In late November last year, I packed a rucksack and a couple of suitcases and moved out of the flat in Tooting. It had been a surprisingly good couple of years in London but it was time to move on. It is now mid March, approximately four months later, and I am still living out of the same bags. I have lived in hotels in Earl’s Court, Dar es Salaam (3 hotels, up to 4 times in each), Mtwara, Arusha and Rondo. I have lived in houses in Dar es Salaam and Mtwara, and all out of the same few bags. Suze has had roughly the same experience but with smaller bags and for an extra 6 weeks! Our belongings, which we were happily told would take about a week for the air freight and maybe up to 6 weeks for the surface crates, is still not here – and I could whinge about the dreadful service we have had from the baggage company for hours. Don’t get me wrong, I know that we are lucky to have it coming it all, and I feel privileged (bordering on embarrassed) to own so many luxuries when so many Tanzanians have less than the 3-bags-full (sir) that I am using. But if we had known that we had to rely on this stuff for effectively 6 months, then we would have packed somewhat differently, to say the least.
At this point I should mention how grateful we are to Suze’s boss and both our families for generously buying and carrying/posting the most useful supplies we could think of (chocolate, the Guardian, isotonic sports drink etc) to ease the wait.
Always good to hear from you, any of you.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Friday, 6 March 2009
Things we miss
Things Mark misses:
- Punctuality.
- Cool weather, at least some of the time.
- Sri Lankan curries and snacks so hot that they make me weep or lose my voice. Particularly the bondas at Yhaal House or almost anything at Apollo Banana Leaf.
- Really hoppy East European lager, like Zubr or Zlaty Bazant, preferably accompanying the above.
- The Cittie of Yorke, the John Snow, and the folks with whom I shared a jar there.
- Some more spare pants.
Things Suze misses as well:
- Everything in our freight. I don't even remember what's in it but that probably shows you how long it's taken.
- Radio 4. Oh man, we both miss Radio 4.
- Having a choice of what to eat for lunch.
- Chocolate from vending machines. Although my hips don't miss it.
- A comfortable sofa.
- A duvet and the need to use it.
- Road cycling (see item 1)
- Hair dressers.
- Family and friends and our cat, although we speak to most of these on the phone.
- Big Brother on C4. ONLY JOKING!
Keep in touch. (See 9 above)
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
If the car in front is a Toyota, the bike behind is a phoenix
visas etc, I thought I would try to cheer myself up with some waffles on
a completely different subject.
If I have spoken to you in person since leaving the UK I have probably
mentioned my phonenix bike. Bought because of the delays with 'the
subject we shall not mention' but feeling that it also made me more
Tanzanian, the Phoenix bike has had more air time in our house than
several other issues of a more important nature.
Phoenix bikes are to Tanzania (and beyond I'm sure) what the Flying
Pigeon is to China. Alternatively phoneixs are to the African cyclist
what Toyotas are to the African motor industry (which maybe being
slightly rude to Toyotas, as you will see).
Phoenixs are everywhere, they are strong, they can carry your family
(adding to my list of a previous blog one can carry 15 trays of raw
eggs, a family of 4 - and only one of them was a baby - or 5 crates of
soda) and they can be fixed on any street corner. But let's get things
straight here, the phoenix has some issues. A typical phoenix has at
least one of the following features on a constant basis: brakes that
don't brake, pedals that don't turn, tyres that go flat on an almost
daily basis, headsets that come loose and seats that fall apart. And
that's the one I bought as new - still covered in plastic when it was
given to me. On this brand new bike the lights stopped working after 10
mins of use. There is always some noise coming from somewhere - a
squeak, rattle or groan - which is good as the bell packed up shortly
after the light did. The ones you see out on the road must be an average
of 20 years old (or that's how they look) with only a few essential bits
still functioning (at this point you need to lower your sights on what
is considered to be essential. Pedals are not. Sadles are only kind of
essential). They handle off road conditions (80% of my journey to work)
like banana skins on teflon. The geometry is such that you can't stand
up on the pedals to go up hills (they wouldn't even be considered as
hills on other bikes) and the handle bar bruises your thighs they come
so far back. They also weigh a tonne.
The phoenix leads me to talk of 2 other matters:
1. The bicycle fundi
2. How poor is poor?
Number 1 - men and the art of phoenix cycle maintenance
The bicycle fundi can be spotted from afar by the strategically placed
inner tube and track pump strung to the branch of a tree. Although often
they have gone off somewhere when you arrive, but they will come back.
