Domestic Peace and Tranquility

After a brief hiatus, here is perhaps the last posting of the year. I’ll make sure a good account of December gets written but, since the end of our year is scheduled to happen in Malaysia, I’m pretty sure the write up will get posted in January.

It’s been a while since my last posting- made just after our trip to Zanzibar, but life on the domestic front has not been without incident. For a start, the power crisis that seemed to be rumbling ominously towards us, well and truly kicked in through much of November. This was bad enough for everyone, with newspapers full of the latest views on the shortages.

For us, things took an even more annoying turn when the cable connecting our house to the main compound substation finally gave up the ghost. We lost all but a single phase on the Wednesday and sure enough the emergency response team came as fast as they could, arriving Saturday morning. After much digging around, they located the frayed underground cable and set about fixing it. The first unpromising signs of action came when one of the workmen poked his head round the door and asked for a knife. Soma asked what this was for and he explained that he was going to cut a cable. Anywhere else in the world, a set of cutters would be used by the crack team of electricians, but this isn’t anywhere else in the world so a carving knife would be perfect thank you. Sadly the knife was not perfect- aware as he obviously was of health and safety requirements, the workman pointed out that he needed a knife with a rubber handle. At this point the minimal understanding of electricity gained from a decade in the industry kicked in and the ears pricked up.

“You have checked that the cable is disconnected haven’t you?” I asked.

Long pause.

“Go and disconnect the cable then you can use whatever you like” I suggested.

Off he went.

After another half hour, the cable was well and truly cut- hurrah. For a worrying but presumably short period of time, our single phase had reduced to nothing. Five minutes later a sheepish workman informs us that he’d left a crucial part at the office and that he’d need to pick it up. Sadly the office was closed until Monday. At this point my normally serene wife hit the roof and came out with all sorts of exciting new words of Kiswahili!

Fast forward a couple of days. The first working day of the week has just finished and I’m pulling up to the compound gate in my car. The place seems a hive of activity- good sign. I park the car and notice that (a) the family is swimming in the pool and that (b) there appears to be rather a lot of water round the back of our house. Interesting, I think and go off to see what has gone on. Kieran comes running up to me and explains very excitedly:

“Daddy, one of the men was fixing the electricity with an axe and he made a hole in a pipe and lots of water has come out”!

How exciting. After one day of work we managed to reduce power from a single phase to nothing. After a far more productive second day of work we’ve escaped the bounds of a single key utility and managed to deprive us of both electricity and water…….and the back garden is a lake!

Fortunately, that is as bad as it got. Somehow after much screaming in various languages, both utilities returned and order was restored.

Since then, what else has happened here? Well it seems as if the country as a whole is getting some rain. Sadly, the predicted El Nino effect has occurred. In the village of Same, close to the Lushoto area we visited earlier in the year, the rains came as a very violent flash rainfall- a bit like those experienced in the UK last month. Tragically, the rains lasted for four days and, caused a major landslide killing scores of villagers. In a fatal combination of rain and drought, the rains had fallen on soil now devoid of any vegetation, resulting in pretty much nothing being there to bind the soil together, Not surprisingly this resulted in a mudslide.

Elsewhere, rainfall has been sporadic. There seems to have been some rain in the important regions, resulting in the dams filling up a little. In fact, on a couple of occasions we’ve even had rains here in Dar. Yesterday morning was especially nice as Kieran and I enjoyed a mid week morning (Independence Day here) sitting out watching a rare thunderstorm come down in front of us!

So it looks like problems of power supply have receded for the time being- they will return some time though- I’d bet my life on it!

We’ve had other domestic tribulations too, this time of the less amusing kind- not the sort of thing you laugh about later on, sadly. Anyone who has stayed with us will have met our very quiet and hardworking maid. Over the past two years she has worked hard and been quietly heroic keeping up with the mess created by two small boys. Sadly, we noticed some cash going missing- not a fortune but, at up to Tsh 50,000 a go, enough to get worried about. Not wanting to go the way of many expats and simply fire someone based on a hunch, we set about getting more evidence. Sadly, our fears were confirmed today with conclusive webcam evidence. Firing people is never much fun, even when they really deserve it. To have to get rid of someone who otherwise has been so good is really tough though. However, if you can’t feel secure in your own home then what kind of home is it. Sadly, we paid her some money and watched her head off on her way.

So, things have been fun on the domestic front these last few weeks. The priceless beauty of watching a tropical storm bringing much needed rain to the mango and papaya trees. No power, no electricity, a bunch of workmen hell bent on killing themselves and finally a trusted maid turn thief. However, I guess that beauty, comedy and sadness do come in plentiful supply in this part of the world. I’m not sure where the final posts of 2010 will be written from but for sheer emotional extremes, you just can’t match this bloody country!