More settling in

Well it seems the boys are finally settled. This morning, for the first time since getting here, Kieran turned to me at nursery and said ‘goodbye mummy’ and then ran off to play. A far cry from earlier occasions, when he’s clutched my leg saying ‘don’t leave me!’ and crying loudly enough to disturb even the hard bitten Masai security guards (they have been giving me some funny looks as I run off to the car without so much as looking back).

Rohan has been rather less trouble – I think anywhere with toys, snacks, and adoring adults is good enough for him. He’s recently started trying to make friends, going up to random strangers saying ‘Jambo (Swahili for ‘hello’)! Ana Rohan (Arabic for ‘I’m Rohan’). I think both boys have decided that if the people they see don’t speak English, then they must respond to Arabic! They accompanied me on an expedition to find someone to mend my only pair of shoes (the cobbler was finally found, as promised, ‘under the tree by the side of the highway’) and had a great time chatting with the other men there (not sure what they were doing under the tree). I decided that their language education couldn’t start early enough so they can now say ‘assante’ (thank you) and ‘kwaheri’ (goodbye) in addition to ‘hello’.

Both boys have come a long way since we moved here. Rohan has finally started talking, in whole sentences rather than the occasional word, and Kieran has started to swim! Admittedly with arm bands, but he’s moving along quite rapidly – he can now stay underwater for about 8 seconds. The good thing about Tanzania is that everyone, no matter how young, swims so the boys are being shamed into catching up.

My own existence is a bit more mundane – I seem to spend a fair bit of every day just visiting the shops (4 visits over the last 1.5 day). Part of this is because there are no one-stop hypermarkets here, and you have to go to different places just to get everything you need. The other part is the difference between having a bawwab to lug your shopping up several flights of stairs, and having to do it yourself. I no longer buy a month’s worth of UHT milk, safe in the knowledge that it will mysteriously get from the car to the correct kitchen cabinet without any further effort on my part. (Does anyone realise how boring it is to put away groceries? Not loving that…)

One thing I am loving is driving myself. It’s been about 10 days since I got my driving license, and I’ve got a little hired car (a Toyota Rav4, which seems to be the standard expat mummy car) and it’s great fun to just zip around the peninsula without having to go through the palaver of requesting a driver in advance. Also, when the boys are fractious, we can all jump in the car and go off to the waterfront to have fresh fruit smoothies (and do yet more shopping). Next on the agenda is to explore as much of the surrounding area around Dar as possible, in terms of beaches, islands and safaris – hopefully by the time I next post something, the boys will have seen some wild animals.