Na, vitu vya mwisho

I fly back to the UK today so this is the last of my blog until I return, which - God willing - I intend to. As I write we have no water, we had a delivery last week but the pump is bust, but we do have electricity, so one out of two isn't bad. The GOM keeps buckets of the stuff in every bathroom and loo for such predictable occurrences, so I shouldn't smell too bad when I get on the plane to Qatar.

Tanzania nakupenda, na mzee, nakupenda sana pia.

Kwaherini na karibuni tena

Barabara na maendeleo

Ten years ago, if you were planning to go to Bagamoyo you were advised to stay there overnight. One senior civil servant the GOM knows well had never once been there. This was because of the road: from Dar, it was a difficult 3 hour journey at best. The journey back a few days ago from Bagamoyo to Tegete on the outskirts of the Dar conurbation took us 35 minutes on a road in very good condition. The difficulties now start in the city and its satellites. Dar traffic management is a misnomer.

The picturesque "real Africa" is gone on the Bagamoyo Road, if you equate picturesque with poverty stricken. The ribbon development along the road is certainly not picturesque, -cement block buildings with corrugated iron roofs would never merit that description- but it is indicative of an increase of economic prosperity for the whole area. There are businesses of all sorts set up and obviously it is easier to get goods to market.

There are changes in Bagamoyo itself. Ever since I first came to Tz, Bagamoyo has been talking about how it is going to transform itself, and meantime all you could see was everything crumbling around you, year by year. This time for the first time I can see changes - a new local government office, (predictably so; Tz is still finding it hard to shake off the the command and control economy of its earliest post Independence years, so that would be its first priority). World Heritage status is being discussed but not yet granted, but the grant giving organisations are already active.
The sisters' house at the mission housing a very good little museum (the museum has always been very good but it was housed in decrepit surroundings) has been restored. The primary school set up by an Ismaili merchant from Pakistan, Sewa Haji, in 1896, and in constant use ever since, and attended by the present President, has been restored by the Germans and very nice it looks too. Henry Stanley thought Sewa Haji was a crook, but then it takes one to know one. He was very rich through his control of the caravan routes into the interior (trade wasn't just about slaves) but in Bagamoyo he was seen as a philanthropist.
His condition for donating the primary school was that all races should be admitted. I thought that the reason it was three storeys (a very unusual height for a building here) was because of the number of children, but no, - the African children were educated on the ground floor, the Indian children on the first floor and the Arab children on the second.
He also gave a hospital, making it conditional that there was free treatment for all races. That still continues, though from the bit we have seen, the hospital could itself do with some restoration.
There are a couple of Swedish doctors there, and the Swedes originally set up the College of Arts and there are always Swedish students who come for some months as part of their art courses. The assistant director of the local Dept of Antiquities is a young Swede. Swedes seem to like Bagamoyo. Despite the history of Sewa Haji, there doesn't seem to be much involvement of the Aga Khan foundation, but they are heavily invested in the restoration of Stone Town in Zanzibar.

Restoration of old buildings may seem to be peripheral, but Bagamoyo's salvation has to be tourism, and they won't get far with the ancient wrecks that speak of the town's very faded glories. They are now letting you into them - I don't think anyone has given any thought to the possible advisability of public liability insurance. Caveat tourist is the line.

However since I was here last year, the first tarred road ever in Bagamoyo complete with white lines - my, there's posh - has been laid. In India Street, the one time premier location in town, ( it reverted to its original name so called after the number of Indian merchants once there, following spells as Kaiser Strasse, and then King Street) they have paved the road. I'm not sure how that will stand up to vehicular traffic.

My point being that this first stirrings of activity rather than hot air, is directly linked to the building of the Bagamoyo-Dar road. This is the second attempt. There should have been a road years ago, but the money disappeared in a series of corrupt contracts. It was so blatant, that even here there was a corruption trial of some of the ministers and civil servants involved. When I left in 2002, this was lazily meandering through one court adjournment after another. I asked the GOM what happened, and he has no idea. If there had been convictions it would have been a huge story so either the case is still going, or it petered out. But I will not get started on corruption!

There are more development experts than you could shake a stick at, and I'm certainly not one, but I have always believed that road construction (and free passage on those roads) will kickstart economic growth. But you have to stop local authorities having roadblocks and imposing local taxes on produce being taken along those roads, thus strangling smallscale enterprise - it's been illegal for many years but it doesn't stop it happening.
When our youngest was in Thailand she heard complaints about the state of the roads and thought - you reckon this is bad, you should see Tz. It's too simplistic to link that with the different profiles of development in Asia and Africa over the last 50 years, but it makes you wonder.
My views wouldn't be shared by Bagamoyo locals - they have great expectations for their future because one of their own is now President.
There will always be a downside of course, and we saw one on our way to Bagamoyo. On one side of the road there were very smart members of the Field Security Force wearing riot helmets with visors and carrying machine guns. Nobody gets in the way of the Field Force. On the other side of the road there were a group of 20 or so mostly women and children, with a home made banner. Later I found out that they were villagers who had been turned off their land because it was now owned by a commercial farmer.
In Dar, the road problems are different but equally important. The city is slowly strangling itself on its traffic; it has got worse and spread to new areas even in the year I have been away. Yes it would be great if more roads in the city were tarred and those that were were properly maintained but simple things like traffic lights at some of the busiest junctions would make a lot of difference. However a lot of grid locks are caused by driver behaviour. At the risk of sounding Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells like, there should be a no tolerance policy. The GOM told me that at one time the police would haul out bad drivers at the US Embassy junction, make them park up on the side take their keys off them and hang on to them for an hour or so. I should think if applied all over Dar that might just work to ease the problem - if it was kept up. It'd hit the GOM hard though, he drives like a fully paid up Tanzanian.

Haditha kwa makaburi

I've always been partial to a good graveyard. The Kaole cemetary has quite a lot going for it- graves from the thirteenth century onwards, of the Persian traders who set up in the Kaole port before the mangroves swallowed it up. There is a touching double tomb of two lovers who drowned on the same day and were buried together. How do they know? Oh, never mind, it's a good story. There is also Sherifa's grave - allegedly a direct lineal descendant of the Prophet. She is supposed to be very effective at answering the prayers of women and others who come to pray at her grave and there are usually lots of small offerings, but when I saw it there was only a small oil lamp container. I did hear this long story about how before Independence, Nyererere had to go to London, and the local waganga - medicine men - gathered at Sharifa's grave with him, ( a devout Catholic) and for 6 nights they circled the grave reciting the Koran, and at the end of it, the mats he was sitting on had become so tiny you could hardly see them. I think the inference was that he also could become that small, and so sneak on the plane without paying. Handy, if true, as he spent a lot of the 50's going round fundraising for his air fares etc.
The crossover between Islam and magic is seamless here, and in the ruins of the mosque, there is an ancient well whose water is deemed holy by observant Muslims and highly esteemed also for the making of efficacious spells.
If you need a really good spell, the Bagamoyo region is where you go, and the creme de la creme of the local spellmakers are to be found in Kaole.
When we had our barbecue a couple of weeks ago, I reminded Saloum of a story he had spun me when we had our spot of trouble in 2001. The Trade Union leadership had, it was well known, gone to Bagamoyo to have spells put on the senior management. In fact, when everything was finally settled, the GOM, as an unwritten side-bar to the main agreement, secured undertakings that the spells would be lifted. Despite all their protestations to the contrary, his managers needed that reassurance.
The story Saloum told was that there had been a spell put on the GOM also. The Leaders returned to the mganga to protest that the GOM showed every sign of being as fit and healthy as ever. "No, he's dead" was the reply -"see it says so on my computer."
One graveyard not satisfying my appetite, I went to the small but very well maintained German cemetary near Badeco, a monument in stone to the Scramble for Africa. Mostly very young German soldiers died in a series of battles in the 1890's because the local African tribes could not understand the concept of lebensraum, and quite fancied hanging onto their land. Their cemetary including the graves of those hanged for such presumption is a little way further up the hill. It didn't take long for the Germans to establish home from home: by 1900, even though the Germans had decided Dar es Salaam had a better port and downgraded the importance of Bagamoyo, there is the grave of a 6 day old baby born in the colony. In one corner of the cemetary there is the isolated but best kept grave of all - that of the British Regional Commissioner, who committed suicide in 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. I guess that even the disgrace of a suicide would not have allowed the British colonialists to bury him away from his own kind in the German cemetary, if he had killed himself a few months later. He apparently shot himself 3 times in the chest when his wife left him for another man. It sounds a most incompetant if not impossible way to commit suicide. I'm certain there is more to the story than that. Which is why I like graveyards....

