Making the Most of Tanzania

With the time ticking by before we leave Tanzania, we wanted to use Andrew's week off  work to enjoy this beautiful country while we still have the opportunity.

So we headed across to Zanzibar. We only had 5 nights on this exotic island of outstanding beauty, so we determined to make the most of it!
We spent 2 nights in historic Stone Town, which included a day's outing to the Spice Farm (see below). In Stone Town itself, we enjoyed exploring the historic, narrow alley-ways. We admired the intricately carved doors which Zanzibar is famous for. We marvelled at the incredible fish market, where huge freshly-caught tuna dwarfed the piles of opaque octopus laid out on floor mats, ready to be purchased.

Stone Town:

We also enjoyed walking along by the harbour wall and seeing the sun set on the calm waters of the Indian Ocean:

After Stone Town, we headed south east and spent 3 days at the beach. It was stunning. This is what we saw from our balcony:

This was outside our beach-front door- unspoilt, beautiful beaches of white sand and lots of sea-life to discover in the rock pools at low tide ( crabs, lion-fish, star-fush to name but a few that we saw and collected and examined in the kid's buckets!):

A few steps away from our room:

And the chance to swim in a gorgeous setting near the sea, even when the tide was low!

It was an amazing location and fantastic to be able to make the most of a just one small part of Tanzania's many beautiful destinations. It was also good to get to the sea-side and make the most of Tanzania's coastal gems before moving to land-locked South Sudan. I'm not sure that I fancy swimming in the River Nile... moving on will be a different experience all round!

Spice of Life

This time last week, we were at a Spice Farm on Zanzibar's Unguja island. We learnt so much as part of this very interesting one-day tour. It was fascinating to see how so many of the everyday spices and fruits that we use start their lives. Even Esther and Ben were engrossed and Joel also enjoyed the day, with so much to see, taste and explore. It seems a shame not to share some of the amazing facts that we learnt, so here's a glimpse from our spicy day out...

We started out looking by at the red mahogany and teak trees on the Spice Farm, which grow very slowly. Their wood used to be a major export from Zanzibar, although these days the market is dominated by larger countries such as Indonesia. Now, it is forbidden to export these beautiful woods, although you can buy ready-made furniture and wooden goods to carry out of Zanzibar. It was interesting to see how patient the farmer needs to be to plant such trees- it can take up to 30 years before a tree can be cut and used. We then moved on with our guide to see products that grow much faster and can be harvested far more frequently....

Our fruit and spices tour began at this Jack Fruit tree, bearing these enormous fruits with their furry exterior...

 The juicy Jack Fruit was tasty to try, with a taste that seems to be a cross between a pineapple and a banana...

Moving on to the Pepper Tree:

 The peppercorns can be dried or harvested early to provide no less than 5 different types of pepper! If dried out, the pepper-corns below become the dark, black peppercorns we use to grind in a pepper-mill:

Fresh cloves:

My favourite tree is pictured here- the tree with cocoa pods...

...once the pod is opened, it is possible to extract the beans which are used to make CHOCOLATE!!!!! I'm so glad that people long ago made this fantastic discovery!! :-)

The tree below is a Cinnamon Tree:

 The bark is the most useful part. If you cut the bark horizontally, you ruin the tree. If you cut it vertically, it provides strips of bark that can be dried out and rolled into cinnamon sticks or ground into cinnamon powder for cooking!

We saw a bush which bears the leaves that are ground down to make curry powder. Even the fresh, green leaves smell of curry! Take a sniff, close your eyes and you are transported to a curry-house full of delicious-smelling curry!

This is cardamon, which is extracted from the roots of a small bush:

The tree below amazed me. Even though I did a Spice Tour 11 years ago, I do not remember seeing this tree. It is the tree that produces iodine! Our guide slashed it with a knife and the red iodine splashed out like blood from a wound:

 When you touch this red liquid and rub it into your skin, it transforms itself into a white balm, looking just like antiseptic lotion. Traditionally, it is used for natural healing in African culture. These days it is also commercially harvested and mixed in factories with certain chemicals to make the iodine we have on our pharmacy shelves.


