one day at a time

generations, sierra leone

2011-12-14T14:22:00.000Z

2011-11-09T16:17:00.001Z

lumley beach sometime in august

2011-09-10T17:10:00.003Z

There is a squint of sun, pink, behind a curtain of clouds above the beach. It’s the imperceptible moment between afternoon and evening. The sea is brown and choppy. The tide has brought up bunches of brown seaweed. The bar girls say its from the sea, its where the baby fish live. They laugh.

It’s bizarre, the beach strewn with natural refuse when we are so used to the spread of man-made rubbish. It’s like the sea has coughed up some bloody phlegm. It’s disturbing. People remark on it. Then we pretend to ignore it. Someone says it’s the mining company dredging the seabed just around the headland from Lumley beach. The mining company strenuously denies it.

aberdeen bay at twilight, details

2011-09-10T17:02:00.002Z

2011-08-19T15:50:00.000Z

Tom Stoppard

"I think of laughter as the sound of comprehension."

2011-07-27T11:51:00.004Z

blue tinged evening in Freetown, rolling down Murray Town road on back of a bike, we pass a welder's hut with people gathered around, orange sparks flying, the welder wearing cheap sunglasses for protection.

2011-07-23T02:10:00.003Z

down by the river
(Yilewa, Sierra Leone)

you and me

2011-07-22T16:44:00.004Z

there i was thinking i was breaking your heart

but i'd just been looking out the wrong window

all along

it was mine

that was shifting in its chair

getting ready

bracing itself for the tidal wave

i didn't see coming.

i felt the prickles on my neck,

but i swear i never saw it coming.

i swear.

text messages to myself

2011-07-04T18:38:00.004Z

***

Flying up the hill to Fourah Bay College on a motorbike in that moment after sunset, blue grey city below, and water sheeny shiny out to the limits of the earth, leaning in close to the bike driver to keep from falling off the back, thoughts flying, spinning off into the blue, the road before us steep and wet and black and I feel like bursting, like this is where I live best.

***

7am the sun sits on a shelf of sky like a fluorescent orange over Freetown

***

Night smells along the open road, The lovely smooth freshness of dark skies swooping past, arm out the window, palm against the wind. Worry Free. The night speeds past and the world seems like it might survive us,. Like maybe, after all, it knows better.

***

sunset

2011-07-04T00:08:00.002Z

2011-07-03T23:18:00.001Z

"When bad things happen often the only way back to wholeness is to take it all apart."
- sugar

kola nut

2011-06-21T08:38:00.002Z

2011-06-08T14:02:00.002Z

23 May 2011

Gay Talese writes about failure. And what about failure? Why can't we celebrate it?

*

We woke up and half the tree had fallen. Not just a limb, but a massive branch with its own limbs and foliage, a mini tree lay on its side like a sunbather looking up at us. We had coffee on the porch and watched John chop it up with a machete.

It's raining now and the air is crystal. From the porch, through a picture frame of tree branches we can see the pastel colours and sharp outlines of downtown Freetown across the bay.

On the speakers, PJ Harvey is scratching out an angry nostalgia about England and I wonder if I will ever be at home there. Will it always be a surreal mix of sunny childhood and family stories, mixed-up with memories of TV shows and old songs. Will I always have to pretend?

I spent last week in Makeni, a town in the middle of Sierra Leone where a huge iron ore mine hopes to level the surrounding mountains and develop the country with smiling promises. Photographing for an NGO, I take pictures for people who will never come here, to show them how the project is changing lives. We intrude on the project's 'beneficiaries', people just busy going about living their lives. We make them do things they were not in the middle of doing. Can you sit over there and wash some clothes? Can you chop up some food? Can you look sad? Can you look happy? Can you give us your story? Can we feed your story to our hungry donors?

*

Operation Raise Millionaires

2010-09-18T15:18:00.006Z

Resurrection Outreach Ministries

presents:

Operation Raise Millionaires

This operation will make you become the next millionaire. The surgeon of all - Dr Jesus Christ - will do the surgery on you. You're therefore INVITED to ATTEND this special operation that will but off Poverty from you life.

Theme: Power for Wealth

Venua: Fatta Rahman Municipal Secondary School
Behind Baycon Field off Fergusson st.

Ministering Rev Ade Beckley and others

Host: Mrs. Augustus J. Bryant

27th February 2010 @ 630pm

Deut 8:18

big bellies and little babies

2010-09-17T17:54:00.006Z

2010-04-06T08:26:00.000Z

snippet of a freetown evening

2010-04-06T08:18:00.002Z

at about six pm just as the day begins to darken at the edges, a group of white birds swoop past our third-floor verandah. Every few minutes I catch the flash of their white swooping shape out of the corner of my eye as they circle around again and again.

keeping the faith

2010-02-28T16:02:00.005Z

The walls and billboards of Freetown are pasted with posters of Nigerian salvation, promising hellfire, brimstone and popcorn. At the stadium last weekend there was a revival - the Fire for Fire Crusade, full of women wearing yellow Battle Axe Ministry t-shirts and African print skirts. There was ice-cream, popcorn, drinks and dancing. A music festival for Jesus, everyone bopping around happily. A woman with a huge headwrap was singing on stage like a blues star. Just forget about your troubles; Lift your voice and wash your heart; Sing the song from your heart; You are the Only One.