Jua, pwani, bahari na .....vinyago

Beach holidays have never been our style, well not since we got past the sandcastle stage with the kids, but we decided a bit of sybaritic hedonism wouldn't come amiss, just as long as it wasn't too long. After a couple of hours I'm looking for something - anything - to do.
We stayed in the Travellers Lodge in Bagamoyo, a tourist hangout, which we'd last been to in 97 or 98. I remember it well as the GOM got the worse case of the runs there that I've ever seen him with. He probably could, and would if asked, chronicle more harrowing episodes.


There is a glorious garden and the bandas are set out well apart from each other; our beach fronting one gave the illusion that we were alone in our own little paradise.

Naturally, there has to be a serpent in every Eden, and Bagamoyo continues to be known for the muggings on the beach. Every resort posts askaris outside to cover their own places, which helps, but it isn't advisable to go for long oceanside walks, which is annoying. The town, -after talking about it for decades - is now really trying to make itself attractive to the tourist trade, but this means it really must get a grip on security. Bagamoyo does not need a rider in every Travellers Guide warning of beach robbery problems.
Not that I had any difficulties: even the curio hawkers were not as persistant as in Zanzibar. But I did stay within sight of the askari at all times.
The owners of Travellers Lodge now are a South African/German couple, but at least when we were there they didn't see the need to oversee their extremely good staff - especially not the 'mpishi mnene' the very fat cook, whom as the GOM observed clearly enjoys her own food. I had an absolutely delicious lobster, which as nearly the most expensive thing on the menu set us back an eyewatering 15,000 shilingi or 6 quid. The fisherman's platter for two was what I really had my greedy eye on, but the GOM is allergic to shellfish. What a waste- living where he does.
And neither of us got food poisoning.
In the reception bar and dining area, are incorporated wooden sculptures. Bagamoyo has had for the last 20 odd years a highly respected College of Art.
One of the areas of excellence is its training of wood carvers, and some of the graduates have developed very intersting artistic styles. The basis of their training has been based on the tradition of Makonde carving - which is two fold. One is that of ijumaa -tree of life, complex life cycle intricately rendered in a realistic fashion and carved out of a single piece of wood sometimes 8 or 9 feet tall. The second tradition is
that of shetani or spirit carvings which tend to be grotesque verging on abstract. The carvings in Traveller's Lodge are anything but airport art and are a melding of these two traditions. My photos fail to do them justice

Biashara wa watumwa

I heard on the World service yesterday of the disruption in Westminster Abbey at the service to celebrate - is that the right word? - the second century of the abolition of the slave trade. In the last week I had had to think of a similar trade which was abolished many years later, but because it had virtually no direct impact on the people who live in the UK, is unknown. The Swahili trading empire stretched to all points East as far as China - operating on a far longer timescale than that of West Africa to the Americas, and probably involving many more people over the full timescale than that trade. One academic estimate is that one and a half million people were sold into slavery on the East Coast of Africa in the nineteenth century alone: nearly a million of those were into the Sultan of Oman's clove and spice plantations in the Zanzibari islands of Unguja( which is the actual name of the island called Zanzibar by outsiders) and Pemba. Throughout the nineteenth century there were a number of largely ineffectual attempts to restrict the slave trade, but it was only in 1873(the same year that ardent opponent of slavery, David Livingstone, died) that Sultan Bargash of Oman, operating from the Zanzibar as his capital, reluctantly agreed to close the Zanzibar slave market and stop all further slave trading.
Years ago I'd "done" the slave tour, but passing by the Anglican cathedral and adjoining backpacker's hostel, Jamila showed curiousity, so we paid our entry fee. I was totally insensitive, and completely unprepared for the emotional impact that seeing the slave cellars below the hostel would have on Jamila. In an unlit space that barely could hold 5 people comfortably, 75 women and children would be packed in for 3 days awaiting the slave auction, and where human waste was twice daily sluiced out through a central channel by the incoming tide. Some days later in the Arab fort in Bagamoyo, I saw a similar room which held up to 100 male slaves waiting transhipment to Zanzibar. I was told that when the Germans took over, they reduced the holding capacity to 50 rebel Africans, and when the British ousted the Germans they further reduced the capacity to 20 prisoners. After independence Tanzanians continued to use it as a prison, ( capacity unspecified)until "human rights activists" managed to convince the local authority to build a proper prison.
In Zanzibar the cathedral is built on the site of the slave market
In the marble floor just below the High Altar there is a decal marking the spot of the slave whipping post. Male slaves would be whipped before sale - the longer they held out the more valuable they would be as field hands. These were people who had already come along one of the several trade routes from Nyasland Central and Eastern Africa; the main one that ended in Bagamoyo (for shipment to Zanzibar by dhow) was a 1200 km, 6 month trek from Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika through Tabora, Jamila's home town.
Outside the Cathedral is something new and very powerful since I was last there - in a pit a Swedish sculptress has created a family group linked by a genuine slave neck chain from Bagamoyo.

The White Fathers first came up with the idea in Africa of buying slaves - based on the biblical injunction to ransom captives. This was taken up by the Holy Ghost Fathers, initially in Zanzibar itself, where I get the impression that they were rather overwhelmed, and then from 1868 in Bagamoyo. Their records show that they raised funds which enabled them to purchase over 1200 slaves between then and abolition in 1873. Because they were at that time a German group of priests, the British consul in Zanzibar was hugely suspicious of their actions, as his reports to London show. The one thing he never suspected was that the purpose of purchasing the slaves was to liberate them. With slaves they had already liberated in Zanzibar, the mission set up a Freedom Village, the inhabitants of which were added to everytime there was a local crisis, be it a Cholera epidemic or a German or British colonial spat - the mission always flew a flag of neutrality, which the European powers involved always ignored. The mission says that the people in the Freedom Village mixed with the locals, and that effectively there wasn't a Freedom village any longer from sometime early in the 20th century. On the other hand I was told there were 3 distinct areas where the descendants of ransomed slaves still live, and use inland tribal dialects as opposed to those used by tribes on the coast.

The slave trade went underground after 1873, but still continued. In 1890, the Germans rescued from a slave caravan a Congolese baby, and took her to the mission. When Mama Maria Ernestina died in December 1974 she was the last slave ever to have been traded as part of the East African trade. But as with the USA, abolition of the slave trade was not the same as emancipation; in East Africa, the last slave was emancipated in 1922.
But what has impressed me over the last three weeks is the continual reporting in the local media of an ongoing 21st century slave trade - the continuing difficulty of returning Sudanese slaves captured in the two decade long war, to their homes: 2 years in negotiation to replace the word slave with abductee; the boys on the Ivory coast who think they are going to football fame in Europe to find themselves sold into servitude in Mali; the lorries opened to find children and babies concealed being driven from one part of Nigeria to another; the young girls from inner rural Tanzania who live in virtual imprisonment as drudges and sexual objects in the main towns of the mainland.

