The death of a chicken and other losses

Sprawled across my bed one night, shortly before my Monday night jaunt to the pub for quiz night, I listened to the final, pleading, hopeless calls of a chicken resigned to the fate of having its neck rung. I guess it was around dinner time! What struck me, lying with a book in one hand and a bowl of spicy peas in the other, was not so much the horror of the last, throaty breaths of a living creature. Nor was it a sense of mortality, a primordial fear of death. No. Much as I felt the panic in the poor poultry’s cries, and much as I shared its anguish and the terrible inevitability of its end, extending my full sympathy to it…… what really hit me was the reality of feeding a family: the everydayness of this minor, bloodless passing.

There was nothing grim about it at all, save the noise (which was a little chilling). As the sounds pierced through the net shutter, which allows for doors to be open without nasties coming in, I called out to my housemate, suppressed laughter in my voice. ‘Can you hear that chicken being killed?’ I enquired. Of course, she could: and there was nothing remarkable about it whatsoever. It was just another street noise: a chicken being killed; Bongo flavour beats pounding through loudspeakers; the high-pitched kissing of a bottled water seller; screeching tyres and heated ripostes.

What is, at first, unacceptable or outside of one’s own sphere of understanding and experience, silently, imperceptibly creeps into the space occupied by the norms and normalities of day to day life. With no apparent fanfare, no particular event to mark the change, there is a gradual shift in expectations and cultural mores so that, one day, things that used to shock, annoy, disturb, disgust, fluster or invoke fear no longer do so. This modification is subtle. You simply realise one day that you have ceased to be an observer of a scene quite external to yourself, and have become part of it. Albeit a spare part.

This is how I feel as I cycle along Kimweri Avenue – somehow an integral part of the day to day life of my neighbourhood, understanding its routines, sounds, smells and peculiarities and yet somehow never quite absorbed fully into it. Nevertheless, this small corner of the world has become my small corner and, when I consider the oceans of difference between this and my parallel life and home in England, I am occasionally floored. It’s still the same old me, I hope, but in such a staggeringly other world that I am at times simply spinning.

Kimweri is the road that leads from the area known as Nmanga towards the peninsula (where the scene becomes less intense, the streets greener, and the houses more expensive). It is a long, paved street lined with dukkas (shops), stalls, food stands, workshops, second hand clothes on crooked wire hangers, fruit carts, bars, mobile phone card kiosks, walking salesmen bearing sunglasses, hard-boiled eggs, hair accessories, bras, DVDs, dishcloths, soap, foot files, knives, nuts .

To be frank, you can pretty much buy anything you might want along Kimweri: from a peeled orange to a cheap beach dress; from a Polaroid passport picture to a laundry basket; from a loaf of bread to a catapult. It’s not easy to explain the sheer density of small commercial enterprises that positively stuff the streets of urban Tanzania. Everything is a shop, a chance to spend a few shillings, a chance to make a living. Denominations are small, and exchanges of coins for roasted corn-cobs or bottles of alarmingly orange sweet drinks can barely generate an income. But this is trading, Africa-style, and I have grown completely accustomed to its almost twenty four hour, open, casual, impulsive rhythm. So unlike the Western world’s controlled, formalised, set-price, pay-at-the-counter-and-keep-your-receipt style of consumerism, here it is an ongoing process of barter, banter, buying; eating, drinking, carrying. It is not shopping as defined activity. It is shopping as lifestyle, as way of life.

My apartment is situated just off Kimweri, let’s say 100 metres up a dirt road which is also home to various dukkas and workshops. When I differentiate between paved and unpaved roads, please understand that even most of the paved roads are rough as hell. Kimweri is pot-hole heaven: the place where pot-holes congregate, retire to, or party when they are fed up with being the solitary pot-hole in some otherwise smooth tarmac drive. The road is in a bad way in many parts, and is rendered even more challenging to negotiate by the speed bumps that rise along some stretches.

I am not certain of the value of these. Having travelled Kimweri so often that I can practically cycle down it blind folded (and I frequently do, in effect, when darkness falls), I have concluded that neither of the hapless bumps do anything to stop the dala dala drivers from careering along as though on a race track. Neither do they pose a problem to four-wheel drive road hogs who apparently have no need to slow down for such trifles. Admittedly, the bajaji drivers seem to struggle somewhat as they veer towards the bumps but most people here drive whatever they are driving with absolute disregard for hazards, logic, rules, etiquette and others.

This includes bicycle riders, naturally. Please do not be unduly perturbed, but in the last three weeks I have had a couple of incidents involving me, my bike and bajajis which shook even me up a little. Let’s just say that my right foot is almost entirely healed and my finger was not actually broken at all. For a moment I grew paranoid, wondering if someone had a contract on my life. I felt like the old woman in A Fish Called Wanda. But, touch baobab wood, I’ve kept in one piece.