Underneath the cloth on the floor you will find some spanners, some old
inner tubes, a pot of glue, a sheet of rubber, some matches and various
sizes of bolts, screws and other things that haven't featured on a bike
in the UK since... well ages. There will be some tyres around somewhere
that we would have thrown away, but here they have years left in them.
But these guys are good - they can keep what looks like a heap of scrap
metal being the family run about for years to come and are more
conveniently placed than most 7/11s. As long as it's a phoenix. A
typical price list for their services is as follows:
-pumping tyres - 10p
- puncture repair - 25p
- headset disassemble and reassemble - 50p
- pedal bearing clean and replace - 50p
Number 2 - for richer for poorer
OK, so given how atrocious I think the phoenix is to ride I was suprised
that it cost over 50 quid new. But I suppose they did bring it over from
China. But sometimes I try not to blurt out what I feel about it when I
have a decent cross bar and parcel shelf that aren't carrying the
aforementioned loads. Seeing these vacant seats people shout for lifts
as you go by (Mark and I tried it and it isn't easy, and we didn't
manage to go faster than walking pace anyway), people tell me to lock up
my bike very carefully in case it gets stolen,etc. All of this makes me
realise that even this torturturous form of transport to me is a) the
main form of logistics for people to get their goods to a place to sell
to make money to feed the family, b) the only form of transport other
than walking for many families, with possibly only one bike for the
whole family to use and c) still out of the financial reach of more
families.
So I will continue to moan about riding the phoenix until either a) I
can't be bothered to get it fixed again or b) my mountain bike arrives
in the freig.. (I nearly said it, but that would jinx it ever arriving).
But I am now aware that at least I am choosing to use this form of
transport over the motorised forms I can easily afford, so in the mean
time I will at least try to keeping the complaining in check and find an
appreciative home for the bird when she does get retired.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
“Whoops, bit of politics, LIKE IT!”
…in the words of Ben Elton, back when he was arguably a cutting-edge stand up and before he sold out to do “The Thin Blue Line” or such abba-rations as “We Will Rock You”. Up until now I have kept this blog almost exclusively for news of a personal or regional nature, so as to avoid any chance of alienating our few readers. But I read an international news story yesterday which brought my blood to the temperatures of fiery hell itself, and which I fear I cannot allow to pass without my own opinionated commentary. Almost needless to say, it involves religion.
Andy Hamilton writes and acts in a fantastic radio sitcom/satire called “Old Harry’s Game”, in which he entertainingly plays Satan. The plotline is that hell has become too full so the Prince of Darkness now walks the earth trying to persuade people to live better lives and hence send their souls upstairs. It seems that the Vatican are operating a slightly amended version of this in which they simply try to get souls into the afterlife as early as possible.
Let’s not rush this: First there was the whole thing with condoms (and even the hole thing with condoms, but more on that story later). One day the Pope awoke having had the revelation that this kind of contraception was a bad thing. Let’s be clear, the bible says nothing about condoms. I mean you can believe or disbelieve what’s in it but it says precisely the same thing about condoms as it does about jet aircraft, mp3 players and Sesame Street. They had not been invented so anything which can be construed to relate to them in the bible is pure speculation and extrapolation. But his holiness decided they were bad and should not be used in any circumstances, and the Vatican stuck to this line while it accelerated the spread of HIV throughout this continent, at a cost of literally millions of human lives. There was even a rumour put about during the time of the previous pope, JPII, that condoms (should you choose to damn yourself by using them) didn’t even work, owing to their being riddled with more holes than his beloved Warsaw FC’s back four. This is plainly not true, latex is impermeable to more or less anything, including human gametes and the HIV virus. But the rumour received widespread credence from a gullible press – much like the MMR vaccine nonsense that harmed British children more recently. And more serious journalists than I have traced the sequence of news stories and events to find that the latex lie originated in, you guessed it, the Catholic Church.
Back to 2009 and the reign of a new Pope, who, lest we forget, was a member of the Nazi party. Maybe we shouldn’t hold that against him as many people were at the time, and it would have taken great moral courage and strength to refuse to sign up. Oh, hang on… Anyway, the current incumbent of this role began with a token step towards righting some wrongs by stating that condoms were actually forgivable if they were being used to prevent disease rather than to prevent pregnancy. The ongoing suffering caused by the planet’s unsustainable over-population clearly still not an issue, but it was a (little and late) step towards slowing what is probably the greatest pandemic in human history.
