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!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Five Years On!
I got an email the other day. Not an uncommon occurrence in my line of work. Even the subject matter- my pension arrangements- was not something I’d normally consider blog material. However, one little fact contained in this email got me thinking and inspired this posting. The reason I need to change my pension is because the Inland Revenue only permits expatriates to make voluntary contributions if they have been resident in the UK in the past 5 years. This period has elapsed, so I need to make my arrangements offshore.
So there it is. A grey, administrative reminder of a major milestone- as of February 6th 2010, we’ve been living abroad for five years. Kieran has lived outside the UK for most of his life and poor (or lucky depending on your point of view) Rohan has only ever seen the land of his birth through the eyes of a tourist.
I thought I’d mark this occasion with a brief look at how living in two countries- both very different from the UK- has changed us. I’m sure there have been many changes and that most of them are down to age as much as anything, but here are a few that spring to mind.
Domestic Servants
One of the biggest changes for me at first was having a domestic servant working in the house six days a week. Although plenty of people in the UK employ cleaners, that relationship is far more detached and egalitarian than is the case elsewhere. Having an employee who was much more a part of the household and far more subservient than your average British cleaner ( how many of them insist on calling you “master”?) was very uncomfortable for me and took a lot of getting used to. When Regina, a lovely young lady from Bangalore, first started working for us back in early 2005, I think I was as nervous about it all as she was. A few years and six domestics later, the concerns have vanished. Whatever she wants to call me is her business- whether that be Richard, Mr Chubb, Sir or Your Lordship for that matter! Importantly, I make sure I treat them as I’d treat any subordinate in the office- no better; no worse.
Having domestic servants does create issues, however. As much as we try to keep the relationship professional, there is a degree of closeness which cannot go away. We loan money and try to help with family matters for one thing. More importantly, any long term domestic servant will build up a close relationship with the kids. This makes for a far more personal relationship and makes breaking that relationship for whatever reason very hard.
Some of our toughest experiences to date have been letting domestic servants go. Saying goodbye to Iman- the boys’ nanny in Cairo- was simply gut wrenching for all of us. She doted on the boys and they loved her dearly. She begged to be allowed to join us in Tanzania but we all knew this would be a bad move. The boys would ultimately grow up and, as hard as saying goodbye then was, having to pack her on a plane home would have been far harder. We’ve heard many horror stories here too. Imagine inviting a friend and her kids round for a playdate with your two boys only to find that the “friend” was so impressed with your nanny that she poached her with a higher salary. Thankfully this has not happened to us, but from what I hear, trying to explain to the poor boys why their nanny was now looking after their school chums instead was a bit of a parenting challenge!
Relationship with Rain
Now like anyone brought up in Britain, I have always had a hate- hate relationship with rain. For the first three decades of my life, rain was a cold, drizzly miserable phenomenon which meant days sitting indoors as a child and a cold, squelchy commute home as an adult.
I can honestly say that the past five years have ignited in me a true love of rain. I guess, this is due in part to three years with barely a drop. Although Cairo is located on the Nile, it is also situated in the middle of the Sahara- the world’s biggest desert. The narrow strip of water we happened to live next to had little effect on the climate therefore, with the exception of the odd drizzly day in February, the weather was an unbroken sequence of blue skies and blazing sun.
After three years of drought, we moved somewhere which, in theory, had a rainy season. Although we’ve had problems with low rainfall, the times that the rains do come in are spectacular. The rainfall is usually quite short in duration- a storm comes in, the rain comes down in a violent hour or so of warm big raindrops and then vanishes, giving way to blue skies once more. Since the violence of the storms means that nobody in their right mind would venture out in one, you are left either to watch it from the safety of indoors or to strip down and enjoy getting wet- i do the former, the boys the latter. I think I still hate the cold miserable drizzle that passes for rain in the UK but truly love the tropical storms we are getting on a daily basis right now!