Battle Axe Ministry International
Presents
Jericho Hour Celebration - Storming the Kingdom of Darkness!
Theme - Walking in the Power of The Holy Ghost.
Prophetic Breakthrough Seminar
Every Jericho Wall Will Crash land
6pm Daily
1 to 7 March, 2010

Flaming Bible Ministries
PROPHETIC DOMINION
Exchange your tears for Joy,
Weeping for Laughter

Living Word of Faith Outreach Ministries International
Women Fire Convention 2010
No More Crumbs,
Matthew 15:27
with Rev. Veralina Sam Jolly

2009-11-22T21:10:00.003Z

Cape Sierra Hotel, closed down, in Freetown's Aberdeen neighbourhood

Freetown

2009-11-21T18:07:00.003Z

I am staying at a nice hotel in Aberdeen, a few minutes from the World Food Programme's helipad. It is a Sierra Leonean run place with a mixed clientele. As I eat my fish and chips with tartar sauce and knock back a Star, I listen. Two Spanish men, wraparound sunglasses perched on cleanshaven heads, talk to upclass prostitutes about massages in broken English. Every five minutes one of them gets up to make an urgent phone call in Spanish. There is also a group of men speaking in foreign language I cannot place - it could be Hebrew or Serbian or Russian. The only word I understand is AK47.

By the pool, three white men smoke cigarettes, huddled on the loungers, talking. In the in-between-room, a space stuffed with couches and low tables between the reception and the pool, a Chinese man naps in an armchair.

I think I might be the only native English speaker here.

The staff are friendly and say Yes-please as they set down your dinner or bring you a drink. Ishmael, whose exact job title is difficult to place, takes me out to find a plug converter and we chat about random things - football, heat, tourism, the war. In the 24 hours that I've been here, I've not asked anyone about the war, and yet it seems to come up in conversation. Nothing in-depth, but the words 'the war' dropped in between other words and then gone, like a pebble plonked into a lake. We do not go into the war, we simply mention it and carry on. It is a marker of Before and After.

Christmas in Dakar

2008-12-13T12:36:00.002Z

13 December 2008

I am sitting at the Café de Rome watching a man meticulously put together a plastic christmas tree. He takes each synthetic branch, unwrapping it like a bunch of spring onions, pealing back each individual branch, like pulling fingers taught. He bends the metal end into an L shape and then pokes it into the pole disguised as a very skinny, very straight tree trunk. He started from the bottom with the longest ones and then worked from the top down. Now he’s on a stepladder arranging and rearranging branches. He steps back every now and again, looks up at the tree to make sure the shape is right, no bulges or gaps where they shouldn’t be.

The man next to me asks, La fete c’est bien passé? And the waiter replies, Alhamdoulilahi. They are talking about a different fete. The feast of the sheep, or tabaski, or Eid al Hadj, was last week and people here are in recovery perhaps similar to the post Christmas slump where you realise you’ve spent all your money on perishables.

The little kid at the next table points to the fake snow that drips its polystyrene down the walls. There are also white blobs stuck to the ceiling, outlined with white spray paint and covered in cotton wool. The man creating the christmas tree smiles and says, It’s too hot in here, isn’t it? The kid and his mum point out that the tree is tipping forward.

They are showing real christmas trees on TV and cars with snow caked on the roofs in some Western European country.

The Senegalese men next to me are talking about the financial crisis in Wolof, dropping in English and French with the ease of the well educated. They are talking excitedly and I really want to know what they are discussing, but unfortunately the French and English parts are only incidental. It seems all the interesting stuff tumbles out in Wolof.

Pictures of american car manufacturers and huge republican politicians talking into tiny microphones pass on the TV screen.

Ok so this is a different Dakar, or a particular priviledged Dakar. The Café de Rome is around the corner from my flat and I’ve been meaning to come here for a while. It is incredibly posh. There is actually customer service. You can sit down and people will come to you and ask you what you want. It also appears that over half of the things on the menu are actually available. The toilets are the nicest I’ve been to in a long while and as I turn to look at my bum on the way out I note that the mirror even makes you look thin. Sometimes you just need a little overpriced cappuccino, a fake christmas tree and a flat screen TV.

The three old men chatting away next to me look like old journalists, hair white-speckled, dark-rimmed glasses and distinguished. After smiling a lot in their direction I finally get up the courage to ask what they are discussing. The oldest one – the one with a full head of white hair – says, A little of everything. I ask them what they think about bailing out the American car industry and they say it’s a good idea if there are so many people relying on it for their livelihoods. But what about capitalism? I say. What about letting the free market do it’s business? I say. They shrug and smile. Why are we socialising our losses? I say. How this can help in the long term?

They are wiser than me. Or maybe shrugging and smiling makes them look wiser than me. I should practice that.

I ask if they are capitalists. They say, No! and shrink back as if I have asked them if they are mentally ill. And you, madame, what are you? one asks.

“Agnostic,” I say. They burst into laughter, they like that.

“Well then we are muslims,” he says with a wink in his voice.

“It’s funny. When you came to help African countries, you told us we must privatise everything and we did because we had no choice. But now…”

It’s true. I shrug and smile.

Niono, mid-July

2007-10-04T17:29:00.000Z

Today is Saturday and I spend it removing the desert from my house, together with the stiff body of a dead frog, I push a few live ones out the back door with the broom, and an assortment of dead insects, I mop and sweep, I dust once, twice, three times – there is still dust – I feel the sweat slide down my nose and wobble at the end of it before dropping to the ground.

the night

2007-10-03T09:12:00.000Z

The night is full of termites losing their wings and performing violent death wiggles on the floor ; the porch light has been assaulted by bugs of all types, they scatter and crawl over the white tiles, like black pepper spilt, grasshoppers clinging to the inside of curtains and beetles spinning on their backs – breakdancing! – and curling their legs around the air. The frogs are trying to get in, too. Every time I pass the back door, I glimpse a fat one eyeing up the gap that the welders left between the door and the floor.

a bamako rooftop, twilight

2007-06-13T18:16:00.002Z

TTCL !

2007-03-24T12:33:00.003Z

“TTCL!” As a bright yellow pick up truck passes by us, I shout and then see an arm pumping the air from the driver’s window. The Tanzanian Telecommunications Company Limited has just modernised, opening a flashy new office in town and offering broadband service that, according to the adverts, appears to zoom out of your computer like a whoosh of broadband brilliance, blowing your hair and eyebrows back in surprise.

