random quotes

• "I don't know what Bono is talking about. Africa is great." As we sit in the pool at Johanne's house drinking tasty beverages on a Friday night. I won't talk about Johanne's three Swedish lady room-mates that cooked beef kabobs for the guests. What Bono is talking about.
• "Just because you have a high-pitched laugh and you love Lionel Ritchie, why do you have to be gay?" By my favourite karaoke performer in Dar.
• "Give your balls an airing." Said in a British accent, to me, about wearing a kigoro which is local garb that's kind of like wearing a towel when you come out of the shower. 
• "All that is usually found when a lion attacks a ranger are boots and broken beer bottles."

it is so hot, i dream about cold like this

new digs

We moved into our apartment at the beginning of November. We had stayed with N and J for a month in anticipation that G and P would be moving out at the end of October. It was great to stay with them as they took us under their wing (s?) and showed us the good place to get eggs. Their house is beautiful, big, and airy. High ceilings really help to keep the air moving and the hot air rising away from your head. That said, we were really looking forward to our big move.

moved our stuff from here over to there

We were supposed to move on Monday but by Saturday evening they were out. We grabbed our toothbrushes and sheets and away we went. It was exciting. It is just great to not be house-guests anymore where you feel like you’re always underfoot. Plus our kitchen is our own and so are the tv channels (though we’re without the cable (see post about lightning strike)).

The apartment has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It’s pretty sweet. It is hotter than N and J’s place as it is on ground level and our old place is above. We sleep at night with the a/c on. We tried the first night without it but now it’s a permanent fixture. (a couple of nights we’ve lost power (there are power outages now that the election is over …) and awoken in a sauna (on tv they make mosquito nets look like some glamourous, exotic accoutrement but they’re hotter than a rap star).

When we got here the apartment was dirty. Kind of weird. Not untidy like you would expect from tenants that moved out in a hurry but dirty like accumulated filth. But, we had at our disposal two housecleaners and two handymen for a couple of days so we were in top shape in no time. Even now we have a housecleaner on Mondays and Thursdays. The housecleaner bursts into laughter at my halting Swahili or her limited English every time she tries to tell me something. At least G and P left behind several soda pops (Fanta Orange!) when they left. And Grappa (P is Brazillian).

We have our own patio, which I can use to lounge and write blog posts. There is a fan overhead, which helps to keep cool and discourage the mosquitoes. The sun doesn’t hit it in here until late in the afternoon so that’s nice too. The gardener dug up the children’s sand box and planted some sort of tropical plant (whatever it is, I wouldn’t now what it was even if it were a native species to my home town). She did the digging with a cast on her arm. She’d been off for a week because she was in a dalladalla (bus) accident. But she had to come back because, well, I would assume she needed the money. I don’t think the benefits covered it.

cutting our lawn

N wanted us to move the stove out of the kitchen and out on to the patio which I think would be kind of nice. However, there are people in the world that mind mosquito bites terribly. I’m not one of those people* but someone (not naming names) that I live with is. Sitting over the stove at dusk while the mosqies look for their evening feed would not be good for house harmony. 

* I suspect this is from being practically carried off by the damn things, while sweat streams in to my eyes, with a canoe on my back, vainly blowing on the ones you can see on your forearms. Omg I just realized how hard my life is.

Shroedinger's cat

Habari.

I would like to say, the thing about when some Americans make fun of Canadians is they really kind of leave themselves wide open as they don't know anything other than we get snow and say 'eh' (and in the west they say 'hey' - did you know this??). And we kind of know everything about America. So the battle of wits didn't last very long.

You can read about Canada.

This kind of reminds me of being in a taxi in Ireland with a friend from Peterborough, Ontario.
taxi driver: So you're Americans?
friend: No, we're from Canada
taxi driver: Oh, same thing.
friend: Yeah, I feel the same way about the Irish and the English.

zing.

We went to a rugby fundraiser on Friday night. There were a lot of white South Africans and draft beer. We probably stayed there for too long and definitely should have had something to eat before having three drafts. But what's done is done. After the party we went to a Indian restaurant. In addition to the restaurant, there is a large room in the back that serves food and drink and has a band. In addition to the band are six dancing Indian women. They perform some rigid dances and interact not at all with the leering Indian men. The only acknowledgement of the audience's existence comes when a man buys a wreath of flowers for 10,000 Tsh ($6.66 US) which is then placed by an employee around the neck of the dancing woman. G, our Irish anthropologist friend, says this is the way these women get paid. They are on 3 month indentured servant contracts from India and the only way they make any money is if they manage to sell some flowers.

