Mark, KC and Suze in Tanzania

The Hole Truth

2010-11-11T00:35:00.000-08:00

Getting myself back on the road for another ironman journey has been extremely satisfying, partly as it gives me the excuse not just to ride my bike a lot more, but also to work on it and talk about it. Recently I have had to do a bit of work on my wheels, which take quite a pounding on the dirty potholed roads of Tanzania. A bike wheel is truly an amazing piece of engineering and physics, and the more I have got to know about wheels by building and working on them , the more beautiful I find them. For example: If you sit on a wheel rim, without spokes in it, you’ll break it- that’s how weak and flexible they are. Likewise any adult would be strong enough to fold a spoke in half if they wanted. And the more you pay for spokes and rims (often) the weaker they are on their own. But when built properly into a wheel, the constant, even, and sometimes enormous tension which is being applied in 24-ish places around the hoop prevents it from buckling or breaking, even under incredible load. It will stay straight and true, holding a rubber tube which is pulling sideways and outwards at 120psi or sometimes more, even when a 75kg man rattles down a bumpy hill on it at speeds approaching 100kph. Achieving this breathtaking durability, while keeping your wheel round enough to use, is supposedly the hardest thing in bike mechanics. But I disagree, it seems to me that it just takes a bit of patience and practise.

This is not the official way to learn, but it worked for me.

Find a really old wheel. Try tightening and loosening a spoke or two and see how it affects the shape. You’ll need to fit the wheel in a wheel jig or just spin it between the brake blocks of a fork in order to see the wobble in it. Try to adjust a few spokes to make it straighter.

Take a spoke out, have a coffee, and then refit it. You will need to thread it correctly between the other remaining spokes (memorise how it went or just copy another one). The re-tighten it to make the wheel straight again.

Once you can reliably straighten this wheel, even after removing and replacing 2 or 3 spokes, you could try to build a new one. I recommend starting with the fairly cheap bits to start with, say about 10 quid for the hub and the same for the rim.

Spoke length can be calculated if you’re a really good mathematician, if not you can use free online calculators, e.g. the one written by DTSwiss. If the result is between sizes, get the size below your results, i.e. shorter. Your biggest challenge, I find, is in buying spokes of the right length, which can take ages to order.

Once you have your bits, copy the spoke pattern of another wheel, in other words make your spokes cross each other in the same way as an example that you can look at. It will help if your eg wheel has about the same number of spokes as the one you’re building. Pay attention to which way the spokes go into/out of the hub, and then overlap each other. Tighten spokes a tiny bit at a time. Unless you are building radial wheels (and if you don’t know what that means, you’re probably not!) be sure to put some grease between spoke and nipple. Don’t build radial rear wheels – although you can build radial just on the non-drive side which looks cool. Don’t build radial wheels if you have disk brakes. But don’t imagine I am against radial wheels, they are definitely good on the front of road bikes.

As the spokes become tight, pay more and more attention to how straight and true the wheel is. (What’s the difference? A wheel can be wrong in two dimensions, side to side or up and down). Do not rush the final adjustments, take time and remember this is an art not a science. I find it works best with a bottle of Fuller’s ESB and a good CD. You are trying to get within a mm of play in any direction but you will not achieve perfection. If you believe you have got a perfectly straight and perfectly true wheel, then you need glasses.

Finally, after a ride or two, go through the fine-tuning again. The bump and grind of a few tens of km will shake a few things loose and expose any weaknesses. Address this and re-straighten now to avoid breaking a spoke or long term deformation of the rim.

It's health and safety gone mad!

2010-10-30T01:37:00.001-07:00

A rotten picture taken through the open window of a minibus, but I had to capture this beautiful example of resourcefulness?

I have been talking to people recently about how restricted and occasionally overprotective society seems to be in Britain. The most obvious example for me being laws against walking on a railway track. I mean seriously, a train weighs about 58 tonnes and makes more than a little noise, I think I have a good chance of noticing it before it reaches me. And then there are situations which remind me why a certain amount of health and safety rules are valuable.

Let me just talk you through what's going on here, because the details are important: the sign advertising this very acceptable watering hole in Moshi had fallen down in strong winds overnight. This enterprising crew is welding it back into place. First of all, notice the home-made power supply, involving a board of wood, to which somebody has attached four large capacitors (correct me if I'm wrong here, sparkys) which appear to have been salvaged from an electricity pylon. Of course the sign needs to be held still while it is welded into place, hence the two blokes standing on the roof of a single cab Nissan hardbody, balancing it on their heads. The scruffy old ladder seems to be fairly stable, although if I was standing that close to the top of it, I might want something holding the bottom in place.

He has no mask, which almost goes without saying, but there is one extra frisson of excitement which you cannot see, as my exposure time is too short to show the sparks: The long metal tube to the left of the ladder as we look at it, is live! Consequently the welder himself, has periodically to stand atop the ladder on 1 foot, and use his other leg to kick this pole away from the aluminium structure supporting him.

If you can think of any way that this procedure could have been made any more dangerous, then answers on a postcard please. I haven't thought of much, except perhaps the introduction of a hungry lion to proceedings.

Incidentally, while sitting in the minibus I also had my first encounter of the whole two years so far, with "aggressive begging". A young man asked me for money, to which I replied (with complete honesty, as happens) that I did not have any spare cash with me, having given out all of my small denominations to 2 disabled beggars already. He then started telling me, in broken English, that begging was better than stealing, that he knew where I lived (which was a little far-fetched, given his surprise a few seconds earlier to learn I came from Dar es Salaam) and that if I did not give him money he would attack me. I stood up and stepped out of the minibus, as I felt I should inform the local shopkeepers that this kind of company may not be conducive to passing shoppers, and upon seeing me to be a clear 30 cm taller than him, he took off like a tiny Usain Bolt. In a way the comedy situation would have reached a perfect conclusion if only he had run headlong into the ladder, or at least the pickup. But the welding crew were minding their own business, so I am mainly glad that they survived unhurt.

Bottling It

2010-10-28T00:37:00.000-07:00

This might be a good time for another blog about bikes. It's been a while eh?

In particular I thought I would entertain everybody with a little information about bottle cages. "Bottle cages?" I hear you cry, and perhaps detect a smirk in your voice as you continue; "could there be a more boring and unremarkable part of a bicycle?" If I heard you correctly, then I'm afraid you have fallen for my little trap, because these humble loops of alloy or occasionally carbon can cause more consternation and intrigue than their humble role would suggest.

For example, the UCI, a probably necessary but nonetheless much maligned organisation responsible for setting and enforcing the rules of competitive cycling, sets a minimum weight which every bike in its races must meet.*

This is a rule which is never going to bother most of us mere amateurs, since any bike which can realistically come close to this threshold is going to set you back at least five or six grand. For the pros, however, the investments made by their racing teams in the latest, lightest and stiffest frames may leave riders in charge of machines -- particularly when shod with fancy mountain climbing wheels -- liable to fall foul of this regulation. "Hold on," I sense you grumbling, "this doesn't seem to be about bottle cages at all." Patience, I am getting there. In these situations, manufacturers will run out a very small batch of heavyweight bottle cages, which can be bolted to the bike at the last minute if the team suspect they are too close to the weight limit. Most of us experience the opposite problem, and are aware that our bikes could go up the mountain passes a tiny bit more easily if only we could afford to reduce their weight, by swapping to some fancier components. Consequently riders such as myself, with a tendency towards geeky and a little more money than sense (I would stress that this is much more a result of dearth of sense than a surfeit of money, except perhaps for the few days of each month wedged between payday and mortgage) bottle cages represent a tempting area to shave a few grams. Having invested in a lovely titanium frame, it's even possible to justify to yourself that fitting an ordinary five quid drinks holder would be spoiling the ship for ha’peth of tar. Plus, mechanically speaking, one can indulge in the silliest and spindliest of designs, safe in the knowledge that it will not affect the bike’s stiffness or cornering ability, and the worst that can go wrong is that it snaps and you arrive at the next town, bottle less and thirsty.

The worst that can go wrong? Oh no it isn't.

Picture the scene, a man sits in his lounge, contented smile on his face and set of Allen keys in his right hand. He is in his mid-30s, ahem, but keeps in shape and would probably look younger if he could only be bothered to shave. His thoughts of late have returned, fondly, to the theme of Ironman triathlons, and with this in mind he is preparing his kit for an hour’s riding later that day. To save space in the saddle bag or shirt pockets he is attempting to fit a hand pump and bracket between down tube and bottle cage. A bottle cage which you should bear in mind, was a result of much deliberation, and weighs a mere 9.5 g thanks to its construction from only two rings of woven carbon fibre. Even the bolts which attach it are made of lightweight aluminium alloy, and are counter-sunk flush with the surrounding carbon. If you think this sounds so good that it is almost sexy, you may be correct.

The first bolt feels exceedingly stiff, which is odd as we can be confident it was greased before it went in. Pulse quickens, frown. Thankfully there is a loud squeak, and it begins to turn. But no, we celebrate too soon, there is another less pleasant noise, and the Allen key shears through the head of the bolt like a warm fork through Wensleydale. And there it sits neither in nor out, refusing to revolve in either direction and with £30 worth of neatly sculpted carbon rattling from its midriff.

What to do now? Pliers will not grip it, and no Allen or torx key is ever going to move it again. I could drill the head off the bolt, as I had to do to get the radiator out of the old Suzuki Baleno, but while this would free the bottle cage I would never be able to reattach it or indeed anything else to the frame. Eventually I realise I need to create a surface which something else can grip. My trusty leatherman (probably the finest multitool around) is pressed into service for the unusual job of filing down the bolt head into two parallel edges which I hope will give enough purchase for a small spanner. It starts to look as though it might work, despite having nothing to align my work except the naked eye and elbow grease -- an elbow which I am grateful to believe is recovering from the misery of RSI. Unfortunately, by the time I offer up a spanner, I find I have missed my chance with a 9 mm and must continue to work until it fits an 8. Thirty minutes of careful fiddling later the spanner fits, and I am able to turn the little swine again. I think I achieved three or four full revolutions before the spanner slipped, damaging one surface so that it would no longer grip. Curses. Forty minutes of even more careful filing later and a 7 mm wrench is sitting in place very snugly. This is good, but I'm aware that I won't have many more chances, as my smallest spanner is a six, and besides there will be no metal left to reshape anyway.

Thankfully this time the tool fits perfectly, and it is not too difficult to unwind the bolt carefully, albeit with nervous, bated breath. I haven't yet had the guts to loosen or remove the second bottle cage; I may let that sleeping dog lie for the moment. But a replacement now goes to the top of my Christmas list, and I will be checking the exact make and model for the quality of its fixtures and fittings, even if that means that the weight of the unit gets pushed into double figures.

*I guess I would be more correct to say mass, rather than weight. Mass is an absolute, whereas weight is a product of the way mass is affected by gravity. As such, the same bike will have the same mass but a fractionally different weight at the top, compared with the bottom of a major climb, such as Col du Galibier. However, since no portable scale would be sensitive enough to detect the difference, I hope you will forgive my colloquial use of the word weight. Thanks

Running up that hill

2010-10-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

... 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.

Train in vain

2010-08-26T03:57:00.000-07:00

There are always interferences and annoyances that make stuff difficult. They make training for an event difficult. And for me at least the ability (or lack thereof) to get fit enough for another big race is a factor of the balance between these difficulties, and the opportunities, or even rewards, that present themselves at other times. It’s like a court case in my head. Currently these difficulties – or the case for the prosecution - include:

Being too busy at work

Being unable to replace any sporting equipment until I or a friend travel to “The Developed World”

Having rotten RSI in one wrist and the other elbow

My MTB front brake STILL not taking its responsibilities seriously enough

Too much time in Dar where running is unpleasant and cycling dangerous.

On the other hand, there are good things, the plusses that make training more pleasant or efficient. Regarding this case for the defence, I will present only one exhibit:

This grainy film comes from Bird Island, near Msimbati, Southern Tanzania. Most UK-based triathletes must swim while snotty schoolchildren scream, fight and wee all around them. I listen to herons and storks calling.

While most people touch the wall and turn around into the path of other swimmers, I go to the mangrove tree and turn right. I see nobody except the boatman who dropped me off and some large hermit crabs.

It may be too late for anything to make me a good swimmer (check the terrible recovery on the right hand side, throwing water sideways and pulling my head too high) but it’s relaxing. And if it's not too pretentious to say so, when I return to Tooting Bec Lido (or Piscine municipal de Strasbourg, or wherever else may be next) I will remember how lucky I am to have had the chance to experience places like this.

Ironman 2. The sequel.

2010-08-09T06:42:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe it’s only a year ago (in fact, the exact anniversary just passed) that I was staggering down the esplanade in Nice finishing my first long distance triathlon. At various stages of the race (and at least once per discipline) I had said to myself that once was definitely enough. But, to begin a tenuous theme of dodgy film sequels, Never say Never Again. It took me less than 24 hours to realise that I wanted to race IM again, initially just because I was disappointed with my performance on the day. Now that a year has passed, and new things have happened in my life and in Tanzania, I realise how much I also miss the training and the motivation of having that goal in front of me.

Sitting in front of a DVD with a cold beer and a Cuban cigar of a weekend is pleasant enough, but I find myself pining for the discipline I succeeded in employing in training, and the huge satisfaction of feeling myself getting closer and closer to the required level of fitness.

So there has to be a sequel. The question is, what kind of sequel is it likely to be?

“Aliens”, not as original as the, err, original, but probably as exciting?

“Exorcist 2”, so howlingly awfully substandard compared with the predecessor that many pretend it never happened?

“Porno”, the long awaited follow up to Trainspotting which it seems will now never really happen?

Or maybe, hopefully “Bourne Supremacy”/”Empire Strikes Back”, genuinely as good and satisfying as the first.

We’ll wait and see.

Moving forward:

Having had time to look back at training and racing, I can identify several things I can do better than before. On the one hand I was really pleased with how training went, but I had a couple of problems on the day. So maybe I can prepare better to avoid those problems? And anyway, you can always improve in sport, otherwise why would Usain Bolt keep running when no one is going to beat his record for a decade? (Trust me, unless Bolt goes better I am sure no one else will.)

Swim: I need more long swims under my belt, particularly in open water. Another set of lessons would surely do no harm – I still have never even finished in the top 2/3 of swimmers in any triathlon, although if I had matched the average swim speed (and everything else remained constant) then I would actually have won at least 2 of those I have raced!

Bike: More time on a road bike is important (90% of my riding last time was MTB, necessarily because of the roads here in Tz). This might be possible depending on when work finishes in Africa. I should also fix or replace my sticky rear hub!

