After almost six years living on this continent, the time has finally come for the Chubbs to leave Africa. In less than two weeks, we will pack our bags and fly out of Tanzania for the last time, heading for a new life in Indonesia.
Much as I’ve enjoyed writing this blog, all good things come to an end. I’m writing this last post because I think that Chubbs Around Africa deserves a more fitting end than an unexplained hiatus in posting- this is a short but sweet final bullet.
I’m glad that from the closing months of our time in Cairo and through our three years in Tanzania, I’ve been able to record some of our experiences for posterity. Like an old photo album, I’ve enjoyed looking back over some of those early posts and remembering some of the experiences we've racked up over the last few years. Hopefully I’ve given at least one perspective on life in two remarkable countries. Some comments I’m sure others will disagree with, some may just ring true.
Tanzania is a country I’ll always look back upon with affection. There is a lot wrong with the place to be sure- well run countries don’t generally spend decades in the “poorest in the world” listings as Tanzania has done. However, this remains a beautiful place with kind, friendly people and none of the admitedly fair comments about misrule and corruption at the top should ever detract from that.
Life here has been a mixture of joy, disappointment, comedy and sadness- a very intense concoction indeed. The angry crowd amassing outside the house after a car crash in 2008 was definitely a low point, as was the experience we went through when we caught our maid stealing.
However, trying to talk our fundi out of attempting dangerous electrical works with a fork or dealing with a traffic policeman who pulled me over to ask me for one of the beers I had in the car “because it is very hot sir” has added the kind of comedy value to life you’d not normally encounter back home.
It is so easy to moan at the bad sides of this country. Yes the politicians are unworthy of power, yes the chances of a fundi turning up on time are tiny, yes the traffic police are corrupt- so what?
Having the chance to see the sheer scale of the world’s largest unbroken crater at Ngorongoro, taking off in a ten seater plane over the enormous Rift Valley and seeing the lions of the Serengeti are all memories I count myself privileged to have tucked away in my head.
However it is the day to day beauty that I am most happy to have enjoyed. for three years, I've started and ended every working day driving along a coastal road, looking out over the Indian Ocean. That has been a treat that I will miss. Enjoying the crystal clear waters at the Yacht Club beach, watching the sun set over Bongoyo Island, eating the freshest fruit in the world and simply sitting on the porch with a can of Kilimanjaro, watching the world go by are all things I could never take for granted.
If work permits, I might start up another blog describing life in Jakarta- who knows? For now though, I am signing off, happy in the knowledge that the prediction made in my first ever post was pretty spectacularly wrong! To those Tanzanians who have been part of our lives for the last three years, whether for good or for bad, I say "kwaheri na asanteni sana".
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Rain at Last!
After a brief hiatus in my posting, I felt the urge to write about something British. Immediately two things sprang to mind so I will be happily tapping away about the two things I’ve heard about in bucketloads from every Brit I’ve spoken to in the past six months- the weather and the elections.
First of all, the weather. I guess my constant complaining about lack of rain and impending drought must have got through to somebody important as the rainy season has well and truly arrived here in Tanzania. For the past few weeks we had what amounted to a pretty decent lot of rains. Once a day, the heavens would open and we’d get a violent hour or two of monsoon. Not the constant drizzle you get in Britain, mind- more like someone opening the skies and pouring bucketloads of water on your head for an hour or so.
Since the rainfalls are so short lived, there is no significant impact on life. Things seem greener, the plants outside our house shoot up, exciting new insects seem to appear and the cars stay cleaner longer. However, over the past few days, the rains have remained as violently tropical as before but instead of stopping after an hour or so, they have continued for two days and nights. The result- total chaos!
Since our house is quite new, we’ve been saved some of the problems of leaking roofs that have affected friends and on that front only have the slightly bemusing issue of a luminous green swimming pool to contend with- not that there’s much point swimming right now!
The main problem as usual comes when you try to drive around- the commute to and from work has been a true experience. So why does everything go to pot here once you get a decent rainfall? I conducted a straw poll of colleagues and came up with the following reasons:
Firstly, only a few roads here are actually any good. It’s true that, once you get off the Peninsula, most back roads are pretty shoddy at the best of times. Unsurprisingly, these are the first to flood and to break up. Since most cars aren’t designed to drive through metre- deep flooded potholes every 20 yards or so, most drivers tend to stick to the main roads at these times. Result- much more traffic on the main roads.
Secondly, the police don’t like the rain. As I’ve said before, your average traffic policeman isn’t very well paid, relying instead on my numerous traffic offences for a decent revenue stream. Many therefore take the understandable view that they are not paid enough to get wet, vote with their feet and head rapidly towards shelter, leaving the traffic to its own devices. Now this is obviously a schoolboy error. Despite the fact that most traffic lights work perfectly well here most of the time, traffic police are still needed to deal with the fact that nobody really takes much notice of them. Within seconds of the policeman abandoning his post at the Mwenge junction on Tuesday, this busy four- way intersection resembled a multi vehicle pile up, with cars, lorries, daladalas and bajajis all fighting to make their way through. It took twenty minutes and about Tsh 20,000 (to pay a helpful passer by who cleared my way by standing in front of the cars trying to block me) to get through that particular mess! Things got a little better yesterday however- someone gave our friendly local policeman a brolly and he was right as rain!