Tiny apples have been appearing on the carts and in the greengrocers which is practically a daily destination for me. Along with them, small hard pears with a rough skin and an inoffensive but not very exciting taste. I’m aware that many people miss out on the seasons here, thinking that they do not exist but, as I have written before, I very much feel them with the subtly shifting availability of different fruits. The apples and pears are from Morogoro or Lushoto, the latter being an up-country mountainous area renowned for the richness of its produce.

Also returning to the streets is my absolute favourite snack: the hard, dense, crunchy cucumbers that enjoy but a short season and are peeled and quartered lengthwise on the street for ten pence a go. Eaten with chili-laced salt they have an addictive quality and seem innocuous enough as a vice. I don’t see many Wazungu hanging around to nibble peeled cucumbers on street corners, but I suppose it might be time to admit that I am prone to being a wee bit different. Just sometimes.

Yesterday I was robbed. In the street. Just like that. One moment, my handbag was there. The next, it was gone. Poof. Snatched out of the basket on my handlebars and whizzed off down some winding alley by a quick-fingered fiend who I shall never see again. At the time, I was cycling slowly (along the road about which I wrote with such fondness before, by the way – Kimweri) whilst my house mate walked besides me, talking about men or some other equally trivial and irksome topic. The guy came between us, had a micro-second glance into my basket, and pulled the bag out with such speed that we could only stand there like fish gasping for breath. No one did a thing. So much for my neighbours!

The dress fetish continues. It is hardly surprising, when so many second hand clothes flap along the roadsides and whisper such obscenities as ‘buy me….. I fit you…. and will be perfect for the beach/ BBQ/ work/ party’. My house mate and dear dear friend, Kari, teases me that it is simply impossible for me to pass safely from any particular A to B without parting with 10,000 shillings and returning with a dress of some description. At times I have felt like an alcoholic, smuggling my latest purchase into my own flat and into my own room somehow knowing that I might be doing something a little bit naughty.

I never wore dresses before. They did not interest me. I guess that the weather in the UK is not exactly conducive to flapping skirts and exposed knees, and I also confess that being in a relationship for as long as I was probably resulted in a terrible torpor in the field of fashion! There was my wedding dress of course (I do wonder where it is….) but aside from that I was very much a jeans and jumpers girl. In this heat, however, and with the apparently endless rows of passed-on frocks from around the world, it would be churlish not to indulge.

On the street, the most I would pay for any kind of dress is the equivalent of £6, so we are not talking a bank-breaking addiction. Golly, now I’m making excuses…like a true addict.

‘Hi. My name is Pennie and I sneak dresses into the house.’

Anyway, to give you a flavour: last week I bought a slinky black backless number, a khaki shirt dress and a slip-of-a-thing to pull over bikinis on the beach. I need wardrobe space.

We have had a few electricity issues of late. I came home, ready to crash, one evening last week to find that the circuit which controls my bedroom had failed. Having no light is inconvenient, but being fan-less during these clammy, airless nights is close to unbearable. I felt every pore of my body open up and spill liquid salt, beads of saline sweat sitting on my upper lips. Someone remarked to me recently that the humidity is brilliant for one’s skin (I suppose I should think about my skin these days, being old and whatnot), but in the middle of the night, unable to sleep for the sheer density of the air, this is small comfort.

Power failings of this kind are so commonplace that they no longer surprise and barely grate unless they mean, as in this case, no hope of relief from the heat. A few nights back, I was enjoying a sit-down shower, hair foaming with shampoo, when I found myself suddenly in the dark: the shower reduced to a trickle. As the power cut, my phone rang… persistently. I stumbled out of the shower, grabbed the phone with soapy fingers, squawked that right now was not a good time to talk, and heard the generator kick in (we are allowed to use it sometimes). Abruptly bathed in light once again, I caught myself in the mirror frothy-headed, soaking wet, naked (hilarious just now with my tan lines), clutching my phone under my chin.

Yes, I had a giggle.

There have been some stunning children in the hospital lately. Children whose stories have touched me again just as I feared I had been rendered immune by so many encounters with tragedy and loss. I met a boy and his father, an oyster fisherman, who had travelled to so many different hospitals with no explanation of why the boy, aged 12, had lost so quickly and absolutely all muscle and power in his legs. This sudden collapse of his mobility had caused the family so much expense, so much time and so much sheer effort that the boy, despite his father’s patent adoration and dedication, whispered that he wanted to die when I went to speak with the family. This, he said, would make life much better for the rest of the family.

I pulled my sunglasses over my eyes at this juncture. Devastated.
Of course, there are plenty of stories like this one. It’s just that sometimes there is a look in a child’s eyes, or a tireless commitment in a parent, that particularly resonates. Some of the most shocking cases I see are children who are the victim of the open flame, of which there are so many in Tanzania. Burning rubbish in the streets, gas lamps that explode, boiling pots over fires inside houses. These things create an environment in which burns can be so severe that limbs and digits are destroyed. There are little faces in the rehabilitation department that are scarred and misshapen so badly by burns that they can hardly raise a smile. This does not stop them trying, though, these tiny people whose lives are already indelibly marked by disfigurement.

