tomintanzania

An obligatory fake sleep photo. I was at the village bar the night before and so wasn’t feeling at my best throughout the day.

Time check #1. I’m living amongst a blind community and this is one of the talking watches I brought out with me.

A friend back in England keeps me updated with football news.

I get ready for the day ahead and sort out everything I will need for a day in town.

I finish getting dressed. Making sure to check my shoes for sneaky scorpions.

I don’t have running water but I have a tank in my bathroom which I fill up using a bucket with rain water from my roof.

I head down to the road to catch a bus into town, but on my way spy Illombo, Doreen and Barracka.

I also spot these children late for class. The boy in front is sighted and the others run along behind with a hand on his shoulder.

The teachers are considerably more relaxed.

I make my first non-sleeping appearance waiting for a bus.

Like some others on here, I have a phobia about taking photographs on public transport. So here is a shot from outside the window.

When I get to Dodoma I meet my friend who is a taxi driver and we go and buy 250kgs of cement.

Time check. Back in England I’d have only just woken up by now.

We get to our destination. This is where the city’s beggars live and is unsurprisingly the poorest area. This is my third trip here and today I’ll be repairing a house. Whereever I go I am met by inquisitive children.

Here is the family who live in the house. Peter is an intelligent and proud man and one of the few here to own his own house. I get many requests for this kind of help and am careful for reasons of time and money who I say yes to, but Peter impressed me by being eager to contribute a small amount of his own money to the project. He was also organised and had the workers, sand and water ready for our arrival – finding this level of organisation in Tanzania is very rare. Much of the money I use for these small projects comes from friends back at home. So if you have donated, then this is one way I am spending your hard earned cash!

The old floor was rubble and the aim of the day was to put a hard cement floor down in the three rooms.

The second half of the job involved making bricks to rebuild a part of an exterior wall which was crumbling away. This is then also cemented to protect it from the elements.

A labourer working away outside the house.

I introduce some children to the land of the iPod. Here they are watching Scrubs.

I went off to meet a blind couple who live nearby. Along the way I met these children. They were plucking some young dead birds. Whether they killed them with a catapult or took them from a nest, I don’t know. Either way, they will be eating meat later.

I also spotted some graffiti. It reminds me of The Lion King.

and here is the couple I was looking for. The man is sporting one of my talking watches.

When I return I see one of the rooms has been finished.

Here is the second worker – If you look carefully you will spy the Nazi insignia on his baseball cap. In many countries the swastika is an ancient good luck symbol, but the arms bend the other way to the version adopted by Hitler. This one was the more modern version. I can only guess some neo-Nazi donated his cast-offs to a charity and they found their way out to the third-world.

Children just love having their photos taken.

Here is Peter’s wife Christina practising with a white stick which I brought with me.

When the job was done I waited with my fan club for a bus back into town.

I was very hungry so demolished this tray of rice and beans pretty quickly.

I then checked my emails. This is where I am posting from today.

Time stamp

I then went to the ice cream parlour with a teacher from my school. He is blind and struggled knowing when he had ice cream on his spoon.

Date stamp. We then caught the bus back to my village. I was impressed they knew my name.

I found these blind children playing football with an empty bottle. It scrapes along the ground so they can figure out where it is.

I’ve been converted to the African method of carrying things. It really is easier. I haven’t progressed to doing it hands free yet though.

I find Samson and Stefano waiting for me outside my house and so I give them a game to play on my front steps.

Time stamp.

I have been invited to dinner by the teacher from earlier. These children are outside his house and they respond well to my request of ‘Neomba ndizi kubwa!’ or ‘Give me a big smile!’.

Potatoes and chicken. Mmmm. I have just one very basic hob and it takes me a long time to cook anything, so it is always a delight to eat in other peoples homes.

The teacher’s wife eats seperately with the children. Here she is using a charcoal cooker.

And here is Omary again.

After we finish, his two children eat rice, chicken and a banana.

I get home and fire up Mamma Mia. One of my many guilty secrets is when I am hungover I love watching cheesey films.

Final time stamp.