Everything is yellow. There is a Thunderbirds-like fleet of various yellow vehicles – a pick-up, a landcruiser, a “bajaji” (auto-rickshaws imported from Bangladesh where they are now illegal). We half expect a yellow helicopter, a yellow fighter jet, a yellow speedboat with little wooden-mouthed TTCL operatives. I wonder if my bicycle – a bright yellow Giant Rock 4000 – could ever be part of the team.

The sign out the front, which lights up at night, is yellow. Half the building is painted yellow. The high-quality collared t-shirts worn by the staff are yellow. The counter is yellow-topped. The pre-paid phone cards are slashed with yellow, under the obligatory picture of a broadband internet user being blown away by TTCL’s power and speed.

Unfortunately, TTCL’s power and speed is almost entirely restricted to the broadband service itself and is barely apparent anywhere else, including the necessary step of getting connected. As it seems often happens here, the splash of new equipment and the flashy front of a renovated office – all massive glass windows and yellow paint – have arrived before the knowledge and skills. There are any number of answers to our question, “How do we get connected?” depending on who we talk to, what time of day it is and perhaps what the person has had for breakfast. It seems there is as much logic.

We make regular visits to the yellow building and have made friends with the lady whose job description seems to include only 1) greeting 2) apologising and, 3) evading of difficult, indeed, any questions regarding TTCL services. However, she is so lovely and wants to be our friend – she said so – that we cannot get angry and the daily visits have become part of our routine. There is a comfortable, if miniature, couch (perhaps purchased from a catalogue that misrepresented its size?) and – gracious – a working water cooler. So we get comfortable, grab a newspaper, a plastic cup of icy water, have a chat with the floor manager about the rain and settle in.

One day we walk in and our friend greets us wearing a fabulous fake fur, leopard-spotted, coat with raised collar over her yellow shirt. She seems down and we ask what’s wrong? We don’t like to see her unhappy and she sniffs and tells us, “mafua” (a cold). There is none of her usual humour in her greeting, or apologising or evasion of our daily question, so we leave early and wish her a quick recovery.

The most elusive and enigmatic and, yes it is possible, unfriendly member of the TTCL team we have named, Lambchops (we have never got close enough to see his nametag), due to his bushy sideburns and Pulp Fiction style not-quite-afro. Lambchops could easily walk into a seventies funk band and not look out of place. He is dark-skinned and unamused with the world. He is not impressed with our daily TTCL antics and is not interested in being our friend, indeed he seems to act as if we do not exist at all. Perhaps he resents the fact that he is not in a Seventies band, or simply that he must wear yellow.

It was somewhere around the time of our daily visits to TTCL, when we lost all hope of ever experiencing the eyebrow-raising whoosh of broadband so well advertised (and for which we had already paid). This was when we subconsciously and simultaneously decided that the only response to such absurdity is absurd amusement – that the only way to carry on without Losing It, is to laugh and realise that Customer Service is not a universal concept. Luckily both of us rely on a similar philosophy in the face of the daily corruptions and inefficiencies that the national corporations thrive on. I am sure that Sartre, Camus and the like might have appreciated such absurdity, a perfect example of the Myth of Sisyphus. As he eternally rolls his rock up the mountain – he must be laughing, or Losing It. I prefer to think of him laughing.

It was somewhere around this time, long before we got connected, that we began to shout in the street every time we saw one of the yellow fleet whizz past us. They just seemed to be having such fun caning around town in their various vehicles that we could barely begrudge them their complete lack of customer service. The indignant horror of the American Consumer who, knowing her rights, demands them without shame and often without patience doesn’t work here. In fact, it often has the opposite effect – I’ve seen the effect of an irate Customer on a government employee. It is possible to pinpoint the moment when heels dig in, eyes glaze over and some paperwork suddenly becomes urgent. Either that or they just disappear out the back never to return.

We were connected a week and a half ago, just two months after we walked into the yellow world of TTCL, and now enjoy the whoosh of broadband at a ridiculous speed, while my parents in California struggle to download my photos on their dial-up connection.

Every time a yellow TTCL vehicle passes us now, we lift our fist in solidarity and shout “TTCL!” My favourite is the yellow bajaji (auto-rickshaw) because of the inherent ridiculousness of a 10 foot ladder lashed to the roof and four or five blokes (technicians, TTCL employees, randoms?), squished inside and hanging off the side. If you’ve never seen an auto-rickshaw, it is essentially a three-wheeled motorbike with a metal hood that covers the back seat and the driver’s seat. I have always wanted to own one – it is a dream that other people might have about owning a Vespa, hair blowing in the wind etc. – and to cruise around town giving people lifts.

One day, when I have sufficiently buttered up the TTCL crew, I will joyride with them all around town, shouting “TTCL!” and shaking my fist out the open side of the bajaji.

But until then, we will continue to pass by the office, sit reading the papers and shooting the shit with floor manager. We will squeeze into the miniature couch with plastic cups of cold water. And we will be thankful for TTCL: Bringing People Closer Together.

Jon's 30th

2007-03-22T11:20:00.000Z

Ethiopia. In bits

2007-02-10T15:54:00.000Z

Arriving

Yesterday the Ethiopian Prime Minister rocked up to our hotel along with 2,000 Ethiopian farmers wearing identical chalk white caps and t-shirts. It was National Farmers’ Day and the farmers, rows upon rows of white caps and t-shirts, watched young traditional dancers shimmy and step in the traditional style. They all wore white and the girls had Queen of Sheba hairdos. The next morning we saw the Ethiopian Prime Minister on TV talking to the nation about the troops they’ve sent to Somalia and the bombing of the major airports. The sharp american accent of the BBC World newsreader comes in over the top telling us it could unbalance the fragile stability of the region. The newsreader uses the word, Islamists.

