AWOL

I just checked and discovered that my last entry was on the 11th of last month! I've been AWOL for nearly a month now!

I actually have some good reasons (at least I think so!):

1. My sister in law, with whom I get on famously, came to town. We seemed to spend the entire time talking and doing not much else. During one marathon session which lasted from 7pm to 4 am, I lost my voice and ended up croaking for two days!
2. After she left, I suddenly came down with one of these inexplicable, unexplainable African bugs that seem to float around and attack when you're not looking

I'm currently still in the recovery phase although I'm well enough to make short excursions to Seacliff and Slipway. I spend most of my time at home attempting to keep my food down and endeavoring to ignore a mild but persistent headache.

The good news is, I've had a lot of time on my hands. I wish I could say that I spent it reading the significant works of Hemingway and Steinbeck but I can't say that. Instead I am forced to admit that I spent the time watching the insignificant works of Grant (as in Hugh) and Swayze (as in Patrick).

While doing that, I arrived at a couple of 'life-altering' conclusions:

1. 'Ghost' still provides great entertainment even though the people who did the special effects must feel defeated when they watch the movie now and realize that bad cartoons have better effects these days.
2. Hugh Grant looks like a total idiot in 'Sense and Sensibility' with that scarf-thing around his neck.


I suppose the movie people were forced to have him wear it since all men presumably dressed that way in that era.



I thought I'd feel guilty about spending almost two whole days watching anything and everything on TV but surprisingly, I don't! I just hope I don't get totally hooked and turn into a gigantic couch potato!

Tanzania's Finest?

I was stopped by a policeman at the corner of Haile Sellasie Road last week.

I was hot and bothered because the air-conditioning in my car is behaving badly and refuses to drop below a certain temperature. Heat always puts me in an bad mood and I was dying to get home and cool off when I spied a policeman standing right in the centre of the road, waving at me to pull over.

I don't really want to admit it but I seriously considered slamming my foot down on the accelerator so he'd get scared and jump out of my way. In Dar, there's no real fear of being hunted down on a high speed chase because policemen rarely have vehicles at their disposal. They all get dropped off at their various corners during the day and presumably picked up at the end of the day.

(Some of them have a horrifying habit of just opening the passenger door and jumping into your car when you slow down at a corner. Then they'll make you drop them off at the police station - this is especially true when it rains as the poor Engineer can testify!)

Anyway, at the last moment, I decided to do the sensible thing and stop. The guy greeted me and then proceeded to rattle off in Swahili but of course I didn't understand a word he was saying. When he discovered this, he began a long lecture on why I should know the national language of Tanzania since I've been here for quite a while (he made it a point to ask how long I've been here the moment he established that I'm Malaysian) .

At this point, I was really beginning to regret not having run him over earlier but it was too late.

He eventually got to the point and asked for my license. When he couldn't find anything wrong with that, he asked if I had a reflector and fire extinguisher in my car (these are a must for every vehicle according to local law). I felt a mild wave of panic because I couldn't remember if I had them in the boot. So I did the only thing women do when they're caught in a situation like this - I pretended to have a 'blonde' moment.

Instead of opening the boot, I opened the door of the fuel tank and then the bonnet and then I told him I didn't know how to get the boot open. The policeman, who had been patiently waiting, decided that I really was a bimbo and went round to the back of the car to try and pry open the boot himself. Fortunately, he failed ( the Engineer later informed me that all the necessary items were in the boot so I pulled the blonde act for nothing!).

The policeman finally managed to catch me out when he asked for the vehicle registration card. Of course I didn't have it because I drive a rented car and told him so (only the owner has the registration card). Nevertheless, claimed my annoying policeman in a authoritative tone, I should have it in the car at all times. He went on to inform me that it would cost TSH20,000 for this 'offence' but he would benevolently forgo this if I offered him another amount.

I had reached the end of my patience long ago and was in no mood to play ball with the guy so I pulled out TSH5,000 and gave it to him just to shut him up.

The guy took it, said thank you and - this is the best part - asked me to take down his private phone number. Apparently he wanted to teach me Swahili! Thinking that it would be easiest if I just did what he said, I keyed his number into my phone (under Corrupt Policeman).

I thought he'd finally let me go but no...he had one last trick up his sleeve. He wanted me to give him my phone number as well! I was ready to slap him so I gave him my best "don't mess with me" look . It didn't work because then he asked, "do you have a husband?".

