So, my laptop died. Again. It seems Dell & Africa are incompatible on pretty much all levels. I'd had problems with the laptop before in NZ, but Africa seems to compound any malfunctions, weaknesses or accidents into catastrophic gear failure. :) So, this means we'll be updating the blog less often, although I still have access to my email & facebook through my blackberry.
Africa is also hard on vehicles, & old Land Rovers are notoriously fuel-inefficient, using perhaps 80l of fuel where a Hilux would use 25l over the same distance. So, we're considering the possibility of getting a newer vehicle, either through importing one, or trying to find a good deal already in-country. So, if you have a spare moment, please pray that God provides either a vehicle, or the money to get one, as our fuel costs are becoming a bit of a financial burden.
That's all for now, I need to let Ben have his laptop back, so he can keep working... :)
Friday, August 28, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Life Through the Looking Glass...
There is something about Africa that speaks to your soul. Something primal and primordial that reaches into our ancient human spirits and strikes a chord. In amongst the dust, heat and frustrations you become aware of the voice of the ages thrumming from beneath your feet, the drum-beats as they pound through your veins. And in the bleak face of the mountain, inhospitable and harshly beautiful; in the opulence of a brief sunset, brilliant and blinding; in the exuberant and excessive display of colour from blooms fighting their way out of the baked earth; in the smiling and dust-covered visages of children tending their goats, flies crusting their eyes, you can truly see the face of God.
So, we've been here a month now, and what a month it's been! I have a awesome job, Dan has more than enough to occupy his time, we nearly have the internet, we have a lovely house to stay in, my family close(ish) by, a horrific road and terrifying drivers everywhere, a stunning view (exhibit a above) and still no water!! Living the fairytale is everything and nothing like we had anticipated...
Seeing as Dan has already enthralled you all with stories of the cars, roads and the daily death-defying gauntlet into town, I will not expound anymore, but will satisfy myself with a brief update on how things are going in Aimee's little Wonderland.
I have been at Aqua Hair, Health and Beauty working with Trish for two weeks now, and loving every minute of it! I approached the role with the usual apprehension that a new job brings, and have been pleasantly delighted with the salon, despite limitations in space and colour, with my boss, who is heaps of fun, my coworkers (free manicures and pedicures anyone?) and my awesome new clients. I was initially alarmed at having to use foil to highlight (I know, who'd have thought??) but I am happy to report that I still have the touch! And the pace here is so chilled out: clients don't mind if they have to wait for ages, and everyone knows everyone, which means the conversations are never dull... In fact, in my first week, a client was happy to wait while I cut Trish (my boss)'s hair because she hadn't had a real haircut in eight months! So cool!
The latest interesting news is that last Sunday our water ran out up at Lengijave... Oh nos! Then ensued a mad hunt for someone to truck water up our horrific roads (apparently the last time someone tried, their truck got stuck - eep!) which resulted in a tractor belching it's way up our drive, hauling 4,500 L of water with it. Operated by a very interesting fellow bearing the enigmatic name Bwana Masikio (Mr. Ears), it was all in all a learning experience as it took a couple of tries, due to the tractor's bald tyres. So, finally, we have a little more water, a lot more experience (and potholes thanks to the tractor) and a definite need for lots of rain before we run out again! So please pray, we need all the help we can get!
In fantastic news, we have made loads of awesome new friendships, re-established some old ones, and made some awesome contacts... This really is the land of opportunity: Dan has already been made two job offers in as many weeks, and with his permit in the pipelines (hopefully only two weeks away), it looks as though things are set to take off soon! Watch this space...
And so, from a dusty Wonderland, over and out.
So, we've been here a month now, and what a month it's been! I have a awesome job, Dan has more than enough to occupy his time, we nearly have the internet, we have a lovely house to stay in, my family close(ish) by, a horrific road and terrifying drivers everywhere, a stunning view (exhibit a above) and still no water!! Living the fairytale is everything and nothing like we had anticipated...
