Unpleasantries

There are a couple of less pleasant aspects to our domestic life in Tanzania.

One of these is the flies which buzz about everywhere. They have an uncanny knack of making their way into my home, especially when food is being cooked, despite the fly-netting we have on the doors and windows. One day in December, I waged war using insect spray and I counted at least 40 dead flies on my window sills when I had finished! The mosquitoes at this time of year are also a problem in the evening and early mornings, bringing with them the ever-worrying problem of malaria.

Another unpleasant fact, especially during this season, is the constant burning of small fires, lit to get rid of people's household rubbish. People light them in the street, on patches of common ground and near their gateways, either during the day or early evening and then leave them to smoulder, which can continue through the night. Everything seems to be placed on these fires to burn, from dry leaves to potato peelings to plastic bottles; the result is very smoky, foul-smelling fires. This is rather a frustration for us in our homes, as the wind here in Dodoma invariably blows the fumes over our home and in through our windows, with smoke curling under the doorframes and infiltrating every room. It can get so smoky in the MAF houses that our neighbour's smoke alarm has been set off!

Since there is no organised local-council rubbish collection like many countries are privileged to have, the fires are one way people keep their homes and yards clear of junk. However, they are not strictly necessary, since there is an alternative option to have your waste taken away by local workers who pull heavy, old carts around the streets and collect up the rubbish to dispose of it at the town's rubbish dump- where the poorer people can be seen sifting through it to find bits they might be able to use. The drawback of having your rubbish taken away for you is that you have to pay the cart-pullers to do so- not very much money, but enough to put people off the idea in a country where the average household income is very low.

As a result, we often have homes filled with acrid smoke, which burns our eyes and throats and makes the home smell most unpleasant. I struggle most of all with the night-time fires, since we cannot escape the fumes- the doors can't be opened in case the mosquitoes come in and the windows can't be closed to keep out the smoke, as they are slatted with gaps to let the air in! There is not much we can do about this problem.

BUT at least when it comes to the flies and mossies, we can go on the attack! One way we can do this is to spray our slatted windows and our fly-netting with some potent poison mixture from the local doctor's surgery, similar to the mixture we coat our mosquito nets with. It may make the windows look dirty, but since Margaret came in last Thursday to do the great deed of spraying, I have hardly seen a fly or a mossie in my house :-)

Margaret on the offensive, in make-shift protective gear to avoid the fumes herself:

Salon Parker

One of the first things I need to do on returning to the UK is to book appointments with the doctor, the dentist (if they will let us sign up again after our absence abroad, during which time we have simply relied on regular brushing with "Colgate" to take care of our teeth) and also the hairdresser.
It has been almost a year since Esther and I had the opportunity for a hair-cut with a hairdresser used to the hair of an "mzungu" (white person) and I am starting to get desperate as my hair grows out of control! I have tried a bit of hairdressing on myself but Andrew warned me that it was best I stopped quickly, before I made a total mess! It is not something I am gifted at! So the girls of the house must wait a few weeks yet before we can have the luxury of a visit to the hairdresser.

Meanwhile, the boys of the house have clippers to use and our rather frightening-looking, but very effective, kitchen scissors to trim the unruly edges. Our house was transformed into a Barber's Shop for Andrew and Ben. Claire did a great job with Andrew's hair (he won't let me near his hair, after he saw what I did to my own!!) and Andrew did a great job with Ben's:

Mums With Tums

There are currently 4 Tanzanian MAF Dodoma office workers who are expecting a baby during the next few months- and then there are 2 MAF overseas workers who have returned to the UK and Switzerland respectively and have just had their second babies- and then there is myelf due in April- and then there is also the Mum of Esther's birthday-party friend, Elisabeth, who is expecting her 4th baby in March this year (not to mention Moshi who had her kittens 3 weeks ago!!). With all these expectant Mums, there must be something in the water here in Dodoma...

At Esther and Elisabeth's party on Monday evening, Elisabeth's mum and myself compared bumps:

Expecting a baby in a place where expert medical care is hard to access has been a little worrying at times. So to put my mind at rest and have my second check-up in 6 and a half months of pregnancy, Andrew and I took the long road trip to Dar es Salaam on Tuesday this week. Claire very kindly stayed home in Dodoma with Esther and Ben, making the trip easier with the limited time we had (and it sounds like the 3 of them had great fun together!).