Driving
Now driving has been a very eventful experience over the past five years. For the first three of these, the experiences were entirely second hand as we employed a driver- nobody in their right minds would drive in Cairo and I wasn’t going to. From the passenger seat of my Pajero, I was able to witness the entire range of driving offences. I still believe that, in Mohammed, we employed the best driver in Egypt- someone with practically no temper and with razor sharp reflexes that saved us both on many occasions. I remember one time driving at high speed along the main ring road, crossing the main bridge over the Nile. For no apparent reason the car in front screeched to a halt and a pile up seemed inevitable. Mohammed not only managed to steer around the car but then also steered right back into a straight line ensuring we didn’t career off the bridge to a watery fate.
Tanzania gave me the chance to drive for myself and what fun it has been. In two years I’ve only had one major accident- something I’m not keen to repeat. However I’ve also learned a more flexible approach to traffic laws. Here in Tanzania, we generally drive on the left but in practice drive wherever the potholes are shallowest. Traffic lights require local knowledge since some are obeyed and others ignored. Stopping at the wrong red is likely to result in your getting rear ended. However, there are some areas where the British culture has stayed firmly inside me. Unlike most expatriates, neither of us drink and drive. Traffic jams are also to be respected. Despite the fact that most of my fellow drivers are pushing ahead by driving up the wrong side of the road or even along the pavement, I always wait my turn- the urge to queue is just too much!
Driving is always an experience and I generally get home either thanking my lucky stars that I missed the mango cart being pulled round that blind corner on the wrong side of the road or cursing the fact that the traffic policeman decided to head off and relieve himself seconds after guiding me into a right hand turn that consequently almost killed me. However, given the chance to either watch someone else drive or to drive myself, I’d take the latter any day.
Having Lots of Mates
This final point comes after consulting with my dear wife. For Soma, the biggest chance over the past five years has been in her words “the sisterhood that I’ve managed to build up around me”. For Soma, as a stay at home Mum, this has been a true blessing. In London, despite the fact that we both worked, our friends tended to be people that I knew and had introduced Soma to. Now things are far more even and in all honesty the situation has completely reversed. Almost all our friends are people Soma has met.
So there it is. A grey, administrative reminder of a major milestone- as of February 6th 2010, we’ve been living abroad for five years. Kieran has lived outside the UK for most of his life and poor (or lucky depending on your point of view) Rohan has only ever seen the land of his birth through the eyes of a tourist.
I thought I’d mark this occasion with a brief look at how living in two countries- both very different from the UK- has changed us. I’m sure there have been many changes and that most of them are down to age as much as anything, but here are a few that spring to mind.
Domestic Servants
One of the biggest changes for me at first was having a domestic servant working in the house six days a week. Although plenty of people in the UK employ cleaners, that relationship is far more detached and egalitarian than is the case elsewhere. Having an employee who was much more a part of the household and far more subservient than your average British cleaner ( how many of them insist on calling you “master”?) was very uncomfortable for me and took a lot of getting used to. When Regina, a lovely young lady from Bangalore, first started working for us back in early 2005, I think I was as nervous about it all as she was. A few years and six domestics later, the concerns have vanished. Whatever she wants to call me is her business- whether that be Richard, Mr Chubb, Sir or Your Lordship for that matter! Importantly, I make sure I treat them as I’d treat any subordinate in the office- no better; no worse.
Having domestic servants does create issues, however. As much as we try to keep the relationship professional, there is a degree of closeness which cannot go away. We loan money and try to help with family matters for one thing. More importantly, any long term domestic servant will build up a close relationship with the kids. This makes for a far more personal relationship and makes breaking that relationship for whatever reason very hard.