Machezo wa maneno

When David Livngstone died in Zambia, his porters Abdulla Susi and James Chuma eviscerated his corpse and buried his heart under a tree. In the Anglican Cathedral in Zanzibar there is a crucifix made from the wood of that tree. I don't know if there are others elsewhere, but I suspect there are fewer than the splinters from the wood of the True Cross. They wrapped the body in bark and walked with it for 9 months until they reached the (no doubt very surprised )Holy Ghost Fathers in Bagamoyo. They announced "Mwili wa Daudi" - here is David's body. The fidelity of those porters, with no prospect of material reward is, in today's terms, incomprehensible.
The body was kept overnight in the tower of the newly built mission church, which, naturally, is now known as Livingstone's Tower, before being transported to Zanzibar and then on to Westminster Abbey on ....HMS Vulture.
To further lower the tone of this post, and just for the GOM who didn't get it when first told, I give you a bilingual pun, which just has to be in every Tanzanian schoolchild's joke book.
David Livingstone asked his porters the distance to the next destination. They answered "Twende tu" ("just let's go"). After a while he asked again, and got the same reply. On the third time of asking with the same response he exploded saying: "it can't still be 22 miles."
I know, I know, I didn't say it was good, I said the GOM didn't actually get it.

Ita missa est

Getting into Mass on Sunday with seconds to spare was surprisingly easy, as there was room in both the carpark and church. Usually if you are not there as the previous Kiswahili Mass comes streaming down the steps you won't get a seat in the church at all. I put it down to two reasons - firstly it was the Mass for the "special collection" for the new parish centre that is going up in true Tz fashion - a bit more is added to it every time some more money comes in. The special collection is taken up at one of each of the 5 Sunday Masses in turn, and what is special about it is that you are supposed to go up to the altar and deposit your offering in one of the wide baskets held out by the parish priest or the nuns. No pressure there then. The GOM naturally isn't having any of this religious blackmail, and sits, arms folded, bum firmly in his seat. What is coming up in the next week is the lenten alms which the Catholics use the Muslim expression zakat for - but interpret it as 10% of a month's salary - and they have a second go in Advent. Muslim zakat is 2.5% of annual income so I guess it is less, and certainly less than the Pentecostal churches who expect a full 10% tithe here. For Muslims it is one of the 5 pillars of Islam so if you cheat it is only yourself that you are cheating because Allah knows; for the Tz RCs the attempt to enforce the same sense of obligation is "if God asks it of us, who are we to refuse?" And where exactly does it say that God asks it of us?
The second reason is the continuing quiet but unrelenting power struggle that has rumbled on in St Peter's since I was first in Tz. Priests have come and gone, but this battle continues. It's just so stupid. Two old men, neither of them with a musical bone in their body, have seen off virtually every effort to get some decent music into the English speaking Mass and inflict their egos on us Sunday after Sunday. The kids get together a half way decent choir that leads the singing once a month. Then these two monopolise the other Sundays with their solo efforts. Last Sunday it was the turn of one with the self satisfied gravitas which speaks of a probable former career as a middle ranking civil servant. As a Tanzanzian, he manages to (quite uniquely, I imagine) both sing off key and be unable to keep time. On Sunday, he surpassed himself by having got the hymn numbers out of sequence so that as he boomed out each wrong number, twice, he then conducted himself with huge arm movements to a silent church full of people. Right or wrong numbers, it would have made little difference as it is impossible to sing along with him. It must have been the heat because, for once, I was irritated rather than amused. He is so full of his own self importance, that I don't think he has ever questioned why he invariably reduces the congregation to silence. He does love the sound of his own voice speaking or singing. And every time I see his grey head, I ask myself why we don't go to a Kiswahili Mass instead. So, lack of both charitable thought and deed last week. Not very Lenten.

A day or so later I was at what was signposted as the first Christian cross to be raised in East Africa. The post is wrong however - it points to the site - the cross itself is distinctly modern. There are many contradictory views about the role of the Christian missions in Africa, sometimes held at the same time by the same person. Some see missionaries as merely the spiritual arm of the colonial power, and as people who rode roughshod over pre-existing cultures. The alternative view is that the missions were the only part of the colonial enterprise to bring education and healthcare to Africans, and that it was largely in the environs of Mission schools and Colleges that the leaders of independent Africa were nurtured. Whichever is right, and both may be, they managed to plant an enthusiasm for Christian practice and belief, which eclipses anything seen in Europe, in recent decades. I did feel ashamed, thinking of the total commitment of those men and women who came to mostly die in Africa, of my petty irritation. It doesn't make me wrong though - we should go to the Kiswahili Mass

