really do inspire a second look. I’m no geologist, but these are special. In fact, I often pause when I’m driving or snap a photo from the boat to appreciate these ancient natural sculptures which are an insane combination of solid strength and precarious balance.

Our little community shares cultures, countries, religions and colour and muddles into a social scene. We share sundowners at the yacht club, we party at Tilapia hotel, we bring elements of our old lives into this new one with braais and St Patrick’s Day and west end theatre, sports, music and art. It’s another thing we balance, but when we wobble there is always someone to hold on to, because we’re all in the same boat and that creates a unity that is just as solid as those rocks. And let’s face it, friends count for a lot, wherever you are.

I can’t write about the good stuff without mentioning Swahili, that beautiful language which I am struggling to master but am so chuffed when I manage to make myself understood (and so grateful to the experts who don’t correct, but catch my intended meaning and smile encouragement!). With words like ‘tikitikimaji’ (watermelon) and pilipilihoho (chili pepper) what’s not to love?

I can find a ‘fundi’ for everything here, that’s definitely part of the good stuff for me. I come up with some random idea and there is always someone to help me make it happen. Just in the last week I’ve worked with a fundi who carves wood, one who makes my photo frames, another who stitches the clothes I draw, a metal fundi who is making the top section of the children’s mobiles I want to create and a shoe fundi who is making beaded sandals for me! How much fun?! It’s all part of my craft fair preparations but it means I get to work with local, skilled people and give them new ideas and a new outlet and I absolutely love it.

And there’s the fact that here I can set up a craft fair, sing with a band, take kids camping in the bush, write a book, be a journalist, sell my photographs and be all the random parts of myself and no one even blinks (except when they try to explain my job to someone else!). You can be whatever you want in Africa, as long as it’s authentically you.

I’ve mentioned living by the lake, but I also have to mention living by the Serengeti. Just an hour and half down the road and we are at the gate to the world’s greatest game park, second only perhaps to its neighbor, the Ngorogoro Crater. These vast wild spaces are a privilege to explore and those spine tingling moments when you come across a big cat or a herd of elephant, a hunt or even a kill, are … I have paused in my typing here as I cannot find a word, I’m not sure there is one for the thrill and the way time stands still and nothing else is present but what you are seeing, for the power you are witnessing, the fact we shouldn’t really be there to witness it all, the knowledge that in all that space you just happened to find that particular moment. I will never tire of safari.

I could write all day describing my favourite things. Here a just a few of the things I love that I’ve found here:

The first warm-butter light of the morning, melting over everything

The feeling you get when a lion locks its yellow eyes on yours and you feel ‘seen’

Fat little babies bottoms hammocked in a kanga on mama’s back

The swaying hips of a hawker carrying her wares on her head

Brightly coloured kangas on a washing line

Dry grasses swaying in a ripple of breeze

Lemons from my garden

Children climbing mango trees

Finding a chameleon in the road

A tortoise wandering into the hairdressers

Seeing people who have nothing laugh

Kindness is the most unexpected places

Glowing smiles

A trusting hand placed in yours so that you know you can do nothing else but try and help

Watching the baby kite in the nest opposite my office window grow strong and learn to fly

Learning to laugh when it all goes wrong

Those of you who know these things, please feel free to add more to the list. I’d love to hear a few of your ‘whiskers on kittens’ favourite things. There might be plenty wrong, but there is also a great deal that is absolutely right and I will never stop being grateful that I live here.

Over to you…

TIA Tales – power cuts

Power cuts are very much a part of life here in Tanzania and can cause some pretty hectic situations.

Believe it or not there have been days at a time where the entire country has been without power. I can tell you, you’ve never seen anything like the absolute blackness when it all goes down at once. It’s an eerie soot-soft silent blindness that descends, followed almost instantly by the thunderous sound of hundreds of generators all roaring to life at once.

Of course the vast majority of people in this country have neither running water nor electricity, let alone a generator, and so it doesn’t affect them much, but living conditions are improving all the time and the strain on the electricity providers is beyond what they can handle. Suffice to say we have a lot of power cuts.

When a storm brews up over the lake we all know that sudden click is coming, that’s pretty much inevitable, but it’s the one’s you never could have planned for that really create the situations.