Some of our toughest experiences to date have been letting domestic servants go. Saying goodbye to Iman- the boys’ nanny in Cairo- was simply gut wrenching for all of us. She doted on the boys and they loved her dearly. She begged to be allowed to join us in Tanzania but we all knew this would be a bad move. The boys would ultimately grow up and, as hard as saying goodbye then was, having to pack her on a plane home would have been far harder. We’ve heard many horror stories here too. Imagine inviting a friend and her kids round for a playdate with your two boys only to find that the “friend” was so impressed with your nanny that she poached her with a higher salary. Thankfully this has not happened to us, but from what I hear, trying to explain to the poor boys why their nanny was now looking after their school chums instead was a bit of a parenting challenge!
Relationship with Rain
Now like anyone brought up in Britain, I have always had a hate- hate relationship with rain. For the first three decades of my life, rain was a cold, drizzly miserable phenomenon which meant days sitting indoors as a child and a cold, squelchy commute home as an adult.
I can honestly say that the past five years have ignited in me a true love of rain. I guess, this is due in part to three years with barely a drop. Although Cairo is located on the Nile, it is also situated in the middle of the Sahara- the world’s biggest desert. The narrow strip of water we happened to live next to had little effect on the climate therefore, with the exception of the odd drizzly day in February, the weather was an unbroken sequence of blue skies and blazing sun.
After three years of drought, we moved somewhere which, in theory, had a rainy season. Although we’ve had problems with low rainfall, the times that the rains do come in are spectacular. The rainfall is usually quite short in duration- a storm comes in, the rain comes down in a violent hour or so of warm big raindrops and then vanishes, giving way to blue skies once more. Since the violence of the storms means that nobody in their right mind would venture out in one, you are left either to watch it from the safety of indoors or to strip down and enjoy getting wet- i do the former, the boys the latter. I think I still hate the cold miserable drizzle that passes for rain in the UK but truly love the tropical storms we are getting on a daily basis right now!
Driving
Now driving has been a very eventful experience over the past five years. For the first three of these, the experiences were entirely second hand as we employed a driver- nobody in their right minds would drive in Cairo and I wasn’t going to. From the passenger seat of my Pajero, I was able to witness the entire range of driving offences. I still believe that, in Mohammed, we employed the best driver in Egypt- someone with practically no temper and with razor sharp reflexes that saved us both on many occasions. I remember one time driving at high speed along the main ring road, crossing the main bridge over the Nile. For no apparent reason the car in front screeched to a halt and a pile up seemed inevitable. Mohammed not only managed to steer around the car but then also steered right back into a straight line ensuring we didn’t career off the bridge to a watery fate.
Tanzania gave me the chance to drive for myself and what fun it has been. In two years I’ve only had one major accident- something I’m not keen to repeat. However I’ve also learned a more flexible approach to traffic laws. Here in Tanzania, we generally drive on the left but in practice drive wherever the potholes are shallowest. Traffic lights require local knowledge since some are obeyed and others ignored. Stopping at the wrong red is likely to result in your getting rear ended. However, there are some areas where the British culture has stayed firmly inside me. Unlike most expatriates, neither of us drink and drive. Traffic jams are also to be respected. Despite the fact that most of my fellow drivers are pushing ahead by driving up the wrong side of the road or even along the pavement, I always wait my turn- the urge to queue is just too much!
Driving is always an experience and I generally get home either thanking my lucky stars that I missed the mango cart being pulled round that blind corner on the wrong side of the road or cursing the fact that the traffic policeman decided to head off and relieve himself seconds after guiding me into a right hand turn that consequently almost killed me. However, given the chance to either watch someone else drive or to drive myself, I’d take the latter any day.
Having Lots of Mates
This final point comes after consulting with my dear wife. For Soma, the biggest chance over the past five years has been in her words “the sisterhood that I’ve managed to build up around me”. For Soma, as a stay at home Mum, this has been a true blessing. In London, despite the fact that we both worked, our friends tended to be people that I knew and had introduced Soma to. Now things are far more even and in all honesty the situation has completely reversed. Almost all our friends are people Soma has met.