The beautiful sight below is nutmeg, nestled into its seed pod and covered by a protective red substance:

The red layer can be pulled off like string. It feels like plastic and is used to make a component of pepper-spray: a self-defence product.  The nutmeg itself can then be removed and is sold separately. Traditionally, nutmeg is favoured by women in East African cultures, as it can be boiled up as a somewhat potent brew to help them lose their inhibitions and join in tribal dancing! Don't worry- we weren't given any of the brew, nor the secret recipe!


The children all loved the citronella scent of the fresh lemon-grass:

Here, Ben is standing by the shrub that produces ginger:

 The root is dug up to provide ginger, which tastes extremely strong when it is fresh from the ground!

Vanilla pods:

Pineapples grown on the farm:

The seeds below come from a bush grown for the tandoori colouring which the ground-up seeds produce. Next time you have a tandoori chicken dinner, you can picture the seed-pod in Zanzibar where your sauce originated!

Along the way, we were all decorated with banana-leaf adornments- a necklace for me, watches for the children, baskets for Esther and Ben and a fetching tie for Andrew:

Some fruits were localised, like the Zanzibar apple Andrew is tucking into. Not my favourite fruit, but very popular with Esther!

At the end of the tour, we all sat down to a Spice Lunch, cooked by the villagers whilst we had been touring the farm:

It was a delicious lunch, with chapati, slightly curried "pilau" rice, vegetables in sauce made from freshly-cut coconut and with cloves and spices added. Sitting down for this lovely lunch enhanced our enjoyment of the local produce we had been learning about that morning. A mouth-watering, spicy end to a wonderful, spicy tour!

A Material World

I need new curtains for our new house in Juba. Fortunately, our neighbour Margaret is very handy with her sewing machine and has kindly offered her expertise help.

Off  we went into town to see whether I could find suitable material. We were armed with a note book, full of my scribbled measurements and a tape measure to double-check the sizes of what we want. We aimed to take just one hour. But nothing ever takes "just one hour" in Dodoma! Rather, we spent all morning in and out of the stalls where material hangs from wooden beams, or is folded up neatly on shelves behind counters, or is rolled in large cylinders, ready to be cut off by the metre.

It was a fun morning. Dodoma has a wealth of materials for sale, sold across the town at various stalls, or from converted containers where you can wander in and browse. There are gorgeous colours, startling patterns and a whole array of material types, from polyester to cotton, thick cuts and thin, sparkly or plain.

Joel joined Margaret and I. He was very patient whilst we examined and measured and discussed what may be suitable to hang in the windows of our future home...

There was an extra bit of interest for Joel when we came across the following sight at the local SabaSaba market:

These rats made me feel quite ill- rats are among my least favourite creatures, along with snakes and scorpions! I have a deep-rooted dislike of rats! I asked the stall owner why he had these rats in the cage. He answered that he's going to eat them! I told him that I did not believe him, but he laughed merrily and replied that rats are very delicious, or sweet ("tamu sana") once cooked. So I asked him how he cooked them... I could hardly believe him when he said he roasts them! I walked away still not knowing if he was teasing, although house-lady Jane assures me that some local people do enjoy the odd snack of roasted rat... ugh!!! I'd rather eat a plateful of mud! I could not bear the idea! I even had a nightmare after this encounter, where rats were running all over my food and all over my kitchen!

Anyway, I was quickly distracted on the actual day when we found the material below at a nearby stall:

 I now have 3 sheets of this fun, boat-themed material ready to be made into curtains for Ben and Joel's room, once I can locate a suitable lining.

I also discovered the material below as a possible candidate for bedroom curtains, partly because the seller had several pieces of cloth in this pattern. Often, the seller only has one or two pieces of any one design, which is a challenge when you need several pieces to make sure all the windows in the room have the same curtains!

I haven't gone back to the "duka" (small shop) to buy this material yet, but if I don't see anything else that I like, it could soon be put through Margaret's sewing machine as she works her magic to help us out with our preparations for Juba. In the meantime, I will continue to haunt the world of material shops in  Dodoma in my quest for those perfect pieces of curtain-cloth...