Run: Again more road training would be good. Better kit planning (run in the shoes I intend for the race, rather than a worn out, last-minute replacement!). Train a few more transitions, to get used to running off the bike, no matter how rough I feel.

I could probably also stand to lose an extra 1-2kg, Bradley Wiggins stylee, which might help in both running and hilly bike routes. Easy to say now, not so easy to do given that I weigh 80kg for the first time in my life, and last year my “fighting weight” was about 73kg...

Nutrition: Breakfast was OK, but the litre-of-seawater chaser was my nauseating downfall on race day. Think of it as my Achilles' stomach. My current solution to this (aside from the swim training above) is to race in fresh water next time! With this in mind I have been mostly looking at races in landlocked areas, such as S Germany and Switzerland. And then I saw:

http://www.zeleznak.cz/index.php

A small competition, not affiliated to official “Ironman” TM but exactly the same distances and vastly cheaper without the branding! Indeed, the organisers have cheekily named the race ironman in Czech. Lake swim, moderately hilly bike ride and a 3-lap run, all in some of the loveliest countryside in central Europe. And the chance to recover with klobasa, dumplings and great quality pilsner. How could I resist?

So, brace yourselves again for various dull training logs appearing here, or in the remote off-chance that anyone read it and was inspired; come and race me!

An old one that failed to load before

2010-05-01T03:34:00.000-07:00

I don’t have enough time to blog, these days. I mean it may still be plenty for you, dear readers of my infantile thoughts, but personally I miss the diary that was building, before, about the time here. So today wanted to correct that. To talk of SUVs and storms and bribes and tail-chasing, and all the other things that characterise my leisure, and work time here. Tonight would have been a very suitable time, a Friday all alone and the last weekend before I move away for Xmas. I cooked up some poppadoms, loaded a plate with chutneys (I am soon to leave for Britain, and certain things need using, in case there is a major power cut that leaves the fridge out of action).

And we had yet another power cut. I know I have mentioned the power cuts before, and they are more frequent in the rainy season, which has begun most emphatically in the last couple or three weeks. So I am well used to this. I sat motionless, thinking clearly, calmly. I thought slowly, confident that I would remember where the torch was, and lo, after a minute or so I remembered there was a wind up lamp on the table. Walk slowly to my left. Score. Wind the torch, no bother.

I could see again. Tidy up anything perishable into the fridge then leave it shut, as usual. Rearrange the bedroom so I can feel my way in, even if the power stays down for hours. Turn off light switches so that even if the power comes back on in the wee hours, I don't need to run around the house extinguishing them. Fine. Well drilled and not a problem. Feel my way back to the sofa where, although the wind-up torch has now gone out I know I will find it, and rewind it. I found the sofa, I picked the middle cushion of it.

If the BBC sound archive needed an effect for “grown man wearing clean shorts sits on dinner plate of home made poppadoms and lime pickle”.....

Driving, rain

2010-05-01T03:25:00.000-07:00

After 3 manic weeks, fieldworkers have been trained. My colleagues and I are exhausted and have been worked by the boss to the point of tears, sometimes literally. But at last time for a breather and a very quick, semi-literate entry on this here blog.

I have been in trouble at work for not being sufficiently “encouraging and supportive” to the students on our distance learning courses. Bunkum. I am encouraging to those who write good essays, and I am honest with the rest – some of whom, frankly, wrote some pitiful and occasionally amusing crap that would embarrass an A level student, never mind a practising GP. I tried to make it clear that no matter how much cash these suckers have paid to get London--- whoops, better keep this anonymous. No matter how much they pay, if they write shit I’ll tell them it’s shit, and believe me: some of what I marked this last month was grade A, horse-derived fertiliser.

On a brighter note, I made an epic journey in the Hilux from Mtwara to Dar, in a day, in the rainy season. This is a journey that many vehicles try and fail (I passed 17 stuck vehicles on the way that day) and only 10 years ago used to kill many people every year. Nelson the Hilux did a fine job, joining up in convoy with a couple of S Africans in Nissan HBs and we had quite an enjoyable Safari. Some nail biting river/puddle crossings, involving sludgy mud deeper than my bonnet, but no serious damage to man or machine. Even more unlikely, no real police issues – car was stopped 3 times and searched once but I departed without even having to bribe the guy. Result.

The roads are always pretty dodgy here and sometimes horribly pot-holed, even if they have been surfaced. Some enterprising young men will often fill in a few pot holes with sand and gravel, then stand by them with a spade, asking the now fractionally-less-delayed drivers to pay them for this act. Nothing wrong with that I guess, shows some initiative, although I have heard from my friend Sarah that the way they fill the holes often actually worsens them in the long run!

And as for work: most recently, we have trained our study staff, as I say. A nice bunch of folks who persist in calling me “Mister Marky!” (That’s Dr to you, and without the Y... Nah, I don’t really care). I tried to contribute to training as well as organising, and enjoyed the chance to remind a few of them of the recent Spurs vs Arsenal and Chelsea results.

Pilot study was very interesting. We went to a health facility in Chanika, just south of Dar. No running water. One toilet (a pit, no plumbing). One Dr (which is more than most) and a number of chickens wandering in and out of the buildings. But tidy, clean, well organised and staffed by hard working folks who actually seemed to care about health. This has actually been a recurring image of health care in Tz for me – chronically under-resourced and under-staffed, but the people there do convey a sense of effort and intelligence which you can’t help but respect. By the end of the day we had seen 17 patients, diagnosed 4 malaria cases and one severe anaemia, found at least 2 problems with our survey, and seen that number of errant chickens reduced by 1.

We had a few minor travel issues, but nothing like the Mtwara journey. One day our return to base was delayed by two fallen trees, which had succumbed to the extreme rain and wind and blocked the entire road. While 9/10 of the delayed drivers sat in their cars hoping for God or Allah to intervene, a small group of us put our backs into breaking up and pushing the trunks and branches away. If I say so myself, our rhythm of PUSH, count to 3, repeat, was a display of strength and coordination which would probably have earned us tryouts for the Tanzanian national rugby team’s tight five. If there was such a thing.... Needless to say, once a gap had been cleared, everyone else drove through without waiting or even waving to those of us who had solved the problem, but that is typical of the way the roads here work. What was even funnier was arriving at the same point the next day, to find a small group of men holding pangas (machetes) and demanding money for having cleared the road. Even if I knew the Swahili for “I sodding did it, you shysters!” I was laughing too hard to shout it.

And here is the statue at our lunch stop. I think it is supposed to be a giraffe. I remember reading, while on a holiday many years ago, about the horse statue outside the art history museum in Vienna. It is a horse, rearing onto hind legs. This is incredibly difficult to do, apparently (or was at the time) the sculptor gaining worldwide renown for achieving this position without the usual “cheats” that were common amongst his peers, such as a tail or spear touching the ground to help with distribution of the statue’s weight. The same guy (I should look up his name, but the internet is slow today!) tried again and again to repeat this feat of art and balance, and eventually it drove him to madness, so they say. So I couldn’t help noticing that this giraffe has achieved the same, by means of standing unfeasibly upright, a pose surely never seen except on the cover of an old copy of Black Beauty. I wonder if the sculptor knows what an exclusive club he has joined?

Life on the ocean wave

2010-01-26T05:33:00.000-08:00

Working for a living has a number of downsides, not least of which is the amount of time it takes up when you could be doing something interesting instead. With this in mind we set out this weekend to make up for lost time, and take on what we are going to believe was the first ever crossing from Mtwara to Mikindani by inflatable kayak. I shall now recount the saga of this epic voyage, a journey which even Homer would have found inspirational, I am sure.

Firstly, about our craft. Suze was piloting the trusty Stearns Yukatat, while I rode a similar sized boat, the Sevylor Pointer. On paper, the Stearns has more features to support the long distance paddler, including smooth neoprene padding to avoid scuffed knuckles, a removable dagger board and more accessible pockets for your drinks and snacks. However, in practice the Sevylor is a far easier and quicker boat to set up. My ride was looking straight and seaworthy far sooner, plus it came with a matching spray-skirt which was to prove valuable over the next few hours. So, once both inflatables were looking literally shipshape, we took the Escudo back to our house and put to sea in mild surf, just deep enough to avoid damaging boats on the coral.

I would pretend that we sang a sea shanty as we paddled off together but in truth, paddling small inflatables through breakers it was basically every man for himself, trying to find a way beyond the surf to flatter water. Those of you with Google earth will notice the route is a long shore-side slog, followed by an estuary crossing, then a short cut over 1-2km of open water, then round the headland on your port side and into Mikindani bay. Which is all well and good on a map. In real life we quickly found that kayaking over distance is slow work. We were certainly travelling a shorter distance than if we were to drive or cycle to Mikindani, about 5km rather than 12km on the road, but we were covering that distance much slower as well. We managed to make life a little easier by heading into the waves and eventually past them to paddle in flatter water. But still, the watch showed we had been going an hour (more than enough to cycle the longer route on land) and we hadn’t travelled more than about 2km. We had timed our launch for about an hour before high tide, giving us good clearance over the jagged coral of the shore line and avoiding currents that would wash us backwards, so delaying longer after high tide would make our work even harder.

Arms became sore and sorer, and the splashing of waves or dripping of paddles gradually washed the factor 25 off our arms. Luckily it was a hazy, overcast day, avoiding some of the heat and sun exposure, but the gentle wind was against us so it wasn’t possible to stop paddling without losing ground. Now and then a bigger wave came through to us, including one which we saw very late but managed to steer into just enough to get soaked but stay upright. Across the open water the bay looked tiny and distant, but we hoped that entering it would make life much easier. It began to get closer and we began to believe that we would finish this maiden crossing, without bailing out on any sandy shore we could find. But, as they say in prison, short time is the hardest time, and the closer we got to the mouth of the bay, the slower we seemed to approach it. And now the wind became worse, pushing obliquely against us, not only slowing progress but shoving us towards low coral cliffs which would have put an end to our inflatable kayaks and put a lot of scratches on us. Clearly we should have fought further into the wind earlier, but that’s easier said than done. I decided to get it out of the way, if I could, and put my back into paddling hard for 5-10 minutes. My legs and stomach were sore from holding position, but by this stage my arms were hardly feeling it, almost numb. Eventually I reached the headland, and grabbed hold of a mangrove branch to sit and encourage Suze in catching up. She made it, looking pretty tired and sore, and I suggested we pull up on a visible stretch of sand to rest muscles and take on an energy gel for the final stretch. Even holding the boat in place, in wind and swell, was continuing to tire my arms and thorax. Fortunately her memory of the coastline was better than mine, and she suggested pulling on for another few minutes to a better beach, not yet visible. This we did and it was an ideal spot. We ran up onto soft sand and tumbled onto the beach, legs too stiff after 2 hours crammed motionless in the boat. Briefly it was a deserted paradise-island type beach of palms, mangroves and untrodden sand, then we were joined by a local fisherman in his dugout, who set about repairing a fish trap of woven reeds.

After plenty of water and some Powerbar energy sludge we boarded again and set off into the bay. Now it felt easy, the end was visible and arms had been able to recover a little. Locals floated past and waved at us. It was difficult to know, at distance, whether they were waving their home made paddles to encourage us, or to say “You think you’re tired? Try doing this every day with the lid of a paint pot nailed to a stick!” Fair point, I guess. It was about a km across the bay, but having turned the corner both waves and wind were roughly behind us. Steering was still hard work as the swell could push the stern of your kayak suddenly one way or the other, but we kept the distinctive white tower of the old German boma in sight and paddled mechanically onwards.

We planned to land together but fatigue meant we each had to do what we could. Suze was taking a break to rest arms every 100 strokes, but despite the pain I felt I had to go on; if I stopped I might never reclaim that momentum. So I hauled up first, surrounded by the classic sights of an Indian ocean shoreline – dugout canoes and mangroves, a black kite swooping for scraps and dead fish – as well as some less traditional decorations, e.g. the head gasket of a straight-six truck engine. Suze soon arrived, labouring along with nothing left in her arms, barely even gripping the paddle, but we had both made it. Two hours 45 isn’t a long duration to be at sea, but for novice paddlers it was more than enough.

Unfortunately before we could celebrate, we had to carry the 2 boats up off the beach, and then one of us catch the dala dala (see a previous post) to collect the car. So a slight delay to and stretch aching arms and back while local children stared and gabbered at the bizarre, colourful and not-wooden kayaks, before remembering to trot out their ubiquitous English phrases: “What is my name!” [sic, I believe they mean “what is your name”, but pronouns are always tricky] and “Give me money!”. Suze returned quite quickly with the wheels, and once we had deflated and rolled up the boats we were sure we’d done enough to justify coffee and a cooked brunch in 10 degrees restaurant.

http://www.tendegreessouth.com/aboutmik.htm

I hate fast cars

2009-12-17T03:22:00.000-08:00

In the words of the Buzzcocks, who I was lucky enough to see live in Aberdeen a few years ago. The beginning of my new job earlier this year, and the fact that I will be spending more and more time in DSM, means I had to go car-hunting again. It is a bizarre transformation for us. A year ago we shared one economical Skoda which I had bought on ebay. My feelings towards SUVs when we lived in London were a mix of hatred and pity, as I sailed past them on a single-speed mountain bike, made principally of old parts from skips or freecycle. And then I find myself shopping for our second 4x4. If I get hooked on them and start looking for a BMW X3 when we move home, this page will hopefully exonerate you when you give me a kicking.

Reassuringly, the more cars I test drove, the more pleased I was with our Suzuki. I have been driving all manner of Japan and Britain’s most rugged vehicles, and none has felt as good or as useful to us as the Escudo, and for a while I thought I’d just get a second. Then I found a decent and cheap Hilux; thirsty and bulky but rugged, with lots of luggage space, and much safer than walking in a country with some of the most dangerous roads in the world. A close contender (briefly) was the Landrover Freelander, but I have now driven two and no matter how much I want to like them, they suck. I assumed the first one just had dodgy brakes and no power as it hadn’t been maintained, but that seems to be how they build them. I also wondered about a low-mileage Subaru Impreza on the basis that it’s a fine rally car, manual, 4WD and a car with two turbos must be twice as good as a car with one?! But that was the mid-life-crisis talking again. As one customer apparently said of the MacLaren F1, until recently the most expensive road-legal car, “Three seats? I won’t be driving with my wife and my lover.”