Soma and I at the Dar es Salaam Burns Night Event
It seems that there is a whole community that exists once the wage earners have headed off for work each day- a whole life we know nothing about and which Soma loves. To some extent the same was the case in Maadi too. For sure I know that both Soma and I have made far more friends among the expat communities of Maadi and Dar es Salaam than we could ever had hoped for in London. Although like all close communities there is a line between close and claustrophobic, we seem to have made some great friends and to have steered clear of the politics.
I think perhaps the most important part of the last five years has been the friends we have made. We are still in touch with some great mates from Cairo- most of whom have themselves moved on. When we left Cairo I was amazed that we could have arrived knowing nobody and have managed to get so many to our leaving drinks three years later. Luckily for us, it seems that the same will happen in Dar es Salaam. We arrived knowing nobody but again have managed to accumulate a lot of good friends we’ll stay in touch with for an awfully long time. If the next five years can be as successful on the friendship front as the past five, we’ll count ourselves truly lucky!
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Christmas in Malaysia
I’ve said before that one of the big challenges of raising expatriate kids is instilling a sense of routine and ritual into an otherwise changeable life. Christmas is a perfect example of this. Given that we very rarely spend two Christmases in a row in the same place, it is important that a sort of family tradition be established, not so much in terms of where we are but more with regard to what we do. Well, we seem to have managed to develop some traditions- albeit not necessarily ones we had intended. For two years in a row now, Christmas Day has been celebrated on some day around 20 December, so as not to interfere with our flight plans. For the second year running, we have spent 25th December roaming around some foreign shopping mall. Last year we enjoyed a festive curry in Calcutta; this year it was dim sum and nasi goreng amid the commercialism of Kuala Lumpur! The Chubb family Christmas must now apparently be held any day other than the correct one and the real Christmas Day must be observed in a shopping mall. After five years, I am actually starting to miss Christmas in Wolverhampton and, might just try to get us all invited along for the festivities next time! Roast Turkey on December 18th followed by a trip to the Merry Hill Shopping Centre a week later anyone?
Anyway, Christmas was duly celebrated over a busy weekend around mid December, taking in a variety of parties, dinners, pantomimes and even a carol service or two. In fact one of the more imaginative parties even included a carol service as well as a treasure hunt! However, while these were fun, we were all looking forward to our trip eastwards- a family Christmas present to ourselves.
Anyway, Christmas was duly celebrated over a busy weekend around mid December, taking in a variety of parties, dinners, pantomimes and even a carol service or two. In fact one of the more imaginative parties even included a carol service as well as a treasure hunt! However, while these were fun, we were all looking forward to our trip eastwards- a family Christmas present to ourselves.
Soma organising the children's choir- Carol Service at the British High Commission, Dar es Salaam
Soon enough, the day of departure dawned and by 5pm we are sitting on an Emirate airlines flight to Dubai. Fortunately for me, who, has travelled that particular leg about once a fortnight for the past few months, Emirates had finally got round to changing the TV schedules. Kieran had no such worries and settled down to the four hours of uninterrupted viewing he would never be allowed at home!
We finally arrived in Kuala Lumpur late on Christmas Eve. Time zones being what they are, we had left Dubai mid morning and, after only six hours of flying, landed at 9.30pm. After a long wait for baggage, we carried out a last search of our bags (I personally didn’t fancy getting hanged just because someone had planted some hash in our suitcase so got a little over paranoid). All the worry was pointless since, by the time we headed out, customs was empty anyway. An hour or so later, we finally drew up to our hotel.
The Traders Hotel is a lovely place- a five star hotel at three star prices. It is located directly opposite the Petronas Towers, a truly spectacular construction which is either the fourth or fifth tallest building in the world. What was most impressive was that each night, the towers were lit up and looked like a pair of colossal jewels, sparkling away. In fact, despite the fact that it was gone midnight by the time we got to bed, Kieran sat up for some time simply gazing out of his window at the towers. I know this probably had something to do with jetlag, it being only about 7pm back in Dar, but it’s a poetic image isn’t it!