This was the final straw so I replied "yes and I can give you his number if you like. Maybe you can call him instead". He mumbled an apology but I was already rolling up my screen and shifting gear. This time, I really would have driven over his foot if he hadn't jumped out of the way.

Can you imagine the cheek of this Corrupt Policeman? First he asks me for money when I had done nothing wrong and then he asks me for my number. I suppose he was planning to take me out to lunch with the TSH5,000 I had given him. What an idiot!!!!

The Dar Three

I grew up in Malaysia and back then ( I sound like a grandma!) people were far more reticent about showing affection in public.

Translation: you shook hands when you met your friends or you just waved and said hi....nobody and I mean nobody ever did the kiss on the cheek thing.

That was something we watched in the movies or witnessed with glee as Malaysian students returning on holiday from the US, UK or Australia tried in vain to incorporate into local society. They usually ended up making a fool of themselves because the recipient would do either or all of these:

1. Totally freeze and look horrifically uncomfortable as they barely tolerated the kiss
2. Pull away as the kiss-er tried to approach with pursed lips
3. Inadvertently poke the kisser in the stomach as they would have extended their hand for a shake at the same moment the kiss-er leaned forward
4. Rudely and angrily ask "what are you doing?" much to the embarrassment of the unfortunate kiss-er

Things have changed now and almost everyone does the kiss-on-the-cheek when they meet. In fact, it is now bordering on the ridiculous since people who barely know each other are cheek- kissing on the street!

I was initially not very happy about this type of greeting (response no.1 was my usual reaction) especially if some drunken male acquaintance I hardly knew decided to slobber all over my cheek. Yuck!

Initial reluctance aside, these days it's become 2nd nature for me to plant kisses upon various cheeks (in case you're wondering, I do practice some level of quality control... ... for instance, I don't kiss the plumber when he turns up to fix a leaky tap although I know him quite well, thanks to the stupid tap!)

While I may be relaxed about this sort of greeting these days, I still take issue with one thing...the number of kisses you're supposed to plant on someone's cheek.

Back home in KL, one kiss on just one cheek or one on each cheek seems to be the norm. I've casually observed that younger people tend to kiss on both cheeks while the more mature portion of the population go in for only one (incidentally, many Muslim people do not do the cheek kiss greeting - lucky things!)

I'm one of those who thinks one kiss on each cheek (i.e two total) is already too many. I was NOT prepared for what I have to deal with here in Dar.

Over here, it's not one, not two but THREE kisses. One on each cheek and then you go back to the first cheek for the third kiss. I mean, I know the pace of life here is rather pole-pole but who the heck has time to go kissing everyone 3 times!

The Dar 3 seems especially popular among the local Mohindi (Indian) crowd. I wonder if some smarty pants is going to try and add another kiss and make it the Dar 4. Maybe if I stay here till 2010, it'll be the Dar 23.

I sincerely hope not!

The Web

I'm afraid of many things and among these are dirty public toilets, camping and appearing at a dinner party in the same dress as someone else. In the natural world, I have to say snakes in particular and reptiles in general give me the creeps. Strangely enough, spiders have never really been the stuff of my nightmares - until now that is!

Even people who keep spiders as pets would find the following photo, if not disturbing, at least a little creepy:



Doesn't it look like something straight out of Stephen King's imagination? Here is the picture again in horror movie mode:



I actually felt a chill run down my spine when I saw them. I'm not even scared of spiders ( I actually used to play with them as a kid!) but the sight of so many large ones crawling about was a little too much for me!


I heard about this giant web from a newfound friend, L, whom I met at a birthday lunch a few weeks ago. She'd spied it while jogging through a residential area and her enthusiastic description of it ("its the BIGGEST spider web I've EVER SEEN and there were at least TWENTY SPIDERS there) propelled me to go and check it out.

After getting over my initial shock, I decided that I would take some pictures. I felt that it was the only way anyone would believe me when I told them about The Web ( I have to admit that I initially thought L was exaggerating!)

I got out of the car and stood as close as I dared (which was still a good distance away!) A few local people happened to walk past and saw me fiddling about with my camera, aiming at the spiders and they all looked at me like I was nuts. Maybe they're used to 1 meter-wide spider webs complete with 20 large spiders attached and were wondering what all the fuss was about!

In the end, my nerves got the best of me and I couldn't get close enough to get a good shot with my tiny camera. I related the whole thing to The Engineer who was immediately gripped by an urge to go and have a look for himself.