It’s been a jolly old week with Nigel. Well, the past five days have. Sunday involved a 15 hour bus ride up to the northern part of the country where the best National Parks are. It would have been 13 had we not stopped for a couple of hours en route when we saw smoke rising in the distance. We heard rumours there were bandits and guns and so our driver decided this would be the correct time to move closer to the action. We came across burning tyres on the road and a small barricade of rocks. It turned out that a car had wiped out 9 villagers shortly before and the remaining locals were rioting and we were caught in the middle of it. Eventually riot police turned up and as we headed over the still-alight tyres we spotted various youths in balaclavas.

The beast of a car we used around the parks. Nigel and I were accompanied by an amiable Swiss gent as well as our driver/guide and a cook.

We saw literally thousands of antelopes, of all varieties. I think this is an Eland.

One of my favourite spots was this pool. We saw many hippos but this place had well over a hundred, all making the most amazing snorts, howls and splashes.

I guess we saw perhaps 8 different prides of lions. These were having a chill out. Lions have to be the laziest creatures. I wish I was a lion.

It may not come out very well, but we came across this fresh kill. It was fantastic seeing the lions chase away hyenas as well as these…

…hungry vultures waiting for their turn.

We not only visited Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti but we also made a trip to Olduvai Gorge where the oldest human(ish) remains have been discovered, but back to animals…

I caused a little bit of confusion when I asked our guide if he thought this Zebra was male or female.

Each day was composed of around 10 hours safari, 10 hours sleep and 4 hours eating and chatting

One of the highlights was seeing streams of migrating wildebeeste and zebra. Over a million get together for their march towards water.

Another highlight was discovering this zebra. It had died naturally perhaps 15 minutes before and the vultures were the only scavengers to yet get to the body. They are not geared to ripping through flesh and so the only access point to the yummy horse meat was by shoving their heads up its arse. Watching them fight amongst themselves for the honour was spectacular.

We passed the same spot 14 hours later. The pic is dark cos the sun had only just risen. There was little left besides the skeleton, although a jackel and some hyeneas were still finding morsels of flesh.

The Ngorongoro Crater is actually a caldra formed when a volcano collapsed in on itself. The floor of the crater is 20km in diameter and a haven for wildlife. The views from the rim were astounding. We spent our final night near where this pic was taken.

We not only had elephants drinking from the water trough 20 meters from our beds but through the night we heard buffallo, bushpigs and other animals walking between our tents.

I didn’t get to chop his head off and transplant it onto my body this time

Just as the safari was ending we caught sight of two rhino – the last of the big animals we had yet to see (OK, we didnt see a cheetah but we did see two leopards and if you squint then they kind of look cheetahish)

Yesterday we headed back to town exhausted after 5 days on the go – despite managing to sleep for marathon stretches each evening. Now it is Saturday and we spent today doing a 10 hour bus slog down to Dar es Salaam and tomorrow morning we sail for a week on Zanzibar.

It’s been a while since I did a picture laden post, so here goes:

I mentioned this in a previous post – the guy is carrying 60kg of maize on his shoulder. I had trouble shuffling it 20 yards along the ground. Today I came with him into town. I’m helping to set him up with a small shop and we came to get stock. Fortunately most of the items were located near the bus station, but we had to walk some distance to fetch 20 litres of kerosene. He insisted on carrying it on his shoulder, like he did the maize. I felt so self-conscious walking with him towards the bus cos it looked like I was getting a blind man to be my sherpa. I eventually insisted on carrying it the final distance – partly so he could use his stick on the uneven ground but mainly so I wouldn’t look like a complete dweeb should there be someone I know on the bus.

I’m not sure what bird this is but I was told it had been slowly dying on the side of the road for 3 days. I asked why noone had put it out of its misery and I was told that people are frightened of it as the head resembles that of a cat with human eyes and it is much prized by witch doctors and the locals fear that if they kill it then the bird’s spirit will come back and kill them. Though they clearly had no problem poking it with a stick and lifting it in the air.

I went with Gabriel and another blind man to buy him some chickens from which he can get eggs to sell and he can also sell any chicks they produce. The chicken seller kept handing me chicken after chicken and I in turn held them up and made approving grunts when they squawked after I squeezed them. I didn’t have a clue what I should be looking for. Who on my flist can differentiate between a good and a bad chicken? I ended up picking the 6 I thought were the prettiest as I thought that way they might get some cockeral action and produce him with more income. Though I’m not entirely sure that a cockeral looks for the same things I do in a mate.

