We’re just back from a couple of months on leave. Volunteering is rubbish pay but the holidays are fab. And we’ve just been going through the photos. We’re not mad snappers but we have noticed that practically every photo we took had food in it. I put on 1kg each week of our 8 weeks. Says something about what’s on offer over here.

Our first breakfast after arriving, laid on by Ivo, our mate in Berlin. We were starving. Butter, cheese, croissants and pastries from the bakery downstairs. Fantastic. We cleared the table then I ate Ivo.

Then I ate the budgie. Her name is Anabelle and she liked stroking her head along my beard. When she’d had enough she would hop into the middle of my chest have a shit then fly off.

And here we have Nadine about to scoff two entire bowls of parmesan cheese and bacon bits. She’d eaten my bowl before I had a chance to get back to the table.

She also got into the habit of snacking on small platefuls of around a dozen or so sausages.

She eventually dispensed with cutlery all together preferring to drink straight from the tea pot. Here she is with Julia, her second mam, gamely joining in with a pot of coffee.

And we of course drank loads of beer. Here from one of the finest dining establishments Consett, Co. Durham has to offer. They had unfortunately run out of food so we just pretended. Times are hard in the north.

The posh South, of course has it all. Nadine in Harrods at the veg counter looking quite cute in her floppy cap. Yes, it’s for shoplifting.

… and again at Harrods fish counter. The bulge in her cap? Half a salmon.

And as contrast, our local fish counter

… and Nadine at our local veg man.

Our local allowance is about the equivalent of an OK local salary. That means 80-90% of it has to go on food. Like most people around here. Small price increases often mean you’re short of cash to buy your fruit and veg. Not really an issue for me and Nadine, we can always dip into other money but for locals it’s a stressful way to live. The problem is that prices don’t increase in relatively small jumps, 2p or 5p, like at home, they sky rocket. The price of tomatoes is almost double what it was 2 weeks ago. Onions are 50% higher. It’s because agriculture isn’t developed. It consists of very small subsistence holdings (single farmers growing primarily for their family and if they’re lucky with a bit left over to sell on), poor transport lines to market (donkey or a knackered pickup), no storage facilities (of any kind whatsoever. Too much food simply rots on the stalk or tree), no co-operative organisation (let’s put our cows together or join up our plots to make it easier to farm is an alien concept) and no forward planning (it’s all inshallah or ‘God willing’). That means supply is very sticky and very sensitive to seasons.  We’ve had poor rains in Zanzibar which means a useless tomato and onion harvest. The only other place to get them is the mainland but it takes ages to find suppliers, transport, pay bribes, organise labour etc. etc. etc. to get it from there over to here. So, tomatoes double, onions go up by 50% and your average family that can’t grow their own food see what little money they have getting sucked away, go hungry and become very angry.

Gosh, I’m being a bit of a misery guts. What can we do about all this dourness? I know . . .

A photo of a big meringue cake covered in berries and a happy, grinning little brother! The meringue is at the bottom. There are no berries of any kind in Zanzibar and certainly no meringues and whipped cream. I have a tear in my eye now just thinking of the taste I have left behind. And no, little brother didn’t get any of it. It was too close to me and too far from him.

Our only non-food photo. Our friend in Glasgow, Fiach phoning David, our other friend in Glasgow, to let him know his idea of an afternoon showing us Glasgow’s botanic collection of Tanzanian ferns and African palm trees wasn’t going down too well with Nadine. We of course had a smashing time.

And then we came back. And I had my birthday last week

Nadine bought me a tree. It’s a baobab tree and it’s bloody huge. You can’t see it very well on this photo. It doesn’t actually end just behind me at that bush, it continues back to the edge of the photo.

And of course you can climb up it. Well it wouldn’t be a birthday tree if you couldn’t climb up it, would it.

And you can have a lovely birthday cup of coffee and piece of cake in its branches.

A bit of a strange blog that. We promise we’ll do more interesting stuff later once we’ve adjusted back to our diet of dried beetles and cow dung.

I shall leave you with a small foodie ad offering found on one of the local networking sites.

…

Dear Friends, I would like to inform you that we have a big offer on chicken livers. They are about to expire and we sell them almost for free. One big box of 20kg costs 10,000Tsh. If you buy many there is further discount! They are perfect for your animal. If you have doggies or cats (including lions) or crocodiles this is perfect gift for them! You find us in ZIPA, Maruhubi (close to Mtoni Marine). My number is 0774…., my email at work: ……

Karibu!

Imagine if you will the sight and smell of a 20kg expired box of this stuff. Let alone a lion or croc gagging on it.