Which leads me (sort of) into one reason why a bike is a massively superior invention to a car. The aforementioned MacLaren generates about 600bhp and is capable of around 300kph. That’s ½ kph achieved for each brake horse power employed. I am approximating and you are welcome to repeat the maths with exact figures, if you care. Eddie Merckx – the cyclist nicknamed “The Cannibal” and usually the first answer in a game of “name 5 famous Belgians” – was measured as capable of about 0.66bhp. I’d assume that modern pro’s might go slightly higher, but without false modesty I doubt that I could produce even 0.4. Still, I recently broke my personal cycle speed record when I hit 73kph in our bike race in South Africa. That makes me and my titanium bicycle (with wheels built by myself ‘cos I couldn’t afford a pair of Zipp 404’s) about 360 times more effective at turning power into speed than a million-dollar sports car. Yeah, I rock. OK, that was downhill, but Britain’s Mark Cavendish was clocked at the same speed on a flat finish line of a stage of the Tour de France, i.e. after about 150km in the saddle.

And finally I’ll mention, mainly as it scares me, there was a TV cameraman (on a motorbike) who was filming our South Africa bicycle race. He and I did a short interview regarding the British Lions’ chances vs the Springboks in the rugby, while I rode uphill, which didn’t make the final cut. He says he also recorded a man grinning like an eejit on one of the tandems in the race, while doing 105kph downhill, which is pretty impressive although, as I say, scary. We don’t know whether it was his wife or his lover on the back.

This blog is a little old now, but I realised it didn't get posted until now. Merry Xmas to one and all, look forward to seeing some of you in GB in a week or so.

Grab the visitor's book!

2009-10-28T22:32:00.000-07:00

I should have done this a while ago, apologies, but I just wanted to say asante sana to our first guest in Tanzania, my dad, who visited in August.

I say thanks, because not only did he bring us a lot of shopping and post, but he also put up with being completely covered in dust on our way to the national park (check out the picture - that's not a sun tan), driving over rough roads for about twice as long as planned, being rudely tipped into the sea by a bloke pushing him in a dug out canoe and a water shortage. He also now gets more detail when we speak on the phone about all the things that we are struggling with at that particular moment as I know he knows what I am talking about!

I also need to say thanks to the zebra, giraffes, lions, elephants, whales and rays for appearing exactly on time as we rehearsed - I'll call you again if another guest is coming. When I get a good internet connection I will put all your pictures on line.

There is a tradition of filling in a guest book wherever you go in Tanzania, so we are thinking of reviving ours that we used to have. But maybe even here they wouldn't keep one for one guest per year... karibuni (you are all welcome).

Cat nip

2009-10-28T03:30:00.001-07:00

I was trying to turn this into a big exciting story that had some amusing anecdote in it, but I havnae blogged for so long that I'll cut the pretentious cr*p and just type the point.

I saw a caracal on Sunday.

A caracal is a medium sized carnivorous cat (tautology, sorry, all cats are carnivores) found in central and E Africa. I went out for an early morning walk while we were staying at a place called Kisampa:

www.sanctuary-tz.com

which is just about the joint most beautiful place I have ever been. Why joint? Thanks for asking, because I would also rate the woods around Modra/Harmonia in Slovakia as equally fantastic and the Amazon rainforest in Guyane.

I saw some cat poo while I was out, which is exciting in a land still occupied by lions and leopards. I also found a few footprints, which I followed up the hill and back towards our banda. Nice walk but not wildly exciting. Then I sat down in our banda, reached for a book and a medium sized sandy-brown cat walked out of the woods about 30m away. I had a perfect view of it, partly because our hut had no walls or windows. It looked around, and stood still for 10-15 seconds, but then caught sight of movement and it skedaddled. Obviously, obviously, my camera was in a bag on the opposite side of the room so there was no point even trying to get it in time.

The owners of the resort have never seen one there yet, so understandably want to try for a picture with a motion-sensitive camera, but I can tell you that's what it was. Fantastic.

Fwd: A blow for feminism

2009-08-13T23:55:00.001-07:00

News from the IOC yesterday that the highest hurdle of sexism will be removed from the Olympic games just in time for London 2012, and I wanted to celebrate that. For the first time since the games began, women are to be allowed their own boxing division. The ancient games, banned for being un-Christian in 389AD, didn't allow women to compete at all. The revived modern games have been much more even, with women's divisions in most sports but boxing remained a sticking point. People can love or hate pugilism, personally I think it is arguably the purest sport. Sport distilled. So I've followed this debate, on and off, and of course there has been some controversy around the idea. Some objections are ridiculous; the rules state that boxers must be naked from the waist up, and for many years it seemed that 5 minutes re-drafting that clause was too much like hard work. Others are well-meaning but misguided; e.g. it's too dangerous for girls. How helpful of the clever men to keep their young fillies safe like that. Boxing is of course dangerous, but to a certain extent so is every other sport. Like so many health statistics, the truth can be surprising but is always more useful than a layman's – I mean layperson's – speculation. Boxing is actually less dangerous than several sports in which women are already rightly welcomed, such as pole vaulting and show jumping. I haven't seen anyone telling the lovely Yelena Isimbayeva to hang up her pole in case she breaks her neck, and she continues to dominate her discipline impressively. Surely this is just hypocrisy, we allow this danger, maybe because we like girls to do nice, girly sports? Gymnastics (does sport get any "girlier" than that?) can have long term health implications that, with my nutritionist hat on, I find quite worrying. So I will be happy to tune in and watch the women's bouts from London, even with the now permitted sports bras in place. And what I would really love to see is an African or even Tanzanian competitor taking the first gold in her newly recognised sport, because this country is in desperate need of a bit more respect for and investment in women.

The terrifying, horrifying, beyond-adjectives health statistic I came across recently is that in a poll in 2002, around 50% of Tanzanian respondents agreed that it is OK for a man to beat his wife if she leaves the house without permission. And that was among the women questioned. That's an extreme example, but the sexism in this society is all-pervading. I thought of myself as a reasonably well-adjusted bloke before, but I becoming a lot more of a feminist. There are issues still to be faced in Britain of course, equal pay for equal jobs, better protection from violent partners spring to mind immediately. But we (Britons) have made some big strides in the right direction of which we should be proud. The news today from Mali is of civil unrest and threats to state buildings over a proposed law to make men and women equal partners in marriage. Meanwhile in Tanzania, women on average work a longer day than their husbands for much less money. So in simplistic terms, better education for women would allow this harder-working section of the population to do better paid jobs: better for their families, better for them, better for Tanzania. Women's and girl's education has massive impacts on health too, e.g. in terms of delayed and less frequent childbirth; hugely important to a country where maternal mortality is high, whose population is growing faster than almost anywhere else in the world, and yet struggles to feed the mouths already here. And how about some more respect. A few months ago in Mtwara, I went to apply for official residency in the country. I had to attend the local immigration department and discuss my case with a senior official there. When I told him that my wife worked, and for the moment I was looking after the house and doing some cooking, he laughed at me and called me a "queer". Homosexuality is, in another display of Tz's ability to stamp its foot and insist on stupidity, still illegal here, so technically this may have been slander on his part. Briefly I considered asking him if my European lifestyle is so laughable, how many SUV's does he own, how many PhD's does his family have and when did he last travel in an aeroplane? But that's not quite the point, and much of it doesn't sit too easily with my leftward leanings anyway. So I just assured him that teamwork was the most valuable thing in my relationship, and the same would go for many people where I live. And as I shook his clammy hand and left the office, I imagined his pudgy little form standing in a ring with Jane Couch MBE, "The Fleetwood Assassin", learning a thing or two about powerful British women.

www.myspace.com/fleetwoodassassin

Come on.

Don't they mean the previous guy?

2009-08-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Cool!

2009-07-29T07:34:00.000-07:00

There has been a bit of a drought. In blog writing that is, sorry. It's
been dry here too, although I don't think it is a drought? So I thought
I would do my bit anyway.

So the fabled 'cool period' has started in Mtwara. And it really is
cool. Having arrived in the 'hot period', which then got hotter, we
desparately tried to find ways to keep ourselves functioning through
A/C, fans (when the power was working), minimal clothing (when the power
wasn't working, and even when it was - it's amazing how many objects one
can stick to oneself in such heat, but you need the light on to see what
you are doing), Azam ice cream and swimming/diving in the sea. We may
have mentioned how hot we found it previously? I didn't think that was
ever going to change. This morning, my cleaner lady (I'm not posh, I'm
contributing to the local economy before anyone comments) arrived at the
house at 7.00, after a 45 min-1 hr walk from her house and was still
wearing 2 jumpers. Even I, a big soft mzungu who feels warm at 21
degrees usually, have slept without the A/C or fan and with a sheet over
me, and have worn slong sleeves to keep off the evening chill, not just
for mozzie protection. I am still hoping to go diving though!

I say cool, but in the car today at 5pm the thermometer said 27 degrees.
So maybe it's just we get a break from the heat over night? Maybe it's a
drop in humidity? Who knows. Whatever it is, it feels more comfortable
and I am making the most of it. (Dad - you have chosen the best time to
visit weather wise!)

The down side of the 'cool' period is the lack of water that is
associated with it. When I left Mtwara 6 weeks ago there was grass and
geckos and not too much dust. Now the opposite is true, it's really
quite arid. Fortunately the cool weather will help me to do my bit to
reduce water use as I don't feel the need to shower as often. Even
though I don't think excessive domestic consumption is the reason why
the landscape is dry, knowing that the majority of people in this region
have to collect their daily water from a well and carry it home combined
with the sudden change in the landscape means I am more aware of my
water usage now than ever before.

Put me back on my bike.

2009-07-20T02:17:00.000-07:00

When the gun went off I was still finding my place on the beach; queues to check in the bike and to store your post-race streetwear had taken longer than I thought. But on the whole that was probably better than having time to stand and dread the swim, and besides I couldn’t persuade myself to get up much earlier than 0430.
So I waddled forward, along with 2500 other very unathletic looking athletes. Big stones bruised the soles of our feet and wetsuits (the tighter they fit the better they work) pushed us into hunchback postures. The water was cold – refreshingly so when you’re clad head to toe in skin tight neoprene under the Provencal morning sun. Not much time to worry as we all flopped into the Med’ and began to cycle the arms, in a rhythm that even the fastest swimmer would have to maintain for nearly an hour. I am not, as I think I have made clear before, the fastest swimmer. I tried my best to stay clear of turbulence, but inevitably I swallowed some of the sea and had to puke it back up, maybe only 6 times in all. It’s all a bit of a blur until I got out. I remember feeling ok for a while, even getting to the first buoy in a decent time, but turns were crowded and slow and choppy, and the last few buoys just seemed to drift away as fast as I could swim towards them. By the time I’d been swimming an hour, the crowds (out of earshot) were welcoming the leaders ashore, but my sinuses were burning with salt and exertion. I had resolved that, as long as I finished this one, I would never do an Ironman again.
Finally, finally, it was all over. I had swum 3.8km and felt sure that everything from then on would be easy, comparatively. I staggered into T1, found my bag and took a little time to gather my thoughts while trying to apply sunblock and fill my pockets with energy gels. Mediterranean and mucous ran freely from my face, as if the seawater and urine drenching my tri-suit wasn’t enough.
Although I was a little disappointed at how few bikes were left in the park, I was glad to be on mine at last and began to relax and rack up a few km. The bike ride was, from start to finish, genuinely enjoyable, with views of the countryside, pretty villages and shouts of encouragement/offers of pastis from the locals. With hindsight though, all was not going well. I had taken on so much sea water that I was feeling pretty ill. My heart rate didn’t settle for the first 90 minutes of riding and I could only manage about half of the solid food I had planned to consume. I got up the hills OK but no better than that. I’ve always believed myself to be un grimpeur pas mal, but as I laboured steadily up Col de Vence, other guys were riding past me with ease. On top of my nutritional disorder, my rear hub had gone sticky, and although a fantastic local bike shop (www.veloconcept.com) had done their best to free things up, it was still like riding while very gently squeezing the back brake. Otherwise, a lot of things went ok: My back was able to hold an aero position for most of the time, I picked good lines in the corners, had no punctures and eventually my body sweated out all the salt and I felt healthier. There were some great moments of being cheered on by strangers, passing a guy who wore the “US Marines Tri” strip (hooray), passing a guy of 71 years old (phew), and chatting to other riders up the hills (Hi Lisa, Eve). IM France has a reputation of being the hardest IM around, mainly because of all the hills, but it certainly makes it pretty.
T2, I got to see Suze and hand her my machine, which was cheering of course. I didn’t rush too much and made sure to re-apply suncream and find my hat. But then I tried to run, and it wasn’t right. Obviously I expected to feel a bit tired, but that wasn’t it. I had done long rides in hotter weather in my training, and always been able to run for at least an hour afterwards, but here I was having to run/walk about every half a mile. This seemed like the only thing I could do in terms of damage limitation, but for the first lap (of four to make up the marathon) I had my doubts about finishing. I had to resolve that just finishing was – I mean is – a real achievement in Ironman, especially in your first attempt at the distance. The crowds were fantastic, cheering in many languages for anyone who’s name they could read. Particular thanks go to the British lady who shouted “You’re not going to die, you’re going to win!” That cheered me right up. The sun started to abate while I was running and as I drank more water and ran further I actually felt better. And to cut a long story short I should say that I did finish and was happy to do so, but deep down I know I got something wrong on the day, and that stopped me from doing it considerably faster. I thought I’d feel proud of it, I thought I’d want to tell everyone about my time, but I don’t.
So what’s the PM?
I think it was a bloating and malaise brought on by nutrition/sea water problems, but I felt awful. I was slowly improving on the bike, but then forgot to keep up the water intake during the last hour or so, leaving me bunged up with energy bars etc. So of the 4 laps of the run I am sure the 3rd or 4th was my best, I was catching up with hydration and my legs still had glycogen in them. By the last lap real fatigue was upon me, which I would have accepted had I been able to run up until then! As further proof that it wasn’t a lack of running stamina that let me down, I woke up the next day with almost no stiffness in my muscles; I have felt far worse after just a half marathon. So obviously, within about 24hours of finishing I had resolved to go back against my promises of that morning, and that I would certainly want to do another one.
I guess that makes this the final IM blog, until or unless I get back into training for IM Germany in a year or two. Thanks to everyone who has read and supported.

IM: Two steps forward, one step back

2009-06-10T03:52:00.000-07:00

About 3 weeks to go until this challenge and I guess that all is going roughly according to plan. To my surprise I haven't really struggled with the physical aspect of it, but perhaps I forgot what else could get in the way.
I recently spent 72 hours recovering from yet another cold. Not nearly as bad as last time but still, 3 days off exercise is 3 days not getting fitter. To pass the time I have been checking over my steed and all is not well. The R wheel has come back from South Africa slightly less straight than your average ring doughnut. I don’t know if it happened towards the end of the race or in the flight but it needs fixed before the triathlon; 180km is long enough when all your energy is going in the right direction. And for some reason my rear derallieur is only moving through 9 of the 10 gear positions it should have. I cannot fathom what’s going on at all. It’s not a massive problem in that I think I could set it up to run smoothly on 9 of my 10 gears (as opposed to currently it running badly on all of them) but you want everything to be perfect for a race so you’re not worrying about it. And if it chooses to get worse half way up Col de Vence then it’ll be a long and depressing walk back to Nice...