When I popped home this lunchtime, a sparrow had managed to fly through the door and up the stairwell, and was resting on the bar above my third floor front door. As I approached the door, he (definitely a boy!) chirped a little but stayed just where he was. It filled me with plain delight, this little life at my door. I don’t know why, but it reminded me of my family and friends and everyone I love who I miss more than even my words can ever explain.

I like to think the bird had flown all the way from my parents garden to invoke a memory of home and reassure me that it was still there and still supporting me, even here in Tanzania. My wish is that my own writings give similar comfort, and that all who read them are peaceful and safe and know that I carry all of them in my thoughts.

Always
P

15 March 2010.

Water, whale sharks and wonder

I was cycling through a favourite neighbourhood of mine last week as the final blush of orange-pink sunset glow was consumed by the deepening black sky. It was transformed, under cover of darkness, into a warren of alleys lit by spitting fires of taka taka (rubbish), carts heaving with heady-scented slices of crimson watermelon and syrupy pineapple, stands where giant pans of hissing oil fry chipsi, donuts, fish.

My nostrils barely know what to relish and what to reject when assaulted by so many smells. Is that the acrid, toxic whiff of molten plastic, or is it maize grilling to a popped crisp? Is that the aromatic, vanilla-laced aroma of an over ripe fruit, or is it something I should refrain from inhaling?

Then there are people. Many many people, criss-crossing, zig-zagging, meandering, chatting, shouting. Sometimes, local banter – harmless as it is – transposes in my ear drums as shrill shrieking. Even today, I can be alarmed by passing resemblance to high-pitched fury. Mostly, it is an innocent, excited exchange of news. It is simply shared at a volume I find challenging…..

I was, plainly, the only white person anywhere in the vicinity. If I hoped to be more conspicuous that this alone, I achieved it seamlessly by riding a bike through the scene. There was little chance that I might fade into the night for, tanned as I am, it remains the case that I am a Muzungu and must surely shine like a beacon as I pedal through the dark. It seemed to be so on this occasion, attracting as I did much merriment, laughing and general interest.

Naturally, this reached a hilarious climax when I gambled that a puddle was but a shallow dip. Not only was I naïve in thinking that it was no more than a drop of rainwater, infinitely navigable, but I also failed – as one would in the darkness – to anticipate that the content of said puddle was a little less sanitary than plain old rain. Only as I wobbled, striking some submerged contour and suddenly unstable, did I realise my error of judgment. Keen to upright myself, instinct drove my right foot quite without inhibition into the murky depths of what transpired to be a thick, gluey, black-grey soup of…. well…. let’s avoid four letter words and describe it as excrement.

Does that make it any more palatable?

Twenty minutes later, as I scrubbed my right foot to within an inch of its life, I realised how much more relaxed I am as a result of being in Tanzania. I’m not sure if this is always a good thing, though. Perhaps I should draw the line at going ankle-deep in dung. Whoever it belongs to.

The recent, fleeting rains bring with them all manner of new challenges. Please understand that I am a tropical rain enthusiast, admiring the sheer volume of water that sheets out of the sky and the rapidity with which the roads become inundated. In some places here in Dar, concave sections of road are rendered truly impassable after such a deluge and make cycling here an even more adventurous sport. I once braved what looked like a puddle only to end up somewhere between knee and thigh deep in warm, muddy rain water. Not only that, but it seems that local vehicle drivers positively delight in veering into surface ponds at an angle of such precision and with such timing that their maneuverings result in a great wall of water crashing over whoever may be passing. Two weeks ago it was me, bike bound, heading to work. I reached my desk soaked head to foot in sandy, silty water, splattered and caked. At least the cleaning lady laughed. Oh yes…. She laughed!

From one drenching to another. Two weekends ago I flew, with two great female friends of mine, to an island which lies south east of Dar, dazzling in the Indian Ocean like the truly unspoilt gem that it is. A poor island, infrastructure is highly undeveloped and the inhabitants live a basic, subsistence existence primarily based on fishing, and plantations of coconuts. Cassava, pineapples and bananas – the finger sized kind which thrill me with their sweetness. It is famed for its marine park, and snorkeling and diving are the lure for travelers who make it beyond safaris and Zanzibar. It is also renowned for the whale shark population, which pass through around Christmas time, and are magnificent, up to ten metres long, and completely unique in their taste for nothing more than plankton. My friends and I were fortunate enough to swim with these benign giants, having endured a rocky boat trip accompanied by two local guys who knew exactly what to look for.