For my first example I have to mention the school play. Try as you might to have thought of everything, you cannot anticipate 40 kids on stage in full Lion King costumes, mid-song and accompanying dance routine when the power goes out. We had the generator on standby but someone had to change it over and that person had chosen just that moment to disappear!

It was only a minute, but it felt like twenty and two things stand out for me. First, the audience never flinched. To be fair they tend to talk right through performances here anyway, but no one moved, or panicked or raised their voice, they simply waited – that’s how used to it we all are. And second, the students simply carried on singing! Ask them now, a few years on, and hardly anyone will remember that power cut, but as the director, I do! Thank goodness no one fell off the stage or knocked over a large piece of set (though it would have made a good TIA Tale!).

OK, so for me that was pretty tense. Now imagine you are in the pub watching the finals of the Rugby World Cup with all your mates, everyone’s dressed up in their team’s colours. The action has just begun again after half time and everyone is shouting at the screen. Oh yes, that’s the moment it picked to cut out. The groan went up from everyone in unison and we were forced to rely on updates via magical internet phones for a very stressful 20 minutes before the TV was reinstated via a generator.

I thought that groan was loud, but I had not heard a thing until I heard the same groans echoed from pubs all over town when the power cut during a Man United, Liverpool game. Now I don’t get football, just not a fan at all, but Tanzania loves it and they especially love the British teams so this was really taken seriously. Not least because many of the smaller local pubs would not have access to a generator.

Some of the funnier occasions where the power has dropped (Tanzanian English creeping in!) have included shopping in our tiny supermarket where one second everyone is wandering the little isles and the next some kid has plunged into magazine stand completely disoriented by the sudden blackness! Or the time when a guest of the school was giving an especially long and tedious speech. The power went and an involuntary sigh of relief went up from the assembled students. “I guess that’s my cue to sit down then.” He quipped when the microphone was reinstated. The silence in response was cringe-worthy!

Of course I’ve mentioned the seriousness of power-outages for major hospitals (see my piece on the mystery deaths in TIATales – hospitals) but mostly there are good contingencies. Either a generator is set up to automatically kick in, or the hospital doesn’t have power in the first place!

It’s the little things that often catch you out though. Like putting your phone on charge and going to sleep, then leaving for work to find it’s about to die – the power was out all night. Or recording your favourite TV show, sitting down to watch it and discovering you only have the first ten minutes. Stuff that you know in the grand scheme of things really isn’t important, but you still curse it at the time …and then feel ashamed of yourself afterwards. Actually a lot of the time power cuts just change the course of your day – you can’t do one thing, so you do something else instead – and I quite like the shake up of routine and the fact that everyone accepts your excuse for things you couldn’t get done! It reminds us all of how lucky we are to have electricity at all.

TIA Tales – flying

There was a pretty hectic storm last night, with thunder that sounded like heavy artillery and lightening that lit the whole room. This morning our road was completely washed away… again (see my piece on fundis!). Weather like that always makes me think of the poor people who happen to be in an aeroplane when it strikes for some reason, and that got me thinking about some of the pretty great little stories I have on the subject of flying. Particularly in light of the recent Air Tanzania crash – the last of the fleet as I understand it (thank goodness!).
Flying within East Africa is something we all do quite a bit, far more than the average European. That’s partly because we have to travel larger distances to reach civilization in this vast land, and also partly because the roads are crap (did I mention that before?!). Pretty much every time we go there is some sort of an adventure, whether it’s lost luggage, a crazy drunk guy repeating the one line of Shakespeare he knows (for two hours!), turbulence that leaves your stomach way outside the plane you’re in, or the wheels not actually engaging when you need to come in for landing!
Yes, it’s all rather more hit or miss than it ought to be. Now don’t get me wrong, the standards here are set at exactly the same levels they are anywhere else in the world and there are rarely any major, life threatening problems (I know I’ve mentioned a couple in the first few paragraphs but that was just for dramatic effect, honest!). The problems we do encounter are generally the sort that aviation standards may not have thought to consider. Take, for example, rain that it is so severe that the chocks holding the planes in their parking spots all floated away and the planes begin to skate around the airport! Who would have known that it could rain metres of water in one night?! Or the fact that cockroaches appear to have made their home in the panels of first class and like to crawl out at several thousand feet – maybe the pressure is hurting their little ears! How do you plan for that?
One of my favourite anecdotes about flying involves a trip from Dar I took recently. I ended up on the same fight as a friend of mine. He’s a writer, treasure hunter, jewellery maker, factory owner, you name it, and he carries a gun!
Right. I’m now going through the airport with a guy with a gun! (He’ll be reading this now amused as I managed to play it totally cool at the time!).
I’m telling you I had a whole new insight into the systems…
Surprisingly things go pretty smoothly, as he hands over his certificate and ammunition and the weapon is taken away for him to collect up on the other side of security. It’s once we’re through security that really gets me. We go through to a little room, once we’re all checked in, and a ticket is handed over to confirm it is his gun (he can’t actually take it on the plane so it is taken on board by an official and returned to him the other side). They then must secure the weapon in front of him. As they examine the empty chamber and take it apart and count the number of bullets that are with it, my friend points to the ceiling… It is full of bullet holes.
Evidently when checking them in the past mistakes have been made! “Yeah, he laughs, the day they shot the air-conditioning out they were pretty annoyed!” Seriously? …How has no one died?!