The Joker, Bahir Dar

The B____ bar is red and tiny and packed on both sides with people sitting on low wooden chairs and stools. There’s a bar at the back (also full of people) and to the right of it a door out to the bluelit alleyway behind. A man with a mini drumkit sits in the space between the door and the bar. Dressed in traditional white garb with a wooden instrument held low on his waist, the top end pressing into his shoulder, a man strolls back and forth in the tiny amount of floorspace afforded him. His instrument is guitar-like, but with a diamond-shaped body and one thick blue string that he manipulates with his fingers and palm, drawing a curved wooden bow across the bottom. The place is packed with young Ethiopians and I can see their shoulders wiggling to the beat. The man with diamond guitar strolls back and forth, his eyes sparkly and mischievous. He has the look of a joker and sings little ditties making fun of people in the room. A big man behind the bar leans over a young man’s shoulders and drunkenly sings a ditty of his own. Four lines.
“You say, ‘How are you?’ in English.” The joker repeats the phrase with a flourish of his bow.
“I say, ‘How are you?’ in Amharic.” Again, and some more bow.
“How can we understand each other?” Repeated and a flourish.
“But in bed, there is no problem!”
The bar goes mad with everyone clapping and laughing. The drums kick in and everyone is smiling at us.

The Boatman, Lake Tana

The hotel manager is strange and sleazy with a cleanly shaven head, he invites us for a coffee, and then for wine after ripping us off on the boat trip to the monasteries. The Ghion Hotel looks right out over Lake Tana and there are pelicans on a pile of rock nearby and hornbills making noise in the high branches of the trees. A nervous monkey collects bits of food left over from the Farmers’ Day celebrations.
We spend Christmas day, lazy start, trying to avoid the manager who seems to appear instantly at our sides, as if he has sniffed the air and smelled us coming. We avoided him and his flashy mobile phone, jumping off the large, clean tourist minibus at the last minute when we realised that we didn’t want to spend the day with other tourists. We caught the nice boatman (who also seems to get screwed by the sleazy manager) and did a deal with him to take us to the mouth of the blue nile river. He’d taken us out to the island monasteries the day before and made animated jokes to the Ethiopian couple from Addis Ababa we shared the trip with. Later the couple told us what he’d be saying, imitating different nationalities and their tipping habits – Japanese, American, French, English.
“You say your price in birr and the Japanese are tentative.” The boatman bows his head and makes a mmmm noise, imitating his Japanese customer. “You ask him then, What about 50 dollars? And the Japanese looks up smiles say yes yes yes and gets the money out straight away.”
“Americans? No problem – they leave big, enormous tips. And Germans, too. the French are difficult and the English,” he says, knowing we are English and the trip is not over yet, “are fair. If they get good service, they will tip you nicely.”

The boatman is embarrassed that his jokes have been translated to us by the man from Addis Ababa with the gold tooth and gel in his thinning hair. His girlfriend/wife/woman is younger and beautiful and quietly smiles. But we all egg him on and ask, What about Ethiopians? How do they tip?

The girlfriend is scared of the boat tipping and smiles nervously every time someone climbs in or out of the boat. While we wait at the bottom of the island at the top of which the monastery sits in a green cloud of foliage, she teaches me one to ten in Amharic and writes the script next to my own phonetic spellings. She seems pleased to help me and I think, with her beauty and quietness, she would make a good teacher. We are not allowed on the island because, as women, we would be a huge distraction to the monks who have there without such distractions on their turf since the middling ages. No Entrance For Lady. The men brought us back a photograph of this sign and of the ancient books of Mattius, Marcus, Luka, and Johannes, and of frescoes and of a monk holding a Lalibela Cross.

While we waited for the men to visit the monastery, we shared bananas and the boatman told us the story of an Italian woman who refused to accept that she wasn’t allowed up with the men, marched straight up to the gate beyond which the path led up the hill to the monastery. Our boatman sat on the dock drawing a sign for a monk who had emerged from the bushes. He traced the sun-faded symbols with his pen. The Italian woman was stopped at the gate by some Ethiopians – maybe the monks themselves – and a fracas ensued, she wouldn’t give up, she shouted and tussled. Eventually a fellow Italian was able to calm her down. And she not pass through the gate. The boatman continues to trace the Amharic script as he tells the story, shaking his head, laughing. She was a crazy woman. The monk stood by, nodding. It seemed we women posed no distraction whatsoever to this monk. And I felt the slightest trace of resentment, the barest inkling of indignation at having been excluded from the monastery for simply not being a man. A memory of feminism/equality, that dirty word, where does that fit into tradition and religion?

st gabriel, monastery, ethiopia

2007-02-10T15:47:00.000Z

3 CORPSE PROVERBS

2007-01-19T18:30:00.000Z

No. 2
Adhabu ya kaburi aijua maiti.
The torment of the grave is known by the corpse.

No. 4
Aibu ya maiti aijua mwosha.
The corpse washer knows the defects of the deceased.
cf. No man is a hero to his wife.

No. 174
Mwosha hadhuru maiti.
The washer of corpses does no harm to the dead.

2007-01-11T09:30:00.000Z

Selections from FriendFinder
The Citizen, Tanzania
16th December 2006

A woman of 27 years is interested to meet a man aged 35-45 for a serious relationship. She [sic] has to be a polite person who is thinking about life, no smoking, I would like a Christian. NB. Not drunker. Hobbies: Discussion especially about life, studying and reading novels. Contact:

A man of 49 years is interested to meet a woman/man aged 29-50 for serious relationship. She must be from Tanzania or any country. Hobbies: reading, swimming and singing. Contact:

A man of 29 years is interested to meet a women aged 20-29 for marriage. She should be Christian ready to test HIV, with a tendency of vision. Hobbies: Choir, travelling and hard working. Contact:

A man of 55 years is interested to meet a woman aged 35-50 for serious relationship. She has to be tall and business oriented. Hobbies: Reading newspapers & books.