Wanawake wanataka kuwa na burudani tu

I first began to suspect, when I saw Jamila in her glad rags ready to go, and I knew absolutely as soon as we arrived at the venue - that I was not so much understated as definitively under-dressed. The only place you would see so many sequins in the UK is on Strictly Come Dancing. This was our girls' night out - a Zanzibari Taarab evening. And girls' night out it certainly was: though the orchestra was all male as were 2 of the 4 singers, and most of the TV crew transmitting it live on Zanzibari TV, with the exception of a few husbands, the 500 strong audience were women of every age, though predominantly young girls in their mid to late teens and twenties.
Taarab is a sort of Arabic influenced singing very popular all along the East African coast, ( but not inland, it's very coastal Islamic Swahili). The singers are predominantly women, and they are backed by orchestras - I was sniffily informed that Dar has far more modern instruments in its Taarab bands than Zanzibar, but then Jamila doesn't have a high opinion of most things Zanzibari. In the band I listened to there were 4 violinists, 2 drummers,2 keyboards, a double bass,an accordian, and musicians playing a qanum which is a 72 string flat zither,and an oud which is a pot bellied lute with a long neck with several strut things at the top (no problems with the right musical terminology there then).They were fronted by an MC who was the spit of Bill Cosby, right down to his laconic sense of timing.
The songs are usually love songs, but I'm told that they can also be used to send messages, both personal and political, in a flowery metaphorical way. Each song is very, very, long with many refrains - over the 2 hour period we were there we probably heard 6 or 7 in total. Even though I understood not a word of any of them, they were pleasantly mesmerising; I have heard snatches of Taarab previously on radio and TV, and on background tapes playing in shops (Tz musak),and wouldn't have said I was taken with it as a musical style, but actually as a live performance, I found it rather enjoyable. For the aficionados in the audience the songs were clearly well known and popular.
But what fascinated me, over anything, was the spectacle. The performance took place in the inner quadrangle of a local secondary school,which, with its two storeys of classrooms each opening out onto central balconies facing the grassed courtyard, reminded me of Chingola Secondary where I taught nearly 40 years ago. People were seated but not so closely that they could not easily leave their seats.
And all the women were dressed to the nines. The band was also very smart but the few men in the audience had clearly not made the same effort. The vast majority of girls and women in Stone Town in Zanzibar wear the buibui (a black coverall from head to toe which is drawn round the face) when in public. They are not always that strict - frequently bright clothing can be glimpsed underneath, and although the edges are usually decorated or heavily embroidered in black anyway, I saw some that were scalloped on the hems with gold or red thread. These clothing rules don't seem to apply for Taarab. There were very few buibui wearers and the only one who was also wearing the niqab as well, had on what I can only call a dress buibui - decorated with flames in heavy embroidery on the sleeves and back, and falling open from about the waist to show an eye dazzling sparkling flame coloured evening dress. Of those who didn't wear the buibui, only a couple wore black headscarves, the hijab; there were women (mostly older ones) wearing veils but these were glittering diaphanous numbers. For the majority, any veil would only have served to obscure their elaborate hair ornaments, their complex hairpieces, and their dangly earrings. And then, there were the dresses: many were elegant in cut, (though surprisingly revealing for modest muslim girls) but totally unrestrained in the vividness of colour or the number of sequins or glass beads embroidered onto them.
Now what's the point of having a decent party frock if no-one gets to see it? And Taarab makes sure that those dresses do get seen. The entry fee is 80p, not a lot when you think how many musicians have to be paid. Virtually nobody was buying cold drinks, so there wasn't much profit there. But there is a another source of income: at the end of each song, however much appreciated, there was only a scattering of applause, but appreciation had already been tangibly expressed during the performance. Both women and men, old and young, would walk up to the singer on the stage, and put a 500 shilling note (20p)in his or her hand all the way during the performance. The younger women made a great performance of this; the note, folded lengthways, held high above their head in two elegant fingers, they would sashay from their seats to the front of the stage, deposit it in the singers hand, do a wide turn - "hey, girls, get a real good look at this, and die of envy" - and sashay back down the central aisle. It couldn't have been bettered on a catwalk. At certain points in a song - Jamila said that these were the parts that were really popular -there was a regular traffic jam of young women, waiting to hand up their money and to be seen returning. Nor was the appreciation only expressed once in a song, although I do think the girl who went up 8 times during one singer's performance must have been really keen on it, or him, (unlikely,as he was old enough to be her grandfather)or hadn't managed to show all the good points in her outfit. The MC was kept very busy (in between doing standup at the end of each performance,) in changing larger notes for 500 shilingi ones, and running to the stage to empty the bucket into which the singers would drop handfuls of notes so that they were free to receive more from the fans. In the second half, which was requests I think, the younger women would all come forward shortly after the song began and congregate at the front of the stage swaying to the music, all holding up their 500 shilingi notes, though I did notice several were still in possession of their money as they swayed back to their seats at the end of the song.
What fascinated me was that these girls who should not expose their bodies to the gazes of males outside their family were not only doing so to those in the audience (and inevitably there were a few single lads looking in from outside the courtyard) but were also doing it for the whole of Zanzibar on TV. The girls were there with friends not their families. I couldn't get an answer from Jamila on that one. She did explain that only fiancees and wives could come to public performances like this; younger girls would only get to see live Taarab at wedding kitchen teas (which are all female parties and much more elaborate than the name suggests) , and at something she called Maulid which I think is a female coming of age ceremony. (However Maulid actually is the prophet's birthday so I may have got that bit wrong.)I was a bit surprised because many of the girls looked to be only about 14 or 15. They get married young in Zanzibar was her reply. In Dar which is much less strict in general about Muslim observance than Zanzibar, the restriction on non-affianced girls attending isn't really observed. She said that in Zanzibar, Taarab was the only public entertainment that a strict Muslim woman was permitted, and they look forward to it enormously, spending huge amounts on their outfits, which of course can only be worn a few times before everyone has seen it before.
The event finished at midnight, and we managed to get a lift back to the hotel in the taxi that Mama Salme, (the main singer) had had waiting. Jamila was completely tongue tied in the presence of this very imposing lady. I gather that she is a big name and I suppose it must have been something like sharing a taxi with -say- Madonna.
The next morning we were in the Swahili shopping area, as Jamila wanted to buy cosmetics and perfumes (which are better and much cheaper than in Dar). She bought udi, which she explained to me was very sweet smelling and was burned to fragrance the scarves and dresses that would be worn at a night out. It looked like minuscule capsules or grains and I thought it must be a form of solid like frankincense. I looked it up when I got back, and it is aloe wood. We were actually looking for a cobbler at the time to sew back the handle of Jamila's handbag but got distracted as happens.
When we were at the third perfume shop, I saw at the back some materials so we had to get the shopkeeper to bring them to the front counter so we could look at them and well, you know, when in Rome, and so I ended up with some. I must be mad. But I will get a fundi wa cherahani to make a dress and then I am definitely leaving it here - it's far too bright for English skies; completely Bollywood. Roll on the next wedding or perhaps another Taarab night! By the time the transaction was completed the heavens had opened and we were stranded as the road outside the shop turned within a couple of minutes into a very fast flowing stream, and rubbish of all sorts was being swept along it. Forty minutes later with no let up, and the water now coming right up to the step on which I was precariously perched on a stool wedged against the front counter, we began to worry about missing the ferry. With no thought for the child's safety, we dispatched an mtoto to the nearest point where there might be a taxi who would take the risk of his engine being flooded. Luckily there was - there always is - and as I contemplated crossing the gap to where the taxi had stopped, I had to balance the chance of losing my Dr Scholls in the flood, or going barefoot and possibly getting my material wet because I had too many things in my hands. The scholls took their chances!

Matembezi madogo vilimani

The GOM was up for a trip to the forest reserve in the Pugu Hills ( technically just a 20 minute drive beyond the airport) but looked decidedly blue when I said this included a hike. This created an interesting juxtaposition: he keeps himself pretty fit and I manifestly do not, so my enthusiasm and his lack of it can only be explained, in his terms, by his firmer grasp on reality.Uniquely for Tz, booking is obligatory, which I did a couple of hours before we set out so that he had no opportunity to change his mind. The directions to get there were ( perhaps intentionally?) misleading, and it was only by following our noses that we made it to the last 1.5km which were on dirt. This branched off in all directions, and we must have done - eventually - three times that distance on false trails. My kiswahili was stretched beyond breaking point trying to understand instructions on how to get to get back on the right track. I can confirm that the male reluctance ever to ask for directions does not extend only to the English language.
However he got a chance to show off his 4WD skills, and I learnt, yet again, how important impromptu prayer is - much to the annoyance of the GOM who took my involuntary calls on a higher being as being a reflection on his ability to keep the car in a semi upright position.It is only marginally less terrifying to be looking down on the driver from the passenger seat, than to be looking up at him. It's at these points he asks when I am going to have a go. Never is a long time.
Again by following our nose and heading in the general direction of the large modern ediface we could see high in the hills, we arrived at the padlocked entry gate and received a somewhat surprised response to our phone call to be let in. The owner is a Dutchman called Kiki, whose primary interest is in the conservation of the remaining vestiges of coastal rainforest at Pugu and Kazimzumburi, something he has been trying, and failing, for the past 14 years, to get the government to take seriously.
To fund his passion he has a resort with 4 overnight bandas, to which he welcomes (somewhat reluctantly I amagine) visitors. Reluctant or not, he has constructed over the years a very comfortable dining and lounging banda with absolutely stunning views, and a superb infinity pool.
I had seen on the website "swimming included in admission when there is water in the pool", which in Tanzania usually means there hasn't been any for 10 years. I regretted the decision not to bring my costume. His own ultra modern home isn't visible from the "business end" of the resort but can be seen both from above and below. The mind boggles at how the construction was managed in such an inaccessible spot.
Kiki told us that he has been going to leave ever since he came here " but how do you walk out of paradise?" He has a 9 year old at the International School in Dar which means a 2 hour round journey twice a day in Dar traffic, and of course as she gets older the isolation isn't going to help. I suspect however he will still find reasons for staying.
There are several reccommended hikes lasting up to 5 hours. We decided to do the shortest, to the reservoir, but with no strong feelings about whether we got there or not. We had a guide from the village, Hamidi, though he was actually more of a guard. He spoke only one English word - snake - and in the circumstances, if you have to have only one, that is a pretty good one to have.
Hamidi took one look at us two wazee and set his pace at something between a gentle stroll and a complete stop. In the heat, that suited me just fine, and, armed with sticks, we followed him as he cleared the track in front of him of loose leaves and branches - shelters for the aforementioned snakes. I learnt that he did know the English word, when he indicated one slithering away from the path. Not that I saw it, which set the pattern for the day. We never did get our eye in. The animal life in the forest is much reduced from what was there 50 years ago, when there were leopard and lions. Today there are antelopes and vervet monkies, and lots of nocturnal bushbabies and bushpigs, though I can't say I would want to bump into the latter. But we didn't bump into anything, that we saw - even the GOM with his binoculars. Hamidi was pointing out birds and monkies, but we couldn't see where he was pointing. We could hear a cacophany of calls throughout the forest however. Pugu remains one of the world's most important sites for the variety of birds it has, and I was hoping to see rather more than in Dar where the incomer, the horrible Indian house crow, has virtually eliminated everything except "little brown jobbies". No such luck. I did see a couple of huge hawks slowly circling on the thermals.
Without Hamidi we would have been lost within a couple of feet of entering the forest.
Besides watching out for snakes, he also prevented us from striding straight into a line of driver ants, around whom we made a very careful circuit and afterwards were checked to ensure we hadn't picked up a painful passenger.