Andrew and I left early on Tuesday and made sure we were home by Wednesday evening in time for Esther's birthday the next day. It was a long way to go, with a 6 hour road trip each way, but Dar es Salaam is far more developed as a city than Dodoma and there is a very good private clinic where I could get a reliable scan, check-up and the advice that I need at this stage in my pregnancy. It was reassuring to get the medical all-clear this week.

Here are some images taken on our trip back home: from the busy bustle of Dar, through the rural villages until we reached the less developed Dodoma at nightfall...

City centre Dar, looking towards the Dar MAF office (the flat red-roof building to the left of the church):

Views of the ocean as we drive along Dar's busy and overcrowded streets:A very exciting sight for us Dodoma-dwellers- a shopping centre with western-style shops and a large food supermarket! This is a long way from Dodoma, where traditional wooden "dukas" rule the shopping areas. In Dar, we can stock up on supplies before heading home:

As we drive out of Dar, the city also gives way to the "dukas" and the streets are bustling with shoppers in a more typical Tanzanian style. Traffic is slow as we head along the busy one-lane main road out of the Big Smoke, contending with "dalla-dalla" mini-buses, 4x4s, lorries, tuk-tuk (sp??) passenger-carriers (the little blue+ black vehicles on the left + centre of the picture), buses, bikes and cars.

A few hours along the route, opportunities for buying goods still pop up occasionally. Some villages have surplus supplies of potatoes and onions, displayed in colourful buckets for passers by to purchase- an eye-catching sight:

In this rainy season, the countryside along our route looks so green compared to the rest of the year. We enjoyed the transformation from dusty-brown views seen for so much of the year to beautiful village scenes set against the greenery and villages with full watering-holes:

Despite some rather bumpy road-works in places...... and some less-than-smooth roads somewhat worn out and melted by the sun's fierce heat in this hot country......we were grateful for safe travels and the opportunity for the medical check-up. Hopefully, the next check-up will be in England, where the availability of reliable and close-at-hand medical care is certainly something I should not take for granted!

Five Years Later...

From this tiny tot...

...to celebrating 5 happy years later with Esther! The birthday girl on her birthday, with one of Moshi's kittens: Esther marked her special day with 2 celebrations. First of all, she shared a joint party on Monday evening with her Swedish friend, Elisabeth, who has her 6th birthday this month. The girls opted for a "Girls Only" Pyjama Party, which was lots of fun!There was nail painting in the Nail Painting Parlour of our lounge...
...cup cake decorating...
Birthday tea...
Birthday cake x2 (one for each birthday girl):
And after changing into pyjamas, there was time for pass the parcel:
Secondly, on the actual birthday day, Esther invited her friend from school, Sam, for a special lunch- and had another birthday cake too! Sam was barred from Monday's birthday party on the grounds that he is not a girl, but instead he was the guest of honour on Thursday, joining the birthday princess for a "home-cinema" experience after lunch and the 2nd birthday cake (which we were able to decorate with strawberries when the strawberry seller from Morogoro just happened to turn up before lunch: a happy coincidence!)

Home Cinema-we hired a projector for the day- lots of fun for the little ones, who have yet to experience a real cinema (something to try out in the UK on our visit there later this year!)...
... with home-made popcorn too!

Finally: The strawberry and vegetable sellers by the MAF gates bringing a treat for Esther's birthday:

Tanzanian Tent-Wear

Being pregnant in a very hot Dodoma can be somewhat uncomfortable. However, help is at hand in the form of my Tanzanian Maternity Wear! It may not seem very fashionable or stylish to the English eye, but it is the best way to be comfy and to feel cooler, as I wear my self-named "tents"!
I now possess 3 "tents", which are incredibly comfortable and just perfect for the scorching temperatures here, as they simply float around my baby-bump and give lots of freedom for climbing in and out of the car, playing with the children, getting on with jobs at home... etc. Horray for my Tanzanian tent-wear!

My new tent, which I spotted in the market last week and my favourite one so far:

This bright and cheerful number was the gift given to me when I acted a "Guest of Honour" at the Nursery School graduation event a few weeks ago- hard to be inconspicuous while wearing it, but my Tanzanian friends love it!

A local lady made this last one for me out of some material I found at the market- it is very comfortable and I was impressed by how quickly Frida transformed a piece of cloth into a dress for me- I seriously lack skill in the sewing department, but many ladies out here are amazing with their dress-making expertise.

Happy Christmas!!

Happy Christmas to you all, from us in Tanzania!