A man of 20 years is interested to meet a woman aged 18-22 for serious relationship. She should be ambitious and ready to send picture. Hobbies: reading, English instructor. Contact:

A man of 33 years is interested to meet a woman aged 28-31 for serious relationship. He has to be understanding, from Europe. Hobbies: everyday learning about everything. Contact:

A woman of 22 years is interested to meet a man aged 25-30 for penpal. She [sic] has to be Christian, educated, charming. Hobbies: traveling, reading the word of God and chatting. Contact:

A man of 37 years is interested to meet a woman aged 22-26 for marriage. She has to be from Marangu, at least form six and must be Christian. Hobbies: sports in general. Contact:

A man of 30 years is interested to meet a woman aged 20-35 for serious relationship. She must be Muslim from Tabora/Mwanza with Secondary level education. Hobbies: playing football. Contact:

A woman of 30 years us interested to meet a man aged 33-45 for serious relationship. Honesty, trustworthy, any colour/tribe, polite. Hobbies: Singing, walking on the beach, children. Contact:

Pope Valley, 11th August

2006-12-15T04:23:00.000Z

My young nephew says, “You’ll never guess what’s in the freezer!” and everyone laughs. We had just been discussing the birth of eight Irish Wolfhound puppies, my mum and dad proud and exhausted parents, up at three in the morning to the whimper and scuffle of little paws as they make sure that the canine mother does not inadvertently squish a puppy beneath her enormous frame. I wonder about that and, if I had eight puppies hanging off my teats, whether I wouldn’t inadvertently roll over on top of one or two.

“What’s in the freezer?” I don’t want to ask the question or hear the answer but my nephew is so excited about it, he’s bouncing on his skinny knees next to me on the couch, grinning. I have helped weigh the puppies and am aware that we only weighed seven little bundles of joy. So I think I know what is in the freezer.

I have come home for two weeks to Pope Valley California from Tanzania for a holiday, but specifically to be part of the rare event that all my family members are in the same place at once. It took me three days to get here and I am unsure if people should be allowed to travel so far in such a short space of time, without transport, without any process to account for time and space changing so drastically. Not to mention my bowels’ adverse reaction to additives, preservatives and e numbers.

I knew it would be a sort of circus. My mum fore-warned me that, ‘things will just be crazy’ and ‘ you’ll just have to bear with us’. Family circus aside, the shock and awe of America never softens no matter how many times you return. Culture shock manifests itself in many different ways, conscious and sub-conscious, external (large shopping malls and thousands of TV channels) and internal (longing to talk to someone who understands the meaning of hali halisi or why I went to Africa in the first place).

So, somewhere in the freezer, wrapped up and sitting snug in a ziplock bag, is the small frozen body of the eighth puppy. My parents are amused by the look of disgust on my face and the shock in my voice, “Are you serious?” My nephew, bouncing and grinning, nods his head frantically. “So, if I dig around in the back of the freezer looking for frozen peas, I might actually come across a frozen puppy?” My mum says, “No, no. He’s right at the front, just under the ice cube tray.” She finds this hilarious. I find it disturbing. I wonder if my parents are considering cryogenics.

There are many times on trips back to England or America from Tanzania, when I find myself asking, perhaps unfairly, “What would Tanzanians think?” At my parents house it is no different. I find myself wondering what Tanzanians would think of our massive American fridge, well stocked with all sorts of foods, drinks and condiments. But it is not a fair comparison. Some people have a picture in their heads that Africans live in ascetic simplicity in mud huts, that they are somehow nobler because of their lack of fridges and drinks and condiments. But Tanzanians are just like the rest of us – they like TV, big cars, money. What is noble about the Tanzanians I know, is that they do not give up their sense of humour about the absurdity of life, even when everything is shit and the Big Potatoes remain Big Potatoes despite rampant corruption and impotent politics.

And yet, as I watch my nephew go to open the freezer, I do feel fairly justified in asking myself, What would Tanzanians think about keeping a frozen puppy in the freezer?

The Wahehe, the local tribe, are reknowned for their ferocity (they successfully battled the Germans’ canons and guns back in the day, before being slaughtered), their tendency to commit suicide (Chief Mkwawa killed himself before the Germans could get to him) and the rumour that they eat dogs.

Some people say that the Hehe word for beans “dogi” was misunderstood by colonials. Others, say it is just a myth. I once came across a band of street kids trying to kill a scabby dog. Almost all the dogs here are mangy and quite often dangerous, rarely cute and cuddly, probably because people do not treat them as pets. Most dogs are locked up in small wooden ‘bandas’ during the day and let out at night when they become ferocious guards. The kids had tied ropes to the dog’s legs and were banging it against the pavement. I wondered how kids can be so cruel to animals. I wanted them to stop. But when I asked them what they were doing, the kids looked up at me and said, We are hungry.

I think about the frozen puppy in the freezer at my parents’ house. I think about the litter of puppies that were born near the rubbish hole in our garden here, under the papaya tree. One died of something mysterious and awful and I remember coming upon him in early morning, his body hard and taught, eyes open, vacant. I was heartbroken. And besides, what do you do with a dead dog?

Our Tanzanian freezer is tiny and anyway it never crossed my mind to put him in the freezer, even if there was a ziplock baggie big enough. Luckily for us, we have a night guard who helps us with the things that we didn’t grow up with – dead dogs, big rats, massive cockroaches, robbers. Valentino, an old and cheeky Hehe man, laughs bronchially every time we shout for him to throw out the body of a poisoned rat or tackle the black wasps that sting your eyes and temporarily paralyse you. He chuckles when he sees me, near to tears, as I show him the puppy corpse. He loves the fact that we need him. He says we are like his grandchildren.