On the plus side running and riding has been going well. SA was a brilliant boost to the riding training and the running distances are getting realistic now without feeling too much like hard work. I recently entered the US embassy’s 10km race here in Dar and was pleased to come in 2nd. I thought I could win it for a while but the local guy with whom I was battling at the front knew what he was doing. He saw his moment when I was struggling a little and made sure he hurt me enough then that I couldn’t pull the gap back, and he beat me by about 10 seconds. Hats off to him, he was a fit lad.

Even my swimming is improving a bit. The incentives to practise down in Mtwara are massive; the water is beautifully clear and warm and you are surrounded by half the cast of Finding Nemo. I am optimistic now about going the distance, especially with the advantage of a wetsuit to buoy my confidence. Sure, the whirling salt and neoprene froth which is the start will still terrify me, but now it feels more like terror than panic, and that seems a slight improvement. I should explain in case anyone new is reading now; I could not swim a length of a pool until I was 31. I mean I had “swimming lessons” at little school, but a lesson consisted of being placed in the shallow end of the local pool; if you could swim to the deep end you got a badge, if not you tried again next week. Now I’ve taken some adult lessons and been lucky to have help and advice from the Mrs. Now Suze herself does not swim either. Rather she gets into a pool and all the water spontaneously chooses to flow past her, and suddenly she is at the other end. There’s an effortless beauty to it which is an inspiration when you are as splashy and square in the water as I am. Little by little, pole pole, I approach her standard, although like a logarithmic graph I will never quite get there. I just hope I have got close enough.
So I don’t know if I’ll get round to many/any more updates, but rest assured you’ll hear all the boring details after the event.

It’s a Jungle out there.

2009-06-02T23:48:00.000-07:00

It is, quite literally, when you get a few miles outside almost any Tanzanian town, a hot, humid, seething mass of greenery. Now I love this, it’s the main reason for me personally, to come and work in Africa. But there seems to be some instinct, or at least tradition, of fearing it. I hope it won’t seem too pretentious if I waffle on a bit about it. I’m not claiming to be any kind of authority on any kind of literature, just trying to link some stuff together in my mind.

Joseph Conrad talks frequently about the menace of the forest, both in Heart of Darkness (in which even the title suggests a foreboding danger) and in earlier less famous works. Even when speaking through the voice of Marlow, who is clearly critical of many aspects of the Euro-centricism and imperialism he witnesses, he describes the forest as frightening and “so dark as to be almost black”.
Shakespeare talks in a similar way about British forest. A few hundred years before Conrad (obviously, as Britain’s forests didn’t really last into much of the 20th century), the dark forests are frightening and avoided places in, for instance, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Now I believe this metaphor has gynaephobic overtones as well, but ultimately it is the forest that we are supposed to fear.
And we’re not out of the woods yet, culturally. Around the time of WWI (in setting at least), Henri Charriere’s “Papillon” tells of his hero’s attempts to escape, not just from a French prison colony, but from L’Enfer Vert. The French overseas dependency of Guyane, almost entirely covered by rainforest, is still known by this nickname. Sections of the film Papillon are actually shot there on location, although Steve McQueen never even attempts a trace of a French accent.

Although I didn’t even take a journey by aeroplane until I was 23, I have since then had the privilege of visiting all these locations. I love walking around the few remaining tracts of Shakespeare’s British wilderness, and the much better preserved examples in Central or Eastern Europe. Suze and I’s honeymoon was in the “Green Hell” of French Guyana. And although it is never specifically stated in Heart of Darkness whether Marlow’s boat travels towards the Congo from East or West Africa – much more likely the latter – we have now travelled, and in Suze’s case worked, in both.
The horror! What horror? What do we actually have to fear in the woods these days, except that bears undeniably shit in them? Bears don’t attack humans (or anything even close to man-sized) unless they feel threatened, and likewise there is not a single documented instance of unprovoked attack on people by wolves. Lions, tigers, and pumas take the occasional human victim, but far fewer than are killed in towns by domestic/feral dogs. Mosquitoes are an annoyance, but providing you cover bare skin and take your Mefloquine or Doxycycline, not much more than that. Reptiles are widely feared, and snake bite does kill quite a lot of people in the developing world. The actual numbers are hard to pin down owing to lack of access to care, record-keeping etc, but 20,000 deaths per year worldwide is a credible estimate. That number could be reduced dramatically if we could raise the standard of living in Africa and South Asia sufficiently that everyone could afford a pair of shoes. Which doesn’t sound like that much to ask, really? Conversely, in a single country (the USA, obviously) about 30,000 people per year are killed by firearms and more than 3 times that number are injured.
So trust me, I do have a degree in zoology after all. If you go down to the woods today, you’d better go in sturdy boots and a long sleeved top, and as long as you do you are in one of the safest and most beautiful places on earth. There is one thing above all others that’s really worth being frightened of in this world, and it mainly lives in cities. L’Enfer, should you believe in such a place, may be firey red or sulphurous yellow, but would surely be unlikely to be green. To paraphrase the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s ideas regarding it: “We have no need for fire and brimstone, hell is other people.”

A game for gentlemen played by thugs

2009-05-08T07:23:00.002-07:00

Football is important here. That’s a bit of an understatement but I’m determined not to use the “matter of life and death” quote which gets way too much exposure anyway. But football is everywhere. Working class Tanzanian men wear a pair of trousers, flip flops and an old T shirt, everyday of their lives, and second-hand football tops are the most sought after. I don’t believe there is actually anywhere to buy new clothes in Mtwara, but every few hundred metres through the town there is someone hanging 2nd-hand clothes on a tree to sell. Tree shops are the place to browse and try things on, if you have put old garments in the containers at recycling centres, a lot of them end up here. And a Man Utd or Arsenal shirt will be sold the moment it hits the bough. Every Tanzanian will, if asked, tell you their favourite team, but I have yet to hear any preference outside “the top four”. A lot of guys will keep their options open by having a team in many leagues; I asked a taxi driver once who was his favourite side, and he was still talking about 5km later, “...in Germany it’s Bayern Munich, they were unlucky last year, in Spain I like Real Madrid...” I’d probably have got a more concise answer asking a British cabbie his views on the asylum system.

Then, speaking of transport, there’s the dala-dalas. These are horrifically damaged old minibuses, usually Toyota Hiace, which run an unscheduled, unsafe but inexpensive transport service around every Tz town. The sides of the vehicle will be stencilled to show you its route, but the rear will have been lovingly decorated with slogans or portraits, in a “graffiti” style (and I’m talking old Skool New York here, none of your new-fangled subversive Banksy stuff). Often there is a religious motto, roughly 50:50 split between Christian and Muslim, which I like to think of as a plea for forgiveness of their driving style, although sadly I have yet to see the bible’s shortest but most apt verse; “Jesus wept”. But everyone has their priorities, and there is usually some other much larger font advertising allegiance to Liverpool, Barcelona et al, often accompanied by the name of a favourite player. A recent in-my-head straw poll surprisingly revealed Carlos Tevez to be the most popular icon. I have seen exceptions, one dala-dala up in Dar publicises the Taliban, and there is also, locally, the inexplicable:

I don’t understand.

Hairdressers adorn their walls with large and often fairly good portraits of premiership footballers, usually black and good-looking; Theirry Henry, Michael Essien, but also for some reason that whinging little cheat Ronaldo. I presume this is so that the customers can sit and point to the star who they wish to look like, which is one of several very plausible reasons that you never see a painting of Robbie Savage. Saturday nights in a bar with satellite TV are a lot of fun. The atmosphere is a bit like being at the game, rival groups of fans sit in opposite corners of the room, shouting and swapping banter. I recently was the only white man in a packed hotel bar watching Blackburn fail to score at Anfield. Both sides also failed to entertain, frankly, but even as the night wore on and the Guinness slipped down, there was no danger of me nodding off as the large local fella to my left would scream “Eh!” and slap me heartily on the thigh whenever Liverpool got remotely close to scoring. Wearing shorts as I was my leg began to turn the colour of Torres’ shirt.

And yet domestic football here is rubbish. I mean terrible, the national side is riddled by in-fighting and struggles against the likes of Sudan, and despite being managed by a Brazilian recently failed to qualify for the knock-out stages of the African cup of nations. I can’t remember off the top of my head whether Tz have qualified for the next World cup, but even on African soil I would put a few quid on them making the short trip home “without troubling the scorekeeper”, to coin my favourite cricketing phrase. I’ll cheer for them of course, but if you want a flutter, there’s my tip.

Biltong and Body Hair

2009-05-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long time, dear readers, and for that I apologise. I can only say that living in Tanzania is kind of 24/7, and trying to do a job at the same time is mental. Obviously about 15 million Tanzanians manage it, and we will manage it, but setting these things up takes some time.
General update: Our freight arrived, mainly intact, and it felt like Xmas three times over, unwrapping all of the things we have been missing. Unwrapped a fair few things that we have no idea why we ever bought, never mind brought with us, but at least they don’t have to go back again when we leave. The house in Dar is shaping up well and feels a bit homely now that we have some things we recognise in it, like saucepans and Finding Nemo on DVD.

One of the biggest sources of relief in the freight was our bikes, which arrived and were unpacked with about 48 hours to spare before we left for Johannesburg and the MTN Panorama Tour (a bicycle race to you and me, hence clearly not much fun sans velo). This was our first genuine week off since we came to Africa, and we were looking forward to it massively. I was treating it as a “big push” in my cycle training for the Ironman, some good long days in the saddle to toughen the legs and the butt. Suze hadn’t done much cycling except on her monster of a Chinese commuter bike, so it was a good chance for her to improve fitness and enjoy riding again.
I decided to take it pretty seriously, and try a few things that I will do on the day in France, including shaving my legs, for the 1st time ever. This is common practice among racing cyclists, partly because aerodynamics can account for literally 80% or more of your energy, and partly to make it easier to clean/repair the skin if you come a cropper. But what a job it was. Strewth. My empathy goes out more than ever to any ladies reading, who presumably go through this far more often than me (although to be fair my legs probably started out a lot bushier). It must have taken nearly an hour, and that was with me doing one leg and the wife shaving the other! It looks pretty freaky until you get used to it, too.
Once we started riding we were glad to have taken every possible advantage. The race is a behemoth, nay, a leviathan of effort. 115km on the first day and less than 10km must have been flat. We were riding for over 6 hours if your include water breaks. The fancy-pants Garmin bike computer-GPS thingamy on Suze’s handlebars reckons we burnt nearly 4000Kcal by the end – that’s about 2 days of food if you’re not doing much. We got there, with gritted teeth, screaming thighs and a little sunburn, but we doubted our ability to complete the race (3 more days to go, all in the same terrain). However, never doubt the restorative power of dried meat products. A little biltong, a little chilli drywoers (kind of soft spicy salami, delicious) and gradually everything seemed more possible. Suze was amazing. I mean I had been training for this, albeit on a different bike and on easier landscape; she hadn’t ridden more than 30 minutes in one go since November, but she slept off the pain and fatigue and when we awoke at 0500 again, agreed to take a swing at day two. Day two was a little shorter, and we finished in a mere 4h15m or so... On the finish line we got talking to the organiser, who was so chuffed to have “international” entrants, that we had to go up on stage at that evening’s medal ceremony, give an off-the-cuff speech and receive a 1000 Rand prize just for turning up!
I’ll spare you the ups and downs of the course, suffice to say it remained as long, hard work. Mornings were recurring at 0500 and in the evenings we delighted in stretching and ice baths. But it also reminded me how much I love to ride a bike. Day three was another 6 hour epic, and I genuinely believe I could have kept going for 6 hours more. The machine felt more and more natural to me. It was a joyous and, dare I say it, almost spiritual experience. The bike and I were one thing by now. Somewhere in my shoes and my saddle was the point where biology stopped and technology started, but the border was getting increasingly blurred. I wasn’t on a bike, I was part of it. I didn’t care how steep it got, I could ride up walls. I didn’t steer the bike, I just had to see corners and we were around them. I was riding an intention craft, if anyone has read Phillip Pulman.
The final day was a team time trial, on a shorter but abruptly hilly course. By this stage we knew that only a break (to body or chain) could prevent us finishing, but Suze was understandably exhausted. We fought through it and even made up a few places in the mixed division, to add to the several teams who had dropped out behind us when they found how hard it was. I’ve been presented with a fair few medals at the finish line of running or cycling events, but this might be the first time that it felt to me like I truly deserved one (and the Mrs probably deserved two).
South Africa, generally, was great. Not without its problems, of course and although I haven’t been before, occasionally you do wonder about the apparently slow pace of change, socially. There may not be official apartheid anymore (in fact Zuma and the ANC were re-elected by a landslide on the day we arrived) but socio-economically, the white-skinned people are still wearing the white-collars, if that’s not too clumsy a way to put it. Nonetheless in comparison with Tz, there was no escaping the facts that SA is affluent, friendly, efficient and so, so easy. The lovely lady in the outdoor shop where we spent our R1000 winnings, remarked that we were lucky to live up in the “real Africa”. It was a nice thing to hear but I haven’t yet worked out how much of it I agree with.

IM: You're only as good as your last week in training

2009-04-14T01:41:00.000-07:00

A sit’rep’. It had all been going so well. Phase 1 (prep’) is over and now it’s about using those techniques in some base stamina work. This feels good, gradually increasing distances/durations at last and getting a proper sweat on. Last month was fantastic, everything went pretty much to plan and it included my longest ever sea swim – still not as long as race distance, not even close, but it felt like another step on the way. A minor hiccup followed as I got an unfixable flat at roughly the furthest point of my bike route. Arse. Couldn’t even patch it, as basically the valve had torn off the tube, I think it caught on something underwater in a puddle. And most of my spare tubes are, of course, in the expensively-shipped freight which, of course, is STILL not here. Long muddy walk home and try again tomorrow. Tomorrow went much better but included two minor crashes while avoiding fast moving trucks on sand roads. Then there was massive GI disturbance, followed by a beast of a cold (sinuses so bad as to cause a kind of sleep-apnoea). That lost me two weeks of training and in my first attempt to return to swimming I caught my hand on a boat’s anchor rope which was covered in shellfish, and cut my palm in about 6 places. The books say you don’t lose much fitness in a week off training, but you do acquire a lot of guilt and anxiety!