On occasions like this, I have no inhibitions. Snorkel and mask fitted, flippers that had me careering about the deck like an unbalanced penguin, I took to the water without hesitation when the opportunity came to join one of these creatures as it swam serenely about a metre under the surface. Grabbing the hand of the guide, I swam with the unabashed delight of a child about a foot or so above the shark: completely in awe of its sheer size, its apparent lack of concern at our presence, and its gentle nature. It was only ten minutes later, when I popped my head up to see where the boat was, that I found myself to be encircled by the flashing fins of ten of these fish. A Jaws moment, and one that will remain with me for all time.

My time on Mafia, time with friends who I hold in such high regard and with such affection, soon washed away some of the city stress I’ve been experiencing of late. I call it ‘Dar madness’ – a sense of claustrophobia and lack of perspective, privacy and personal space that sweeps over me from time to time here. Walking barefoot along the beach, picking up giant shells and wondering at their perfection, letting the sea cleanse every part of me inside and out (including a nasty motorbike burn I acquired on New Year’s Eve!), I was restored. I truly believe that the sea can do that for people.

A fortnight on and the weather has taken another turn. The sun is biting back with a vengeance these days, somehow more fierce and passionate than it has been for some time. This weekend, I felt its rays quite pierce through my skin, pricking every inch of me and challenging me with its ferocity. By seven thirty this morning, large drops of sweat were trickling from the nape of my neck to the curve of my lower back, sliding down the backs of my legs in rivulets. I eat oranges, watermelon, pineapple, passion fruit the colour of lemons in an attempt to assuage thirst. I crave salt. I find it hard to focus on important tasks, such as the reports I am trying to piece together and the poems I wish to see manifested on paper. Concentration is hard. I can barely imagine the chill which grasped England in the past month, wondering how I would react to being plunged from this heat into that cold. Perhaps my skin would sizzle upon contact with the cold? It seems possible.

Tonight I took a bajaji (it’s like an Asian tuk-tuk, for those of you well travelled enough to understand) into the city centre to do some work. I asked the driver to take me along the ocean road, so that I could feel the breeze that is carried on the waves. The air was filled with the stink of sewage, as it often is en route to the centre of Dar, but I barely notice it these days. I’m simply too absorbed by the crashing of the waves and the scale of the visa as the ocean sweeps round my curvaceous coastal home.

I came home to find, variously: an army of pinhead sized ants convening on a single papaya seed which went astray this morning as I chopped my favourite fruit; a shining maroon cockroach disappearing under my bed; a thumb-sized gecko creeping up the wall of my shower room. I am now sitting with the doors open, shutters closed against mosquitoes, with the sounds of the street vibrating through the room. Children chattering; a woman yelling; buses screeching; a cockrel crowing; music thumping from various quarters.

I feel alive.

My bikini and other seasonal greetings

Yesterday, we gave a Christmas gift to Rachel: the wonderful, warm lady who spends two days a week in our apartment. She bristles with energy, and we do our best to exchange information about our lives through amateur Kiswahili and gestures. Somehow, we communicate something – although Rachel has a tendency for doubling over with squeals of laughter when the whole process breaks down.

Rachel is one of the most open hearted, dear people I have met here. She seems to genuinely care about me and my flat mate (Kari), takes such incredible care to make our home tidy and clean, and has an astounding knack for reorganizing our wardrobes so that all our clothes can be more easily found. This is achieved by categorizing our items – tops; shorts; dresses; trousers; jeans; undies - and making beautifully laundered piles of them.

Admittedly, there have been a very few occasions when I have failed to locate something as a result of my inability to fully grasp Rachel’s logic but, on the whole, her system is remarkable.
Last week, Kari and Rachel shared thoughts on my bikini. We had some old magazines lying around which Rachel was keen to flick through, if only for the pictures. She approached Kari with a page showing women wearing what must seem like very skimpy clothes to someone who has never been beyond Dar es Salaam although, to you and me, they were nothing too outrageous. What was outrageous, however, was my bikini – which Rachel managed to slide into the conversation after having asked Kari why western women wear small clothes like those in the magazine.

It soon became clear that Rachel, whilst washing my bikini on a weekly basis, had been pondering its purpose and, more significantly, seriously questioning its decency as a garment. Why, she enquired, would I choose to wear such a thing in my daily life. Why would anyone do this? Was this normal behaviour?

Rachel, in short, thought I was a bit of a loose lady who wore practically nothing and probably had very little dignity. Kari did her best to explain that bikinis are for the beach and that even she has a bikini, whilst undoubtedly stifling laughter at this almost poignant cultural misapprehension and, we hope, the matter was settled.

When I heard this story, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Whether to laugh at the idea of myself gallivanting around Dar in a bikini with gay abandon, or whether to cry because the lady whose approval and care I actually value thought I was hussying about her hometown.
I think we’ve cleared the air. A barrel of biscuits, a sprawling hand of bananas and a kilo of sugar was our gift to Rachel and her family and I think she has seen my pyjamas enough times now to know that I’m not entirely without shame.

Not entirely.

