najonajo

…well, not sure whether you can call it a street, see for yourself on the last photo below. Our new home, which we have finally finally moved into, is part of the spacious campus of the College of Health Sciences. We humans are by no means alone.

It took nearly four weeks for the house to be ready. Well, ready is a relative term, have a look:

Our first meal in our new living room, with one chair and one pillow, our bikes and a curtain that needs hanging up, no cooking facilities yet – but it’s our own space and we’ve unpacked our bags, having our own food! Tumefurahi sana, we’re very happy indeed.

Our back yard, after the newly installed bigger water tank had come tumbling down from the roof – luckily we hadn’t moved in yet…

Our bedroom, yet to be equipped with a new bed.

The future guest room, in which we’re currently sleeping.

And the kitchen, with all our scrubbing and cleaning materials, much needed to make the house our home.

We’ve been promised furniture – in Kiswahili ‘fanicha’  – and we’re looking forward to it!

And here comes

Life Adjustment number 2:

Alarm clock number 1

5.10 a.m. =11.10 Zanzibari time: Muezzin call

Distance: 25 metres

Effectiveness: medium

A couple of nights ago, during the daily power outage, we pointed our head lights at the roof of the mosque, locating some noises of, well, excitement. Our spotlight revealed three or four pairs of eyes gleaming back at us, jumping  wildly up and down. Our new friends the bush-babies.

Alarm clock number 2:

5.22 a.m =11.22 Zanzibari time: this one calls, for lazy non-believers who have turned around in bed

Distance: 5 metres, backyard wall

Effectiveness level: high

Snooze button for alarm clock number 2

Effectiveness: ooh, unsatisfactory….

We’re really chuffed to have a house now that has potential for becoming a cosy home, and we’ll make sure to post a progress report!

Our pad for the next year or so

150,000 inhabitants. One traffic light. 2 public toilets. The highest concentration of carved doors in Africa. Current home to a gazillion flea ridden cats. Former home of Freddie Mercury though nobody can remember where his house was. Where nights of Arabian passion can be experienced in the spice laden air of the ‘Bot Club’ the city’s premier (only) late night entertainment venue. I give you the heaving metropolis that is Zanzibar’s capital – Stone Town.

A pretty nifty Venice look-a-like shot

Shark bait

During our first few days one of our VSO colleagues on the island reported seeing a huge ‘Great White’ being brought in by the local fisherman to the market. ‘How do you know it was a Great White’, I enquired. ‘Well John’, came the reply, ‘I’m not too sure but it had bloody great white teeth and was as long as the lorry that dumped it’. A lorry. Swims are now preceded by half an hour scanning the water for tell tale fins. There’s one behind the boat. I know it.

Not our house

I’ve got hundreds of these mate. Every night. I can’t give them away.

He’s got a good 100m head start on that shark. He should make it. (not our front garden gate).

Also not our house but we’re happily making every second count in it while ours is sorted out.

Toddle down to the beach. Catch the fishermen coming in from a day/night’s work ask them if they’re selling and you can be munching down on fresh squid, calamari, a King fish, fish of all sorts, within half an hour. Any fresher, you’d have to go snorkelling with a knife and fork.

You’ve heard of flash mobbing. People pre-arranging ‘spontaneous’ mass gatherings in public. Places like underground tubes, airports and the like. Well, it’s arrived here with a bang. Below, we have a spontaneous flash mobbing of the Dar Es Salaam public transport system. Getting the sound system in there was tight but hey man, it was a party. This was the actual bus we had to take to the VSO offices. If you think you have problems with impolite bus drivers and conductors. If you feel your buses run late, are over-crowded and are generally in a parlous and shoddy state of repair then think again dear reader. I can assure you, compared to the daladala 43 to Micheweni, you have a gold plated, 10 star luxury transport service. So the next time you get on your favoured form of public transport give that driver or ticket conductor a big hug and thank him.

136 people and a sound system on a 20 seater? You betcha

Below is the first of what the editorial staff here at NajoNajo hope will be a permanent feature. A new section simply called, ‘Life Adjustment’, devoted to the interesting peculiarities of living and working in Tanzania.

Life Adjustment (No. 1) – You will fall down a hole at some point. I have successfully ticked that one off apparently in a new VSO record time. It was a sewer drain, uncovered, unlit. Thankfully unused and dry. One minute I was walking along chatting to a couple of colleagues, the next, wondering why I was conversing with their knees. Luckily for me there was a passing neuro-surgeon, I kid you not. You meet the most unexpected people over here. An Italian neuro-surgeon no less. Not many people get to say they’ve had their big toe checked out by a brain surgeon, at least not in a hole in the middle of Africa. Downside was my leg required to be rested for a few days meaning I missed a climb I wanted to do. Upside was my brain appeared to be in working order. I think he felt sorry for me and chucked a quick check up in for free. Though, I didn’t know you could diagnose brain injuries through your big toe. Must be a new non-intrusive technique. Clever blokes these surgeons. The nerdy headlight torch is now a permanent wardrobe fixture after dark.