To be honest the whole thing has become a bit of a joke to those of us who have to live with flying over here. Flights are frequently cancelled and no one thinks to tell the passengers, and last year one airline launched a loyalty card. Brilliant! Except we live in Mwanza. One of the privileges is access to the VIP lounge. Ha ha ha! The airport is a building with one waiting room with the least comfortable metal seats you can imagine and two very loud TV screens which shout at each other from across the room. When you queue for customs you do so through someone’s office, and when you collect luggage (if you collect luggage – it goes missing fairly frequently) you help yourself to a pile, there’s no such thing as a carousel or conveyor! VIP Lounge? I don’t think so.
The main company here is Precision Air (you can imagine some of the sarcastic comments made about that name when they cancel flights with no warning or turn up hours late!). Actually their service and their staff have improved about a million-fold in the past five years, but I did laugh the other day when I received an emailed photo from someone who had just got off a flight where the two stewardesses were both fast asleep at the front of the plane – great service!
All the experiences I’ve mentioned so far are in the bigger planes (we have Boeings and jets here that are the common city hoppers – do I sound like I know what I’m talking about, because I really don’t!), but a lot of mwanza folk frequently take smaller planes if they’re heading to the mines or more rural destinations. I have no doubt some of you guys have some stories… do tell!

TIA Tales – Clothing (& competition winner)

Having just spent a few days with the beautiful (that is the right word I think, although they are warriors) Masai in Kenya I was inspired to comment in this blog on clothing here in Tanzania.

Whilst the Masai clothing is steeped in tradition and practicality, clothing across the country is a comedic, heart-breaking, wild mass of colour and influence and no one ever seems to bat an eyelid about any of it!

Let me start with the Masai, since I have mentioned them already. There are several outfits a Masai might wear depending on their gender and stages in life so I won’t go into all of it, but I can’t possibly write about clothing in Tanzania without mentioning the brilliant shoes they wear made of used tyre treads, and the tartan or checked ‘shuka’ or blanket that the male warriors wear. These are always bright and generally red or purple. The main outfit consists of two cotton sarong like garments in the traditional colours and patterns each tied like a one-shouldered dress but on opposite shoulders, forming a short cover-all. For warmth, should they need it, they then tie a thicker blanket around their shoulders. Add to this ankle wrist and neck beads and you might imagine this would make them look effeminate – far from it! Take a look at my photos in yesterday’s post for a better visual.

The red blankets stand out dramatically against the soft browns and yellows of the plains and the cattle and their huts and manyattas and it is rumoured that animals have learned to fear that colour so it is a form of protection in itself. It is certainly striking and lends a certain majesty to these tall and imposing figures. So much so that many who are not Masai choose to dress in outfits like them.

Of course there are also their weapons and tools which are fascinating, but a subject for another day since I want to talk about more aspects of clothing here today.