My eight year old nephew is back to bouncing on the couch next to me, cackling. He wants me to look in the freezer, he wants me to look at the frozen puppy. He has all the enthusiasm for gore that his age demands. My brother is reading a book but I can see him smiling out of the corner of my eye. Everyone is vaguely amused by my repulsion and I know Valentino would be laughing, too, though perhaps for different reasons.

I disappoint my nephew and start pulling ingredients out of the cupboards for lunch. I would rather spend my time in California enjoying the family circus and appreciating the easy comfort, the kitchen appliances and the beauty of the oak speckled valley where my parents live.

Several months later, I am back in Tanzania, and it occurs to me to ask my parents why they were keeping the eighth puppy in the freezer. I am used to their eccentricities now, though it still disturbs me to think that I have been replaced by four Irish Wolfhounds, or that the cost of feeding such mammoth dogs is inappropriate if you plug it into my worldview. It seems somehow wrong to me when there is so much need elsewhere.

I have never directly said this to my parents for fear of upsetting them but also because it sounds unbelievably self-righteous. They have built their lives around their dogs and they love them without apology or embarrassment. So I am learning to do the same, to accept my parents for who they are and realise that long before dog shows and irish wolfhound paraphernalia, my parents devoted their entire lives to the two little blobs that became myself and my brother. They made us and then helped make us who we are and for that I am only just starting to be grateful.

My dad tells me the reason the eighth puppy was in the freezer. The ground was too hard to dig a grave deep enough to stop the coyotes from exhuming and munching on the body. Fair enough, I think.

2006-12-15T04:22:00.000Z

“It should not be physically possible to get from the banks of the Pepani river to Wyoming in less than two days, because mentally and emotionally it is impossible. The shock is too much, the contrast too raw. We should sail or swim or walk from Africa, letting bits of her drop out of us, and gradually, in this way assimilate the excesses and liberties of the States in tiny incremental sips, maybe touring through South America and Mexico before trying to stomach the land of the Free and the Brave.”
– Alexandra Fuller, Scribbling the Cat

clare in front of our house

2006-12-14T06:50:00.000Z

Beer Bottle Legs

2006-12-13T17:29:00.000Z

I have been away for no longer than a week, in the lowlands stretching towards the Mozambicque border, in Songea a southern regional town with red dirt and hot sun. I was attending a conference for the organisation I work for and we were put up in a crumbling government hotel attached to the football stadium, which also doubled as the Coka Cola depot. We woke every morning to the rhythmic crashing of crates of empty bottles thrown from truck to depot, from depot to truck.

The MajiMaji Complex smelled alternatively of urine and beer. My colleague warned me of cockroaches ‘the size of cats’ and I did see some the size of a small mobile phones scurry from the light as I walked into my room. The mosquito net seemed intact and yet still in the middle of the night, half awake, I sensed the little mozzies buzzing and in feverish half-sleep scratching bites. I woke up to red and raised bumps on suprising parts of my body. When I tried to inspect every corner of the net for stray mosquitoes I found a tag in the corner revealing it came from UNICEF.

On returning to Iringa, I feel like I am coming home. The mountains, scattered with boulders like God’s marbles, rise up behind the town.

As I walk into the office, Fatuma greets me with her massive smile and black beehive hair and I am happy to be back. Our office is based at the Municipal youth centre, which is little more than a massive hall and some rooms. There are some cool things, like a library with youth magazines and sexual health information and some funky half-finished wall murals depicting the issues that confront young people in Tanzania. But there is a long way to go before you might call it a youth centre as we know it.

Fatuma says, Karibu! And, Mbona umenenepa? Immediately I am irritated. I had forgotten that any time you go away and return, there are two things that will inevitably come up.

One, What have you brought me? Each region has its own speciality. If you go to Mbeya, you will be expected to return with lovely purple beans. If you go to Songea, they say, Bring us some sweet potatoes! If you go to Ilula, it is tomatoes, Tukuyu, green bananas, Dar-es-Salaam, anything.

Two, But why have you gotten so fat? What have you been eating there? You have been eating life, eh? Sweet life over there, eh? I try to explain to my Tanzania colleagues and, in fact, anyone who greets me with the rhetorical fat question, that In Our Culture, it is not a Good Thing to be fat. The question used to make me wonder whether I had in fact put on a few pounds or if I was wearing particularly unflattering outfit or if I’d eaten too many greasy omelettes on the road.

Fortunately, I enjoy food and drink just enough to want to stick with it, no matter how many people talk about my massive hips and bottom. No matter how big my hips and bottom truly are. Within reason. I am not into obesity.

After a few years of this, I have undertaken informal but continuous research every time I return from a trip. Often it has more to do with what clothes I am wearing (I’ve learned skirts are better than trousers) and just as often it seems completely random. Someone might exclaim, with characteristic mock surprise, how much weight I have put on and later the same day, someone else wonders at my slim figure. Someone else might say, Oh you were really fat back then, you are thin now.

If you actually listen to these remarks, you start to look at yourself through a wonky mirror, like trying to imagine how other people truly perceive you. It is impossible to judge. I turn around and around in front of the long mirror in our livingroom, like a dog getting ready to sleep. I look at my bum. Wiggle it. Is it really bigger? I try to gauge the snugness of my clothes. It’s true I would like to be slim and svelte and fit inside someone’s pocket. Everyone wants something impossible. But for the most part, for 99% of my waking life, I do not give it another thought. Until the next time I return from a trip and Faraja asks, “But why…”.

I force a little laughter, the culture of thin is not that easily cast off. I realise that there is no answer to this question. It is asked simply to remark that you have been away, living it up somewhere else and now you’re back. It is asked in the same way we might say, You look great or, You’re really tanned to someone returning from holiday. It is a way to answer the question of seeing someone again.