He bravely got a lot closer than I did and the photos are the result of his courage. I think this particular picture he took is exceptionally good:





It looks like the thing has managed to defy gravity and is hanging, mid-air. Eeeewww!!!! Despite the horror captured in the photos, I think it was a lot worse looking at the spiders live because they would all suddenly start crawling around on the web! Ghastly!

I would have imagined that an amazingly horrible web of this size would be hanging sinisterly in the recesses of some dark Amazonian jungle and not in the middle of a residential area in the biggest city in Tanzania.

This sort of thing always reminds that, in the end, we shouldn't be surprised because TIA - This Is Africa!

Zanzibar Secrets

To me, one of the most dangerous places in Dar is not the area in town called Kariakoo (where pickpockets apparently wait to pounce on the unsuspecting) or the deep waters around the little islands off the coast (where sharks apparently wait to do the same).
No...one of the most dangerous places in Dar sits innocently enough along Haile Selassie road and looks really innocuous.

Zanzibar Secrets is a little place which sells beautiful things at not-so-low prices. In fact, if you enter, without thinking, you're likely going to leave at least USD50 poorer.

This is a bad thing for innocent foreigners (mainly expat wives) who might find themselves driving past quite frequently. It's especially bad because women here are starved of any good boutiques and the allure of Zanzibar Secrets on an idle afternoon is particularly difficult to resist.

You'll be lured by the pretty, picturesque window dressing and the gorgeously tall, proud Zanzibar doors.



Once inside, there's no turning back....


There are lovely Zanzibarian tops, loose-fitting but stylish pants, beaded necklaces and bags and intricately-made lamps, all priced above what you would pay if you weren't dying for a good place to shop! The worst part is, all these lovely items seem to know your name and have no qualms calling it repeatedly until you find yourself delving into your purse to pay for them!

I've fallen prey, many a time and have now learned to keep my eyes on the road (where they should be in the first place!) when I drive past.

Despite this resolve, I've succumbed (most recently, about a week ago) and found myself coming out of the place in a daze holding somethingI never intended to buy in the first place.

Evidently, one of the secrets referred to in Zanzibar Secrets is getting their customers into a trance-like during which said customers make purchases that they never planned to in the first place!

Ras Kutani

Oooh! I had the best weekend ever!

Last Friday afternoon, The Engineer and I decided to go for a weekend getaway at Ras Kutani at South Beach. We'd heard wonderful things about it but our previous attempts at going were thwarted for one reason or another. So, this time, when the opportunity arose to spend a night, we decided to go for it.

This trip was possibly the most unplanned, last minute thing I have ever done in my life! I'm one of those boring people who have to have 5 contingency plans and a list of things to take on the trip even before I know the exact date of departure.

So, deciding on a Friday afternoon to go somewhere on Saturday morning is definitely a craaaazzzzzy thing for me to do. I felt so proud of myself for 'hanging loose' and being all laid-back but this feeling lasted all of two hours - between 2pm (when we made the decision) and 4pm (when I realized I hadn't packed yet). My momentary pride of being 'cool' went out the window as I reverted to my old anal-retentive self again.

Even though it was an overnight trip, a girl's got to have her essentials:

1. Moisturizer, toner, cleanser and other toiletries
2. A good stack of undies (you can never pack too many of those)
3.Makeup kit i.e perfume, base, liner, lipsticks (in about 5 shades. One never knows when one will be in the mood to go Purple Passion or Raspberry Pink)
4. Medicine kit i.e panadol, plasters, pills for going to the loo, pills to prevent you going to the loo etc
5. Swimsuit and related paraphernalia such as large, floppy hat, sarongs, flip-flops and the beach bag to carry it all in style
6. Sunscreen, mosquito repellent
7. Books to read
8. Clothes ( a couple of evening dresses just in case you get invited to a party - hey you never know!)
9. Earrings, bracelets and other accessories (to match said evening dresses)

I was running up and down getting all this stuff together when The Engineer sauntered in at 5:30pm. He took one look at his empty bag, randomly grabbed some shorts, t-shirts and underwear, threw them into the bag and was done packing. Grrrrr....sometimes men are so infuriating even when they don't mean to be!

Anyway, it was all worth it because Ras Kutani is every bit as beautiful as everyone says it is.

I'll let the pictures do the talking:









We'd been lucky enough to get one of only four suites and it had a little private swimming pool:


We sat around and lazed all day, had food served to us and just read and read and read. I actually finished Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns and almost finished reading Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting in just 2 days!