G also referred to the women as "ethnographically out-of-reach". This means that because of the culture and environment, as an anthropologist, you can't study them. I gather this means that in the actions you would have to take to get to talk to them about how this all works, you would have to break down several figurative, if not physical, barriers. It would be like that quantum physics thing, the act of observing changes the outcome.

charcoal

On our flight from Amsterdam to Dar es Salaam, we touched down in Kilimanjaro (which is in northern Tanzania and where you land when you are going to safari the Serengetti or hike and climb Kili) to allow the Mzungus (a not always flattering term for Europeans or, of late, Westerners in general) to disembark. It was while we waited on the tarmac with the late evening breeze blowing in through the cabin doors that I caught josey at the back getting some fresh air. When I approached her she said, "This is what Tanzania smells like". Huh? "It smells like charcoal." (and garbage burning...)

Dar imports 22, 000 sacks a day of charcoal from the countryside to feed their traditional cookstoves. The cookstoves, unfortunately, are not terribly efficient. There is no ceramic to retain heat. There is not an elaborate system of vents. It is basically a wok over an open flame. One of the projects that josey is involved with is to try and replace the charcoal with LPG. LPG is Liquefied Petroleum Gas. Now, I know that the term "liquefied gas" makes your head hurt. But I think we just need to get over it. As the kids say, and people who have just screwed you over (i.e. your manager) say, "it is what it is". I'm sure you've guessed that there is no natural gas pipeline delivering gas to every house. There is no water line or sewer either (which, incidentally, it why cell phones are ubiquitous - Africa got to skip the step of sending home lines to all the houses in Africa - they built cell towers instead).

My bright idea was that the water delivery trucks would deliver LPG like the water (akin to the milk man of olden times). But josey says the profit margin is already so tight on LPG that it wouldn't work. However, I feel that is the only way that we can ween people off the charcoal. At the present rate of consumption of charcoal for fuel, East Africa will be without forests in 16-20 years (and if that doesn't give you chills on this hot Africa day, start reading Jared Diamond's Collapse about the issues facing Montana farmers!).

Charcoal bags on the highway in to Dar. Yeah, I said highway. Bicyclists often have these on their bikes. 

To make matters worse, one of the corporation that supplies LPG in Tanzania is pulling out. They have bigger fish to fry (see how I did that?). So now, there is more of a supply crunch than before (there is only 3 weeks of supply and sometimes the ship won't make it back and into port before the 3 weeks is up). The corporation is one that we've all come to know and love, British Petroleum. Beyond Petroleum. We're on this side of wood fires, jackass.

two maps

Here are two maps that make you go hmmmm. Second largest continent and second most populous.

Notice below that it really is darkest Africa. Even the parts of the continent with light are not really considered Africa (I kid, I kid, but it is South Africa (Dar has its first strip malls from South Africa open - it's like Walmart) and Egypt). Not a lot of light for 1 billion people.

If I took a holiday

Today is a stat holiday. Holiday is sikuku (day is siku).

Today is Eid. It is a Muslim day of sacrifice that coincides with the end of the Hajj. The Hajj is the pilrimage to Mecca and N's sister went this year. This is a "big deal" (I know you know this). She felt she was called this year. This is one of those things that if events conspire to prevent you from going you don't work through it. It wasn't meant to be that year and Allah doesn't want you to go.

When N's sister was here last month N was telling us about the women that cover up except for their eyes. That is fairly common to see here - perhaps 2-3% of women. That is not allowed on the Hajj and if women do cover their faces they will be told to uncover their faces so that God can see it. (it was at this point that N told us there is no prescription against drinking in the Koran, rather, after some years it was decided that you couldn't be drunk and talk to God because you would talk nonsense. So really you just can't be drunk at prayer time. There is a lot of prayer time)

Eid commemerates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God. It is based on the lunar calendar so the date changes every year. This year it was marked as Monday in the calendars here. It was celebrated yesterday by all the other Muslim countries, and today we're celebrating it here. So the date was changed - ahh, astrophysics why are you so arbitrary? Also, I guess the government here determines that it's the day following whatever the event of the moon is while everyone else is determining it was the day of the night.

Okay - I googled. This is from wikipedia: Each year, Eid al-Adha (like other Islamic holidays) falls on one of two different Gregorian dates in different parts of the world, due to the fact that the boundary of crescent visibility is different from the International Date Line. Interesting. But not enough to send me looking to see what countries do it which way and compare their longitudes.