So hot is it at present that one might, indeed, be forgiven for resorting to a bikini at any time of day. The sun positively heaves its weight with a mighty punch onto the people of Dar es Salaam, as though it has expanded in the last month; somehow slipped closer to the earth; or has actually become hotter.

Has the sun got hotter? It certainly feels that way. I cycled less than two kilometers at lunchtime yesterday and, within the first one hundred metres, I started to feel the burn. The earth seems to be baking and all who walk on it are trying to live, work and stay healthy in this giant open oven. At dusk, a breeze occasionally rises from the sea to nudge away some of the intense heat of the day but, last night as I sat by the ocean sipping a glass of wine with a friend, there was barely a murmur of freshness in the air.

As mosquitoes tucked into a feast of Pen leg, the ultimate Christmas treat, we bemoaned the distinct lack of crispness and envied those who have found themselves gripped by the chill clinch of snow. Whilst wearing dresses, shorts, cotton tops and – in essence – as little as possible (though not, let me advise you, bikinis anywhere other than on a beach!) is freeing and simple, I miss cold weather attire.

This Christmas, I would dearly love to dig out warm, thick socks or opaque tights; long sleeved tops; chunky knit sweaters (preferably borrowed from a man- don’t ask why, it’s just a penchant I have); hats, gloves and scarves. Oh, I miss my fleece, my Gortex and my sturdy walking boots.

More than this, I miss the unparalleled sensation of coming in from an invigorating, brisk walk through silent woods, where one’s icy breath dances in the still, cold air, and finding a home lit by the low, soft lights of early evening and a fire in its early stages of crackling life.

I yearn for the spicy aroma of mince pies, the first glow of wellbeing that floods through the veins after a sip of Christmas spirit, and the intense, immediate relief-laden sigh of a still slightly cold body submerged in a warm, bubbling bath.

This Christmas, I will mostly be taking cold showers. I will eat syrupy pineapples by the basket, so abundant are they at present that, for me, they have assumed a quasi status as a seasonal symbol. On the 25th, I will spend time with my surrogate family in Dar es Salaam: the friends who give me the support and strength to keep going when I sometimes feel like packing my suitcase and coming home.

No doubt, there will be some Savannah involved.

There will be a little messing about on boats, hopefully on a benign ocean, and some safari-ing. I will escape the city for a few days and connect again with the Tanzanian bush. I hope to swim, to walk, to talk and to be.

Just to be.

I hope, too, that everyone I love is able just to ‘be’ this Christmas and into 2010. I have an intimidating list of resolutions that I hope to honour, many of which are less about quitting and more about not quitting.

May you all have a truly wonderful Christmas, very much fun, succor for the soul, and a brilliant 2010. I’ll do my best to accompany you through it with some thoughts, observations and news. If I can share a little of your from time to time, it would make my New Year that much pleasurable.

Warmly, warmly.

23 December 2009

Tidal Shift

It's not too hard to reconnect when you feel the need, or when you look in the mirror and are not quite sure who the baggy-eyed witch staring back at you is. What is hard is admitting that you have the need in the first place - now that can take some humility.

My great leveller is the ocean, a trait that runs so strongly through the Cabot line that anyone doubting the true identity of my father would be floored by this luminous thread in the genetic patchwork of the family.
Yesterday, I took a wooden boat from one of the beaches that lie to the north of Dar es Salaam and, after a half hour crossing which eased me into another mood and rhythm, arrived on the island of Mbuja with my thoughts starting to untie themselves and my body visibly relaxing.

I adore the theatre. I love great cinema, can be distracted by artifacts, get absorbed by art in all forms and am carried back through time when I enter, say, the National Gallery. Goodness, I miss all that. But, for me, there is something equally transporting and uplifting about being removed from all cultural references, in nothing but bikini, and running down to the ocean through icing-sugar sand so soft that you sink and trip all the way to the water.

When I was a child, during the many summers that my family passed on the beaches of Brittany in France, I developed a passion for sea life which was inspired and nurtured by Dad. Dad would endow me with some aptly over-the-top title such as 'Great Mariner Extraordinaire', and we disappeared for hours with buckets and nets in search of some prize catches.
There were many. The rock pools in that area were a child's paradise, teeming with fish, shrimp, crabs, urchins, anemones..... Some of our catches were surprisingly large and we literally spent hours scrambling over rocks, slipping across weedy, wet, barnacled expanses bent double as we turned rocks and prodded our nets into the deeper pools. It was here, in Brittany, that I really fell in love with the sea and, at the same time, discovered that my Dad, too, was a child again when presented with the simple wonders of rock-pooling.