Third on the list is the surprising one of cashflow. With Tanzania not exactly being the wealthiest country in the world, it isn’t surprising that many of its residents are a bit tight on cash. One symptom of this is the sad fact that many taxi drivers simply cannot afford to buy a whole thankful of petrol- they buy a little, and then fill up incrementally as they get revenue to do so. This works fine most of the time but, when Dar reaches gridlock and these almost empty taxis find themselves in long queues, it is not surprising to find a fair few abandoned petrol- less vehicles in the middle of the road.
Anyway, faced with a frustrating two hour journey home, battling with the worst Dar traffic has to offer, all you can do is try to stay calm, not get into a scrape- after all that might involve actually getting out of your car into the rain- and slowly make your way home!
I guess we have to be grateful here that water is the only stuff we have in the sky here. Talking with colleagues in the UK, everyone there seems to be abuzz with volcanic ash. Luckily its effect on me has been pretty minimal- no flights in that direction for a change. In facto the only concern I have regarding travel is the delay in the journey of my postal vote.
Like the good citizen I always to be, I spent a joyful afternoon online trying to sort out a postal vote back in Erith. Sure enough, this has now been achieved, with the rather worrying caveat that the voting form might not be sent out until four days prior to polling day and that any forms not received by May 6 would not be counted. So, my enfranchisement is fully dependent on a piece of paper making the round trip from Bexley Council offices to Tanzania and back in four days- here’s hoping!
Anyway, perhaps this is for the best, since I’m unusually at a loss as to who to vote for. Despite his best efforts to curry favour with me by (a) selling me some of the UK’s gold bullion at the bottom of the market a few years back and (b) abusing women from Rochdale a couple of days back, I just can’t bring myself to vote for Gordon Brown- I just can’t. Cameron just seems shifty and too much like Tony Blair and Nick Clegg hasn’t a hope of winning in Erith anyway.
This would then bring me to the minority parties. Well the chap in charge of UKIP did amuse me by saying that Belgium wasn’t a real country, but that isn’t really the basis for a broad election manifesto.
Despite my current intention not to return to live in the UK any time soon, it would be nice at least to have the option. That being the case, voting for a party like the BNP, who would try to ban my wife and kids entry is probably not too sensible either- well not unless said wife and kids started to annoy me! Besides, for an immigrant like me (“expatriate” being the posh word for “immigrant” of course), voting for an anti immigration party would be more than a little hypocritical.
So I’m stumped. I guess it all boils down to whether I do the right thing and vote for someone I think will do the best for Britain or take the unethical but fun option and assume I won’t be in the country to deal with the consequences and just vote for someone out of morbid curiosity!
Anyway, from a country in which I pay no tax and don’t live, yet still have the vote, back to Tanzania- where I live, pay taxes but don’t get a vote. We have both parliamentary and presidential elections here in October. I doubt the outcome is on such a knife edge as in the UK, however. The ruling party, the CCM, has been in power constantly since 1964 and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere soon. This doesn’t seem to be through any systematic suppression of the opposition, since other parties are very active and vocal. The perpetual one party state seems more to do with the inability of the opposition to organise itself properly- kind of like the Tories under Ian Duncan Smith, except for forty six years. The only real opposition tends to be focused over in Zanzibar and particularly on the island of Pemba, where things tend to get a little heated around election time.
Anyway, despite opinion polls stating that if elections were to be held tomorrow, 60% of MPs would lose their seats, the outcome is pretty much assured. Come Christmas, the ruling party will be the CCM and President Kikwete will have begun his second and final term of office, having managed to achieve re- election without insulting some poor little woman from Rochdale, I imagine.
So, from a Brit in Africa, who has happily engaged in the national party of talking about politics and complaining about the weather, I’ll leave you ponder the question raised by that little old lady- where have those Eastern Europeans all come from? Classic!
First of all, the weather. I guess my constant complaining about lack of rain and impending drought must have got through to somebody important as the rainy season has well and truly arrived here in Tanzania. For the past few weeks we had what amounted to a pretty decent lot of rains. Once a day, the heavens would open and we’d get a violent hour or two of monsoon. Not the constant drizzle you get in Britain, mind- more like someone opening the skies and pouring bucketloads of water on your head for an hour or so.
Since the rainfalls are so short lived, there is no significant impact on life. Things seem greener, the plants outside our house shoot up, exciting new insects seem to appear and the cars stay cleaner longer. However, over the past few days, the rains have remained as violently tropical as before but instead of stopping after an hour or so, they have continued for two days and nights. The result- total chaos!
Since our house is quite new, we’ve been saved some of the problems of leaking roofs that have affected friends and on that front only have the slightly bemusing issue of a luminous green swimming pool to contend with- not that there’s much point swimming right now!
