Running up that hill

... is in Kate Bush's back catalogue, a metaphor for the worries and difficulties of life. Personally I have never found any better escape from the humdrum of life’s dull cares than running (or perhaps cycling) up and down some hills, and when the hill concerned is Africa's highest peak, then so much the better.

In a double stroke of good luck, both of us were sent by our respective projects to observe and present at a Tanzanian collaborators meeting in Moshi last week. We made the most of the opportunity and headed out of Dar on the Friday night, in order to get a weekend in and around the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, before the meeting started. What a great place! A repeated frustration of our life/lives here is that in Dar es Salaam, we have a few interesting restaurants and are more able to go about our business without attracting so much attention as outsiders. But the traffic, the dust and the crowds can be horrible, and make exercise a real chore. On the other hand Mtwara has so much more space, is closer to the countryside, but lacks any real choice of venues for evenings out. Moshi manages to combine the positives of both these places, and is also 2 to 3° cooler, by virtue of being at around 1000 m altitude. The views are beautiful, and the whole town feels a little better developed and maintained than almost anywhere I have seen in Tanzania.

Part of the reason for Moshi's relative wealth is the coffee industry. This in itself is reason to celebrate, when very few places will sell you any coffee except the ubiquitous Africafe -- a murky brown powder which makes Nescafe seem full flavoured. I still can't help raise an eyebrow when I see local Tanzanians making up theirs with an average of three sugars, but perhaps it is the only way to make it taste of anything. Thanks in part to a tipoff from my sort of colleague (on maternity leave) but definitely friend, we were able to book a full day's walk into the mountain on the edge of the national park, which included a visit to the small-scale local coffee plantation.

It was a fantastic day out, run by a company called Akaro Tours (they have a website but we haven't made it work yet). We started off walking up and down the hills through small subsistence farms, growing tomatoes, bananas, potatoes, peas and lovely dark red coffee beans. You read articles (if you're interested in this sort of thing) about coffee being a crop which requires an enormous amount of water, which is not the best in terms of sustainability. But what I can understand now is that it is also a shade loving plant, consequently encouraging farmers not to fell all the tall trees on their land, which presumably has benefits in terms of preventing soil erosion, as well as balancing the greenhouse effect.

Anyway, following a good lunch we got the chance to participate in most of the coffee making process, including peeling the raw beans by pounding them in a huge pestle and mortar, sorting the beans from the skins by tossing up and down in a small basket while standing in a crosswind, then roasting the beans before returning them to be smashed up with the same wooden machinery. The powdered coffee is then made up with boiled water, which itself can be gathered from naturally occurring springs past which we had walked. Maybe it was the atmosphere, the views, or just the knowledge that we had done it ourselves, but I’ve never had a better cup of hot black coffee.

The walk included a couple of other surprises, including a rather pretty chameleon, and the chance to throw oneself into the cold plunge pool of a 70 m high waterfall -- a truly refreshing experience to both mind and body. And a real treat for me was seen very near the pool: I have given up asking guides if we might get the chance to see some snakes, even though some of them understand my interest. Even when they assure me that there are numerous cobras/mambas/whatever else in the area, I hardly ever get lucky. But this time (although I now find out it is very unusual) we were fortunate to see a decent sized serpent rustling through the low grass on the right of our path. It was a medium-sized green job, which is about as helpful to herpetologists as little brown jobs are to Bird lovers. Who knows? It could have been the spectacularly venomous but also passive boomslang, or the somewhat less tolerant green mamba. Personally I think it looked too broad for either of these tree loving snakes, but I don't have any sensible bid about what it may have been instead. Still, with or without a name it was lovely to watch him throwing efficient curls along the bank next to us, moving almost silently along the contours of a hill, while doing what snakes do best -- getting out of the bloody way.

Our final treat, if that's the right word for it, was to stop at a local bar (i.e. unfurnished wooden shack) and sample something which I think was called mbege. This generally gets translated as banana beer, a naturally fermented product made of pulped bananas, water and millet seeds. The only yeast involved is that which is found naturally on the skins of the fruit, and it is served in a large plastic jug, without ever having passed through a filter or indeed a bottle. It is an odd sensation to consume it, not entirely unpleasant, and considerably more enjoyable than a similar brew which we sampled in Ethiopia, but it is definitely not about to become “my usual". It has a texture like loose porridge, with the remnants of the yeast forming an unattractive head. The taste would not be recognised by many people as beer, although most would guess that bananas were involved. If it doesn't sound pretty, then it isn't. Refreshed (?) by this brief stop, we marched a little quicker downhill, in order to catch the local minibus back to town. And at the bus stop, lo and behold, another revelation, some enterprising local businessman has taken it on himself to bring mbege into the 21st century. The bottled version is substantially stronger thanks to the addition of sugar, has been filtered to remove the pulpy lumps, and uses extra yeast. This seems to do a little better in out- competing the bacterial fermentation so the final product (called Kibo) while still a little sour, no longer makes your mouth feel like someone is forcing your jaws out sideways with the jack from a Toyota land cruiser. I felt a little bit like a brave beer journalist, sampling something new and unknown, charting new territory, filling in the blanks on a brewers’ map of the world. Honestly, it was genuinely pretty good, and reminded me a little of Belgian geuze, which one might enjoy in the “Mort Subite” in Brussels, or those of you with very good memories might recall sampling at our wedding. This discovery, called “Kibo”, does not make my top 10, but it does provide me with an excuse, however tenuous, to list those brews which do:

Hence, partly for fun and at risk of making me even more thirsty, my ten favourite beers of the world, maybe in order. You may ignore or discuss.

1. 1. Fuller’s ESB (England). Malty, biscuity, hints of hay. A mouthful of ESB is more satisfying and complete than a whole pint of Stella (or a barrel of Miller). Best enjoyed, in my experience, slowly and quietly in the Melton Mowbray, High Holborn. I’m pretty sure that if every young man in GB switched to this, we’d have an end to lager-loutism.

2. 2. Zlaty Bazant (Slovakia). I feel bad having pilsner but not a Czech one, given that they invented it, but even though this is Sk’s most mainstream brew I still think it’s the perfect hot weather drink. It’s sad when people assume that lager tastes of A-B Budweiser, which is simply wrong (and by some definitions not even beer). This is how a lager can be as full and grown-up as any other type of drink.

3. 3. Timothy Taylor’s Landlord (England). Madonna’s favourite, allegedly. Almost as rounded and full as ESB above, but a little less malt and more hops, allowing one to enjoy a little more of it.

4. 4. Zubr (Poland). Strong lager in GB has traditionally meant Tennent’s Super but it can be sophisticated. Zubr is refined and complex and probably my favourite lager in the world ever. And if I’m translating it right, a portion of the profits go to conservation. It is also the ideal thing with which to wash down spicy Sri Lankan curry; a happy discovery of Britain’s various waves of immigration that might otherwise have gone forever unknown?

5. 5. Rogue Imperial Stout (USA). Oh in the name of Thunder. Pull up a chair, put on your most comfortable sweater and maybe play some classical music, because a bottle of RIS (at only 330ml but about 11.0% ABV) is going to take you a while. To rush through this in less than 25mins would be wasteful and actually difficult. Your mouth reels from it, confused but intrigued, and somehow relaxed. Hard to describe the flavour except to say enormous.

a. Honourable mention to Zywiec Porter (Poland). Very similar to the above but maybe a smidgeon less complex. It has a fore-taste that for some reason (and even though I have never eaten any) always makes me think of kelp.

6. 6. Cantillon Organic Gueze (Belgium). Frankly bizarre, an acquired taste and not one for the kids. Having said that, I’ve acquired it. Surprising, sour, with stale cardboard-like hops. Made in strictly old fashioned and organic conditions. For example, the brewery clears itself of pesky flies using... spiders; you’ve got to respect that. The fermentation is spontaneous using ambient airborne microbes. But don’t be scared, take a breath and then a sip. I’m not saying you’d want to sink four of them on a Friday night, but I am saying that until you’ve had a couple you can’t really say you know beer.

7. 7. Schneiderweisse (Bavaria). I had to include a weissbeer and this one is probably my top choice, but if the wind changes I could easily say Franziskaner. If you aren’t sitting with a weissbeer you’re not really in Bavaria. (Oddly there is also a brilliant weissbeer from the Ukraine, name of which I forget and probably couldn’t type on this keyboard anyway). Fresh and fruity and tart, great. Mein dunkel, mein dunkel...

8. 8. Black Isle Yellowhammer (Scotland). Somehow Scottish ales seem distinct from English, lighter malt without losing body? The grassy grapefruity hops in this are so clean tasting. The fact that a fully-organic beer can taste this good makes me yearn to live in the countryside growing or foraging all my own produce. Tastewise, Schiehallion brewed by Harviestoun, is roughly as good, but Black Isle makes me happier.

9. 9. Cooper’s Sparkling Ale (Australia). It would be easy to believe that all Aussie beer is terrible, since 99% of what we taste of it is Fosters or XXXX. In truth Fosters is the p*sh that they happily export to anyone fool enough to buy it, while back home they get to enjoy gems like Cooper’s. Fruity but not sweet, light but not lite. It ought to come in bigger bottles.

10. 10. Hmm. How to finish? Maybe Innes and Gunne’s Oak Casked beer (Scotland again). Vanilla and toffee on top of beer. Quite a new innovation and almost in a style of its own. Never lasts long.