I have never been afraid to run into the ocean, to take on the currents, or to get my head under water. I have always, also, been a strong swimmer. This, again, is pure Dad: this is the man who was a young lifeguard off the Devon coast; once made the Brittany news for a valiant sea rescue of a flailing swimmer; would, in my teenage years, lead me out into the Atlantic swell from the far southwestern beaches of Portugal and commandeer two hour long snorkeling marathons in water so wild and chilly that I had no option but to invest unfathomable faith in him.
It was here that Dad taught me what has become one of my guiding principles in life: just keep moving. Then, it was an instruction designed to prevent my lips from bluing at the edges in that icy sea. Now, it means something a little more than that to me, and I recall it and am driven by it at times when life threatens to grind to a halt.

Mum was, on more than one occasion, a panicking, pacing figure on the shore, wondering where her teenage daughter might have chosen as a swimming target. Again inspired by Dad, who had a penchant for using boats out at sea as destination points, I once decided to swim solo out to a boat which did not seem so far away. Except that it was. It was bloody far away, and even I have a recollection of a vague concern that crossed my mind as I swam towards the apparently chimerical vessel. I reached the shore an hour and a half after I had departed, weak-kneed, shaking, purple at the extremities, and with a mother apoplectic and so distraught that even today I cannot quite forgive myself.

So, to the ocean.

The Indian Ocean that sweeps around Africa’s east coast, and nudges the coast line and islands of Tanzania, is a tamer beast than the Atlantic of my past. At least, the parts that I can access are positively benign and, despite the warnings by certain slightly sensationalist relatives who warn me of the dangers of, variously, sharks, jelly fish, and Somali pirates (I wish I was joking), I know it to be kind and gentle.

Admittedly, it is not always refreshing as such, especially at this time of year when the blistering heat of the day turns the great expanse of water into a giant bath, but the water around the islands in this part of the world is magically clear, warmly reassuring, and, for this sea lover, hypnotic.

As I said, my mind starts to come into balance and my physical being is also somehow righted when I immerse myself in the sea. So it was yesterday. The moment my kanga was off, so was I: snorkel in hand, tripping down the beach and soon completely immersed in the warm embrace of the sea. There is no other metaphor but to say that it was crystal clear yesterday and even I, a loather of cliché, cannot find a better description.

It is then that it happens: the reconnection. Once under, with snorkel and mask in place and free to thrash out to where the coral reef, eroded and not nearly as spectacular as it surely was some years back, I am transported. Not, so much, as to another time or even another place but, rather, transported back to ‘me’. In that case, maybe not transportation at all but rather a kind of ‘bringing back’: a return. For this is the moment when I forget what my hair is doing, have no inkling of the imperfections of my body, drift far from the day to day detritus of the life that I have built, break the relay race of question-answer-question which at times plagues me, and, finally, gloriously, actually stop thinking.
At that moment, when I am lost without thought, suspended in the water with my body and spirit and mind quite free – I suddenly, dramatically, feel just like ‘me’. It’s not a certain mood, emotion, age, or anything specific, it is purely a sense of being whole and sound and somehow, simply, back.

Yesterday, back exposed to the sun, body carried by the Indian Ocean, spirit lifted by the irrepressible pleasure of watching the world of fishkind going about its colourful daily business, surrounded by legions of jellyfish which pumped past full of casual vigour, wrapped in the warmth of the salt water, I came back again and emerged, as I always do, walking steady and strong. Me again.

Losing yourself in Africa

Sometimes, I admit, it's hard to remember myself here in the middle of Dar es Salaam. Sometimes, I lose my bearings.
There are few familiar points of reference, and the elements of life that tend to ground you at home - family, childhood friends, walks in the rain, old TV shows that somehow remind you of YOU - are nowhere to be accessed.

When that happens, and I feel the drift towards a sense of total anonymity, I really have to remember to do something that makes me feel like ME. Ride my bike along the sea front; jump into a pool and thrash things out in lengths; take some photos; write a poem or twelve. It's hard to do at times, make that reconnection, but today more than ever I feel how important it is. If you leave it too long, things can really go awry.

I miss home just now. All that is familiar, secure and safe. I miss my family horribly, and would gain so much from running about with my niece and nephew for a few days.

Yes, it's hard being away at the moment.

This week I really need to pick myself up, dust off and get strong. It's fair to say that Africa can grind me down at times. Or do I do that to myself?

Anyway - to all travellers and people who live away from home. Stay focused on what you are and try to keep yourselves somehow on top.

My Tanzania Times

Hi Hi

Before I started this blog, I was writing all kinds of bits and bobs about my time in Tanzania, and e-mailing them back to people.... that was in my pre-IT days..... I thought it would be nice to post them here. I'll date them so you know when they were written. The most recent was about a week ago..... the rest getting old now.

As you read down, the oldest one (near the beginning of my time in TZ), is at the bottom....


Hope you enjoy

P

The drift back to Dar - November 2009

Two months it has been since I landed back in Dar es Salaam, on a humid, dusty night. Sometimes, my emotions are running such riot that I cannot even access what I am feeling: there is little precision from one minute to the next and, often, I experience a host of conflicting ups, downs and upside downs within a short space of time here in Tanzania. That day, the first in October, this was particularly acute.