Seeing as Dan has already enthralled you all with stories of the cars, roads and the daily death-defying gauntlet into town, I will not expound anymore, but will satisfy myself with a brief update on how things are going in Aimee's little Wonderland.
I have been at Aqua Hair, Health and Beauty working with Trish for two weeks now, and loving every minute of it! I approached the role with the usual apprehension that a new job brings, and have been pleasantly delighted with the salon, despite limitations in space and colour, with my boss, who is heaps of fun, my coworkers (free manicures and pedicures anyone?) and my awesome new clients. I was initially alarmed at having to use foil to highlight (I know, who'd have thought??) but I am happy to report that I still have the touch! And the pace here is so chilled out: clients don't mind if they have to wait for ages, and everyone knows everyone, which means the conversations are never dull... In fact, in my first week, a client was happy to wait while I cut Trish (my boss)'s hair because she hadn't had a real haircut in eight months! So cool!
The latest interesting news is that last Sunday our water ran out up at Lengijave... Oh nos! Then ensued a mad hunt for someone to truck water up our horrific roads (apparently the last time someone tried, their truck got stuck - eep!) which resulted in a tractor belching it's way up our drive, hauling 4,500 L of water with it. Operated by a very interesting fellow bearing the enigmatic name Bwana Masikio (Mr. Ears), it was all in all a learning experience as it took a couple of tries, due to the tractor's bald tyres. So, finally, we have a little more water, a lot more experience (and potholes thanks to the tractor) and a definite need for lots of rain before we run out again! So please pray, we need all the help we can get!
In fantastic news, we have made loads of awesome new friendships, re-established some old ones, and made some awesome contacts... This really is the land of opportunity: Dan has already been made two job offers in as many weeks, and with his permit in the pipelines (hopefully only two weeks away), it looks as though things are set to take off soon! Watch this space...
And so, from a dusty Wonderland, over and out.
Friday, August 14, 2009
We're still alive...
Our internet connection isn't, though. The original setup at Lengijave was a satellite connection, which I found out would cost US$175 per month for 1gb of data, if I got it reconnected. And I though NZ had it bad for broadband... So I'm looking into cellular broadband options similar to the Vodafone Vodem back in NZ, & using wireless hotspots in the meantime. Hence my slackness at posting here.
My time at Outpost is going well, I'm looking into sourcing locally-roasted fresh coffee, as opposed to the not-so-fresh stuff from Kenya the cafe has been using so far, but it's a question of quality-vs-freshness at the moment. The Tanzanian stuff is pretty good, but I think I'll need to try sample batches every week or two for a while to ensure that the quality & flavour remain constant. Oh well, trying coffee isn't much of a hardship, really... :)
Aimee is going really well at the salon, she's loving the environment, & her boss is pretty cool as well. As an added bonus, a lot of her old school friends play sport at the complex where she works, as it's also the local venue for rugby, soccer & other sports. So, seeing as I finish a bit after her, & have to drive for about half an hour to get to her salon, she has a bit of time to catch up with them before I get there.
Speaking of driving, the city of Arusha seems to be in a permanent state of, well, you can't really call it gridlock, seeing as they don't even have a grid, but more a case of No-One-Can-Move-Because-Of-Every-Other-Bugger-In-The-Way. There is one set of traffic lights in town, & it seeems to cause more problems than it solves, due to sheer unfamiliarity on the part of the drivers. There are no give way rules, except those that apply out of self-preservation, ie Give Way To Bloody Big Trucks. Intersections are navigated by pulling out into the smallest gap in the lane you want to be in, whenever you can, want to, or just feel like it. Indicators can be used to signal an impending turn, a lane change, oncoming traffic, passing, don't pass, or any combination of the above. Use of the horn is an accepted alternative to indicators. You can pass on the right, the left, the footpath, or even the other lane in the path of oncoming traffic, if you think you can get away with it, & no-one will even look twice. Of course, this may be because the traffic is only moving at about 10km/h anyway...