Hamidi eating matunda ya asili - honey-fruit
We turned back when the GOM's rumbling tummy drowned out the birdsong, and made our way along the edge of the reserve. We only met 2 people on the whole journey, but there is farming and habitation further down the hill and a charcoal burning village in the reserve itself. Floating up from below we heard the soothing waves of the one o'clock muezzin call -something normally submerged in the background noise of the city unless you are very close to a mosque. We also saw another sign of human habitation - the blue plastic bag. Ten years ago all the sides of the roads in Dar were strewn with rubbish waiting to be burnt, and these tacky thin blue plastic bags that every shop used. It was terribly unsightly. That has almost entirely disappeared in the city, but not in the area where you would least want to see them. A law was passed last year banning the use of plastic bags, although suppliers are being allowed to run down their existing stocks, so no change has been seen so far. If it does become effective it should at any rate boost the basket making trade.
The tension between the expanding human population of Dar ( increased 25% to 4 million in the last ten years) and its satellite towns and villages, and the preservation of areas like Pugu, is a difficult one to sort out. The area is supposed to be protected, but there is no official action - as opposed to rhetoric - to stop encroachment for agriculture and burning of trees to make charcoal. But what do you do with so many people on the doorstep for whom charcoal is the only fuel they can use? And yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy when I know we bought 3 sacks of charcoal for our barbecue last week. So I am ineffectually wringing my hands. Typically sopping wet liberal as the GOM might observe.
By the time we got back - and I had been obeying with alacrity the frequent admonition "pumzika" (Rest!)- I had a hearty appetite for what turned out to be an excellent lunch and a severe case of dehydration. The heat of the day although lessened by the forest shade, and some cooling hill breezes, was still strong.
Following lunch, we acted like the wazee we are and fell asleep on the couches - I did say it was comfortable. When we finally left sated and happy, even the the craziness of the Dar rush hour couldn't spoil it - well not for me, I wasn't driving.

St Patrick's Day na nyama choma

The GOM has threatened to throw a barbecue over the last year, and me being around was the perfect excuse. That it was on St Patrick's Day was coincidental. The Irish diaspora was represented by me and our neighbour - both 2nd generation - and one born and bred Irish woman, who has been to and from Tz for the last 20 odd years. She recalled her first Paddy's night in 1983 when she had been billeted to learn Kiswahili in a convent in Tabora headed by a formiddable Dutch Mother Superior. Rose was quickly marked as heading for eternal damnation mainly because she preferred to spend her evenings with the male volunteers living in the priests' house half a mile away; the bar and the snooker tablethere being the main attraction. Rev Mother imposed a requirement that for safety reasons Rose had to have a male escort, the volunteers volunteered, and on second thoughts there had to be two, "to prevent scandal"... But on this St Patrick's night an American missionary asked Rose to come to dinner, and Rev Mother was satisfied that she could come to no harm in the company of a man of God. She might have been less complacent if she had heard the crates rattling in the back of Fr Chuck's vehicle. He had been asked by President Nyerere to stay on to develop the Tabora honey industry, and his bright wheeze was to create honey based alcoholic drinks. Rose was to be his captive tasting panel. He had honey aperitifs, champagne, wine, liquers - any and every possible bevvy which could be made from honey. She swore that the chicken they were to eventually eat was not even killed until she'd been there two hours, and by that time all was lost. On arriving back at the convent at 4am she was smuggled in by a young Indian nun, whom she thinks became drunk on the fumes, but who covered for her "illness" later that day. I don't think this made her a fan of Tabora booze.
Whilst preparing the food, I heard on the World Service that NY firemen had been demoted from pole position in the NY St Patrick's Day parade because of last year's drunken behaviour. Now, I'd always thought that was obligatory.
People naturally behaved far more soberly at our do, or perhaps they can hold their liquor! We had made the usual Tz calculation, only half the people you invite, and two thirds of those who accept, will actually come. However this time we got it wrong: they came bringing their sisters in law, or their nieces, and whereas previously wives would never turn up, for this one they came even when their husbands were out of Dar. So it was a rather more crowded than we anticipated, but luckily I had done my usual party food planning -work out how much you need, panic, and double it, just in case, God forbid, there isn't enough to go round. Some people I hadn't seen since 2001/2, so I had good times catching up.
It could have been disastrous though. Jeroam went down with malaria on the Friday, very tough for him, but difficult for us too, as this really was a three man job.With the number of people coming, the GOM should have been full time mpishi ministering to the meat, and try as we might, we have never been able to get Tanzanians to just help themselves to drinks, so there has to be someone doing that, and then someone has actually got to talk to people.
Getting it ready was just a matter of working out which supermarket was likely to have which things, - the GOM in his semi-batchelor existance is pretty well stocked, but with some odd gaps: he hasn't a single tray for example, and I don't know where all the teatowels have gone. I had to become pretty inventive in finding alternative uses for kitchen implements.
However the most important lack - given that this was a barbecue - was the barbecue itself. Harking back to our days in Zambia we call it by the South African name - braii - which in those days was an oil drum cut in half and placed on welded X legs. The Tanzanian jiko, -not the little charcoal burners, but a real biggie - does bear a resemblance to a barbecue you could buy at B&Q, but looks as if it is made out of meccano. Now, buying food here, given the heat, the fridge and freezer capacity, and the liklihood of electricity outages, should be left to the last minute, but it might have been wise to have thought of getting a jiko rather earlier than the day before. The show room par excellence for jikos was on the patch of grass opposite the massively ugly prison/fortress which is the new US Embassy, (built to replace the one destroyed in the 98 Nairobi and Dar bombing). Here, you could buy them in all shapes and sizes. The GOM drives past the embassy each day to work, but had failed to notice that the majiko emporium had been cleared off some months ago in the roadside clearup I mentioned in a previous post. He eventually located an alternative supplier but who only had a few, and only one decent size one, which rather hampered his bargaining position. We borrowed a second small jiko for cooking boerwors (thick South African sausage) so we could separate out the meat for Muslims and non Muslims. The chicken I wasn't taking a chance with on a barbecue and I cooked it in the oven. Mind you, they were the most anorexic birds I have seen in a long time, even here. All the result of a tactical decision (not mine) not to go to the only decent butcher in the city just because he was over an hour's drive away.
These houses were never designed with the convenience of cooks in mind, but then the occupants were always expected to have someone to cook for them. Even with all the doors and windows open, and the fans and extractor going full blast, it was like the Black Hole of Calcutta.
At the end it was the usual performance, gliding like swans on the surface, paddling wildly under water. It seemed to go well, but I think it was 11pm before I was able to raise the first (alcoholic ) glass to St Paddy. Over the next few hours I managed to sink a bottleful. In the early hours the GOM was looking forward to his bed, and started clearing up, and complained to me the next morning that the last hard cases failed to take the hint and leave. He clearly missed that I had got to the garroulous stage and was urging them to stay! I got to bed after 4am, sometime after he'd stumped off to bed in true GOM fashion. Not before, in expansive mood, I'd decided the night guards might like the leftover meat and chicken (but not the pork sausage) and taken it out to them. Not a sign could I find, even when I knocked on the annexe where they cook and change. As usual - we pay people to sleep at our compound, rather than their own homes.