I enjoyed such a special time during my three and a half week break in the UK. Admittedly, it took about two of those weeks to feel vaguely grounded again, to regain my bearings, but even as I did so I felt closer to my family than I have in years and a great tide of warmth swelled within me. It helped, too, that I was a more relaxed Pen – a brighter, more positive person than the one they said goodbye to last year. Never in my life have I had such a wonderful time with Mum and Dad – a product, I’m sure, of my being away from day to day life. But also, maybe, a product of where I’ve moved on from and what I’ve experienced in the last 12 months.


All was oiled by stunning September weather – some of the finest sunshine to kiss the UK all year. It lasted almost exactly from the day of my arrival to that of my departure, resulting in lunches on the patio, strolls by the Thames, pints in pub gardens, and birthday celebrations in the garden. I could not have wished for much more – only the improved health of Dad, which I’m sure time will bring.


So – let’s just say that leaving the warm belly of the family to embark on yet another chapter was extremely tough. Ouch. Dad and I had, to say the least, an emotional farewell at Heathrow and my flight back was punctuated by hard-to-control sobbing. The soulless, limbo-like, sleep deprived vacuum of air travel didn’t exactly soothe, and at one point I came to the decision to simply hide in the overhead cabin at Dar, and wait for the plane’s return leg to Amsterdam. I am never sure whether it is bravery or cowardice which keeps me going.
But here I am, at my table in my third floor flat in dusty Msasani, the balcony door open, the netted external door closed to stop unwanted flying creatures from invading the place. I can hear thumping music from the bar up the road, children shrieking, the cries of a maji salesman. The fan is humming overhead, offering some respite from what is now the quite repressive heat of late November.


It gets worse from here for another couple of months – the sun more and more intense; the humidity higher and higher; the temperature fiercesome. Even I, sun worshipper extraordinaire, have been drained of late, nudged over into moments of real fatigue where the prospect of yet another scorching day seems too much. Energy levels drop massively during the day, and without air conditioning in the office I have lost concentration from time to time. Still, I seem to recover at dusk, when the sky shocks with orangey red hues and a breeze drifts in from the Indian Ocean. A couple of Savannahs later, and I’m somehow restored. Indeed, it would be easier working at night that during the day. Lately, I seem to be awake during both.
The lady in the small dukka across the street sells the most wonderfully sweet watermelons. I wonder if they are addictive. Our regular conversation commences with polite enquiries about each other’s health, and progresses towards the size of melon I’m looking for. I’m an elfu moja kind of girl, as the elfu mbili option is a bit much for my fridge to bear. That’s 50p to you, if you’re wondering. I sometimes hang around for a sweet menthol, too; a fairly strong local cigarette which I get a craving for at night time. It takes something fairly radical to get me puffing by day, but once darkness falls and the stars are above me, and I get the African butterflies which flit about my stomach most evenings for no apparent reason, there is something just so soothing about that first evening drag. Ahhhhhhhhhh.


It took about three and a half weeks for me to stop waking up imagining that I was about to head downstairs to share tea and morning grumbles with Mum. Funny – she is the first person in my life to ever comment on my complete uselessness in the mornings. I never noticed it before, but maybe she’s right. Yup – I tend to warm up around evening time, when most others are winding down. Still, I developed a real fondness for seeing my folk around the house every day: part of my life again, I part of theirs. Getting used to be far away from those who know me and love me (warts and all) was extremely tough – much tougher than I ever imagined it would be.
Africa, too, came into starker contrast. The streets of Dar seemed somehow more challenging, more brutal even, than I had noticed before, and I felt fragile, vulnerable for a while. None of this strange, delayed culture shock was helped by the fact that I was hit by something fairly hefty in my second week (and I don’t mean a local bus!). Not sure what, but there is plenty going around, and whatever it was had my world spinning, rocking, and causing me to feel pathetically sorry for myself! It has crept up behind me and caught me out again since, but at least as I write I am feeling as good as it gets in the heat of a sun-burnt city.


I have a new job, and it’s taking time to adjust from teacher mode to NGO mode. Yesterday, someone whose opinion I value called me bossy. Ouch. I guess that’s the teacher in me then?? Oh well, yeah – hell I’m bossy. But, in my new role, I don’t know nearly enough to be bossy and it’s a daily challenge. My NGO is a disability organisation and a hospital and, as such, there is plenty to get to grips with that is totally new to me: medical terms and surgical procedures which are a whole other world from the one in which I have sat comfortably for much of my life. I have always been a passionate teacher but, at CCBRT where I now work, the emotions which drive my commitment are different.


My office is sited precisely opposite the hospital and, on a daily basis, patients come and queue and wait in their hundreds. I see the elderly; mothers with children or babies in their arms; middle aged men and women. I see babies or children with clubfeet; the blind; children with cleft lip or palate; women with fistula; amputees waiting to have a prosthetic limb fitted; people who have suffered burns. I see people who really have no means of paying for treatment, dressed in kangas to protect them against the harsh sun of the season.