Other thoughts: I don’t make a point of telling many people that I’m training for an Ironman. The main reason is that I haven’t done one yet, so the more people who hear me talk about it the more people I will have to tell of my failure if I collapse within the first 10 miles of the marathon. But there’s one thing that I hear often when I own up to being a closet triathlete, which goes something like: “Why didn’t you say before? I’ll sponsor you.”
Now I believe in charity, or even in altruism if we want to get all philosophical about it. But why do people assume that the best or only reason to take on a physical challenge is to raise some cash for a worthy cause? And from that assumption it’s only a hop, skip and a 2-mile jog to the point where you’re entering races dressed up as a rhino/blue whale/bearded cacomistle, which no matter how endangered is still an irritation to other runners trying to get past, and an increase in your chance of taking up space and time in a St John’s ambulance. I read a fairly convincing piece of journalism arguing that the quality of British athletics, and distance running in particular, has been harmed by the fact that most places in the London marathon go to those who can raise the most cash for charity, rather than those who can run 26.2 miles the fastest. [I believe the abolition of student grants and introduction of tuition fees does the same to higher education.] If people want to give to charity then I wholeheartedly approve, and not just because they ultimately pay my wages. If people want my opinion (unlikely, I know) of which charity to support then I would suggest something in sustainability/conservation, or non-religious third world development. If anyone is thinking of taking up triathlon I would say “do it!” I have never felt so healthy and fit as I do now, and the day of a race itself is magical. But give money if you think it’s a good cause, and swim-bike-run if you want the exercise, not because a friend of a friend is hopping backwards up Ben Nevis dressed as a giraffe.

Relocation Relocation Relocation

2009-03-11T01:46:00.000-07:00

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.

Things we miss

2009-03-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

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)

If the car in front is a Toyota, the bike behind is a phoenix

2009-03-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

Tempted as I am to moan about the lack of freight, driving licences,
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.

“Whoops, bit of politics, LIKE IT!”

2009-03-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

…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.

The curse of the drinking classes

2009-02-25T23:53:00.000-08:00

Is work, according to Oscar Wilde. And half of all the quotes worth quoting are Oscar Wilde, according to my Father. It seems that my days of washing clothes, reading Philip Pullman and Kurt Vonnegut novels in the sunshine and blowing the froth off cold bottles of Tusker are numbered: I have gone and got a job.
[If I were clever with computers I would have the music that accompanies the marching of the Stormtroopers in Star Wars playing now, maybe you’ll be good enough to hum it while you read?]
Perhaps I tempted fate too much by stating how I enjoy my employment-free life, or perhaps it was because I was foolish enough to apply for something, but either way there you have it, I have only myself to blame. The School, who employ Suze, advertised 2 posts in malaria research, the eradication of this disease being a stated (and ambitious, commendable etc) aim of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and also part of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. It is interesting to wonder which of these organisations is, these days, more powerful.
I put in my CV, saying I would be interested in either job, and the School (bless ’em) decided that, in the words of the Beastie Boys; “I got the skills (What skills?) To pay the bills” and offered me the more senior of the two. It’s a malaria treatment study, so the more pedantic amongst us, like myself, could question whether it is really epidemiology – a discipline which usually investigates disease prevention. I suppose that epi’ is literally about the study of diseases and how they spread, and semantics aside the aim of reducing malaria deaths, even among those who are suspected to have the disease, is definitely a good one. It sounds as though I will have a number of other staff “under me”, which is a little intimidating. OK, the idea of even turning up 5 days per week is intimidating, having supervisory responsibilities borders on the terrifying, but deep breath, fingers crossed and here we go. I’ll keep you posted.

On a completely different note: Wildlife. We aren’t as surrounded by beasties as I hoped we would be here, but we do see a few new things now and again. And it is odd, you never know what will impress you the most. The bigger stuff has actually not made that much of an impact on me; monkeys and monitor lizards are lovely, of course, and I am really glad they seem to survive and thrive even close to towns. But the smaller things have been the ones really to take my breath away. Lion fish, sea horses and chameleons are way out on top of my list of favourites at the moment, for having a kind of delicate and detailed beauty that simply doesn’t show up on TV. I can’t say exactly what it is, but even though the BBC have shown me these things many times, to see a real one is genuinely thrilling. I found my first chameleon recently. It was actually crossing the road in front of me during a training ride, so I jammed on the anchors, laid my bike down to obstruct passing traffic and carried him off to the relative safety of a bush. I got bitten pretty hard on the thumb for my trouble (“Oh, now he’s gettin’ really mad” in the words of the sorely missed Steve Irwin), but I would take that any day if it means I get to see another one. I remember David Attenborough apparently being moved almost to tears by pygmy chameleons on Madagascar: At the time I thought it was charming if slightly odd, but now I think it is quite understandable.

Oh! You pretty things.

2009-02-23T05:57:00.000-08:00

Wearily she opened her eyes and peered across the tiny room. Even the dim light of the single, smoky, kerosene lamp could neither hide nor romanticise the squalor. Dirty walls struggled to hold the low bare ceiling up, as the rain ricocheted off the rusty corrugated iron roof. The floor was about 70% covered by torn, darkly-patterned linoleum, and the single window had neither curtains nor glass, just some corroded iron bars. At least the receptionist hadn’t asked questions. Two US dollars for the room, and a guest list to sign (name, passport number and so on) but it didn’t matter how many boxes she left blank or made up. She realised that sooner or later she must again make the short but long walk, under fog and thunderstorms, across the muddy yard to the stinking communal squat toilet – communal with any other paying guests as well as with the crawling things that she couldn’t name. How long could she live – exist – like this? Was it any better than the prison she sought to avoid?

Alright, I suppose we’re unlikely to be locked up for the crime of me taking occasional turns to drive while we await my licence, especially as our car has the almost unique combination of seat belts, brakes and 4 good tyres. But the above is a faithful description of the double room we shared last weekend at the edge of the rather beautiful Rondo Forest Reserve. To be fair, it had looked for an hour or so like we would have to sleep in the back of the Suzuki, so we were grateful to find anything, and we slept pretty well on the tatty sheets. Besides, the thrill of the place was the scenery not the comfort. About 40km sq of almost-pristine, closed canopy montane forest (the Brit’s in their wisdom, ordered sections of it cut down and replaced with a commercial teak plantation, but this has since reverted more or less back to natural growth) is only about 3 hours by 4x4 from our house. It was an adventure of a journey (quite literally a “Safari”) in itself; the unmade roads changed from loose rock to rutted stream bed to sand with little warning, and even many of the flat sections would have been impassable to any other car we’ve owned. When we stopped the car for longer than the few seconds it takes to shift into the low-ratio gear box, various locals would trot out of thin air and beg us to move them and their child/sister/box of chipped crockery to the next village, anything from 1-15km away. I think we helped about 5 of them in total, but when all your concentration is focussed on reacting to the next pot-hole, drop-off, rock or ford (and I mean this without any hint of racism) the guys in the back seat all blur into one.

We went on two long-ish walks through the forest tracks. The first day a local guy who was an uncanny likeness of a short, un-tattooed Mike Tyson, and seemed to be the village elder/forest warden, spent about 3 hours showing us where to drive in, park and walk. He was a lovely bloke, knew a bit about the forest wildlife and spoke decent English, and genuinely seemed to be pleased and surprised to receive a couple of quid after giving us an afternoon of his time and knowledge. I guess we were a little disappointed not to see more of the big famous animals which are known to frequent the forest, such as leopard, lion, elephant, various antelope etc. But we did see tracks of at least one carnivore, I suspect a rattel, as well as all sorts of small pretty stuff: colourful birds, butterflies, bombardier beetles and chameleons. We don’t yet have our “Spotter’s guide” books, but there are about 11 butterflies and 4-5 chameleon species that haven’t been seen anywhere else on earth except in this forest! For me it was just relaxing to walk in the shade of the varied and venerable trees, listening to things calling. I think if we go back, we’ll take a tent and maybe we’ll see more by keeping still and letting stuff come to us.

Ironman: Close to braking point

2009-02-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

I’ll try to keep this brief but I have to whinge a bit. My front brake is rubbish. I train long hours/distances on the mountain bike, and the F brake is obviously pretty bloody essential. There may be one or two people out there (assuming that anyone is reading at all) mistakenly thinking that the front brake is less important than the back brake, in which case I shout poppycock*! When you decelerate, the weight moves towards the front of the vehicle. More weight on the front wheel = more grip for the front tyre = use the front brake more. Valentino Rossi (or any other racing motorcyclist) will probably not use his R brake from start to finish of a race, because when you brake that hard the R wheel has so little grip that it would skid immediately. Which makes it all the more eye-popping when our charismatic security guard turns up on an off-road Kawasaki with no F brake at all! All well and good for doing a few laps of our front garden (which obviously I had to try) but I wouldn't fancy it on the highway. This is also a massive issue on a mountain bike, since you do not have the luxury of both tyres being planted on firm and consistent tarmac, but rather you frequently have one or more tyres squelching and slurring through unidentifiable poppycock (or more correctly pappe kak*, this being the Dutch term for “soft shit”). It is possible of course, to stand the bike up on its front end, and from there even to fall over the front onto the track, by excessively hard and sudden use of the F brake, but you’d have to be a complete clutz and a dullard to manage that. I’ve only ever seen one person do it, and I won’t name him here. (A clue you say? Oh, alright then, Aberdeen, religious fundamentalist, annoying accent…)

But, since I want to be able to brake as hard as I like, I do want my F brake to have sufficient power to stand the bike up on its front end, should I so choose. Indeed, with a little bit of practice one can learn to perform an “endo-stop” or even an endo-turn in relative safety, and once learnt it can actually be useful. I did it once in T2 of a triathlon and the marshal screamed in fear; great fun. And the Hope MonoMini gracing the front end of Rocky (the mountain bike) will simply not do the business. Now I know a tiny bit about maintaining bikes, having built about 6 from the frame outwards. I even make my own wheels, so basically you can’t do much more without a welder. I set up my R brake, exactly the same make and model as the F and it works fine. I set up Suzanne’s F brake (Hayes XC9, fantastic piece of kit with a carbon lever, prrrr) and it is superb. But I have worked on this for some time, and spent sums of cash I don’t want to add up:

Bled and re-filled the oil reservoir four times (twice by me, twice by a pro’ just in case).
Replaced the hoses with new Goodridge jobs. This kit is canine reproductive tackle, they use the same brand in F1 racing, allegedly.
Cleaned the rotor in water, fairy liquid, vodka and any other solvent I could think of.
Replaced the rotor with a brand new one.
Adjusted the reach of the lever (which was a revelation, didn’t even know you could do that with an open reservoir system?).
Cleaned the pads in all the above solvents, and then baked them at 180C to burn off any trace of remaining dirt.
Replaced the pads with after-market upgrades from EBC.
Replaced the entire chuffing calliper and lever.

And while this was all infinitely preferable to going to the office, none of it has made the slightest difference to my ability to convert kinetic energy into heat (i.e. to brake, but you knew that? Good). So please, answers on an e-card, what the blazes is going wrong with my brake? I am fast running out of ideas, and becoming tempted to blame bad karma.

Hydro, Electric, Plants.

2009-02-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

The rains are here. Yeeehaw, brother, the rains have come, and they’re about a fortnight early this year, apparently. This is mainly good, because it lowers the temperature and/or humidity to levels much more bearable for us white folk.

It also has a number of other knock-on effects, including:
The electricity keeps going off. We have a power cut every day, sometimes three or more. Depending on where you are in the town you sometimes hear an ironic cheer when the local electricity supply finally kicks in again, much like the noise in White Harte Lane when Gomes catches a ball.
The coconut trees drop coconuts. Mainly a good thing because they’re a tasty and free addition to a curry, but don’t make a habit of walking underneath the palm trees. I forget the exact statistics but a surprisingly high number of people are killed by falling fruit each year.
It is easier to sleep in between the storms, again because of the temperature, hard to sleep during them as the noise can be pretty thunderous.
Roads quickly become impassable to anything except a proper 4x4. Fortunately we now have our proper 4x4, and have even brought it back from Dar. Currently only Suze can drive it, as she has a proper local license and I do not. [And as I type; the 4th powercut of the day…]
So I never drive it anywhere, oh no sir.

Here is the car, and Suzanne, showing that she was not at all affected by marketing.

So, I am in the process of gaining a driving licence, which brings to my mind the Monty Python sketch where a man requests a fish licence for his pet, Eric (he’s an ‘alibut). In Tanzania it goes a little something like this:
Fill in a form stating your identity, cost TSH 3,000.
Obtain 8 passport sized photographs (taken on a mobile phone and uploaded to a PC, dreadful image making my nose look even bigger than real life), cost TSH 6,000.
Take the form and photos back to the place where you filled in the form, and fill in a new form, applying for a provisional licence, cost TSH 5,000.
Take these 2 forms and your recently signed and stamped provisional licence to the hospital. Queue for about 90 minutes among the sick and unfortunate, to obtain an eye-test form. Queuing, locally, is not quite the way us Brit’s would expect it, and requires you to lean/push/shout your way to the front or you will never get there. I found it hard to judge this process, as I am the size of about 2.4 hospitalised Tanzanians, and have spent many days over the last few months pushing weights around a gym. But it hardly seems fair to throw my own weight around and symbolically re-enact decades of colonial oppression in a hospital waiting room. Fortunately a local contact who was too small to cheat the system offered to queue for me.
Take all 3 forms to the eye clinic, where Matron fills in the eye-test form while you sit and (for example) memorise the sequence of letters on the eye exam chart.
Return the eye test form to the place where you got it, queue for a while longer, and obtain a signed, stamped receipt for your fee, cost TSH 10,000. OK, make that 10 receipts as they are all pre-filled with a value of 1,000 – presumably to make things quicker??
Take all 4 forms and 10 receipts back to the eye clinic, where you sit in the middle of the room amongst about 15 other patients, covering one eye at a time with your own hand, and reciting the letters you learnt previously. (I jest, I did the test properly).
Once Matron has stamped and signed the eye test form, and a fifth form stating that you are sufficiently sane and able bodied to drive (I had to write my own name on this one, which with hindsight may have actually been the test), you simply return all the above to the local police station, and wait an undefined length of time. Simple!
You will have noticed, that at no stage in this procedure did I have to drive, or even sit in, a car.