Except for the Dala-dalas. Dala-dalas are vans used as taxis, filled with squashed passengers, & driven by grinning homicidal maniacs bent on vehicular manslaughter. These guys will take any gap, pass at any time, stop without warning, turn without signalling, & I suspect they may even drive with the horn taped down. They turn even the jammed rush-hour into a non-stop adrenaline-fuelled madcap destruction derby/rally/survival-of-the-fittest fiesta.
So when I say you can only afford to keep half your attention on the traffic, & need all the rest for the road itself, it gives you some idea of the state of said roads. Only some of the roads in town are paved, & somehow they manage to be at least as bad as the dirt roads. Potholes big enough to swallow at least a medium-sized elephant abound in the paving. Cracks, shoddy repairs & gravel patches give a wonderful texture through the suspension. And speed bumps. Let's talk about speed bumps. The designing, construction & maintenance of speed bumps seems to be some sort of Tanzanian National Pastime. They have them at each end of every village, every zebra crossing is a speed bump, they put them in dusty spots to slow passing cars, they even have small speed bumps to warn you of approaching larger speedbumps. Some are smoothly paved & can be taken carefully in 3rd gear, some are almost square in profile & are best avoided by driving off-road around them. Some of them are constructed out of dirt using shovels, and some come small & in sets of 3 or 4. It's like they didn't think the rest of the roads were rough enough, so they decided to help. Maybe they just missed that old-fashioned off-road feel. And the best bit? You can never tell what type of bump it's going to be until afterwards.
It's not that I'm complaining, mind you, I like off-roading. I just didn't expect to be doing it for 2 & 1/2 hours every day, from home to Aimee's work, then mine, & then back again...
Still, all in a day's work, eh? :)
My time at Outpost is going well, I'm looking into sourcing locally-roasted fresh coffee, as opposed to the not-so-fresh stuff from Kenya the cafe has been using so far, but it's a question of quality-vs-freshness at the moment. The Tanzanian stuff is pretty good, but I think I'll need to try sample batches every week or two for a while to ensure that the quality & flavour remain constant. Oh well, trying coffee isn't much of a hardship, really... :)
Aimee is going really well at the salon, she's loving the environment, & her boss is pretty cool as well. As an added bonus, a lot of her old school friends play sport at the complex where she works, as it's also the local venue for rugby, soccer & other sports. So, seeing as I finish a bit after her, & have to drive for about half an hour to get to her salon, she has a bit of time to catch up with them before I get there.
Speaking of driving, the city of Arusha seems to be in a permanent state of, well, you can't really call it gridlock, seeing as they don't even have a grid, but more a case of No-One-Can-Move-Because-Of-Every-Other-Bugger-In-The-Way. There is one set of traffic lights in town, & it seeems to cause more problems than it solves, due to sheer unfamiliarity on the part of the drivers. There are no give way rules, except those that apply out of self-preservation, ie Give Way To Bloody Big Trucks. Intersections are navigated by pulling out into the smallest gap in the lane you want to be in, whenever you can, want to, or just feel like it. Indicators can be used to signal an impending turn, a lane change, oncoming traffic, passing, don't pass, or any combination of the above. Use of the horn is an accepted alternative to indicators. You can pass on the right, the left, the footpath, or even the other lane in the path of oncoming traffic, if you think you can get away with it, & no-one will even look twice. Of course, this may be because the traffic is only moving at about 10km/h anyway...
Except for the Dala-dalas. Dala-dalas are vans used as taxis, filled with squashed passengers, & driven by grinning homicidal maniacs bent on vehicular manslaughter. These guys will take any gap, pass at any time, stop without warning, turn without signalling, & I suspect they may even drive with the horn taped down. They turn even the jammed rush-hour into a non-stop adrenaline-fuelled madcap destruction derby/rally/survival-of-the-fittest fiesta.