The best view from any hotel room we've ever stayed in- the Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur
We spent about a week in Kuala Lumpur in total, two short stays in between a four day trip up to Penang. We emerged from four very deep sleeps around 9.30 Christmas morning. After the usual minute or two of trying to remember where and when we were, it all came flooding back- we were in Malaysia, we were jet lagged and oh my God there’s only an hour before they close breakfast! After a rushed breakfast, we set out to explore the city.
Kuala Lumpur is a truly beautiful, almost futuristic place. It is also a place of contrast where spectacular modern buildings stand side by side with beautiful green parks and busy, crowded Chinese and Indian quarters. As a result you have a city that both looks clean and spacious, yet also has the kind of character you might find in an older place. You might not get the dusty hustle and bustle we’ve been used to in Egypt or Tanzania, but that doesn’t mean you lose the sense of possibility- the feeling that the next dozy side street might just house a really special little restaurant or shop. If London is a step above Dar es Salaam or Cairo ,then Kuala Lumpur takes things even further. It has the futuristic luxury of Dubai but in contrast has a true sense of itself- it is a proper city rather than a sprawl of impressive buildings.
Perhaps it is the ethnic makeup of the country which has made KL what it is. The majority grouping is ethnic Malay, a predominantly Muslim community, with a Catholic minority. Added to this are substantial Chinese and Indian minorities. As a result amid the big shopping centres you can also find a busy Chinatown and an Indian quarter. This made for interesting sightseeing and the kind of culinary experiences which blew my diet to bits! I asked Kieran what he enjoyed most about his holiday and food came second on the list (new toys came first naturally!) Luckily for us our stomachs have been well trained in various parts of Africa and India so, unsurprisingly, we had our first evening meal in a small restaurant somewhere in Chinatown- a meal for which even Kieran managed to use chopsticks!
Kieran tucking into dinner on Petaling Street- Kuala Lumpur. The chopsticks came out shortly afterwards!
One of the best things about Kuala Lumpur is that there is so much to do. In our week there we managed a bus tour of the city, dinner in the revolving restaurant of the Kuala Lumpur Tower and visits to an aquarium, an amusement park, and plenty of self improving museums! Actually one museum came as a real surprise to us all. The Petrosains museum, located in the Petronas Towers, is a museum related to the oil and gas industry- not perhaps the most exciting place one might imagine. We headed there to kill an hour or so on our last day and emerged many hours later blown away by the helicopter simulations, aeroplanes, dinosaurs and Formula 1 racing cars- all somehow connected to Petronas and its business. It sounds odd, but it seems to me that engineers just know how to make good museums- get a room, fill it with cool gadgets and watch the punters come!
After four days exploring the city, we headed back to the airport, this time to the domestic terminal for the short one hour flight up to Penang. Penang is both a state and an island, located a little to the north of Kuala Lumpur, on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. The state capital is Georgetown- the name perhaps giving a clue to exactly which imperial power spent a good while knocking around there. From what I could glean from various museum walls and a very helpful guidebook, Penang is little like Zanzibar in that it held a real strategic importance in past centuries. The Portuguese were the first western powers to take an interest in the place, naming the small island they used for water replenishment on their way to and from Goa “Pulo Pinaum”. The island was ruled for centuries by the Sultan of Kedah until the mid 18th Century when he ceded the island to the East India Company in exchange for British military assistance. The British naturally reneged on their part of the deal but retained the island nonetheless. Almost to rub it in, they agreed to pay the Sultan a small annual fee for the island- his descendants receive the princely sum of 18,000 ringgits per annum to this day!
Anyway, back to the present, or a very recent past at Kuala Lumpur airport. Although the flight was delayed (I get especially fed up and intolerant when the delay is longer than the flight itself so Soma had to placate me with a coffee!), we still managed to arrive before lunchtime. After checking into the hotel, we headed out to find some lunch and duly found it in a small restaurant which was apparently over 100 years old. Although the place had clearly seen better days, as evidenced by the combination of garden furniture and plastic stools which served as our table and chairs, the food was, as usual, magnificent. As with most of these restaurants, your table serves as your base but, other than that, you are fairly mobile. A waitress will come and take an order, but only for beer. The rest of the food is served at a number of small stalls- a little like a small food market.