In honour of Abraham (who sacrificed a ram rather than his son), it is tradition that people will slaughter the best of their herd and keep a third, give a third to a neighbour, and give a third to the poor. Yay, me. I'm a neighbour. N dropped off a very generous serving of goat last night. Today she will be taking in some friends and family visitors but not everyone like some do ("who wants all those people in their house?").

I held my breath and I stood my ground

There was two of everything but one of me
And when the rains came tumbling down
I held my breath and I stood my ground
And I watched that ship go sailing out to sea

The rains came. It's the short rainy season. There is the short rainy season (for about a month between October and December) and the long rainy season (March to May). To me this means there is a short and long dry season too. Four seasons. Just like home. The short rains were actually a little slow arriving. We had planned on going on safari to Mikumi National Park this weekend but had heard that it being late in the dry season meant all the animals were all congregated in one spot - where the water was - instead of being spread throughout the whole park.

The temperature is getting hotter too. It's not that the sun is directly overhead (because we're at 7 degrees South, it pretty much is about 3 feet above your head all the time) but rather the currents change in the ocean and instead of a nice cool current coming up from Antarctica, the current curls around India and Oman and brings hot water. And monsoon rains. So that's why it rained like a bible story on Sunday. We didn't go to the beach, we went to the movies instead. In our absence, the palm tree outside the house was struck by lightning.

It just missed P, the nightwatchman. Some lights burnt out. Babu's volume went on his tv (bad for him but a huge blessing for us). Our cable box went (we can get pirated dvd's at the intersection - not that we would - I'm saying we could). Babu thought that a bomb had gone off. Now the palm tree is in 4' sections on the ground, hacked by machete. Everyone is fine. We have some sort of fruit from the tree on our patio that we think we are supposed to know how to extract yummy goodness from but we don't. Maybe they are coconuts that got all signs of familiarity lightning-struck off? [edit: I've just been informed that it's only me that doesn't know that they are coconuts. My mistake.]

hodi hodi

this is what you say instead of knocking. As in, I'm here, I'm coming in the house. The response is "karibu". Welcome. Oh, which reminds me of something else that I like. As an example of literal translations that aren't quite right: you meet someone, they say hi, you say hi, they say you're welcome. It's awesome.

The election is over. I didn't mention it earlier because you know how mom worries. I was mostly blissfully unaware of the issues of the election but here's the gist. CCM (The Party of the Revolution) has been in power since '62 when Tanganyika (which eventually became Tanzania when Zanzibar joined the party) achieved independence. They were communist and single party until other parties were allowed in '94. The different parties send trucks with loud speakers out to the neighbourhoods. I'm not that hot with the language so I don't know if there was mudslinging or the stereophonic equivalent of kissing babies.


I do know that a couple of days before the election one of the parties said they were going to kick all the white people out if they won. CCM said, umm, I know why you feel that's a good idea, but they will take their money with them when they go.* The day before the election we were out and about when we got the call and told to be home by 4pm. There were going to be demonstrations in the city and it would not be ideal to be wandering around should one of these crowds work itself into a lather. We went home and we weren't allowed to go out for Halloween. Fine with me, I'm old. I have had exactly one good costume in about the last 30 years (it was pretty awesome). But Josey was disappointed.

The next day, Sunday, was the election. It occurred without incident (here). Eventually we heard that Kikwete was re-elected. That irritated the hell out of some people. Our friend went to some other city for work that night and he could here shots fired etc. But he's been here for eight years so he knows how to stay out of trouble (which is stay in your hotel room -- which I could have figured out upon hearing gunfire. I'm just saying).

The results took a week to come in. I had some friends that were acting as observers. They got sequestered and wrote reports but still got to leave at night and do karaoke.

* none of these statements are based on newspaper reporting but just what I've heard. Must all be true.

store in a cool dry place

oh yeah? and where is that, smart guy?

You can get around town in many different ways. All have their pros and cons.

Daladala (the bus)
- cost 500 Tsh (33 cents) (might be less)
Private city buses that cover all the major routes but no eclectic routes so there is unlikely to be door to door service. This is my hypothesis anyway because I've never seen one off of a paved road and there aren't many paved roads (stay tuned for a post about the Tanzanian Bum Massage). The price is right. The crowds are not so right. Most buses will have a banner at the top of their windsheild which can say anything from "Get Rich or Die Trying" to "Arsenal" to "God is Great".