If only we could live at Ras Kutani for 5 days a week and come to Dar to work on Saturday and Sunday.....

Where's your Fairy Godmother when you need her? I'll even make do with this evil one!



fairy godmother image from virginmedia.com

Green tea and spinach juice

Today is my writing day.

This is the day that I sit down and write in a disciplined manner i.e I'm at the computer for hours at a time.... no phone calls, no tv, no nothing. I know it sounds dangerously like some kind of prison sentence but believe it or not, I find uninterrupted writing time quite therapeutic.

In fact, I often get so involved that I don't think about lunch This happened to me today but instead of stuffing myself with cream-filled pastries and chocolates, I've decided to go for the saintly route:



That green thing in a glass is a spinach drink (I saw Dr. Oz and Oprah drink it and found the recipe on the web). The other two are water and a mug of green tea. I caught sight of all 3 sitting on my living room table and could hardly believe my healthy, healthy lunch break. How goody-goody am I?!

It doesn't last long, unfortunately. I'm going to go into starvation mode in a while and I'll grab the first high-calorie, low-nutrition thing I see. There's a packet of chocolate biscuits at the back of the shelf with my name on it!

I suppose it's easy to be goody-goody when you know you can be bad again soon!

The ATM Hop

I was patiently (okay, I'm lying - impatiently!) waiting in the queue at Seacliff to withdraw some much-needed cash from the ATM yesterday. For some reason, the person at the booth was taking an age and a day to complete the transaction. I was about to go into 'silent curse mode' when he came out and announced that the machine was out of service.

The guy standing behind me rolled his eyes and said "now we have to do the ATM hop". A non Dar-ian would have gone 'huh?' but I knew exactly what he was talking about.

We would all have to go to the next ATM to get our money. If our luck was bad, it wouldn't be working either and if our luck was really bad, neither would the next and the next.....
Hence the ATM Hop.

Inexplicably, the ATMs in Dar (around the Peninsular anyway) seem to go AWOL at the same time. Go figure!

Out of tofu!

This is the first time the word holiday has struck fear in my heart!



Okay, that's not clear so here it is again zoomed in for full effect:


A closed deli may not mean much in the ordinary world but here in Dar, that's like a lifeline shutting down! There are no mega supermarkets from which you can get everything you could ever want under one roof. In Dar, certain shops sell certain items and if one of them is closed you can only dream about getting it from another store.

For me, that translates to my precious slabs of irreplaceable fresh tofu!The worst part is, the Deli isn't closing for just a day or two but from June 26 to Aug 4 - horrors!

Eating tofu always makes me feel so healthy and virtuous even if I follow it by stuffing myself with a whole bar of chocolate.

Maybe I should take this as a sign and just eat junk for the next two months?

Hapana Swahili

Despite two years in Tanzania, I have a shameful lack of vocabulary when it comes to the country’s national language, Swahili. This probably also points to a shameful lack of interaction with the Tanzanians but that’s a whole other story.
At the moment, I believe I am proudly on par with the Swahili spoken by a 12-month old Tanzanian baby. The only words I seem to know are:

Asante – Thank you
Karibu – Welcome
Hapana santi – no thank you
Umeme -electricity
Mchicha – spinach
Duka – shop
Badai – later
Sasa - now

I also know some ‘cheat’ words which have the same meaning and pronunciation as Bahasa Malaysia/Malay (Malaysia’s national language) such as 'dunia' which means world.

I’ve been quite lazy about learning Swahili because the majority of Tanzanians speak at least a little English and I have met a number who are impressively articulate.

So, I’m left with no real reason to learn Swahili because I get along fairly well in English. The only person whom I actually feel the need to speak in Swahili with is my housekeeper and even though her grasp of English is pretty bad, it’s still worlds better than my Swahili!

I realized just how bad my Swahili is when I thought of translating “I Don’t Speak Swahili” for the title of this entry and could only manage hapana Swahili which literally means “no Swahili”

This is akin to someone saying “No English!” when they don’t speak the language. To think that I used to believe people like that were pathetic – now I’m one of them!

The slowest Cats ever!

If it’s possible to kill an Internet Service Provider I’d squeeze the life out of mine in a minute! I use Cats Net and it’s seriously slow. To give you an idea, it’s slower than say.... the Girls of the Playboy Mansion attempting to add 25 and 19 without the aid of a calculator.

I happen to love cats and I thought that a provider called Cats would be quick and have 9 lives (i.e be quite stable).

Instead I’m stuck with something that’s the exact opposite – it’s slow and dies often.