You might drive down any street in the centre of Mwanza for example, and all in the same minute you would see women in kangas, men in shiny silk shirts and chinos, women in bridesmaids dresses, men in muslim galabaya (those very cool looking white dresses) and flat topped circular hats, women in arabaya (like a black burka), men in sports shirts for a team they may never have heard of and women in heels and office wear. It is an incredible mish mash of crazy fashion and abject poverty.

The kanga, which I just mentioned, is a length of fabric printed generally in wild patterns and bright colour (though a popular modern twist includes one with Barak Obama’s face at the centre!). The patters forms to two halves and the piece is cut in half. One part to be worn wrapped around a woman’s waist and the other takes on multiple uses – it may be tied in such a way as to provide padding for heavy goods being carried on the head, or simply as elaborate African fashion head wear, to support a baby on a mother’s back, to tie up everything that has been bought at market or as a shawl. A kanga tied over a pink shiny 1980’s bridesmaids dress is not an unusual sight.

The versatile material is also frequently sewn to create beautiful matching skirts and tops or children’s clothes, bags, cushions – you name it – by the fantastic fundis we have around here (see previous blog). Actually, that’s a whole other aspect of clothing in Africa – the fact that you can design whatever your imagination can handle and have it made in just a day or two. Love it.

Of course it’s easy for me though. For me the equivalent of two or three pounds buys me a kanga, and the same again will have it turned into an outfit – that’s cheap right? Well, not when that’s a week’s wages and you have several children to feed. One of the things that slowly dawns on you when you live here is that children tend to wear school uniform at all hours of the day and night. It’s when you see a group of them on a Sunday, still in uniform, that you realise they probably don’t have anything else to wear.

Education here is ‘free’ but to attend school you need a uniform, books and usually you must contribute to school maintenance, so once a family has forked out for a uniform, play clothes are a luxury for some.

Whilst we’re on the subject of children, I will never get over the sweat-inducing sight of little babies here. They are always swaddled to within an inch of their life in thick knitted hats, winter jackets or wooly blankets. I think it’s fear of the many illnesses babies can die of and a lack of education in child care but it always makes me want to set them free! To be fair infant mortality is high here and it must be a terrifying time, particularly if you have nothing and can’t afford hospital trips or any kind of support.

One of the reasons behind all the mis-matched madness is the diverse culture here – so many tribes, influences from over-seas and religions inevitably leads to all sorts of different clothing – but the other is ‘mutumba’.

Mutumba is the name given to the second hand stalls and all their goods. It’s like OXFAM gone mad. It’s a huge part of life here in East Africa and you can find just about anything there. Amongst these stalls are throwbacks from the past fifty years in every size and colour imaginable. Much of it arrives through charities and becomes a person’s livelihood. In fact, two clever Kenyans I know have built a business out of finding the designer labels in amongst everyone else’s stalls and cleaning them and selling them back to the foreigners! Anyway, what I’m saying is it’s a treasure trove of costumes for plays and even the occasional fantastic find for yourself, but does result in quite a wild array of outfits and combinations.

They also stock shoes. Of course they are second hand and only come in the size they are, no options. One little Tanzanian boy I know went to stay with some of his family in the UK for a bit and when he returned his mum asked him if he enjoyed himself. “Yes” he said, “and you won’t believe it, they have shops where you can find a shoe you like and then just order it in any size. They have a big room in the back and they all come in boxes!”

If variety is the spice of life then things are certainly hot when it comes to fashion in Africa!

Actually, before I sign off I should add that, at the other end of the scale, there is in fact a thriving fashion industry in East Africa as events like Zanzibar Fashion Week clearly illustrate. I was at a fantastic fashion show in Kenya just last week, photographing some incredible outfits. And I remember my 6^th Form students were always seriously stylish. It’s not that fashion doesn’t exist here, it’s more that not everyone can afford to think about and everyone accepts that – so you are entirely free to wear whatever you want. Well, as long as you don’t reveal thighs or cleavage, they’re considered a bit slutty round here!

Any comments are, as always, very welcome. I mentioned some time ago a guy wearing a pink t-shirt that proclaimed ‘I can’t even think straight, let alone be straight!’ – a slogan he clearly did not understand. Perhaps you’ve seen some other good ones? If so let me know.