I’m not sure why I’m including this pic aside from these are two of my favourite kids.

I went to a neighboruring village on Sunday to listen to watch some tribal singing and dancing. There were 3 Japanese people there in tribal facepaint. For reasons I can’t be bothered to go in to, the Japanese are very fond of this particular tribe’s music. Here one of the Japanese women is playing a local instrument. She started playing spontaneously and the crowd quickly formed. I ruined matters though by forgetting to turn the flash off on my camera. Every single person looked up at me with a nasty look on their face. I tried to pretend it was someone else by also looking behind me but it didn’t work and the crowd dispersed. It was then that I remembered from a previous trip that this village really hates photos.

This is me with Sara. Again. I quite like this photo of me – it’s a shame Sara looks less contented though.

Nigel arrived on Wednesday and we had a good few days in my village. Today we have come into town cos tomorrow we leave at dawn for Arusha which is a 13 hour bus ride away. We’ll then spend 5 days visiting 3 game parks: Ngorogoro Crater, Lake Manyara and the Serengeti. I’m looking forward to it – it’s a holiday within a holiday.

Yesterday I used some of the money that’s been donated to buy 1000kg of maize for the rehab centre and then today we visited other blind in Dodoma and distributed maize, onions, soap, bananas, beans, fish, talking watches, a white cane, school books and pens to 25 people. Here is a photo post of our activities:

Nigel enjoying one or three beers

We had a couple of teachers over so we could see if they liked gin and tonic (Nigel picked a bottle of Gordons up in Duty Free) and olives. The reaction was varied!

Here I am at the rehab centre handing out the maize

Meanwhile Nigel taught the kids how to make noises with blades of grass

Good old maize

We found ourselves walking around hand in hand with the children

This fellah had a groovy hat

Some of the kids had found an ingenious way to make toys with few materials

Back home some kids played on one of the 2 new Boppits which Nigel brought out

And we gourged ourselves on lollypops

This morning we had a civilised breakfast

Then caught a lift into town on the back of a pickup

We handed out the exercise books and other items

The children queued for sweets

And others looked on

I went to church like a good Catholic boy on Christmas morning – It started at 8am so I arrived at 7.30 to be sure of a seat. 8am came and went and the church was filled but there was no service, at 8.45 the priest decided to kick things off. There were 15 children being baptised during the service – it seems as though Christmas is when they do a job lot. Sara, the baby named after my Mum was one of the babies being dunked. I stupidly assumed the service would be short due to it being aimed at kids – I eventually left at midday, 4.5 hours later. There was plenty to look at though as the choir leaned more towards tribal dance and music than traditional Christmas song.

One thing which was odd was the rains have kind of failed – it should have rained every day this month and instead it has rained just twice, the last time being two weeks ago. Right at the moment the service started the heavens opened and a massive thunderstorm kicked off.

I had lunch all by myself. Well, there were a couple of guys in my house but I ate alone. The culture here doesnt really place much emphasis on the lunch, like we do in England. I had bangers and mash followed by yoghurt and very nice it was too.

In the afternoon I went to the rehab centre. I had Dairy Milk for the kids and I gave each family 10,000Tshs (around £5) so they could go and get pissed or do whatever. Local homebrew is 15p a litre, so it was plenty.

I then visited some friends and handed out christmas cards, then I went to the pub. I got into a slightly awkward position though cos I went with a few people and bought a round of drinks. I was then prepared to pay for all their drinks through the night (beer is 60p a bottle and soft drinks are 20p, so it hardly breaks the bank) but I found two guys had ordered several drinks and said ‘Tom will pay for it’ which was highly presumptous and annoying so I told them that I wouldn’t get them more. It was a bit of a shame and I don’t know if I was being nobbish or not, although I suspect I wasn’t.

It was a fun day and rather different to my usual Christmas.

With David and his family outside the church. These are the smartest clothes I had!

Sara being baptised

Giving the presents to the rehab centre

The largest and girthiest milipede Ive ever seen

Heading back from the rehab centre with Gideon

Sara’s family in the evening

Sara looking frightened

A snail, funnily enough.