We hope you had a nice day celebrating this special time of year.

Here are a few shots of our family Christmas with Claire, spent at our home here in Dodoma.

The chefs, in the heat of the kitchen, attempting an English-style roast (with a veggie option for Claire as well). Thankfully, Christmas Day was a lovely overcast day, meaning that it wasn't too hot to eat our roast chicken dinner!

Christmas Day feast:
Gift-giving has a unique flavour of its own in Dodoma, where the luxury of a box of cereal (so expensive to buy over here) was a popular present amongst the Parkers of Dodoma!

Moshi the cat delighted us with her very own gift, producing 2 tiny kittens on Christmas Eve, which we discovered in the flowerbed on Christmas morning, on our return from the service at the cathedral:

Leading up to Christmas...

After the school nativity play, Esther broke up for her long summer holiday and then over the next week, we had a couple of other events to get us ready for Christmas itself.

On the Tuesday, we had a Christmas meal at home together with our househelper, Jane, my language helper Margaret and Gadi, who works a couple of mornings a week in our garden, growing some veg for us and making sure the plants and weeds don't get out of control.

Andrew was unable to join us, as work last week saw him flying with the Masai up in the north of Tanzania, but Esther, Ben and I were able to celebrate with our Tanzanian friends at a mixed-culture lunch.

We started with a traditional Tanzanian dish of "pilau", served at times of celebration here, which Jane cooked for us all. It is a mixture of meat, rice, potatoes and vegetables, with a slightly curried, onion/garlic sauce:

For dessert, I couldn't find what was needed for a traditional British plum pudding, so I cooked a fruit cake with the left-over almonds, cherries and sultanas from my Christmas cake and served it with custard, which was as close as I could get to a real British Christmas pudding! Thanks to kind friends, we also had some UK Christmas crackers and napkins, posted out from Lancashire, just to add a British flavour. Our Tanzanian guests had never seen crackers before, so they caused much laughter as we pulled them open at the start of our meal and everyone dutifully wore their paper crowns with good humour right to the end of the meal, except for Ben, who was a bit tired of all the Swahili beng spoken and more reluctant to join in the festive spirit!

Later in the week, we hosted a Christmas Evening at our home for the few of us who are left here over the Christmas period- many from MAF have gone away to visit friends or family or just to get away for a few days and really relax away from the work environment. There was a Christmas quizz with prize for the winner and for an international flavour, we asked everyone to bring something traditionally Christmassy from their home culture (or as close as you can get with what is available in Dodoma). Our buffet was very interesting, with Tanzanain pilau, Ugandan matoke (savoury banana) and groundnut sauce with meat, Swedish meatballs, American Christmas cookies, South African fudge from Claire, my UK Christmas cake (although minus the marzipan!) and a French-style pizza!

Snowmen in Tanzania?? only on the cake, just so that we can think of you who are over there in a cold and snowy England at the moment:
It was a lovely evening and to my great relief, quite a lot of rain fell in the last week, reducing the temperatures and giving the evening a cooler feel, so that all of us together in the one home did not mean that we were all overheated, especially with 9 very excited and well-fed children charging about the place, in and out the lounge and bedrooms!

Our get-togethers here are usually very international. Andrew (who returned from work up north just an hour and a half before the guest arrived!) with some of our guests, representing Germany, Sweden and the USA:

Esther's School Nativity Play

The Friday a week before Christmas started a lovely lead up to Christmas Day, as we were given a great reminder of The Christmas Story at Esther's school Nativity Play. Andrew was pleased to be able to attend and join Ben and I at the school production- the first time all year that Andrew has been free from work commitments and able to come along to a school presentation.

We were all thoroughly impressed with the wonderful musical/ acting production put on by the pupils. The school runs from nursery right through to secondary level (up to International GCSE level), so there are pupils from age 3 right up to 20 (as some start school later out here than back in the UK and fit in according to learning level, not age). The younger ones were more involved on the singing side, while some of the older pupils took on acting roles.

Esther joins in with her class as the Reception sing their parts enthusiastically:

No Room at the Inn for a weary Joseph, with his donkey and Mary behind:
Jesus is born:
I had to get a photo of these wisemen in their original outfits!