One friend did tell me recently about a great one that read ‘I give up… Perhaps the Hokey Cokey really it is what it’s all about.’

AND THE WINNER IS… You may remember that about a month ago I posted a competition. Well I had some fantastic entries and you guys really helped with your amazing inventions for 2054. But the winner has to be my fantastic friend Gary Patterson, who came up with a whole series of brilliant ideas and will get at least one featured in the novel – with a thank you in the acknowledgements section. (Please do check out his blog too if you have time as he’s doing one hell of a cycling trip to raise money for charity: www.cycle4africa.wordpress.com). Anne Harkonen is a close runner up and will also receive acknowledgement for her excellent ideas. Thanks everyone!

Messing about in the Mara

I guess most of us are back at our desks after the Easter break now. Just to really shun the renewal of routine I’m going totally wild and crazy and posting on a Wednesday – woah! OK, truth is I just wanted to share some Easter holiday pics! I just spent four days next to the Masai Mara Triangle in Lloita Hills and had a pretty incredible few days, I thought you’d enjoy some of our antics and the wildlife – same thing?!  More TIA Tales on Thursday as I get back to normal again, I promise.

I hope you enjoy the photos.

Obviously I didn’t take this one!

A lunch break with style, right in the middle of the Masai Mara, our guides produced salads and chilled rose!

Olarro bathroom – that bath has a view of the plains, a great way to start the day!

I couldn’t believe the size of this stick insect! With its wings tucked away you’d never know it was anything but a stick. If you touch it the wings shoot out as a warning like that dinosaur on Jurassic Park! – nifty.

It was all very well until the thing began to head for the face – the poor hotel manager kept trying to act cool but was clearly wetting himself!

What a great spot

our hotel

As dusk fell these guys trotted across our path.

One of the great things about staying just outside the main park is that you can drive around at night. The sounds are amazing and all the animals are on full alert. Eyes shine in the torchlight and we even had night vision binoculars to play with!

This is a masai manyatta in the morning as the women are milking their cows.

Always perfectly alert this little jackal emerged momentarily onto the road and then disappeared again, almost instantly, into the long grass.

showing off for the camera

Seriously close!

Lion tracks – which our Masai drivers used to find the pride we came upon only a few minutes later.

The curve of the giraffe’s neck is so graceful.

Gotta love these funny pigs – as they run their little tails stick up like the antenna on the back of bumper cars. I learned that they are called pumba because it is short for ‘pumbavu’ (stupid). When I lion chases them they run, but then forget they are being chased and slow down to graze again!

You can see the muscles and potential power, even when they are still.

Mum watches her cubs stalking.

Cheetah on the look out

These are her cheetah babies, almost fully grown now they will soon head off to hunt alone.

Long and lean the beautiful mother of two.

The elusive leopard – we spotted its tail in the bush but only caught this brief glimpse of him as he disappeared down to the river, leaving a chunk of unfinished antelope dangling in the tree above us.

Even when you think they’re sleeping they’re alert. As I locked my camera onto this lioness, she locked her eyes onto me.

A lioness rests in the cool grass with a very full tummy.

A large pride of lions had killed a hippo, this was all that was left by the time we got there. You would not believe the smell!

Hyena and vultures battle it out for the best scraps.

Hyena tear at the meat with seriously powerful jaws.

Staring at me through the bushes – glad I was in a big safe Toyota!

The golden lion on Easter Sunday – not quite the same as a British pub but a good day out!

Whilst the king of the jungle sleeps off the latest hunt (the one in the pics earlier we think).

A vulture purveys its land

…until suddenly there were fifty or more! Did you know that a large group of giraffe is called ‘a journey’ – nice huh?

This giraffe ran right past us through the acacia scrub – beautiful.

us hanging out with a few giraffe

so was Damien! – modeling the latest in Masai blankets!

So we had drinks and let them come and surround us. (Ezekiel the Masai was quite excited about getting into the photos!)

they kept coming…

As the sun set a giraffe crosses the plains.

As part of their traditional dance the Masai jump – the higher the jump the more manly the warrior! They also make a low rolling, grunting roar in their throat as they dance, it’s very rhythmic and quite incredible when they are dancing all around you.