Finally, yet another list. Learn from my mistakes, here are some useful tips for distance running during a monsoon;
Take water, you are still sweating underneath all the rain.
Glasses may help you to keep your eyes open when the wind is in your face.
When moving through shin-deep muddy pools of about 5m diameter, walk rather than running, to avoid hitting hidden objects or twisting your ankle.
Don’t wear white socks.
Do remember that all your clothes will double or triple in weight.
Do wear shorts with a drawstring.

IM: It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it.

2009-02-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

My training thus far has been following the advice/ideas from a book called “Going Long” by Friel and Byrn. On the one hand this is useful as the authors have been coaching and racing Ironman for several years. On the other there are some glaring errors in the book. The entire chapter on nutrition is, how shall I say? Bovine Surplus-matter, and I speak as someone who has a PhD in the area – OK, in both nutrition and BS, more on this below. There are also some big misunderstandings in the section on bicycle handling, some of which are pointless and some probably dangerous. Still, until proven otherwise I am assuming most of the rest to be correct and going along with most of the ideas. That means, up until now, that training has been all about “preparation”: Improving my technique over short distances and short durations, the principle being that there’s little point trying to do something for hours if you can’t even do it properly/efficiently for the first 30 minutes.

This has been both satisfying and useful. Swimming is becoming more relaxing and smoother and it is great to spend some time thinking about pedalling technique and decision-making on the bike. My running style remains a bit too bouncy and low-cadence, as 1 or 2 better runners have pointed out (Joe Socks and a random Canadian, thanks) but I think I have maybe got a little tidier there too.

What I am also really enjoying is not having a job. For one it gives me the chance to train when and where I can do so best, rather than when the boss dictates. Since my swimming is usually dependent on the tides this is fairly crucial. But more fundamentally it means I can introduce myself to people in a much more honest manner. I’ve always disliked the way a lot of people in Western society tend to define you solely by your job – can this really be the most interesting thing about someone? I am sure Marilyn Monroe did more interesting things than standing on air vents, including having affairs with at least one US president, for example. Those few people I know who have read a Jeffrey Archer novel assure me that his writing can certainly not be the most interesting thing about him, not compared with being a liar and a crook and serving time for it. But is she just a model, and he just an author? No, they are real, complex, multi-faceted (maybe I should say multi-faced in the latter case) human beings with quirks and flaws to their characters just like anyone else. And those are famous, well known jobs. Introducing myself as an epidemiologist was confusing for one, as most people don’t even know what it means, and secondly it was telling less than half of the story. I find (found) research and teaching in epidemiology interesting enough that I could turn up to work each morning, just. And I presume that one day I will have to work again, probably in the same area. But if you offered me early retirement I would take it on Monday. I have 1001 other things more stimulating and rewarding that I will always want to do with my leisure time, and by which I would much rather be defined, or categorised. All I ask of my job is that it pays me enough to do them, for one, and secondly it should be something that I can at least regard as “not unethical”.

So being here is fantastic, I can support the Mrs in her work, aiming to improve the survival rate of newborn Tanzanian infants, which is surely the opposite of unethical. And at the same time we can both be a myriad other things, and be known for those things. Some of them may seem small or quirky (the white couple who don’t drive everywhere), while others may on a local scale be really weird (“How can you not be a Christian or a Muslim!?”), but all of which tell far more about who we really are than the things we have to do to earn money.

Out of Arusha

2009-02-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

In the words of the late great Joe Strummer;
“I went to a place where every white face is an invitation to robbery,
Sittin’ here in my safe European home, I wanna go back there again.”

Last weekend took me to Arusha where I was trying to do something useful with my time for the excellent African Palliative Care Association (http://www.apca.co.ug/). Must confess that I felt like a tiny bit of a fraud at first, having very little confidence that my brain was useful enough to make it worth their dollars transporting my body that far. Being introduced as “Dr Taylor” also remains a strange and slightly uncomfortable experience, but perhaps that title is the reason I get offered the odd piece of work like this. Does it make my PhD all seem worthwhile? Maybe it will eventually but it’s not even close yet. The thought that such a dull and protracted episode of turd-polishing and box-ticking, culminating in a viva which I can honestly describe as the worst 3 hours of my life, can lead to me gaining any more than a congratulatory handshake from colleagues still feels like a farce to me. Still, I guess this kind of work is a way of moving on, all part of the process of “closure” or whatever a psychiatrist would call it.
So I landed at Kilimanjaro airport hoping that the few days of work would be at least doable, possibly even therapeutic. It was quickly apparent that if anything was going to make the work difficult it wasn’t a weakness of mine, but of the limited data available. The original and ongoing work – which is valuable and interesting in its own right, naturally – wasn’t set up as a research project, and retrospectively using data for a new purpose is always controversial.

The accommodation was extraordinary, big and opulent and a stark contrast to the surroundings in rural Tanzania. I have to say I wouldn’t choose it myself but I suspect choices were limited anyway. I was warned by the hotel staff and another guest not to put myself in danger by going outside the gates of the complex, hence (at last) my reference to the Clash lyrics above. I am, of course, a surly misanthrope so normally any excuse to avoid personal contact is a good one. But I loathe feeling like the privileged white man, and in accordance with the other theme of this blog I needed to keep up with some exercise, so I got up at dawn to take a run around the local roads. What can I say? It is hard to describe the inspirational feeling of calm and beauty that I felt running through the foothills of Mt Kili. It soothes almost every sense. The views, the birdsong, the cool (yes!) and clean mountain air, just slightly thin with altitude.

The roads were rolling hills, and unsurfaced so the 4-5 cars I did see in nearly an hour could barely go faster than me anyway. I have never enjoyed running so much in all my puff. Normally it is a way to keep in shape or to get somewhere, but suddenly I could understand what motivates people to want to run and run and see just how far they can go, at which point a virtual nod to my friend Anna:
annakatfinn.blogspot.com/

And it goes almost without saying that I never felt in the faintest danger that someone was about to mug me for my cheap digital watch, despite that fact that in Tanzania it is unremarkable to see anyone from the age of about 3 upwards carrying a machete. The most threatening encounter I had was a couple of young men working in a field who called out “Good morning, how are you?” in a difficult accent. My conclusion is that the only robbery taking place on the road to Arusha is the daylight variety inside the hotel (a roughly 500% mark-up on a bottle of mineral water, for instance), and the rumours of danger are “an invitation to robbery” designed to keep these prices viable.

Things to do in Dar when you’re dead bored.

2009-01-27T03:57:00.000-08:00

Two of the three main stages in acquiring the car have been achieved, i.e. we have chosen the car and sent the money to pay for it. Unfortunately the money has not yet arrived, so (understandably enough) the vendor isn’t keen for me to take it away. So now I sit and wait in the lobbies of hotels or in friends’ spare rooms, whiling away the time. Suze has had to go back to Mtwara to get on with work, whereas my work, or the little that I have, is flexible enough to be done from anywhere with an internet connection.

We managed a trip to a water park called "Wet ‘n’ Wild" on Saturday, which was fun and/or funny, partly by virtue of the fact that we never thought we’d do something like that. I have always felt a certain amount of (I’ll admit it) snobbery about theme parks. Whenever colleagues or neighbours have announced they are flying all the way to Florida to visit Disneyworld I can’t help thinking that’s odd. I would travel for hours to avoid such a place, the idea of travelling all night and spending a thousand pounds so that your kids can get wet/sunburnt in a queue that is essentially indistinguishable from the queues at Alton Towers is somewhat perplexing. However, it seemed like it could pass an afternoon, not usually the way I like to choose leisure activities, but we needed to wait for the banks to reopen. So off we went.

The attraction of a water park is certainly increased in 30C heat, and from a training point of view it had a fantastic benefit in the shape of a huge hoop-shaped pool that must have been almost 200m in circumference. This was a great chance to practise a few of the things that I’ve been trying in drills or in a small pool, and compare times over about 3 minutes of continual swimming. The park, it must be said, would not have been allowed in Britain, for reasons quite apart from being named after a local brand of prophylactic. Pointy things were to be found in too many places, the water was dirty and the floor uneven, but I guess these things serve to give another perspective on the balance of safety/responsibility/nanny state (delete according to when you last read the Daily Mail) which we have currently in GB. But the flumes were pretty well maintained and the water provided welcome cooling. I think there was also a dancing competition, which involved numerous bikini-clad teenage girls gyrating provocatively in an open-plan shower, but with hindsight I wonder if that was just the Larium affecting my head??
I have also been to the local gym, where day membership is a bargain and the equipment is almost spanking new, and have read cover-to-cover a relatively recent copy of the Guardian. This sort of thing becomes a great luxury after months away. As do cheese, bacon and good coffee. And incidentally, if this post is starting to become boring, that’s partly intentional, as I am bored. Fingers crossed for some good financial news today...

[A few days pass while the internet connection is fairly rubbish]

I have returned to Mtwara, and in accordance with Murphy’s Law, received a call about 24 hours after I arrived here to say the money has cleared, when do I want to pick up the motor? Fortunately I have another trip to Dar already arranged through some work I’m doing for the African Palliative Care Association, so can collect in about 3 days’ time.

To balance this, a small piece of good luck. We have been learning to take on the local fish market (soko samaki). It’s not far from our house and the fish (and vegetables) on sale are fairly cheap, but it is noisy/busy to the point of being mildly frightening and the stench of fish guts drying on a hot beach is quite unforgettable. You take a deep breath as you walk in, both literally and metaphorically. The way it seems to work is that the fishermen come in, and auction off their catch to local women (We have never even tried to take part in this). The women then give them a quick clean and, depending on which way the wind is blowing, either sell them on fish by fish at a small mark up, or refuse to sell them for any price. I think.
The best fish that we’ve found so far is the "kori kori"; it’s tasty, has big (ie easily found) bones and is big enough to feed two. It is the opposite in all these ways of the "changu" (small, spiky bones, floury, not good). So when a woman turned up at my door today with a bucket of lovely fresh kori kori (or Corrie Corrie?) and offered to sell them for 500 TSH less than I usually pay, there didn’t seem any point bargaining for a lower price, even if I did have to gut them myself.
Finally hats off to our clever friend Jillian who has pointed out (re: the previous post) that the Escudo was itself a nearly-worthless coin in circulation in Portugal, before the arrival of the (currently far-from-worthless) Euro. If only my general knowledge had stretched this far I could probably have tied the last post up with a witty play on the word Escudo, if only.

The price of everything, the value of nothing

2009-01-22T22:46:00.000-08:00

We have found ourselves in possession of a large handful of 5 shilling coins, thanks to a mini-market not having any 50 shilling coins to give in change. In fact chengi (change, many Swahili words are English words with an “I” on the end) is often as hard to come by in Tanzania as it is in WRVS shops of British hospitals. So in theory having some small coins in your pocket should be useful, but there’s small and then there’s pointless. The 5 shilling piece may (I am pretty sure they do not mint anything smaller here) be the lowest value piece of money I have ever held. I would put it forward as a candidate for the most worthless piece of money outside Zimbabwe. I mean this is seriously “Pass the blowtorch” territory, as the metal it is made of must be worth more than 5 shillings. Dinner here will typically cost about 10,000, which is also the largest denomination in circulation. A single mango (having been picked from a wild tree and then transported about 10km by ancient bicycle, i.e. almost no cost of labour involved) costs 100-200. Most shops and restaurants, regardless of whether they have ever seen you before or even if they don’t know you from Adam (or Mohammed depending on their favoured mythology) will ignore the last 100 shillings either way, instead smiling and promising to make it good next time. A car costs anything from 10 to 40 million. In other words, 5 shillings is about as much good as a farthing is in London today, whereas if you “max-out” at the ATM you actually cannot close your wallet, the wad is so thick.

If it sounds as though I am going to go on and link this in some clever way to Britain’s continuing refusal to join the EU or the imminent collapse of the US dollar, then sorry to disappoint but I’m not. This isn’t thought for the day, who apparently did their first Humanist TFTD recently, about chuffing time. But no punchline or message here. I’m just observing the value of stuff, and maybe thinking that the Tz government could do with melting down all the 5 shilling coins and printing a 50,000 or 100,000 note, for instance.

In other financial news, we have found and bought a car. I was all set up to get a Nissan Patrol, and looking forward to this, my first legitimate excuse to drive an enormous 4x4. Because I am human and I am a bloke, so as much as my green ethics made me despise SUV drivers in London, my testosterone still gives me a firm, male bonding type boot in the arse relating to big butch vehicles. And living at the end of an unmade road which is full of potholes and rocks in the dry season and massively worse when it rains, is exactly what high, long-wheel-base 4x4s are actually good for. Then, at the last moment, Suze and I got lost and accidentally found Lara, and she gently shook me out of my macho dreams. Lara (as in Croft, natch’) is a Suzuki Escudo (called the Vitara in GB, I think) with proper 4x4 including the low-ratio option that always used to cause Land Rovers to stall, in my memory. Air con, five doors, decent luggage space and a bloody good stereo, roughly in order of importance. And the fact that she has a piddly 2 litre engine instead of the 4.2l turbocharged monster that drove the Patrol had to be put aside as she is in almost showroom-new condition, with 5 new tyres and about 2/3 the cost of the Nissan. [Sigh] The midlife crisis will have to wait another year or two.

No news is good news

2009-01-04T23:46:00.000-08:00

As I believe Suze has mentioned below, the usual greeting in East Africa is “Jambo”. This is an abbreviation of “Hujambo?” meaning, fairly literally, “Nothing happening?” The polite reply is “Sijambo” meaning “No, nothing happening for me.” No news, then, is definitely regarded as good news. However, not only is this the polite reply, it is more or less the only reply. It is usual to say a few words to anyone with whom you interact, along the lines of “Hello, I hope there’s no news/nothing is happening today/nothing happened on your journey” etc, and the reply is always to say that nothing is happening, everything is fine and your journey was good. Even if said journey was actually delayed 5 hours like our flight here, or whatever other misfortune may have befallen you, you say it is all fine.
So, when yesterday we went to swim off the same pier we have swum from before, and met the Security guy who is always sitting at the end of it, we said Hi and established that nothing was happening for him, nor to us, and nothing had happened on the way there, etc. Marvellous.
So we proceeded to dump our towels on the concrete pier and remove shoes, shorts and other chattels, only to look up and see the Askari (security) making his way down the pier to speak to us again. Between us we had a little Swahili and he a little English, and gradually we understood that the police were on their way; “one man dead in water now”, he explained while pointing to an empty and unattended fishing canoe. I distinctly remember how he stressed there was one man dead, as if we might still want to swim providing there weren’t more of them. Or perhaps it was just that, even though this wasn’t quite nothing happening, it was still better (i.e. less) news than 2 or more men dead.
We walked away a little shocked, although relieved to have been told the small (?) but undeniably bad news before we swam out and saw the figure on the sea bed. Eventually we came to realise that this is, while no doubt a great loss to his family, still small news, locally speaking. I guess the thing is that very few people here have pensions, and almost nobody has the “opportunity” to die in a nice clean bed in a retirement home, or whatever other euphemism you want to use for such a place. We’ll never know for sure, but he was probably not the mid-20’s drowning victim you read about in the British local press, most likely he was a elderly fisherman, who had fished here for decades. But everybody’s heart stops beating eventually, and for whatever reason his had done so while he stood up in a canoe.