So I answer the question – though Faraja wasn’t looking for an answer in particular – with a list of foods that I have consumed in the past forty-eight hours. They all laugh and look me up and down, pinch my underarm just where the flab is. But you have a nice shape, a figure of 8. Not like those English figures. You have an African figure.

Great. English figure is what many of us have been striving to find underneath our flesh and bones (some less maniacally than others), the perfect slimline shape. African figure looks much better on Africans, I think.

As I walk out of the office, I shout over my shoulder, Tomorrow Jamani! And they shout back, Kesho! I can feel them watching me and I hear Faraja say, Cheki miguu, chupa za bia hizo! I know she is teasing me on purpose. She has told me before I have beer bottle legs. As opposed to what? I asked. Oh, we have legs like… soda bottles, maybe. It was if she had never thought about it. How do my legs look like beer bottles? She made a motion with her hand to show an upside-down beer bottle. I think of the thick brown Kilimanjaro bottles. Ah, the bulge of the calf.

Yesterday I was walking down the street, past the madness of the daladala stand – banana-sellers, colourful flipflops jumbled on tarpaulin, the pigadebe shouting at passengers, selling seats on the minibuses for small change, their eyes bloodshot, their breath boozy. Two young women walked past me and one said to the other, Wow, did you see those hips? I smile to myself and turn around long enough to catch their eyes and laugh, long enough for them to realise I understand.

UHURU Day

2006-12-10T11:43:00.000Z

Yesterday it was Uhuru Day. Tanzania turned fortyfive year old and there was an impressive show at the national grounds in Dar-es-Salaam with heads of state from all over East Africa, looking like large cartoon caricatures of themselves, on a big raised platform. I was hungover and mesmerized by the lines of colourful uniforms goosestepping (yes!) to the tune of a parping brass band. I sat in the coffee shop near my house for over an hour watching it all unfold on TV (the coffee shop is patronised by the ruling political party and never have their power cut).

The president got up and made appropriate jokes about his older fellow heads of state. Jakaya Kikwete is like a Tanzanian JFK - young and charismatic. I ordered a fanta orange, wrapped my omlete in a chapati and listened as he made a prosaic speech about how the Colonials left nothing behind when they buggered off (true). He said, before independence, Tanzanians were not allowed to drink beer! If you were caught drinking beer, you could be fined or thrown in jail. You were told to drink pombe ya kinyeji (local brew) instead. But now it is a measure of how far Tanzania has come that everyone can drink as much beer as they want.

I munched on the egg chapati wrap and sipped sugary chai, and thought it was an interesting point for the independence day celebrations. Beer, local brew, oppression. Everyone likes beer.

Kikwete went on. People My Age, he said, remember the days of collecting water from the bomba. People my age only studied to the fourth year of primary school. And look how far we have come. We now have thousands of primary schools and millions of students; we have 22 universities; we have a national grid; we have plumbing.

After the military displays, the four thousand blue tracksuited school students, the aeronautical flyby, the national anthem, the speech about the Colonials and Beer and what it was like ‘back in the day’, Kikwete stood silent at the podium. The national stadium is massive and the commentator remarked that thousands of people stood outside, refused entry. All waited in silence. It started to spit but the thousands of blue tracksuited students sat still on the field. We were all mesmerized.

An old man sitting close to the TV screen shouted to the woman in the kitchen without taking his eyes from the screen, Oi! Where are my gizzards! I am very hungry!

Then Kikwete broke the silence by leading the crowd in singing the ‘popular birthday wish song’ Happy Birthday To You into the microphone. His voice cracked at the high note, his sweet accented english was perfect. He paused then went straight on to the second verse, How Old Are You Now?. In the coffee shop, the old man sitting close to the screen laughed abruptly.

What? I looked around the coffee shop. There was the old man in front of the TV, the woman with the dodgy leg sat behind the counter looking unsurprised and some kids played with empty coke bottles by the door.

Did noone find this amusing or vaguely absurd? Kikwete’s entire speech was made in Kiswahili and most of the Heads of State had nodded along, seeming to understand the linguafranca of East Africa. The colonials had left us nothing: no piped water, no electrical grid, no university, few medical facilities. The things they built were for their own benefit. Surely, he would sing in Kiswahili, not the language of the Colonials. Surely there was another way to celebrate independence from the oppressors than to sing an English birthday ditty? The kids spun the empty bottle and the woman behind the counter shouted to the girl in the kitchen about the gizzards.

It was over and I was glad that Kikwete did not go on to sing the final verse, You Look Like a Monkey. The blue tracksuits marched out of the stadium waving little Tanzanian flags on sticks. The old man’s gizzards had still not arrived. The Heads of State walked down the red-carpeted stairway one by one looking grand and stately. Then, one by one, they clambered into a posh curtained minibus, reminding us that they were only people after all.

I thought about how much money was spent on the UHURU Day celebrations. All those blue tracksuits, all those Heads of State, the aeroplanes, the little flags on sticks, the military, the brass band. And I wondered why all the pomp and circumstance is so important when there are far more pressing issues to deal with. There has been no regular electricity in Tanzania since July. There is not enough water to power the hydroelectric dams. Poverty, HIV, TB, Malaria, drought, gender-based violence, child labour, corruption.

And at the same time I found myself mesmerized by the rows of men and women in colourful uniforms, moving in unison, not a leg out of place, oddly comforted by the guns they clutched and their disciplined and precise movements, respectful of the ridiculous goosestepping. As I finished my tea, I found myself smiling at the formation of blue tracksuited students, spelling out 45 Years of Independence (Miaka 45 ya Uhuru), across the stadium field. I laughed with the old man when Kikwete’s voice cracked on the high note.