The red shuka and traditional beading look amazing out on the plains but also against the black night sky as they dance.

Introducing Masai’s to the wonders of iPad Damien shares some shots from the day. Although many traditional Masais do not like to have their photographs taken these two were fascinated by seeing themselves on the screen!

Happy Easter

Hi everyone, I’m on the road this week, hence the delayed posting and temporary change of style. I’m not going to post a TIA Tale this week as I’m not even in Tanzania, the source of so much of my inspiration!

In fact as I type this Damien is negotiating the notorious escarpment section of the road (quite expertly i should add- he’s really good at Chinese burns!) between Nairobi and Nakuru, where I used to live in Kenya. We’re not going as far as up as Nakuru though, we’re turning off and heading for the magical Masai Mara.

Everyone in Kenya seems to make some sort of plan for the Easter break, hardly any of the ex-pats stay at home. There are so many places to see in this incredible country and with functional roads (you Europeans wouldn’t be impressed but compared to TZ it’s good going!) and really high quality places to stay it’s so easy to take a trip and have an adventure. Where I live in Tanzania we do have the Serengeti and Lake Victoria but there is literally nothing else, in terms of destinations, for miles and miles.

Here in Kenya the rainy season has just begun so the mornings start misty and cold and full of a mystical sort of beauty. The past couple of days have featured torrents of almost violent rain that it’s hard not to take personally somehow! Back at home in Mwanza it would be carrying roads away and forcing its way into people’s roofs, here it does bring down a tree or two and the traffic builds – just like all over the world, any change in the weather, even one as predictable as the coming of the rainy season in Kenya or snow in January in the UK, always causes chaos! But this morning is special, the sun has burnt through the mist and golden grasses are lit up either side of me, whilst the majestic Mount Longonot, a dormant volcano in government reserve land, presides over the vast space. It really is pretty sensational. The only vibrant colour is provided by the bright red of the Masai blankets worn by farmers herding huge horned cows or skittering goats. The only shade is provided by the occasional brave flat-topped acacia tree, iconically African.

Anyway, all this to say have a great break, wherever you are. I’ll show you some pics from my adventures in the next post! Xx

TIA Tales – sense of humor

One of the observations you cannot fail to make when you spend a long time in Tanzania is how very different their sense of humour is compared to those with a more Western background. Obviously that is a sweeping statement and not true of all Tanzanians, but I know that my Tanzanian readers will recognise many of the stereotypes I’ll illustrate today and I’m pretty sure I’ll be forgiven as they’ll be laughing right along with everyone else.

Let me start with the story that triggered me to write this week’s column – plus it’s highly topical as we start April this week. OK so a local radio station features a story on a terrifying murderer who is combing the area for children. He captures them, tortures them, skins them and then leaves the remaining little body out to dry as a warning to others. Pretty sick. Obviously parents all over the area reacted by wanting to ensure their children were kept close in order to protect them. Many children were kept home from schools all over Mwanza and the school I was teaching in kept everyone inside the main hall until every parent had been to collect their child. It was pandemonium for several days, and then the whole thing seemed to just blow over.

It was months later that word finally got around, the entire thing had been an April Fool’s hoax.

Was there a public outcry against the radio station? Did anyone react at all? Nope. They thought it was funny! Now if this wasn’t the majority’s perspective they would never have got away with it, so I hope my case for a bit of stereotyping is made!

So the first aspect to understand is that the Tanzanian sense of humour somewhat more macabre than what may be deemed appropriate say in the UK.

One excellent, if a little disturbing, example was told to me by a friend who looks after many young babies in a local hospital.

On one occasion a tiny baby came in with such extreme malnutrition that he was not going to survive. This is always distressing, but she tells me – without sounding callous – is easier if you don’t already know the little character. When the child died that night she paid herself for a little coffin to be made as the parents were nowhere to be found. The paint was still a little tacky when it was time for her to take the child to be buried.

The tiny box was taken to some local mamas so the child could be washed and dressed in decent clothes before the burial but when she came to open the coffin the child’s hair had become stuck in the wet paint and it ‘sat up’. The mama shrieked, believing this was some sort of voodoo, but once she’d calmed down she quickly realized this had potential for a fantastic joke. She invited each of the other mamas in, one at a time, and asked them to lift the lid – laughing hysterically every time they got a shock! Tasteless? Yes, perhaps. But here it is sometimes important to laugh at death and to lighten this very distressing subject. Life expectancy here is only 53, and everyone has been effected in some way.