Finally, so as not to end on a negative, and following the unprecedented success of the “name that fruit” competition (apparently it was a sweetsop, by the way): a mystery object round. What is this? This time we know the answer, so I can give a clue or two. Most households locally have one, but despite this the Bajaji driver was amused that I had bought one. I’ll even tell you its name, it’s an mbuzi.
[Darn it, picture to follow... You have no idea how unsophisticated the 'net connections are out here. Someone give tell the mule to walk faster, I can't upload!]

Ironman: He once turned to steel, in a huge magnetic field.

2009-01-04T23:40:00.000-08:00

Who’d have thought that Ozzy Osbourne could become television’s most celebrated and endearing mumbling drunk, as well as arguably heavy metal’s most iconic frontman*, with such a flawed comprehension of atomic structures?

I am not turning into steel, more like turning into a fluid as it is sometimes impossible to tell where the sweat stops and the triathlete starts. But with all due modesty I think I’m toughening up a little. Although I don’t have the kit here to test it, I’d say that I’ve lost a couple of kilo’s and that body fat levels are now closer to my aged-mid-twenty’s 11 or 12% than my early-thirty’s 14-15%.
Incidentally, I think I have “disclaimered” these IM blogs before as probably of no interest to anyone I know, or anyone I don’t except perhaps another triathlete who has stumbled across this column. I predict that this will continue so I wouldn’t bother reading this if you are unlikely to do the whole swim-bike-run thing yourself. Speaking of which, I have been asked (although thankfully not often) the question: Why do an Ironman?
There is no answer to this. If somebody asks the question, in my opinion, they will not understand the answer. I never asked anyone why and I never had to know why. I was initially amazed/borderline horrified by the idea. Amazement gradually became awe and then inspiration, and there was a very swift transition (pardon the pun) in my head from the moment when I thought “maybe I could” to the realisation that “in that case I must”. There was and is no “why”.

So, without further ado, an update. Cycling is a delight. The roads are open and mixed providing opportunities both to practise and then challenge good technique. Drivers generally leave reasonable space as they pass – certainly no worse than in Britain – and use their horns, to my amazement, the way the Highway Code suggests: As a brief warning of their presence rather than an irate and futile audio-punishment. My mountain bike is ideal for the dust or gravel roads I am riding on, and I glide easily past most other cyclists, perhaps unsurprisingly with Hope hydraulics, ShimaNO XT/XTR and RaceFace bits which seemed cool in GB. Now they feel a little odd/conspicuous considering the bolts which hold my wheels on cost more than a local bike… The air movement over the face and body helps to keep you cool even in the heat of the day, although fluid intake is important/difficult, and when you stop or slow down you are aware of an almost constant thirst. I’ll have to get some electrolyte drink sorted for longer sorties, or Stokers’ cramp becomes near-inevitable. Yet another reason I wish our freight were here with sports nutrition products and bicycle spares, but we’ll be unlikely to see that for another month or two. Last ride I ran out of fluid and ended up stopping to buy fruit from a woman with a roadside stall. I was pretty sure she said mangoes were TSH100 each (5 pence, although not the highest grade of mango it must be said), so having a 200 coin handy I got two. She looked puzzled, and with hindsight I am not sure if I under- or over-paid for them. I guess I will never know, and it doesn’t change the fruit; which in my limited knowledge of both Swahili and physics makes her the Schrödinger’s kitten of roadside fruit vendors.

Swimming makes slow progress, in every sense, but I have learnt to love progress of any kind in this discipline. Recently had to do a 200m-ish open water swim as part of my ongoing SCUBA certificate (more of which will appear soon in the other blog sections, no doubt). This was a good chance to have decisions and worries removed for a moment and swim out into deep water under pressure. It was tiring by the end, which clearly 200m should not be, but for now I am content to finish it without ever feeling in danger, and reassure myself that I’ll have 6 months more training, and a wetsuit, on the day.

Running has become the most arduous of the three, which is surprising. I start out as a decent runner, with a half-marathon time that is out of reach of most amateurs. In theory I need only push my durations bit by bit while maintaining anything close to the same pace. In the real world, the intensity of the heat and humidity here, coupled with a “road” surface that European runners would call “cross country” make anything beyond 40 minutes seem intimidating. But to take the positives again, I do not yet need to go further in my training plan, and the humidity should subside after Feb/March’s rains.

Finally, I must mention the continuing support of the Mrs. She hasn’t asked “why” but has offered encouragement and ideas all the way. Recently she has secured access to a plastic kayak, immediately volunteering to paddle alongside me to support and reassure on occasional longer swims.

*If I ever discover that the rumours of Bruce Dickinson being an Olympic standard fencer are true, then he may outdo Ozzy in this respect, but Black Sabbath will always eclipse Iron Maiden artistically.

Christmas MT style

2008-12-30T08:56:00.000-08:00

(some names have been omitted to protect the guilty)

Did you blink? You might have missed it. We did. We heard there was music and great TV and delicious food and special shopping nights and office parties, but I think we must have dozed for 10 mins. And it looks like Father Christmas missed MT on his way through, sorry kids.

In some ways it was refreshing not to have the constant pressure to spend, not to have pretend you like your colleagues, mince pies and Brussels sprouts, and not to have to join the mass exodus from everywhere to everywhere else. But in other ways, without it… it just isn’t Christmas.

There was tinsel though (one piece), and Christmas crackers (a complete novelty, not just to Tanzanians but to Canadians and Polish alike), and Christmas pudding (thanks Dad) and Mark had his Christmas shave. In our house we made the day a little different to make it memorable. We didn’t arrange for a monitor lizard to wander through the garden or for an enormous storm at 6.00 which dropped the temperature a few degrees – heaven sent indeed – but both added to our festive cheer.

After a fried breakfast and opening of a couple of pressies we have room to carry out in our luggage, we got in Steve’s taxi to go to the next town – no day off for him. Early on we had decided that, because of our limited cooking equipment, transport options and the hard work it took to procure food as well as get it home and prepare it, the Christmas lunch being put on by a nearby ‘Up market hotel’ was worth spending a bit of cash on. The set up for the meal was nice enough – in the shade of the trees next to the small pool on the hillside so it caught some breeze. We even remembered to bring our cosies for a pre lunch dip, thinking, ohhohhoh, that as we were spending quite a bit of cash having lunch there then they wouldn’t charge us the ‘visitor’ rate for swimming for £2 a person. There were several other wazungus there but not many Tanzanians. Sodas and beers were opened and the seafood starter was a good thing to kick off with.

I had forgotten the mean mosquitoes that they breed at this hotel, but they really got going just after the seafood starter.

Then it just got odd.

Mango soup followed. It was an interesting idea but I’m not sure it worked. It’s fruit. It’s sweet. And it’s a cold soup. But points for imagination and local food sourcing.

Then the main course. Turkey! Yipee! OK, don’t get too excited. For a start did someone tell them that Christmas day was the 24th? Cos I’m sure it was done by then but they had to keep it warm until the 25th. And I think the waitresses could have got more meat off the bird if they had gone at it with a feather duster. Use a sawing action people!! Don’t just poke at it with the end of a blunt knife and smile at the queue of people who are beginning to realise that in yes, in fact they could have done a better job at home for a fraction of the price. I ended up holding the bird still while the waitress tried again at cutting. I suggested a couple of places she could try for some meat (no, that’s bone again) and eventually I got a few morsels. I’m not sure everyone else was as lucky…. And of course, the meat was served with omnipresent rice and stewed vegetables and beans. Enjoy your cold roasties people! Finally we had what I think was a cake… covered in liquidised cake. Not the Christmas pudding that was advertised – maybe that was a blessing in disguise?

But this was Christmas and not even bad food would get us down! After settling our UK-sized bill, we headed down the road to knock back a few Amarulas and share some banter with the other wazungus, a great way to restore the festive feeling.

And finally, what better way to end your Christmas day than by heading to your local Indian with some local big cheeses, who buy you some scrummy food and a few more beers? If it’s not a Christmas tradition where you are then make it one.

Merry Christmas and Happy 2009 to all our readers!

Name that fruit!

2008-12-22T04:02:00.001-08:00

By way of a Christmas quiz, does anyone know what this is?

We peeled and ate one today from the garden. The inside is a bit like a cocoa fruit, if that's any help (ie lots of pips and a white, pulpy flesh)!

Friday night in Shangani

2008-12-22T03:31:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write about the way in which this place feels different to London, but there are so many things, so many ways. Eventually I thought I may as well just describe one thing in a bit of detail. So, this is a typical Friday night:
This Friday just gone, unfortunately, Suze wasn’t at all well, so having spent all day cooking and nursing, I made sure she was OK for an hour or two and went to our local to unwind in the evening. Our local. The connection here is not fast enough for me to upload pictures at the moment so I will have to describe it. It looks like a car park. To be fair, by British standards it would be a fairly poorly maintained car park, in need of the shrubs trimming and the surface could be a lot flatter. And it probably only has room for 3 cars. Still, very few of the locals have cars, and those who do aren’t too precious about them so it’s fine. This was a busy night, with 2 cars there and 2 other tables occupied.
On one side of this car park is a container – a big metal box that would carry freight on a boat or truck. It has been whitewashed, and then someone has set about it with an angle grinder, hence creating a door, and a serving hatch. Inside are a few shelves baring whisky bottles and a local spirit called konyagi, and two large fridge/freezers, both full of beer. The main local beers are:
East Africa’s ubiquitous Tusker. Not very much flavour but hey, anything’s better than Budweiser. And as an old team mate Ed pointed out, actually doesn’t taste too bad warm if the fridge breaks or the power goes down.
Serengeti. Pretty bottle but not to my taste. Too much maize in with the malt.
Kilimanjaro. Now we’re talking. A decent lager of about 4.5% which, unusually for Africa, actually has noticeable hops. Refreshing, and two Kilimanjaro (or “Kili mbili” to a local) is a good default choice for you and a friend.
Ndovu. If you’re lucky they will have a bottle or two of Ndovu tucked away. It means elephant and this one is genuinely good. The label says something about using Czech hops and you can taste them. My favourite by far but you can’t always get it out here in the provinces.
On one shelf they also have some Stella Artois, but it may be just for display as I have never seen anybody drink one. The bar is staffed, on and off, by either of two large local ladies. They don’t speak any English, and they laugh at our primitive Swahili, but they are always smiling and seem friendlier than most of the bar staff around Leicester Square area. When they aren’t looking there’s a rat who comes out and sits on the crates of pepsi, and then scurries away again before they return. And if you’re thinking that sounds a tiny bit like Tom and Jerry, it is.
Beers cost TSH1300, which these days is just over 50p. That’s enough money for a taxi half way to town, 5 or 6 mangoes or about 500g of tomatoes, so not to be sniffed at, but you get a choice of 3-4 local beers and on a warm humid night they’re worth every shilling. It is fantastic. Sitting under a tree in the dusk, sipping ice cold Tusker from a chipped glass, reading a novel or just smiling at the locals and watching the occasional bicycle go past. There’s a sea breeze most evenings which also helps to cool you down at the end of a hot dusty day. There is no music and no bullshit and nobody cares in the slightest what you look like, but there are millipedes in the trees.
From now on, I want all my bars to have millipedes.

The Plague

2008-12-18T04:19:00.000-08:00

We’ve been in the house a few days now, so I thought it would be a good time to give an update on things.
The house is nice enough. It is huge compared with anything we have ever lived in before, and the bedrooms have some old and noisy but effective air-con. It is very basic in some respects – a hard dusty floor rather than any carpets and the shower is a trickle of unheated water – but it’s impossible to miss the many reminders of how much luxury we have here compared with most people. Luxuries like running water or a fridge are way beyond many of our neighbours, never mind air conditioning (old or noisy or whatever). It is good to get into the house and out of the insulation/illusion of Tanzanian life which we had in the hotels, but at the same time this is when you start to feel the culture shock and it starts to get much harder.
An immediate problem is that everybody wants to be our maid/houseboy/washer-woman etc. I leave in the mornings and people who have been sitting in the garden approach me to offer such things, usually without being able to speak a word of English*. I don’t want to be mean and I suppose eventually we will end up hiring somebody, but (aside from the fact that I am pretty uncomfortable with having “staff” and telling someone to clean my house for me) for the moment it is the only thing I have to do! Currently my daily routine goes something like:
Do some exercise before it gets too hot (i.e. before 0800).
Put some washing into soak (the “washing machine” these days is a large plastic bucket, a tap and me).
Boil some of the tap water.
Go to the market for vegetables/fish. This is done before the midday heat but is still searingly hot; something in the 30’s and humid.
Scrub and rinse the washing. Hang on branches or broomsticks to dry.
Pour the now slightly cooled boiled water into the gravity-fed water filter.
Lunch
Sweep floors.
Fold and tidy washing.
Generally clean the place.
Cook dinner. etc etc

So if I hire someone to sweep the floors and scrub my smalls then I will have absolutely nothing to do except start writing a novel or something.

AND then, on day 5, the plague of winged things arrived.
We had a fair bit of rain, and then these big 4-winged termite things started appearing apparently from nowhere. Now this is obviously fantastic news-
If you are a gecko or frog, as you get to eat like a king. If you are a human it is nightmarish, a kind of Hitchcockian world in which little beasts push under your door or through you netting. They just pushed against the windows or against each other, reminiscent of a miniature "Night of the Living Dead" (forgive me mixing my horror metaphors, as NOTLD was Romero I think, but you get the picture- it was horror). One got through at first, then 3, then dozens, all flinging themselves with suicidal abandon into the lights or into us. They were posessed of a hydra-like quality where the disposal of one seemed to lead to its replacement by two. Eventually there was no option but to go to a bar and have a couple of beers, and hope.
Our wishes came true and by the time we returned there was nothing to see but sloughed wings, dead insects and bloated frogs. Made me think about the way a basic knowledge of the weather and/or biology could have made people seem like wizards or gods in days gone by...
Other early observations:
Nothing which used to be white will ever be white again. White clothes will soon become grey clothes etc.
I need to learn more Kiswahili*.