Indeed, I see much which could depress the hell out of me. Not only the poorest of the poor – but also the most dependent, needy of all - for disability in this country is not managed in the way it would be in the West: it is a socio-economic barrier; a hard-to-escape spoke on the wheel of poverty; a ticket to nowhere much unless you happen to be one of the rare few who realises that a disability can be treated, cured, or managed in order to allow for a fulfilling, productive life.


Our organisation is like Robin Hood, and we boast about it! The poorest patients, those who really cannot pay, simply do not have to. Patients pay what they can so that, ultimately, the richest patients are subsidizing the poorest. This is a unique system, and one which means that we really are able to help those who need it most. Of that, I am proud.


Whilst I joke with a close friend of mine that the weather here is merely degrees of different ‘hotness’, I like to spot the seasonality which creeps subtly into the tropics. Late November, and a pleasant surprise appears on the street corners: something which I have missed these past six months. Pineapples, large, conical, plump and radiating the warmth of the southern hemisphere sun, have taken up residence on wooden carts along the roadsides. It is a wonderful time, then, for the men who grow and sell these perfect fruity symbols of tropical climes. Next to each stand, a plastic bucket in which sit carefully carved slices of the fruit, whose sweetness here delivers a sugar rush unmatched by the sad, imported pineapple wannabes that we see back home.


Mangoes are also making a showy comeback. In the past two weeks, the carts which were laden with oranges have taken on a new, headier passenger. Mangoes, of different size, shape, colour, texture, moisture content and sweetness, have taken Dar by storm. It could easily rain mangoes for a week or two and there would still be enough to wrap around the globe several times with a few left for breakfast.


Today, I found a clutch of red plums at the back of my grocery store, where the men pop secret surprises into my bag after a particularly large shop (sometimes an apple and, once, a custard apple!). They were small and sweet and yielding, and I ate most of them from the bag as I rode home with my goodies hanging from the handle bars.


It is a little hot to cycle, and I arrive at every destination glistening with sweat, which drips down my back and forever tricks me into thinking that I have a parade of ants marching across my skin. Cycling at night is little better: it is dangerous for a start, at least until the dala dalas have stopped careering down the roads and the rush hour traffic has eased off. It is also a little tricky on roads which require high levels of concentration to navigate even during the day. Potholes are unforgiving in the dark – indeed; they seem to breed magically at dusk. Then, there is the dust……


Still, I love my bike and I guess that there is something rather ‘Pen’ about arriving by bike for a night at the pub from time to time. The Masaai last night seemed disappointed that I was going home in a taxi: but, sometimes, a girl needs a treat.


Africa seems to have made more of a girl of me. I have no idea how, when, or why it happened, but some time in the last six months I felt an urge to start wearing dresses. Maybe it is the sight of African women, usually immaculately presented, albeit if only in kangas, or maybe it is the warmth of the climate by day and by night, but I have developed a potentially expensive love of dresses….. My tailor, who lives a couple of doors down from my apartment, is getting sore fingers from all the work I am giving him. I, in the meantime, am constantly seeking reasons for dressing up. My friends, many a few years younger than me, are very kind to humour me.


One problem: dresses and bikes are not exactly the best of friends.


The Indian Ocean is crackling across the rocks as it makes its way towards the shore. It is 4pm, and the tide is turning. Skinny-legged, long-beaked sea birds tread with caution between the stones and coral, pecking in the holes where small ghost crabs scuttle to escape the heat of the sun. There are local men wading just knee deep; others pushing boats without much urgency a little further out. Perhaps they hope to catch a fish for dinner.


Wooden fishing boats, some with sails, sit on the glistening water so invitingly that I imagine myself to be a great mariner, so tempted am I to stride into the sea and claim an oar or a sail. Across the bay, the white sands of Kawe beach lull me away from the city and give perspective to my day. I will sit here until sunset, writing, checking e-mails, adding to an important proposal that I have to write in order to secure funding for a significant number of child eye surgeries in the coming 18 months.


No doubt, others will join me. They start to drift in. Sometimes, it is hard to leave this spot and, two nights ago, I was here from 4 – 11pm, wondering at the contradictions which riddle the heart of this continent and finally reckoning that every ugly, threatening, disturbing, alienating feature must surely have its counterpart – a feature as magnificent and wonderful in measure. It is that thought which keeps me going.


Like my moods and my feelings for Tanzania, it is neither one thing nor the other. I cannot love this place unless I also hate it. For all the negativity that I am often exposed to; for all of the pessimism about the future of the country and, indeed, the continent, I remain the eternally driven, motivated and die-hard protagonist.


Just now, as a barely perceptible breeze starts to lift from the sea and valiantly endeavour to soothe me, I actually feel ok.