Whole school Grande Finale, where even Ben stands up next to his big sister (bottom left) and tries to join in with the fantastic, infectious singing:

Tanzanian Toad of Terror

The day and a half of rain that we had a couple of weeks ago (sadly there has been no rain since and the heat is beating down fiercely again) brought out of hiding not only the scorpions but also lots of frogs and some rather charmless toads. The children were fascinated by the frogs and particularly by these enormous, fat, ugly toads. This one was having a lovely rest from his daily chores in amongst the wet grass in our garden.
These toads, however, are to be viewed with some trepidation... Esther and Ben went very close to get a good look at this specimen, but next time, I will be more cautious in allowing my children near to the creatures, since I just learnt that one of the little girls on the nearby MAF compound tried to approach one to see if she could pick it up and it suddenly leapt up and bit her! Shrieking with fright, with blood pouring from a wound on her hand, the poor little thing ran inside to be comforted by her Mum. None of us had ever heard of a biting toad before, but it seems most wildlife here in Tanzania should be treated with caution! Fortunately, the bite is not poisonous, but it still seems very odd that a toad can strike out and bite! I never even knew that toads had teeth...
Jane tells me, though, that one of the local tribes near Dodoma find these toads rather tasty, cooked up with a bit of "ugali" (think mashed potato but made with cornflour rather than potoatoes). She herself has never tried them, but I can't help wondering how many people get bitten in their attempts to catch their toady dinner. As for me, I have no intention of finding out for myself- toad in the hole made with pork sausage is the closest I'd ever hope to get to eating anything with the word "toad" in the title!

5 Reasons to Celebrate

Over the past week, there have been several reasons to celebrate...

1. The Rains came to Dodoma at last!

Last Monday, after a horribly hot Sunday at 35'C in the shade, when it was impossible to do anything without feeling grumpy and sweaty (even lying down, I found myself covered in sweat!!), Monday dawned as a beautiful cloudy day! What a relief to have some cover from the blazing, relentless East African sun! Then later that day, the first rain drops in 8 months began to fall- and what a celebration it was in the Parker household! When we lived in rainy Lancashire, I never knew what it was to appreciate rain, but now rain breathes fresh air and life into Tanzania and I have gained a new respect for the gift that it is.

Swinging in the rain:

It is now hot again, but at least we have had a few day's break from the energy-sapping heat. Tanzanians are rejoicing that they can plant their crops to feed their families since the ground has been made softer and last week's rain brings hope of more life-giving rain over the next few months to water those vital foods.

2. Ben turned 3!

Ben had a wonderful day last Thursday celebrating his birthday. His lunch-time pizza party was lots of fun, with 4 little pals and his big sister. He was delighted with all of his gifts and also with being the VIP for the day!

3. Escape from danger!

I had my own private celebration since discovering that these fearsome scorpions have not made it into my garden or house, despite coming out of their holes in droves once the rainwater arrived. 5 dead scorpions on our compound, like the one below, find me much relieved- better dead than creeping into my home and delivering a toxic -if not lethal- poison into one if my children or family. However, I am still being vigilant- you never know where they might be lurking and I have a deep-rooted fear of dangerous creatures out here.

4. Finding sultanas AND almonds AND glace cherries in Dodoma!

It is unusual in Dodoma to be able to get hold of sultanas and also almonds and also glace cherries all around the same time! However, the unexpected happened- wow! I was so excited that I got inspired to make my very first Christmas cake, since I will not be able to sample my mum's cake this year. Delia Smith's trusty recipe tells me that I need dried peel, currants, raisins, lemon rind and marzipan to make a bona fide cake, which I cannot find right now, but when one is part of the way there with some sultanas, why not have a try with what one does have?? So out came the cookery book and apron and I must say, I am mightily pleased with my Dodoma effort, even if it is dominated by sultanas!

5. It is nearly Christmas- and Santa has been to see us here in Dodoma!

Last Saturday morning, the mums here got together to run a Christmas party for the 12 children on our MAF compounds. The children all had a wonderful time outdoors, playing games, making sparkly cards, winning prizes, having a Christmas party lunch together. However, the highlight of the Christmas celebration had to be a visit from Santa in his special Tanzanian outfit, complete with mop-head hair! He even brought each child an individually wrapped gift, sourced apparently in Dar es Salaam , since it is a little closer than the North Pole. The children were so thrilled with their gifts that they didn't seem to notice that Santa's Tanzanian outfit is a little different from the conventional suit... :-)

Making cards with glitter is fun!

So is playing musical statues:

Here comes Santa with his bags of goodies!!

Rapt attention for Santa from the MAF kids:

And great excitement as the gifts are unwrapped!