So when I say you can only afford to keep half your attention on the traffic, & need all the rest for the road itself, it gives you some idea of the state of said roads. Only some of the roads in town are paved, & somehow they manage to be at least as bad as the dirt roads. Potholes big enough to swallow at least a medium-sized elephant abound in the paving. Cracks, shoddy repairs & gravel patches give a wonderful texture through the suspension. And speed bumps. Let's talk about speed bumps. The designing, construction & maintenance of speed bumps seems to be some sort of Tanzanian National Pastime. They have them at each end of every village, every zebra crossing is a speed bump, they put them in dusty spots to slow passing cars, they even have small speed bumps to warn you of approaching larger speedbumps. Some are smoothly paved & can be taken carefully in 3rd gear, some are almost square in profile & are best avoided by driving off-road around them. Some of them are constructed out of dirt using shovels, and some come small & in sets of 3 or 4. It's like they didn't think the rest of the roads were rough enough, so they decided to help. Maybe they just missed that old-fashioned off-road feel. And the best bit? You can never tell what type of bump it's going to be until afterwards.
It's not that I'm complaining, mind you, I like off-roading. I just didn't expect to be doing it for 2 & 1/2 hours every day, from home to Aimee's work, then mine, & then back again...
Still, all in a day's work, eh? :)
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Coffee Beans in a Vanilla Bean.
I drank a lot of coffee today. I've been contracted for a period of at least 2 weeks by the best cafe in Arusha to train their staff in the art of espresso. There's also a chance that I may be staying on longer in some sort of management/barista capacity, if needed. If I do, it'd be a great opportunity to learn the ropes before we start our own guest house.
Tanzania grows some of the best coffee in the world, but hardly anyone here knows how to make a decent cup. The best roasted coffee seems to come from Kenya, & even that is at least 2 weeks from roast when it gets here. There are a few local roasters that can deliver on roast day, but their beans seem to be all local origin, with no blending for flavour balance. Plenty of room for experimentation & improvement, methinks.
I spent about 4 hours today familiarising myself with the equipment, procedures & staff at The Outpost, which is also a lodge with a good restaurant. I'll only be involved in the cafe side, which is a bit of a relief, given my more or less nonexistent restaurateur experience. The cafe is an open-sided place with polished concrete floors, a mix of couches & tables with some pretty nice decor, situated right by a small pool & under the shade of some tall trees. The atmosphere is great, the people are friendly & seem willing to learn, & they speak pretty good english. My Swahili is coming along slowly, but I seem to pick up more by osmosis than through study.
The Land Rover rego came through today, so I drove it into town for my first day at Outpost. I've christened it RattleTruck©. The suspension actually makes for a more comfortable ride on the rough roads than Jeremy's Isuzu Bighorn, but the rest of the vehicle seems to be constructed entirely of quirks. The driver's door is the only one with an external key lock, & the key has to be turned just so while pressing the open button, but the inside lock still stays down until you pull it up manually. Sometimes the offside back door doesn't stay shut, & the latch in the door needs to be fiddled with to get it to stay closed. The back bench seats fall forward when you go over bumps, the indicator lever is on the wrong side of the steering column, making me turn on the wipers when I go around a corner, reverse gear is to the left of 1st, & there are 5 different keys for all the locks on the vehicle. The jack is a meter-long monstrosity of medieval engineering, as I discovered when I came out of the cafe to discover a flat front left tire.
So after half an hour of wrestling with siezed bolts, finding hidden tool caches under the driver's seat, & thanking the Lord for those last few slices of Aimee's brownie as I used all my weight on the tire iron in order to get the wheelbolts undone, I managed to mount the spare tire. After that, it was a simple matter of stopping at a gas station on the way back to En Gedi, getting one of the fundis (workers) there with limited English to take the tire off the spare mount, take the tube out, patch it, reinflate the tire, take the spare back off the front wheel, remount the fixed tire & stow the spare back on the rear mount. For about half an hour of relatively skilled labour, I payed the princely sum of 2000 shillings, or about NZ$2.50. That's right, two & a half bucks. I love this place.