Tanzanians also seem to love anything slapstick. Fall down, or hit your head and everyone will openly laugh at you! (They will also say ‘pole’ – sorry – and mean it! They aren’t being mean, only honestly and innocently amused!). One friend recently was at a night club where three muscle-bound male dancers were doing some seriously cool street dancing, and a little skinny guy was off to one side parodying the moves. She said the crowd were howling with laughter, whilst she was cringing and could barely raise a smile.

There’s also nothing funnier, it seems, than a mzungu (or white person) freaking out. If you are attempting to complain or getting frustrated with the service and you fail to remain calm it is more than likely you will raise a smile. Now, when you’re angry this can be enough to ignite a full on fury and we have no idea how funny we look. On reflection, I have to admit – it probably is hilarious.

My all time favourite story to illustrate this actually resulted from the language barrier, rather than a complaint and I was told it just recently. A good friend of mine came home from work and overheard the gardener talking to the askari – guard (I should point out that most people here have staff, it is almost expected, even the staff have staff!) – the two were chatting in Swahili “blah blah blah prisoni blah”. Her ears perked up and she grew a little concerned that her askari, assigned to protect their house, had in fact been in prison.

Sometime later she decided to ask the gardener what they were talking about.

“Uli sema prisoni, kwanini?” (You said ‘prison’, why?)

“Kwasababu ana kaa mwaka kumi.” Shrugged the gardener. (He was there for ten years)

“What!” At this stage she freaked. Totally flipped out. Repeating ‘mwaka kumi’ several times she called in her house help and asked her too. Oh yes, she agreed, ten years.

On the verge of storming out to fire the guy she yelled “He was in prison for ten years! This is ridiculous!”

At this all the staff fell about laughing, they had just realised why she’d been going so crazy… “Ana kaa” is somewhat open to translation – literally ‘he sits’ but it is used to ask where you come from, and in this case they had meant he had worked at the prison! She still hasn’t quite lived it down!

Something I’ve discovered to be universal in East Africa is the never ceasing joy of telling foreigners they are fat: “Oh my, I see you had a good holiday Mel.”

“Well, yes I did thank you, do I look tanned and relaxed?”

Blank face “You look very fat!”

I am told somewhere along the line that it was a compliment since the fuller figure is preferred by many here, but many have worked out that it gets us all in a tizz and it is generally followed by a big belly-laugh (not from me, in case that needed explaining!)

Swahili first language speakers also fail to grasp sarcasm (my readers aside of course – not sarcastic by the way!) which can further significant miscommunications. When a young kid asked my friend for the millionth time: “Is that your guitar?” and he finally responded “No it’s my bath” the poor child was completely confused.

You may be thinking it’s a miracle we can communicate at all at this stage. But I must add, to close, that I have laughed so often and so deeply with many wonderful Africans. And it’s true what they say about the African smile – I have never seen anything so full of joy and life, it is infectious.

 

Your turn

Anything you can add, any little anecdotes, are always much appreciated. Plus you know I love getting your comments.

Also, don’t forget the competition for 2054 inventions closes this week. I’ve had some fantastic entries so thanks to those of you who’ve already entered. If you want to find out what it involved check out my last ‘write time’ post and email me by Monday! Thanks.

Short story – 1st to be ‘published’

OK I know it’s not Thursday so I shouldn’t be bothering you, and I know that getting selected online isn’t quite the same as being published but this piece being chosen for inclusion is a first step! So… I thought you guys might like to read my short story ‘Diamond, Mine‘. Please do click the ‘like’ button or even make a comment on the cafe lit site so they can see it’s been appreciated (it might help me get selected for their printed anthology at the end of the year and then I really would be published!). Here’s the link via Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Caf%C3%A9Lit-Writers-Creative-Caf%C3%A9-Project/138022606266155
Or try: http://cafelitcreativecafe.blogspot.com/2012/03/diamond-mine.html
Thanks. Mel