Dua la kuku halimpati mwewe

Kangas which are worn by poor women all the time, and by all women some of the time, were the original T shirt with a message. Around their borders they have slogans, proverbs exhortations etc, and are frequently chosen for the message rather than the design. Dua la kuku halimpati mwewe is a Swahili proverb which says something to the effect of " a hawk doesn't heed the prayer of a chicken."
For the last few months, a criminal case has been filling the Tanzanian newspapers, and is generally being seen as a barometer of whether the Kikwete government is serious about transparency, and even handedness. At the beginning of November, an ex-military officer and present Regional Commissioner, also one of the "good ol' boys" of the CCM the ruling party here, Ditopile Mzuzuri was arrested for murder.
I was given the following account by an eye witness a couple of days ago. She was in a dalladalla in the early evening. Dalladallas are minibuses which are the backbone of the public transportation system in Dar es Salaam. They are cheap, (200 shillings or 10p a journey), sometimes atrociously maintained and always appallingly driven. Everyone complains about them, but the city would grind to a halt without them.
A Prado pulled out in front of the dalladalla and the dalladalla nudged the spare tyre at the back. It seems to be common ground that no damage was caused. Both vehicles stopped. It intrigues me that in a city where drivers seem completely unaware that there are any rules of the road, let alone abide by them, the one thing they do seem to do is to remain where they are after any accident until the police arrive. The driver of the Prado came to remonstrate with the Dalladalla driver. Now, the essential job requirements for a dalladalla driver are (1) that he drives like a drunken one-eyed maniac, and (2) that he is voluably foul mouthed. I was told that the driver of the Prado was graphically informed just where he could go.
The passenger in the Prado – Dito as all the papers call him - then came to the dalladalla and said do you know who I am? The driver apparently told him where to go as well. The driver shut his driver's window; Ditopile pulled out a gun. He used it to hammer on the window, and suddenly there was a shot and the driver, Hasan Mbonde, was dead -shot in the head . My informant said that there was absolute panic, and people were leaving the bus through the windows, anyway they could find to get out; she could not remember how she did it - all she can remember is being outside and running. One of her friends was sitting at the front of the bus and was sprayed with the drivers blood
A mob gathered, and fortunately for Dito, the incident happened outside a military barracks and he was rescued before he suffered worse injuries than a broken arm. The gun has never been found. He handed himself into the police some two hours afterwards in which time he had spoken to the President. Kikwete was quick to claim afterwards that justice was the same for every Tanzanian, be he ever so mighty. The response from the man on the Tegete dalladalla is profound scepticism.
Dito was charged with murder and remanded in custody. In February, at the committal proceedings, the charge was reduced to manslaughter, understandable I suppose given the circumstances I have described, but only if you forget his military background and his familiarity with firearms One of the opposition parties has however started a private murder prosecution – which was not supported by the drivers’ family who are widely suspected to have been paid off. Manslaughter is bailable here, but bail was refused by the Resident magistrate. An application for bail was made in the High Court on March 8th, unopposed by the Prosecution, and he was bailed on his own recognisance of 30 million shillings(about 12,000 sterling) and two sureties for the same amount. His family and friends at court then turned on the press photographers(in the court environs) and started to beat them up, watched by the police who did nothing to intervene. The press - both kiswahili and English - have been incandescent; special pleading for their own lads, but I think they're right about the ruckus being a contempt of court. The judicial reaction? Huffing and puffing that the police had brought Dito into court using the judges' door. Nice to see that the priorities are right.
The interesting reaction has been from other prisoners on remand throughout the country. They immediately went on strike, short lived in most places, but only just called off in Dar. There have been constant denials that Dito has been treated in any way differently than any other accused person, but to say the case has got to committal stage within 4 months is, by Tz standards, expedited justice. Tz is the land of constant adjournments and it is not unknown for people to be remanded for up to 5 years before coming to trial. There seems to be no penalty on the Prosecution for failing to have their cases prepared. The strike consisted of men ( the women didn't join in) refusing to leave the prison vans at court until their demand (that the Minister of Justice came to the prison to hear their complaints) was met. There was tough talk at first, but there have been no cases of attempts to force people off the vans, and the remandees seem to have access to material and paint, so that their grievances were hung out of the windows of the vans for the waiting media to read and disseminate. The Minister agreed to meet the prisoners and they called off the strike. I suspect police/prison collusion with the remandees, because there is a general sense of special treatment for -shall we say the hawk if the common man is the chicken?
What will be interesting to see is whether, now Dito is out, there will be the same urgency to progress the case. I wouldn't hold your breath.