So, now that we have transportation, we're finally moving tomorrow to Lengijave, our new home. The process of getting the vehicle on the road has been a bit of an eye-opener as to how slowly even simple administrative things can move over here, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This Is Africa, after all. We've done a load of shopping for the basics we'll need up there, including food, drink & kerosene lanterns, which I intend to modify at my earliest convenience. More Power, grunt-grunt-grunt. I'll have those things shooting 20-foot jets of flame, if I can get away with it. :) We've also met up with plenty of great people over here, including paragliders, motocross riders, pastors, musicians, old friends & a host of other mad characters we look forward to getting to know better. Everyone here, including us, seems just a little bit mad, but life is an adventure, after all, so why not live it to the full? :D
Tanzania grows some of the best coffee in the world, but hardly anyone here knows how to make a decent cup. The best roasted coffee seems to come from Kenya, & even that is at least 2 weeks from roast when it gets here. There are a few local roasters that can deliver on roast day, but their beans seem to be all local origin, with no blending for flavour balance. Plenty of room for experimentation & improvement, methinks.
I spent about 4 hours today familiarising myself with the equipment, procedures & staff at The Outpost, which is also a lodge with a good restaurant. I'll only be involved in the cafe side, which is a bit of a relief, given my more or less nonexistent restaurateur experience. The cafe is an open-sided place with polished concrete floors, a mix of couches & tables with some pretty nice decor, situated right by a small pool & under the shade of some tall trees. The atmosphere is great, the people are friendly & seem willing to learn, & they speak pretty good english. My Swahili is coming along slowly, but I seem to pick up more by osmosis than through study.
The Land Rover rego came through today, so I drove it into town for my first day at Outpost. I've christened it RattleTruck©. The suspension actually makes for a more comfortable ride on the rough roads than Jeremy's Isuzu Bighorn, but the rest of the vehicle seems to be constructed entirely of quirks. The driver's door is the only one with an external key lock, & the key has to be turned just so while pressing the open button, but the inside lock still stays down until you pull it up manually. Sometimes the offside back door doesn't stay shut, & the latch in the door needs to be fiddled with to get it to stay closed. The back bench seats fall forward when you go over bumps, the indicator lever is on the wrong side of the steering column, making me turn on the wipers when I go around a corner, reverse gear is to the left of 1st, & there are 5 different keys for all the locks on the vehicle. The jack is a meter-long monstrosity of medieval engineering, as I discovered when I came out of the cafe to discover a flat front left tire.
So after half an hour of wrestling with siezed bolts, finding hidden tool caches under the driver's seat, & thanking the Lord for those last few slices of Aimee's brownie as I used all my weight on the tire iron in order to get the wheelbolts undone, I managed to mount the spare tire. After that, it was a simple matter of stopping at a gas station on the way back to En Gedi, getting one of the fundis (workers) there with limited English to take the tire off the spare mount, take the tube out, patch it, reinflate the tire, take the spare back off the front wheel, remount the fixed tire & stow the spare back on the rear mount. For about half an hour of relatively skilled labour, I payed the princely sum of 2000 shillings, or about NZ$2.50. That's right, two & a half bucks. I love this place.
So, now that we have transportation, we're finally moving tomorrow to Lengijave, our new home. The process of getting the vehicle on the road has been a bit of an eye-opener as to how slowly even simple administrative things can move over here, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This Is Africa, after all. We've done a load of shopping for the basics we'll need up there, including food, drink & kerosene lanterns, which I intend to modify at my earliest convenience. More Power, grunt-grunt-grunt. I'll have those things shooting 20-foot jets of flame, if I can get away with it. :) We've also met up with plenty of great people over here, including paragliders, motocross riders, pastors, musicians, old friends & a host of other mad characters we look forward to getting to know better. Everyone here, including us, seems just a little bit mad, but life is an adventure, after all, so why not live it to the full? :D
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