Next update will hopefully be around Xmas time, so anyone who has been reading, have a merry one. :-)

IM: Some like it hot

2008-12-13T03:04:00.000-08:00

I was feeling pretty pessimistic about the whole triathlon malarkey when I left the UK, and was feeling like I may have to use the opt-out/refund that seems to be available. Swimming was not improving, still, meaning that 400m was a struggle, never mind 4km. This was particularly disappointing as I had some apparently useful lessons from a fantastic moustachioed Turk called Mohammed, who was forever encouraging me to kick harder and make my arms “Floppy floppy floppy,” or “Floppy more, floppymore!” Add to this my doubts regarding the possibility of a Mzungu like me taking any form of aerobic exercise in 30 C heat, and I was starting to wonder if there was any point in resuscitating my dying hopes.
But, here I sit in a Kibanda in Mtwara, admittedly on only my 2nd day here, and things seem a lot more positive. I feel I can move forward with all three disciplines:
Swimming. Suze and I’s first hotel had a pool, only a tiny one but sufficient to do some drills and repeatedly practise being floppy. After 2-3 days of this we went to Bongoyo Island, where there is the opportunity for some unprecedented sea swimming in stunningly clear warm water. I always feel far better in open water, and Bongoyo was no exception. Mtwara will be a lot more difficult to get going, owing to the savage underfoot coral and broken shells, but once into the water it again looks beautiful.
Cycling. My mountain bike got here. I guess the phrase I’d like to use would be “Got here in one piece”, but this would be a wicked lie. I had to unbolt almost everything that gets bolted on, to the point where it was debatable whether there was any merit in paying what I did for a bike box, it was really a large suitcase full of spare parts. Even this took a few metres of duct tape and a few hours of sweating, jiggling and swearing to close. Then I had to work some Jedi mind tricks with two separate airport security people to persuade them that they really didn’t need me to open it again. Still, more or less all of the parts arrived, with only minor scratches. I could only bring very basic tools within my luggage allowance, and found myself wishing I’d paid more attention to that week in Swahili lessons where we learnt to say “I don’t suppose your mechanic has a metric hex-key torque wrench I could borrow?..” Initially I was all on my own in putting it back together, but then a bright blue agamid lizard hung out for a while, subsequently joined my a few of the hotel staff. Having built it up again (in the shade of a palm tree in front of the sea shore) I find only two problems. The back brake is locked on (should be surmountable by disassembling the calliper and forcing the pistons back, but don’t want to rush this and damage anything); and I forgot to pack a pump. This second point is truly, weightily and historically stupid, especially given that nobody in Tanzania seems to use Presta valves. I must thank the Mrs for pointing out that I can buy two local inner tubes with local valves until my remaining spares and tools arrive. Since the friendly hotel maintenance man and I have tried all we can with an industrial air compressor (but no torque wrench), this will have to be the way.
Running. It is possible! We went this morning at 0615 and it is pretty bearable really. By about 0700 is becomes insufferably hot and humid, but I think that longer runs will be do-able if I set out at 0500 and take a bottle of water with me. The most striking thing I learnt was that you must not stop! If you think you are getting sweaty while running, keep in mind that your movement is creating a sort of airflow over your body; try stopping for a minute and unless there is some kind of breeze it just starts to cascade down your face and torso.

Mtwara, Mtwara, so good they named the town after the region

2008-12-13T02:57:00.000-08:00

Getting to Mtwara was not without its challenges. Tanzanian immigration took me 2-3 hours. A couple of days of catching up (on sleep and with Suze) in Dar, and then I would be moving on to Mtwara. Dar is friendly in a busy way. Decent variety of places to eat and an abundance if taxis to take you there. Much cheaper and cooler than a taxi is a pujaji, which is basically a motor rickshaw. Or to put it another way a moped with a cheap tent on the back. This has the advantage of allowing in a cooling breeze and the disadvantage that in the case of unplanned meeting with a Toyota Landcruiser, it offers no more protection than, well, a cheap tent.

Another advantage became apparent shortly after one of our pujaji drivers (a boy of surely no more than 14?!) proudly boasted of his “short cut road”. We soon hit a rock and punctured one of the puny tyres, but the lightweight construction, along with the good fortune of me being a large-ish mzungu, meant we could lift the thing up and change said wheel despite him having no jack. Genius. At least we could be sure of better reliability in the 100 dollar internal flight down to Mtwara…
The plane down to here was delayed 4-5 hours and when it did arrive it was – how shall we say? Knackered. Imagine Del Boy’s Reliant with wings. Still, the crew were very nice and “ye cannae change the laws of physics”, so given its full compliment of two wings and at least one engine, it was a plane and it could fly. Unfortunately, by the time I got on, a nun had stolen my seat and didn’t want to move, and my guessing somewhere else to sit caused a domino effect of clashing seat numbers and milling travellers in the baking hot oven of a cabin. Finally, some 4 and-a-bit hours after we should have finished the journey, we took off for the 45 min hop to Mtwara.
I had been told that the view from the plane was impressive, but I didn’t see much to write home about? Countless meandering rivers and soft deltas, pouring their water into deep oceanic blue. Forests and mangroves held back from the water by a tiny strip of golden sand. Shaded, green islands and occasional wooden sailing boats. Is that it? Maybe I have been spoilt by living the last 2 years inside a picture postcard: London’s square grey concrete and round grey smog…
But enough of such banalities; what is it actually like to be in Mtwara? For the first hour or two words failed me. Among the words I should have been using would be beautiful, peaceful, picturesque, friendly, lush and did I say beautiful?
To get an idea of the view from either our kibanda or the terrace/bar: In the foreground there are big spiky fingers of orange-brown coral. Just beyond them a kind of mud and sand-flat with rock pools and wandering ghost- and hermit-crabs. Big dark birds seem to be common on the flats (purple heron and hammerkop, I mention specifics just in case you are an ornithologist or imagine that I am a xenophobe). And beyond that is a full widescreen panorama of sea. Bright, almost shining turquoise in the day time, but with layers of darker blue visible over the deeper straights. As evening draws in fishermen punt across the shallow water in dugout canoes, an incredible slow motion display of patience and balance which seems to be mocked by the manically fighting geckos on the rocks and posts at the edge of the shore. The next months will have their challenges of course, but it’s hard not to feel like the luckiest person around, when you think about spending years living here.

Meanwhile, back in the Northern Hemisphere….

2008-12-02T05:12:00.000-08:00

I’m up on the 11th floor and I’m watching the cruisers below, on a grey, dreich day in London. Last week or two was a frenetic mix of cleaning, selling or throwing out everything I own, punctuated now and again with a swimming lesson or a run around the common. Don’t mind saying it was stressful and without many laughs, and for a while I felt that me and my sanity were having the same kind of relationship as the Spurs goalkeeper and a high ball. (Suze, hopefully this answers one of your questions below?) But I have now left the flat in Tooting and moved to a cheap and moderately shabby hotel room in Earl’s Court. The tiny bed, grubby shared bathroom and continuously passing traffic makes it feel very much akin to a sleeper train, except bereft of the pleasing prospect of ever waking up somewhere as bonnie as Aberdeen.
The supposedly fully-staffed and stress free removals system didn't go quite as much like clockwork as I had been promised, as they turned up without nearly enough space to take everything in the crates. We managed to muddle through by prioritising which things went and which didn't, with freecycle Wandsworth and my parents sharing the leftovers. Tick, tock. I feel some trepidation about when and in what state we will next see our bicycles but I guess they are insured, should they go South figuratively as well as literally.
But are we downhearted? Well, not really. Only about 4 days until I go to join Suze and we can start to find out about the place together. That has to be good.
At this stage we should also reiterate our thanks to both of our families for the help they have given in cleaning, storing and moving things, as well as (sniffs back the tears…) providing a retirement home for the pussycat. Next update from me will almost certainly be written in the heat of Africa, so apologies if the typeface starts to look a little sweaty.

A shout out from the blackout

2008-11-28T11:00:00.001-08:00

In a bizzare contrast I am sitting here in a power cut, so no fan or music from the neighbouring houses, and only a wind up torch to stop myself from knocking myself out in the bathroom. Yet , by the wonders of modern technology, I can still connect to the world through the web on my laptop via its extra long-life battery. So no excuses not to work then! Fortunately the power cuts don't seem to last too long (unless this hotel has some uber generator that I haven't noticed yet) so I don't have to adapt my usual life patterns too much from normal. Yet.

And then there was light.

So it's been a few weeks since I left now so I just wanted to give a shout out to everyone who has been in touch since I have been away - by email, phone or the book of face. I have really appreciated the messages whilst trying to adapt to a new job and life. I apologise if I haven't managed to reply to you all individually. Do keep in touch with the life updates, news and goss. Specifically:
- What was all that news about John whatsisname leaving strictly? And has someone won it yet?
- Has the economic turn down actually stopped being headline news yet? I'm quite glad to have got a break from the constant scare mongering, about which we can do nothing. But I spose I should keep up todate.
- Has anyone saved Woolworths?
- Has Tottenham managed to keep up the magic tricks under Harry (Potter) Redknap?
- And what films am I going to miss on the box over Christmas?
I think that might be the most important stuff to be updated on, please.

Let me take this opportunity to wish David and Simone a very happy anniversary - many congratulations!

Right, it's way past my bed time for Tanzania time (GMT-3 hrs, -another 2 hours social time difference), so I'll leave you in peace for now.

Missing the family and chums, so lots of love to you,
Suze
X

A few photos from Mtwara

2008-11-22T07:11:00.000-08:00

Some snaps to show you Mtwara, and a rather unflattering one to prove I am there (I'm just off the plane from Dar in this picture, which I would like to think explains why I am looking rough.)

These photos are taken at southern cross hotel, my home for about month.

I'm here and it hasn't quite sunk in yet...

2008-11-10T07:42:00.000-08:00

Mambo!
Contrary to what our swahili teacher taught people rarely use 'jambo' here in Mtwara. More common is 'habari za...' (How is your news on... e.g. work/the morning/the family/since I las saw you - I can't say all these, yet!). However if you want to be really cool you say "Mambo!" And in response "poa!". Wicked.

So, it's taken a while for me to get a reasonble internet connection, and enough time to use it - and even now I am using the Save the Children's internet connection on a quiet evening, but my connection is coming. Apparently. Pole pole (slowly)

So hi from Mtwara to friends and family! I'm doing OK - that is until my line manager come Swahili translator leaves in 10 days and then my confidence will probably go and join the hermit crabs! I can see a major culture shock coming whenever the time comes that I have to do something for myself. But fortunately that hasn't been yet. I have Stella, who works at the partnering institute of the London School here in Mtwara, who seems to be my first contact for ANYTHING - poor Stellla...

For those of you asked what the heck i am going to be doing here in rural Tanzania - I can now tell you. I am co-ordinating a study which is going to have a community based intervention and a facility improvement strategy. Our study involves developing the interventions through facility and community consultation, AND evaluating their effect on health behaviours of mothers, quality of care in facilities and neonatal survival. So the main new bit for me is actually being involved in developing the interventions. So there you go.

Right, time for me to wrap up. I'll do the promo for holidays in the region once I have been out and tried a few things. In the mean time, lots of love to the family, esp Mark. And I hope to hear from folks soon.

Suze
X

Ironman, update

2008-10-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

Ironman training is going backwards. Current situation is that Tooting Bec Lido and Heron Lake have both closed for the season, meaning the only way to train is seeminlgy endless laps of a little indoor pool. If this sounds like "pool snobbery", then:
(a) count how many lengths of your local pool it would take to get close to 3.8km, or
(b) just go and try swimming in open water. It's beautiful. No lane ropes, no splashing screaming kids, no lifeguards with whistles. Instead of imperceptibly-slowly moving grandmothers there are herons and grebes for company, maybe the odd water vole scurrying away. You'll never want to go back to indoor swimming.
Add to this, I cut my foot, right over the achilles, during my last short triathlon in Sept. This stopped me from running for at least a week. Finally it has almost healed, just in time for the September cold (an unavoidable occupational hazard of working in university) to lay me low for another few days. I am fat and unfit and even the stairs to my office feel like hard work.

On the plus side I got some tri-specific bike shoes. Sidi T2's: They are stiff, light, easy to get on and off and they look like a tart's handbag in pearlescent white. What more could you want? Oh yes and I finally got confirmation that I'd finished and passed my PhD. Glad to see the back of that before we move away.

Ironman

2008-09-11T06:40:00.000-07:00

“He once travelled time, for the future of mankind.” Black Sabbath

Time sounded much too far for me to travel, so I’m planning on travelling 3.8km in the water, 180km on a bike and then 42.2km on foot, as a participant in Ironman France 2009.
http://www.ironmanfrance.com/

I don’t expect many people to be interested, except perhaps other triathletes-in-training, but partly by way of a simple motivator to myself, I thought I would put up some irregular updates regarding my training. In particular I’ll be focussing on the peculiarities of training for one of the world’s toughest endurance events in Southern Tanzania. In other words, and just to crow-bar in a weak reference to Clash lyrics, training as a White Man in Mtwara Valley.

Part 1: “You don’t want to be starting from here”

So in order to remind myself of the challenge, a quick SWOT analysis of the task ahead. Not that I place much faith in management tools, especially those with acronyms, but here goes:
Strengths:
I own a bike and know how to maintain it.
I can run reasonably well.
Weaknesses:
I only learnt to swim in my 30’s and have never completed the required distance.
I have never run a marathon.
I have never cycled over 150km in a day.
It will be consistently 26-30C and humid in Tanzania.

I habitually eat too much curry and drink beer.
Opportunities:
Erm, I may be a very unusual sight in rural Tanzania, so perhaps someone will sponsor me.
Nice in June could be almost as hot as Tanzania.
Threats:
Lion.
Crocodile.
Malaria and other parasitic diseases.
Heavy rain.
There are no surfaced roads on which to ride a racing bike.
I will be unable to buy any spares of the appropriate quality, e.g. new bike tyres or running shoes.

So, what could possibly go wrong? We shall see.

2008-08-29T06:33:00.001-07:00

Things I know about Tanzania as at end Aug 08:
- it's in Africa
- it's huge
- it's where kilimanjaro is
- the main language is Swahili and I have learnt a little (Jambo!)
- it borders lots of places such as Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi
- it includes the islands of Zanzibar and Mafia
- the capital is not Dar es Salaam (Dar to us now, darlings)
- it's on the Indian Ocean
- the currency is shillings
- you have to ask everyone how they are multiple times - and the answer will always be positive
- Mtwara had something to do with peanuts
- The Germans and the Brits were around at some point, and not necessarily at the same time

Hmm, not much so far, but more than a few months ago at least! Onwards and upwards...

2008-07-01T06:34:00.000-07:00