The main problem as usual comes when you try to drive around- the commute to and from work has been a true experience. So why does everything go to pot here once you get a decent rainfall? I conducted a straw poll of colleagues and came up with the following reasons:
Firstly, only a few roads here are actually any good. It’s true that, once you get off the Peninsula, most back roads are pretty shoddy at the best of times. Unsurprisingly, these are the first to flood and to break up. Since most cars aren’t designed to drive through metre- deep flooded potholes every 20 yards or so, most drivers tend to stick to the main roads at these times. Result- much more traffic on the main roads.
Secondly, the police don’t like the rain. As I’ve said before, your average traffic policeman isn’t very well paid, relying instead on my numerous traffic offences for a decent revenue stream. Many therefore take the understandable view that they are not paid enough to get wet, vote with their feet and head rapidly towards shelter, leaving the traffic to its own devices. Now this is obviously a schoolboy error. Despite the fact that most traffic lights work perfectly well here most of the time, traffic police are still needed to deal with the fact that nobody really takes much notice of them. Within seconds of the policeman abandoning his post at the Mwenge junction on Tuesday, this busy four- way intersection resembled a multi vehicle pile up, with cars, lorries, daladalas and bajajis all fighting to make their way through. It took twenty minutes and about Tsh 20,000 (to pay a helpful passer by who cleared my way by standing in front of the cars trying to block me) to get through that particular mess! Things got a little better yesterday however- someone gave our friendly local policeman a brolly and he was right as rain!
Third on the list is the surprising one of cashflow. With Tanzania not exactly being the wealthiest country in the world, it isn’t surprising that many of its residents are a bit tight on cash. One symptom of this is the sad fact that many taxi drivers simply cannot afford to buy a whole thankful of petrol- they buy a little, and then fill up incrementally as they get revenue to do so. This works fine most of the time but, when Dar reaches gridlock and these almost empty taxis find themselves in long queues, it is not surprising to find a fair few abandoned petrol- less vehicles in the middle of the road.
Anyway, faced with a frustrating two hour journey home, battling with the worst Dar traffic has to offer, all you can do is try to stay calm, not get into a scrape- after all that might involve actually getting out of your car into the rain- and slowly make your way home!
I guess we have to be grateful here that water is the only stuff we have in the sky here. Talking with colleagues in the UK, everyone there seems to be abuzz with volcanic ash. Luckily its effect on me has been pretty minimal- no flights in that direction for a change. In facto the only concern I have regarding travel is the delay in the journey of my postal vote.
Like the good citizen I always to be, I spent a joyful afternoon online trying to sort out a postal vote back in Erith. Sure enough, this has now been achieved, with the rather worrying caveat that the voting form might not be sent out until four days prior to polling day and that any forms not received by May 6 would not be counted. So, my enfranchisement is fully dependent on a piece of paper making the round trip from Bexley Council offices to Tanzania and back in four days- here’s hoping!
Anyway, perhaps this is for the best, since I’m unusually at a loss as to who to vote for. Despite his best efforts to curry favour with me by (a) selling me some of the UK’s gold bullion at the bottom of the market a few years back and (b) abusing women from Rochdale a couple of days back, I just can’t bring myself to vote for Gordon Brown- I just can’t. Cameron just seems shifty and too much like Tony Blair and Nick Clegg hasn’t a hope of winning in Erith anyway.
This would then bring me to the minority parties. Well the chap in charge of UKIP did amuse me by saying that Belgium wasn’t a real country, but that isn’t really the basis for a broad election manifesto.
Despite my current intention not to return to live in the UK any time soon, it would be nice at least to have the option. That being the case, voting for a party like the BNP, who would try to ban my wife and kids entry is probably not too sensible either- well not unless said wife and kids started to annoy me! Besides, for an immigrant like me (“expatriate” being the posh word for “immigrant” of course), voting for an anti immigration party would be more than a little hypocritical.
So I’m stumped. I guess it all boils down to whether I do the right thing and vote for someone I think will do the best for Britain or take the unethical but fun option and assume I won’t be in the country to deal with the consequences and just vote for someone out of morbid curiosity!
Anyway, from a country in which I pay no tax and don’t live, yet still have the vote, back to Tanzania- where I live, pay taxes but don’t get a vote. We have both parliamentary and presidential elections here in October. I doubt the outcome is on such a knife edge as in the UK, however. The ruling party, the CCM, has been in power constantly since 1964 and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere soon. This doesn’t seem to be through any systematic suppression of the opposition, since other parties are very active and vocal. The perpetual one party state seems more to do with the inability of the opposition to organise itself properly- kind of like the Tories under Ian Duncan Smith, except for forty six years. The only real opposition tends to be focused over in Zanzibar and particularly on the island of Pemba, where things tend to get a little heated around election time.
Anyway, despite opinion polls stating that if elections were to be held tomorrow, 60% of MPs would lose their seats, the outcome is pretty much assured. Come Christmas, the ruling party will be the CCM and President Kikwete will have begun his second and final term of office, having managed to achieve re- election without insulting some poor little woman from Rochdale, I imagine.
So, from a Brit in Africa, who has happily engaged in the national party of talking about politics and complaining about the weather, I’ll leave you ponder the question raised by that little old lady- where have those Eastern Europeans all come from? Classic!
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