Pujaji (sp?)
- costs about 1/3 the price of a taxi
These are motortricycles (motortrikes?) with a bench in the back and a roof. There aren't seat belts and they are a little umm fragile. But if you don't have to hit a major street and don't have to go far then these can do the job. They can also be a good choice if it is rush hour because they don't have to stay on the road (ie. they pass on the left, which is the shoulder because we drive on the left here). If you are walking down the street and you're a tourist (ummm, they can tell) all free puajajis will honk for your business.

Taxi (sp? just kidding)
- costs about 1/2 of what it would cost to take a taxi at home (probably less if you were a local)
You negotiate your price before your trip so it is valuable to know what it actually should cost. My conversation with a cabby today went "shingapi Oysterbay?" (how many shillings to Oysterbay) "elfu kumi" (10,000 Tsh) "saba" (7 - wanted to say 6 but the number slipped away from me at the moment of truth) "nane" (8) "sawa" (ok). We have a regular driver now that we usually take if he is available.

Car
It is always an adventure but I am not as freaked out as I was when we arrived. Still haven't seen a stop sign. The traffic lights have a traffic cop 7 times out of 10 (huh? why?). Further research required.

Motorcycle
This is the best choice for folks that are not faint of heart. In heavy traffic you can pass on the shoulder or on the right in the middle of the road against oncoming traffic and other motorcycles in the middle. An enduro motocross would allow you to whip down the dirt roads/back roads. All other vehicles have to negotiate these very cautiously.

Bicycles
This ain't Amsterdam. Scary. Cars have priority over both bikes and people.

Walking
Keep both eyes open. Try to distinguish between a pujaji looking for your business and a car that is about to kill you if you don't get out of the way.
Honking is how you communicate. It's not considered rude like it is at home. It just is.

Also, Nutella, where have you been all my life?

lions, tigers, and bears - oh my!

As I mentioned before, we're living on a compound. There are, of course, lots of plants that we don't have at home. We have mango, coconut, and pomagranate trees; aloe plants (of which josey used a leaf to soothe her arm after a french press accident); and a bunch of other stuff that I've never heard of.

There is a lawn, despite the fact that our hostess had never even seen a lawn until she went to England as a grown up. Now we have a lawn that is cut by machete by the men or with garden shears by the women. The machete is sharp enough to cut down trees that are 10" in diameter. I don't even know if there is an axe - why would you get one when these are so versatile?

There are also animals. Brownie, the dog, we never see. He stays in his run during the day back where the men sleep (there are three guys that have quarters in the back - one of the tasks that they share is opening and closing the gate. They do this whenever you come home -- if you're coming home late they like you to give them a heads up). At night, once the last vagabond has made it home he is given free reign of the compound. It is not unheardof that a meat bone, after getting finished at a barbecue, gets tossed into the garden where Brownie walks at night. A little treat for him. It's kind of fun to listen to the tick tick tick of his toenails on the patio in the late evening. He is pretty timid and never barks. He looks like a sweetheart but a flea-bitten sweetheart. So we don't hang on the couch or anything.

There is a parrot. He can mimic:

• skype messages coming in
• the car alarm
• our host calling his wife
• the wife calling the help
• <latest> josey calling the help (this hasn't happened, I swear, but it's great because josey sat in front of that bird saying things like "josey is pretty" because she wanted the parrot to talk about her. yeah karma)

Our host took the parrot because it belonged to people close to her previously and she wanted to hear their voices again. For real.

There are two tortoises that live right beside the parrot. The first time I rolled up to say hello those little heads retracted right into those cute little shells (shells aren't that little - they are about a foot long). J told us a funny story about another tortoise that took advantage of a security breach and ran like a son of a gun for an hour and made it 20 yards before someone came along and put him back in his cage. These guys eat food waste that would otherwise head to the compost.

Living with the parrot is a pigeon. I was having trouble understanding but I gather that our one footed pigeon had its foot taken by a witch doctor and was going to be killed. Our host took the pigeon. I don't know if it was compassion, fear of bad luck, or both. He is a cute bird but a little more shy than our parrot friend. I don't blame him. "I got close to people once, it didn't work out."

There is a mongoose. I saw this one for the first time yesterday. I didn't have any idea what it was. It was far away against the wall. I was not alarmed until I found out that they are like gigantic rats. It will be a while before these guys take care of him.


These guys have been growing like weeds since we got here. They are pretty keen on people. One was just playing with Mzee while he watered the garden (with the biogas water - "it smells like farts"). One is more shy than the other. The shy one thinks his gregarious sister has lost her mind. They sleep like cats. Unlike Canadian cats, they look for shade.