Beware of unexpected holes in Africa

So what’s Tanzania like then? It’s hot. We flew from Heathrow in -16C, and a snow blizzard. 9 hours later we’re in a mini bus sucking in +34C air, thick as horse glue. A little-known fact. There are 246 ways in Swahili to express ‘bugger, I’m sweaty’ and only one for ‘It’s a tad chilly out. Pass me the duvet’. Lots of obvious contrasts between the slick rich West and East Africa. I won’t bother with the stats and figures. The photos below sum it up well enough.

Merry-go-round Berlin & Merry-go-round DarEsSalaam

We’ve since been on our own merry-go-round of induction. Lots of information on the Tanzanian context, donor networks, beneficiary chains, governance, how to kill, hang and gut a chicken, how to tell the difference between cholera and malarial symptoms, how not to offend a Massai and so on and so forth. We’ve also met a lot of fantastic VSO people. For example, in our VSO group we’ve got: Anneka and Irma both tropical doctors who’ll be working in remote island hospitals saving heavens knows how many lives. David, a livestock nutritional expert responsible for, among other things, reducing the death rate of new born pigs in Eritrea from 85% to 15%. Believe me, that’s a life changer for thousands upon thousands of some the poorest rural livestock owners. Krista, a former VSO volunteer who in Ghana introduced organisational development models to enable the handicapped to get into small-business. Here she’s going to be working in climate development practice. Dragana is going to set up the first Radiology clinic in the South Tanzanian Highlands. Tony is going to help local small holdings in the foothills of Kilimanjaro develop their yields, currently barely large enough to feed themselves, to quantities they can pool in cooperatives and sell on for profit. Claire will develop knowledge information management systems that will allow hospitals in remote rural areas to track drug supply and delivery paths giving doctors valuable information they can use to manage scarce supplies. Amazing people. Me, I’m going to fix laptops and drink beer.

Nad’s: Well, yes, it’s true, we are rather surprised about the amount of beer that is available, especially on Muslim Zanzibar.  And it’s certainly true that I’m drinking more beer here than at home but only those of you who know my usual beer-intake in Berlin will get an idea of what that might mean in terms of quantity. Some random impressions from our induction week:

– Yes, a really energising diverse group of VSOs from Canada, the Netherlands, UK, Uganda, Kenya and the Philippines (oh, and me from Ujerumani), our new network of friends who are now dispersed across the country – we’ve got a few visits lined up already!
– Busses here are made for VERY slim bums and can fit about 350% more human bodies than expected, plus of course diverse animal life
– Timetables are there to be ignored (hey, we still covered loads of ground!)
– Power and water cuts are the norm, just get on with it
– Instant coffee can taste rather nice
– Once you’ve lived here for a while you can get seriously excited about the existence of a shopping mall. Hm, if you’ve just flown in? Well, then it’s kind of strange to spend 5 hours in such a place not knowing what it is you will soon be missing in your new home
– If you give bribes you support the system of corruption – congrats to our VSO Director Jean for being a really convincing role model – very “inspiring” as some might say…. 😉

We’ll keep you posted how we manage to stay clean on that front. Up to now: nothing to report, may it remain this way (insha allah!)

…. and welcome to the NaJo report. We’re a bit late but we have excuses. Kiswahili immersion courses, falling down holes (yes, I have already managed to fall down a hole) and generally lying, dead weight, in pools of our own sweat, panting and dosing in 34C heat and 95% humidity. How hot is it? Hot enough to wilt trees.

A sweaty Dar Es Salaam tree

Before we go any further a few words of thanks to our sterling removal road crew who ably assisted us in shifting our worldly possessions into a matchbox. Well, a bit bigger, but not much. A 10 cubic metre storage room. 9.99 cubic metres for Nadine (she’s hitting me while I write this) and 0.01 cubic metres for my precious dirt collection to which I hope to be adding more samples (I’ll explain later). Anyway below from right to left thanks go to Eilidh, Thiago (possible the most elegant removals person I’ve ever worked with), Ivo (the brains), Nadine (long suffering of my anal removal plans and storage layout diagrams), don’t know who the bloke is second from left. He just wandered into the photo. And last but not least Steve.

The A+ Team

Editor’s (Nadine’s) Addendum: It’s a blog, John, a blog, not a report. But just in case anyone’s keen on some more reporting: Yes, we did arrive safely in Dar and the photo of the interesting tree also shows the Econolodge, our elegant abode during our VSO induction training, which included climbing into “daladalas”, private local busses, (“a dollar here, a dollar back”) through the windows at record speed or, as a more conventional method, wrestling matches by the bus door. An interesting example of survival of the fittest as there is certainly no way an old or sick or disabled person would make it onto one of these. The Econolodge itself was the epitome of Customer Service, flashing signs such as “Mr Credit has gone on safari, meanwhile deal with Mr Cash” at reception. Welcome to Africa. Oh, and I did learn in our Kiswahili training that safari simply means journey . You’ll get to see some of my photos of my first  one – giraffes, elephants, zebras, baboons, buffalos, impalas  and hippo babies in half a day –  a spectacle selfishly consumed  while John was licking his wounds from the little mishap with the hole in the convent garden. Yes, I am a good wife…. (more to be told soon on what that means in Tanzania)

General Hack’s (John’s) Addendum to Addendum: Actually, I used the opportunity of the safari to become better acquainted with Tanzanian beer Serengeti (herby, slighty tangy aftertaste), Kilimanjaro (sweet tasting. Good head), Tusker (bloody awful. Even after the third).