This is what happens when you sign up with a service provider because it’s called Cats and not because it’s known to be reliable. I’m trying not to but I think I have to blame myself!

The Heart of Dar-kness

I just survived a trip into the heart of Dar. It wasn't unlike Marlow in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (that's the Heart of Dar with 5 extra alphabets!).

In Conrad's novel, Marlow had to brave a harrowing journey up the Congo river complete with attacks from the natives. While I may not have had to grapple with the Congo river, I certainly had my share of harrowing experiences this morning and like Marlow - some of them involved the locals!

I drove into town today because The Engineer needed my help to collect something from a printer. Firstly, I had to deal with what must be the world's worst Giver of Directions. The lady at the printing shop was very polite and very sweet on the phone but she wouldn't have been able to tell me how to get from her elbow to her fingersnails leave alone give directions from the Movenpick Hotel to her shop!

She kept telling me to "go behind the Azam ice-cream store" when she meant 'go past the Azam ice-cream store' and when I asked her if I was supposed to take the 3 o'clock or the 12 o'clock at the roundabout, she thought I was asking her what time it was! Fortunately, I managed to get there despite her help. I shouldn't have been surprised by her bad directions though - this has happened to me before.

Unfortunately, my woes didn't end when I finally found her shop. On my way out of town I swear I encountered at least 2 dozen local people who must've been suicidal. They kept throwing themselves in front of my car just as I was driving by. The good people of Dar may possess many fine qualities but looking left and right before crossing the street isn't one of them!!!

As it were, I narrowly missed killing a number of people. I ended up driving around at 10kms an hour, my fingers clutching the steering and my nose practically touching the windshield just so I wouldn't run over anybody's toes!

Because I was so obsessed with not hitting anyone, it was really hard to keep track of exactly where I was going. I eventually realized that I had been going round and round the same area. I'm not exactly familiar with Dar town which features plenty of narrow two-way roads and inexplicable 'no-entry' signs so it was a real headache trying to figure a way out.

At one point, I felt like I was trapped in an episode of "The Twilight Zone"......forever doomed to be imprisoned in the hideous maze of Dar. The part of town near the coastline is really beautiful but I'd be lying if I claimed that the city center is pretty!

To prove my point, here is one road that skirts the coastline, leading into the city.....

....and another.....


Now, here's the city.....



...not exactly a vision of beauty!

I finally found my way out after battling for a good half hour and stepped on the accelerator because I was determined to get away as quickly as possible!

The next time The Engineer needs me to go to the printers, I'm going to drag him with me. You won't catch me going in there all by myself again!

Looking beyond the obvious

The Engineer had a birthday a couple of weeks back and we had a great time with a small group of our closest friends. Everyone was actually very sweet to turn up even though I planned the get-together at the last minute. We had a little sundowner thing at the Coral Beach Hotel right near the water - lovely!

The Engineer didn't really want a cake (he isn't much of a cake man but will make exceptions for cheesecake!) but how can a birthday be a birthday without a birthday cake, right?

Seeing as I was still suffering from homesickness at the time, I was in 'no shape to bake' (hey! that rhymes!) so I thought I'd order one from this little place that the Bead Queen had told Pinkie about years ago.

This bakery is actually fabulous but it doesn't really have a name (not that I know of anyway!) much less a signboard announcing its whereabouts along United Nations Road. In fact, it's so much a part of the scenery that blink.... and you'll miss it!

The place may be nameless and faceless but boy can they bake! You name it and they can bake a cake of it! They have cakes in the shape of dolls, baskets of flowers, bicycles and even the map of Africa. Pinkie and I got the map for Girlfriend and the Boss when they were leaving Tanzania. The cakes taste as good as they look too!

I wanted a Spiderman cake for The Engineer who is a HUGE Spiderman fan but the ones they had were waaayyy too big for the number of people who were coming so I settled for a Batman cake instead:



See! Lovely and complete with black icing. They don't give you any of that awful, fluffy type of light icing that the commercial bakeries force on you these days. It's good old fattening absolutely delicious, butter-cream icing. They remind me of the homemade birthday cakes my mum used bake when I was small.

Now that you're properly impressed with the cakes, let me show you where they come from:


Told you it was nameless and faceless. It doesn't look like it's capable of producing a muffin leave alone delicious, gorgeous cakes. If there's anything Tanzania has taught me, it's to look beyond the obvious. The most beautiful things can emerge from the ugliest of places!