Soma duly headed off to provide for her starving young and came back with a vast array of interesting dishes. We all worked our way through the dishes in that slow and considered manner that so characterises the eating habits of the Chubb male. Needless to say, two minutes later, three of us were looking at empty plates, watching poor old Soma just getting started on her lunch- we really need to start chewing our food this year!
For such a small place, there was a lot to see and do in Georgetown for the three days we were there. The first full day was devoted to sightseeing. This was a busy day in which we took in the best of the British, Chinese and Indian influences. We started our day at Fort Cornwallis, the very first British fortress built in Malaysia by its “founder” (from the British point of view at least) Sir Francis Light. The fort is pretty overgrown these days and, apart from an impressive collection of cannons had little to keep us there more than an hour. From there, we headed towards the Indian quarter, via my first Buddhist temple of the holiday, the Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy Temple. This is a small but very old temple, dating back to the 1800s and is dedicated to a daughter of a king who so wanted to become a Buddhist nun, she defied her father and was ultimately executed for her defiance. At her execution she prayed so as to take the mortal sin of the axeman onto herself and thus descended into Hell. She was so good in Hell that she transformed the place into another heaven. She was taken out of Hell so as to return the place to its previous state, providing the justice required for wrongdoers.
Some of the biggest incense sticks we'd ever seen- outside the Goddess of Mercy Temple, Georgetown, Penang
Although old, the temple is still very popular. Outside was a proliferation of traders and some of the largest incense sticks any of us had ever seen. We bought some smaller ones and made a few offerings- Kieran in particular got very Buddhist all of a sudden!
A one hour bus ride out of Georgetown, to the base of Penang Hill, took us to an altogether different temple. As with the Goddess of Mercy Temple, the Kek Lok Si temple is also devoted to Kuan Yin. This temple, however, is one of the largest in South East Asia, and, although it was started back in 1890, is still partly in construction. Interestingly, this is a temple that absorbs both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, with imagery from both Burma and China found there. Most spectacular, though, was the 30 metre high statue of Kuan Yin who looks out over the island in a way reminiscent of Christ the Redeemer in Rio.
Kek Lok Si Temple
The newly completed status of Kuan Yin at Kek Lok Si temple, Penang
A couple of days later found us back at the base of Penang Hill, this time for a try at getting on the funicular railway to the top. We’d actually tried the previous day but upon getting there at 1.30pm, found that the first available tickets were not until 5.30pm. This time we were there just before 8am. We got tickets and boarded an almost empty funicular. Apparently, the problems only start at about 9am when the hoards of tourists from the cruise liners make it ashore and block book the rest of the day. Fortunately we were at the top of the hill before they’d even woken up! Sadly, our hopes of getting a panoramic view of the island were dashed by the equally beautiful morning mist. The top of the hill, seemed like a little world of its own with a small village, a little Hindu temple and a few curious monkeys all we really had for company. However, nice as it was to escape the heat and humidity, we had to get back on the car and down to civilisation. One of the most important aspects of civilisation being breakfast, we walked over to a nearby street cafe and tucked into a few plates of dimsum.
A rare sight- three Brits happy to see snow this winter. Soma and the boys at the snow park in Dubai
From that moment on, our direction was really homewards. We had a fine few days back in Kuala Lumpur- shopping for luxury items such as Rolexes, Breitlings and Patek Philippe watches, all at $20 each. After a further few days in Dubai, it was with a surprisingly heavy heart that we headed back to Dar es Salaam and a parallel world of power cuts, cockroaches, heat and dust. Actually, we’ve been back a week or so now and after a tough few days battling the cockroaches, we’re happy again. However, the world of possibility and excitement offered up by Malaysia remains a happy memory fixed in all of our minds.
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