Soko ya Samaki

Tuesday, a day of "sun and showers", otherwise known as alternating torrential downpours and blistering heat, (with no time to adjust to the change), was when we went to the fishmarket. There are a number of these around Dar es Salaam; the one the tourists go to is on the Kivukoni Front, and has recently been properly set up with Swedish or some other Nordic Aid money. Previously it had been a malodourous and quite hassling place to go. I haven't been since it has been modernised.
I went to the fishmarket at Kunduchi Pwani, a village near the old Swahili town of Kunduchi, which was part of the Swahili trading empire, and which has a ancient cemetary with apparently some interesting Muslim graves. However, as you need to get a police escort to go there, I have never yet been. The village is cheek by jowl with Wet'n'Wild, a water theme park popular with the (very) well heeled youth of Dar. What, exactly, is the logic of manufacturing water experiences when the Indian Ocean is a matter of yards away?
The fishmarket at Kunduchi is not on the tourist circuit, and from the look of the (largish) village is not benefiting much from its neighbouring theme park. I saw no school in the immediate area, there were a lot of children working on the beach round the boats and with the fish, and despite being there until after 4pm I didn't see any children, at any time, in school uniform. There was a one/two room building advertising itself on the clay external wall as a madrassa with a Dar PO Box no. Madrassa in kiswahili means classroom as well as Islamic religious school.
We got there well before the auction started and went down to the beach, where there were a lot of boats in, as well as dugout canoes up on the sand. We were offered one calamari (squid) at 2000 shillings (80p) Jamila's snort was enough to tell me that was not a good price. I would have liked to get some photos, but it is a very Muslim area, and there is a belief that the camera steals your soul, so I had to be careful how to ask. One fisherman with a huge fish let me take a photo of him holding the fish, as long as he wasn't in it. However, fate or his deity intervened because although I thought I had taken it, (sweat obscuring my specs not withstanding) it's not on my memory card.
We went off for some lunch at the Swiss place nearby the village, whilst the heavens opened again and when we returned there were other cars in the village (ours having been the sole one in the morning.) The auction had already been set up. It starts every day at 3pm (saa tisa or 9 0'clock in Swahili time, as the day begins at 6 in the morning and so 7am is saa moja or 1 o'clock).
There was a large crowd in, but a couple of "minders" who had attached themselves in the morning, soon sought us out again! The buyers were Arabs, Indians, market traders, restaurant owners and Mama lishas - roadside fried fish vendors, both young and old. There were three separate auction areas - each outlined by a rectangle of sticks and twine surrounding a piece of sacking or old tarpaulin on the sand. Everyone congregated around these. Again I would have loved to get some photos but apart from the risk of causing offence in this very Muslim area, I didn't need to draw any excess attention in the crowd to my handbag, by flashing a camera around. In each of the auction areas there were 2 or 3 auctioneers operating simultaneously, so it was very noisy! Each transaction took no more than about 20 seconds, and immediately the auctioneer moved on to the next one. The catch would be brought in by basket or bucket and a shoal of small glistening rainbow coloured fish strewed on the sand, or sometimes up to 20 fish strung together (by their mouths)in a circle made with twine or a strip of (banana?) leaf would be held up by the auctioneer. Large Rays or Red snapper would be sold singly. Changu fish would be sold two or three together. Prices varied from 500-700 shillings (20-30p) for a half bucket of the small fish to 8,000 shillings (3.20) for a monster Red Snapper about 5 foot from head to tail. Keeping tabs on the prices the fish were being sold for was difficult; apart from there being some slang or dialect words for numbers being used - and Jamila wasn't able to interpret these - all the prices were in hundreds of shillings. So whereas normally you would say "shilingi elfu nane" for 8,000 shillings that price was called out as "mia thermanini" (80 hundred). It was also difficult to see who was bidding. Although the occasional person would call out bids, most of the time it looked as if the auctioneers were dementedly crying out numbers on their own. Part of the time we were with a young woman Jamila knows, who sells fried fish and soft drinks from a kiosk opposite a bar in Mbezi Tangi Bovu, not far from where we were living in 2002. She was murmering "tano" or "sita" ( 5 or 6) so low I could hardly hear her, but the auctioneer obviously knew and somehow could hear or interpret his customer, as she got her bucket of fish for 600 shillings. Some times it was clear from the auctioneer's demeanour that a pitched battle was going on between 2 bidders, but stare as I might, I could not guess who was doing the bidding until the fish was deposited with a buyer. As soon as one lot sold, the auctioneer moved on to the next heap of fish flung out on the sacking, and men would run and collect up the sold lot, scooping it into a basket with a couple of billy cans, and others would come in with a new bucket spilling onto the floor, or dragging a Ray behind them in the sand. It was nonstop. The auctioneers take a percentage of each lot sold but how the sums are kept I haven't the faintest, it seemed so hectic to me. It's a gruelling job, after an hour I saw one of them, the most showmanlike of them all, (although it is not a job for the retiring type), and the sweat was running off his face, and his shirt was soaked.
Now neither Jamila participated in this except as spectators, but our minders were keen to see that we did not go away empty handed; they had tried to sell me the huge red snapper before it went into the auction but what would I do with a fish that big? We did a side deal with a buyer who had bought a red snapper with some other fish and paid 8,000 for this one, and I was well satisfied especiallyas my minder also cleaned and filleted it for me ( they are big bony monsters)Iwas still left with a lot of fish and have frozen about two third of it. Luckily I keep my Jane Grigson fish book here because I hadn't the faintest idea how to cook it! Very tasty it was too. Jamila and I also split a lot of calamari between us, 2,500 each for which we got a lot more than one! This is my share waiting for me to clean them. All in all - a good day - and it was fortunate that because I knew I was going to a conservative area I covered up and dressed very modestly, because every part of me that was exposed got sunburnt.

Wanawake kwanza

Last Friday was International Womens' Day. Yeah, I know, I missed it too. But on Saturday they were reporting all the various shindigs, with female Ministers doing all the usual blah blah stuff. Don't get me wrong - I have huge respect for the resourcefulness and the sheer sticking power of most of the Tanzanian women I have met, but no respect at all for the intentions of the majority of those in power to improve the situation of women generally- which means improving the situation of children as well. Six or seven years ago, Tanzanian men ( of influence) would always refer to the Beijing international womens' meeting in 1995; yes you'd never heard of it either, but Hillary Clinton was there, and it was a big thing here in Tanzania and in most of the developing world, because it was meant to change the status of women in the areas where they most needed that to happen; however it turned out to be one big talking shop as far as I'm aware. Nonetheless, genuflecting to the Chinese event was de rigeur for many years here as a badge of: "I'm a modern Tanzanian man and I have my right-on credentials". And that was it. No need to change any attitudes - most crucially to the women in their own families.
Anyway, the reports of the womens' rallies were on the front page ( it must have been a slow news day) of The Guardian - same flaghead as the UK version- which is middling in politics: ie more cautious and less scurrilous than some of the weeklies, but not such a lapdog of the government party as the Daily News. It has taken to publishing poems in the top left hand column of the first page. And in honour of International Womens' Day, there were a few verses. These were of no great literary value, and the content can be summed up as - I was your cow but don't you come looking for milk from me now. And who was the poet? - and I use the word in both the gender specific and non specific sense - why, a man of course.

Sokoni

Before the car calamity, Jamila and I had been to the market. I was pretty well stocked with fruit, having asked Jeroam to buy me the usual- mango pineapple,papaya, and bananas, and also some limes,but lemons if he couldn't find any. The GOM who usually sends him to do this, had told me there seemed to be a problem on the citrus front. Not any more there isn't:I now have enough of both to stock a lemonade factory.
However we needed vegetables, so we were off to the market. Around this area over the last year, there has been a total clearout of roadside vendors. Beside our old house on Heile Selassie (now the residence of the Rwandan Ambassador), all the shops on both sides of the road have gone, including the Corner Bar. The GOM says they were just bulldozed. The same is true on the road to Mwenge and in other parts of the city as well, I understand.
Jamila totally approves: she says how much cleaner and greener the place looks without all the shops cluttering up the place. True enough, but still...I'm not so sure - I was thinking how you could get vegetables, cold drinks, padlocks, bread, LPG for the cooker,a dress made, the promise of a photocopier arriving "next week" from the Secretarial Bureau outside our gate, bootleg CDs and DVDs and, if you needed it, the company of the hardest drinking Wazungu and Tanzanians in Dar (including, I think, the BBC World rep) all within a few minutes walk, every day of the year including Christmas Day. There must have been hundreds of people getting a living just from that short stretch of road.
OK, so they were all on the land without any title, but not all the stores were wooden shacks, well, actually, yes they were. That is Jamila's argument: that now they are gone, people will set up in purpose built places, that will be smart and clean. I think that is optimistic, the beauty of the opportunistic traders is that people needed very little capital to set up their businesses, and they just don't have the wherewithal to set up in a place where they will have to pay rent electricity etc before they sell a single thing
I never did work out why nobody ever set up shop outside our old place - I know there were all these big metal signs saying the equivalent of Trespassers will be prosecuted, but I can't believe that put people off. But all we ever had was the odd cow or some goats tethered for a day or so for grazing.
A vaccuum has to be filled, so there is now along the same stretch the equivalent of an open air garden centre -hundreds of plants with soilballs in plastic bags.
Anyway, all that is readily available locally for fruit and veg are some small kiosks, so off to market we went.
The market we went to is deceptive - it looks like a single row of stalls on the road side, but as you push through the mitumbo stall (secondhand clothes - the largest single export of the EU to Tanzania) there are loads of stalls behind. I could have taken home a live chicken and some really rank fried fish and other meat I couldn't possibly identify, but..
Jamila tried to convince me of the incomparable taste of cassava leaves, but we got a bit stuck on the cooking techniques. I got the bit about pounding them, but after that it became a bit like a Tanzanian version of the Bob Newhart Walter Raleigh sketch. Bob who? -oh, you have to be over 50. It still is one of the all time great comedy monologues :"Are you saying "snuff," Walt? What's snuff? You take a pinch of tobacco and you shove it up your nose! And it makes you sneeze, huh. I imagine it would, Walt, yeah. It has some other uses, though. You can chew it? Or put it in a pipe. Or you can shred it up and put it on a piece of paper, and roll it up - don't tell me, Walt, don't tell me- you stick in your ear, right Walt? Oh, between your lips! Then what do you do to it? You set fire to it! Then what do you do, Walt? You inhale the smoke! Walt, we've been a little worried about you...you're gonna have a tough time getting people to stick burning leaves in their mouth...." That was me. However it is sorted as we're having a Tz dinner - with me being the maid of all work, so I'll tell you what they taste like soon.
I got mchicha - spinach - and later the GOM was really grumpy about that, because he has only had it in restaurants where it is really bitter and stringy; I wanted to do it in coconut milk but the nuts are young at the moment so I couldn't. I knew about the incessant rinsing but was surprised at how many changes of water were needed, and I could have done with a child or two to strip it for me, but when I cooked it,it was fine and he even admitted it!
Virtually everything is priced singly and sold in threes. So a tomato would be eg 100shillings(4p)and then you count how many groups of three you want and then, usually, another is put in as a present. It was OK at first as I wasn't buying, but as soon as I did, the mzungu effect happened and Jumila's costs went up - eg when we went back to the stall for the cassava leaves they had doubled in price. She was also offered a papaya at 800 shillings, when she said the current price was about 400. What I couldn't get was Viazi Ulaya (European potatoes) although there were of course plenty of viazi vitumu (Sweet potatoes) which I can't stand, although the GOM is partial to them. I think cassava root is viazi vikubwa -big potatoes, and this is also what politicians get called.
Baskets full, we headed into car hell!