Trustworthy Diagnosis?

Apparently, according to the results form below, Joel has malaria:

This is the result from a blood slide test that was carried out on Saturday at the local clinic in town. I took Joel there to be checked after he had an awful week of vomiting, from early Monday morning up until early Friday morning.
This is Joel's registration card card from the clinic where he was tested:

We had already done a home rapid-result malaria test, which was negative. Apart from the vomiting, Joel was showing none of the more obvious signs of malaria- in particular, he had no fever. But as a precaution, local clinics always recommend malaria tests, so I went along with their advice on Saturday when I took Joel to the Aga Khan health centre in central Dodoma to see the doctor and have him properly checked over.  The visiting doctor that I saw, from Kampala, was very good. He reassured me by doing a proper examination of Joel's stomach and his hydration levels; but he still sent Joel for the standard malaria test.

Before collecting the results of the test, I was warned that Aga Khan nearly always issue postive malaria results, so I was a little cautious when I came back to the clinic to collect the outcome of Joel's test.

When I saw the paper above, my heart sank- a positive result! BUT could I believe it? Joel was improving by the hour and seemed so much better than he had in the previous days. He certainly was not acting like someone who had malaria!

I decided to double-check with a retired Italian pediatrician who now runs a coffee shop in town. I took Joel and the results paper and drove over to the coffee shop, where I ordered a bottle of water and then asked the Italian doctor to check the results written on the above paper. It is not every day that people go to a coffee shop for medical advice- but this is Dodoma!

"Dr Massimo, what does this mean?" I asked, as I showed him the results.

He took the paper from my hands, squinted at it, looked at Joel who was standing next to me drinking from his bottle of water, looked back at the paper and then exclaimed,

"NOTHING!!! This, it means nothing!! This child, he does not have malaria- he could not stand here if he did- this is rubbish! These blood slides are never accurate- you should do a rapid-result test to check malaria, not an Aga Khan test- and I tell you, don't go back to that clinic again!"

He then muttered something incomprehensible (in Italian??) under his breath and gave back the paper. I felt very relieved that he was so outspoken is dismissing the results, as I did not feel they were correct.

When Andrew came home from flying on Saturday evening, we made the decision to do another home-kit rapid-result malaria test- which was negative. It seemed Joel did NOT have malaria after all.

Knowing what and who to trust on a medical level are part and parcel of the challenge of living in Dodoma with small children. Making decisions on where to go with the sick child, who to see and who to believe can be as emotionally and physically draining as the effort required to spend all day in and out of the clinic: waiting for the doctor, waiting to go to the lab to do the required tests, waiting for the lab results, waiting to see the doctor again to get a run-down of the lab results. A 4-part process that necessitates a LOT of waiting!

Saturday's medical outing for Joel required much patience, as we started the day at a different clinic where we took a delightful (!!) poo sample from Joel to be analysed: 

After depositing Joel's foul-smelling offering at the MacKay House laboratories at around 10:45am,  I returned home with the 3 children to drop Esther and Ben off with kind MAF neighbours. They had called me and volunteered to take care of  Esther and Ben until I was free of medical visits. What a HUGE help this was. What fun for Esther and Ben to spend the day with their good friend Aleah and her family, rather than trailing miserably around Dodoma's medical institutions!

 Joel I returned to town to pick up his stool-sample results at 11:30am.
"No worms", the lab technician told me, but no other information was available about possible causes of his upset stomach and vomiting, as they only do full-screen tests on Mondays- Fridays!
Then Joel and I went for a quick visit to my usual food shopping venue, the "2 Sister's" shop in town, where the shop-keepers were concerned to hear about Joel's health. They very kindly set up an appointment  for me at Aga Khan, where they have a lot of influence. I was very grateful for their help.
But things take time in Dodoma. By the time I'd seen the helpful Ugandan doctor, done the malaria test and had the results, it was almost 4pm!

The day had gone; the results were uncertain. Thankfully, here we are on Wednesday and Joel is fine. All's well that's ends well! With hindsight, I'm glad I didn't believe everything I'd been told!