And so on to this week’s news story. I can only imagine that the man upstairs has had a quiet word in Benedict’s shell-like about how they’re not seeing enough death these days, and St Peter has too much time on his hands. Desperate to avoid any further redundancies amongst the angelic horde, the Vatican has now come out and tried to block a UN scheme which would make clean hypodermics and more frequent health checks available to drug addicts. This is a scheme which would undoubtedly save lives. The perverse “logic” behind opposing this measure is (and this must have taken some imagination to dream up, and the control of a Saint to deliver such a statement straight-faced) that it is a liberalisation of drug policy, and could be seen as condoning drug use. This is much like saying cars should not be allowed to have brakes as this could be seen as condoning speeding.
With or without clean needles, injecting drug users will die an unhappy death, most of them sooner rather than later. But if this health promotion project is scuppered by a superstitious minority, then another wave of wives, husbands and children (I should probably say orphans) will one day be told that, through no fault of their own, they have contracted an incurable and deadly disease. But I’ve misinterpreted things, as the Pope is of course infallible.
Andy Hamilton writes and acts in a fantastic radio sitcom/satire called “Old Harry’s Game”, in which he entertainingly plays Satan. The plotline is that hell has become too full so the Prince of Darkness now walks the earth trying to persuade people to live better lives and hence send their souls upstairs. It seems that the Vatican are operating a slightly amended version of this in which they simply try to get souls into the afterlife as early as possible.
Let’s not rush this: First there was the whole thing with condoms (and even the hole thing with condoms, but more on that story later). One day the Pope awoke having had the revelation that this kind of contraception was a bad thing. Let’s be clear, the bible says nothing about condoms. I mean you can believe or disbelieve what’s in it but it says precisely the same thing about condoms as it does about jet aircraft, mp3 players and Sesame Street. They had not been invented so anything which can be construed to relate to them in the bible is pure speculation and extrapolation. But his holiness decided they were bad and should not be used in any circumstances, and the Vatican stuck to this line while it accelerated the spread of HIV throughout this continent, at a cost of literally millions of human lives. There was even a rumour put about during the time of the previous pope, JPII, that condoms (should you choose to damn yourself by using them) didn’t even work, owing to their being riddled with more holes than his beloved Warsaw FC’s back four. This is plainly not true, latex is impermeable to more or less anything, including human gametes and the HIV virus. But the rumour received widespread credence from a gullible press – much like the MMR vaccine nonsense that harmed British children more recently. And more serious journalists than I have traced the sequence of news stories and events to find that the latex lie originated in, you guessed it, the Catholic Church.
Back to 2009 and the reign of a new Pope, who, lest we forget, was a member of the Nazi party. Maybe we shouldn’t hold that against him as many people were at the time, and it would have taken great moral courage and strength to refuse to sign up. Oh, hang on… Anyway, the current incumbent of this role began with a token step towards righting some wrongs by stating that condoms were actually forgivable if they were being used to prevent disease rather than to prevent pregnancy. The ongoing suffering caused by the planet’s unsustainable over-population clearly still not an issue, but it was a (little and late) step towards slowing what is probably the greatest pandemic in human history.
And so on to this week’s news story. I can only imagine that the man upstairs has had a quiet word in Benedict’s shell-like about how they’re not seeing enough death these days, and St Peter has too much time on his hands. Desperate to avoid any further redundancies amongst the angelic horde, the Vatican has now come out and tried to block a UN scheme which would make clean hypodermics and more frequent health checks available to drug addicts. This is a scheme which would undoubtedly save lives. The perverse “logic” behind opposing this measure is (and this must have taken some imagination to dream up, and the control of a Saint to deliver such a statement straight-faced) that it is a liberalisation of drug policy, and could be seen as condoning drug use. This is much like saying cars should not be allowed to have brakes as this could be seen as condoning speeding.
With or without clean needles, injecting drug users will die an unhappy death, most of them sooner rather than later. But if this health promotion project is scuppered by a superstitious minority, then another wave of wives, husbands and children (I should probably say orphans) will one day be told that, through no fault of their own, they have contracted an incurable and deadly disease. But I’ve misinterpreted things, as the Pope is of course infallible.
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