Magari mabaya

Jamila and I had been to the market and were on our way back when her car began to make the most concerning noises. We limped to a small garage that she had used many times before, and luckily got there before the car broke down completely. This naturally meant we slightly inconvenienced the traffic heading towards the city so our progress was accompanied by a chorus of honking. Jamila had had the car mended on two previous occasions in the last few weeks. The first time the mechanic had merely taken out, and then put back, the defective parts so the car broke down almost immediately, but, unfortunately, not until after he had been paid . Jamila then purchased new parts, herself, and a second mechanic installed them, but -so we were told - completely wrongly. The garage we ended up in, she had used for many years and had been completely happy with. She however now lives many miles away, and therefore had put herself into the hands of a couple of cowboys. I did say that the same thing happens in the UK - the AA report it regularly. She found it hard to believe, as her European experience is 14 years in Denmark. We were by this time in the bar next to the garage, shortly to be joined by the garage owner who was drinking half and half tumblers of Konyagi and water - it didn't appear to have much effect on him but it would have had me out cold! By this time I had abandoned my stuttering intent to speak only Kiswahili: I don't have the vocabulary to discuss car repairs in English let alone Swahili, but "engine mount" appears to be common to both languages... It only left me with even greater respect for J who speaks not only Kiswahili and English but fluent Danish as well, which she reckons is harder than either. The Tanzanian total incapacity to pass on bad news then took over - in this case how long the repair was going to take. 15 minutes was followed by 30, by 15, by 45... After four and a quarter hours, we took up the GOM's offer of rescue, previously refused on the grounds that it would push the bill up to mzungu levels. I think I didn't count as I was clearly a hapless passenger rather than someone who might foot the bill. During the long wait in the bar (Cokes only, please note)I had ample opportunity for people watching Tz style. What was supposed to be, I guess, a pavement of sorts outside was occupied by traffic in both directions (though it was just a car width wide), looking to beat the traffic snarlup in and out of the city on the Ali Hassan Mwinyi dual carriage way, as the rushhour built up. Seeing as the vehicles were driving on a path presumably meant for pedestrians, it might be reasonable to expect them to drive at a speed commensurate with coming across a school child, a cyclist or a cripple in front of them. Such a thought clearly had not crossed most drivers' minds - they just treated it as a third lane.
The GOM took us to the Anghiti for a much relished Indian meal: he, like many others, had given up going there after a frightening armed robbery last year, but memories are short, and it was again packed on a Friday night. Our desertion of our duty post was obviously the incentive to complete the work, (perhaps also because it was after 9pm and even though this garage stays open till 11 or later, everyone wants to get home sometime) so we had hardly started on our first course before the call came that the car was done.
So I wasn't happy to hear on our way home at last, that he thought there was something wrong with his steering. Closer inspection the next morning convinced me ( a complete moron as far as cars go) that this baby was not even fit for a trip to the shops. The idea of a jaunt up to the Pugo Hills ( the last remaining area of rain forest near Dar) went out of the window. However, a neat wheeze was that he took a photo and emailed it, so that when Gamma comes to mend it tomorrow he knows what the problem is and brings the right parts. So that is the photo accompanying this post - our car not Jamila's. From the mechanical among you I expect sucked teeth!

Piga Ngoma

I went up to the Village Museum "Kijiji cha makumbusho" the other day with a friend. I haven't been for about 6 years. It's an openair museum showing different tribal houses in Tz, with traditional crafts etc., and has expanded quite a lot since I was last there. Every afternoon there is traditional dancing. I was interested in the drummers and the Mama Mzee who had replaced what I assume would have originally been gourd rattles with two tin cans on sticks. The drummers would run off between sessions to a small fire behind them which they kept going with cardboard as a makeshift bellows and when well aflame would hold the drumskins against this to tighten them up, hitting them until they were satisfied they had the right tone. The hides didn't seem to show any sign of scorching. How are skins tightened normally?

Nyumbani

Where the grumpy old man lives now, is where he first settled in Dar ten years ago, after an initial period of living in the infamous Smokies. He came back just over a year ago - out of nostalgia I think, - on finding it to let at a time when he was looking to move away from the gruelling daily drive into town from Mbezi. The house is in a compound of four, originally built for Italian workers. The common factor between now and ten years ago is that one of our neighbours has an African Grey parrot. However the present bird only squawks - the previous one's partypiece was to awaken you with a phone call; only after you had stumbled blearily eyed downstairs did you realise you had been conned once again! Our immediate neighbour has a two year old who has just reached the prattling stage, and it is great to hear her constant chatter; she seems quite a character. For some reason the families with children who have lived in this compound previously when we have been there, have always had what I would consider unnaturally "good" children-not something I have had much experience of.
What I like particularly this time is the garden. It never previously seemed to be plant friendly: there were a number of trees, frangi pani and coconut palms, but even grass didn't seem to get a hold on the red laterite soil which is very infertile. Last year the GOM had some trellises put up to mask the huge black plastic watertanks which were an eyesore. He planted some ornamental bananas on one trellis and passionfruit plants on another by our veranda. the bananas are gone without trace but the passionfruits are taking over the world. All I have to do now is negotiate a modus vivendi with the night guards so that they don't take all the fruit before I get a share. There is absolutely no more blissful taste experience than eating a sunwarmed passionfruit straight off the vine. Eating six however, as I did the other day does funny things to your digestive system.
Part of the world the passion fruit was taking over involved clinging to the burglar bars of the study window before climbing up to the balcony outside our bedroom. The study is not naturally a light room, but the profuse greenery made it extremely gloomy. Its original purpose was as a food store: the mind boggles to think how much canned and bottled stuff the Italians thought they needed to survive in Tz, requiring a room about 10'x12' to keep it all in. I assumed the (for me) unusual role of gardener and removed all the vines from the window. Unfortunately that meant cutting off the ones from our balcony as well, thus removing the pleasent idea of strolling out from the bedroom and helping myself to a fruit first thing in the morning. However they are not to be beaten- the first tendrils are already curling around the window bars again