Because after all Tanzania is massive and poor and corrupt but it is peaceful. And how can I possibly imagine how important it is to mark your independence when I have never been dependent, when the small island where I was born has not been occupied since the Normans invaded in 1066.

I still think that they could have found another song – would Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the first leader of an independent United Republic of Tanzania and one of the few African leaders of his time to have stepped down in favour of a semi-democratic process, have sung Happy Birthday To You?

southern highlands goat

2006-12-07T11:49:00.000Z

a rock, a tree, a cloud and me

2006-12-07T06:48:00.000Z

lionking rock, iringa

2006-12-07T06:33:00.000Z

full moon dusk coming down the mountain

2006-12-06T18:17:00.000Z

Vicky at the mic

2006-11-29T19:24:00.000Z

Check out

http://iringayouth.tripod.com

for more information about Positive Voices radio project

Iringa, Tanzania

bottoms up

2005-11-01T19:28:00.000Z

Sima and Baobab

2005-11-01T19:27:00.000Z

2005-10-08T05:07:00.000Z

Sima

2005-10-08T04:55:00.000Z

"Be civilised when you go into the toilet"

2005-10-08T04:52:00.000Z

maximum speed

2005-10-08T04:51:00.000Z

Gunners!

2005-10-08T04:49:00.000Z

pose: Ras the human microphone.

2005-10-08T04:38:00.000Z

2005-10-08T04:18:00.000Z

when we got back from lake malawi, we popped over the malawi border and had some authentic malawian beer, Carlsberg, otherwise known as Greenie. Our guide was a friendly money-changer who told us that we could walk straight across the border and noone would stop us (remember my passport is somewhere in the dusty halls of tz immigration in dar-es-salaam) and it was true. we walked through and behind the building to a bar with a pool table and a view of the bridge and the border office. how bizarre. our money-changing friend bought us beers in kwacha and we gave him the 'equivalent' in tz shillings. he surely ripped us off, but it was worth it for the small euphoria of stepping over a line that you're not technically supposed to step over and having a cold beer (no cold beer where we had been for 3 days sweating on the beach). i had clare's digital camera and we took pictures of people and showed them smaller versions of themselves on a tiny screen. they loved it. there were three old ladies who asked to have their picture taken. a very tall skinny lady, a medium tall one and a short toothless lady with a red scarf wrapped around her head. they said, take a picture! and i showed them their tiny selves and they pointed at the screen and recognised themselves. there was much hand slapping, cackling with delight and telling me i was mjanja (clever), the short one with a wrinkly hand over her toothless mouth. i ran back down the bridge to catch up with the others on the way back to the car, as i looked over my shoulder they were still laughing and being amazed and waving at me and shaking their finger at me as if i were personally responsible for the wonders. on the way to lake malawi, hamim told us about how the earth was created according to the koran, but on the way back he was grumpy because ramadan had begun and it was his first day of fasting. we were all eating sweet small bananas, because we were all christian or unsure. we were hungry.

2005-09-08T14:25:00.000Z

me an irene

2005-08-29T14:11:00.000Z

The Captian, Rashid and mates

Wachawi

2005-08-29T13:50:00.000Z

Adapted from what The Captain said, on a dhow sliding through the Indian Ocean, at the beginning of July

If you need to get rid of a curse -
for example if people are jealous of your good fortune or see you are friends with lots of white people or think the white people are giving you lots of money...

then you need one black cow eye, lemons, a verse of the Koran and a piece of tree root. you need a mganga (witch doctor) a real one, not a faker who will run off with all your money.

you must walk inland - the tree is a dry tree and is only found inland - you walk until you cannot see anyone, noone at all. then you take off all your clothes and walk for a hundred metres. dig a little under the tree and take a piece of the root. then walk back (you are still naked) without blinking or flinching or showing surprise if you see a person, to where you left your clothes. get dressed. when you get home mix everything together and put to one side, in a safe but easily accessible place.

2005-08-29T13:41:00.000Z

watches

coast to coast

2005-07-22T06:54:00.000Z

we're up at seven to catch the 8 o'clock bus and when we get to the road with our bags we see it hurtling towards us piled high with sacks of coconuts and luggage on the roof. in front of it is a white pick up truck with three guys in the back - it slides to a halt, engine still running do we want a lift let's go Tanga Tanga! i look back at the bus closing in remember the large pair of breasts stuck in my face for 2 hours and the clatterbang bumps of the road and the stifling heat inside the bus. I look hopefully at clrea and zach, What do you think?

2005-06-26T17:03:00.000Z

Valentino.

I
We have become accustomed, every night at around nine o’clock, to filling the electric kettle half-way and boiling it up for a cup of coffee for Valentino. He sits outside on an old pillow on the concrete stoop that runs around the outside of the house. These days, he wears a long khaki trench coat with a hood (which is always up) and the grey wooly balaclava that frames his face, a weathered leathered dark brown circle of a cheeky grin. It is windy and cold at night and there is no banda to protect him from the cold. He says that all the other guards refuse to come to our house because it is a hard environment with no protection from the chill of southern highlands’ nights. He says, “Fide!” (he pronounces it almost like Fidel) “Fide!” he shouts from outside, “Mbona hujaweka sukari?” He seems genuinely distressed. He wants more sugar. I tell him his teeth will fall out at this rate and he laughs, I’m already an old man and I still have my teeth! He taps his teeth and, indeed, they are still there. He stands there grinning at my youthful ignorance, holding out the cup. We have learnt that the ideal formula is 5:1 sugar to coffee – anything less and Valentino won’t drink it. We are going through sugar like nobody’s business. We have become wrapped around Valentino’s little finger, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. He has become a member of this bizarre family of four young people living together, a sort of mischievous grandfather and guardian not just of the house and its contents and us, but also of something as constant and reliable as a cup of sugary coffee every evening.