Domestic Arrangements

23rd February, 2008

Sunday morning – woke to find Donald had been inspired to write another “letter from Mwanza” (does anyone realise that it is titled this in the style of Alistair Cooke’s “letter from America”? We both used to love listening to his letters read by him with his wonderfully distinct voice. Anyway, as he was inspired I thought I’d have a go too, as I would be typing his up later (yep, I do the typing, he hand writes his).

I realise that I haven’t told you too much about our domestic arrangements. As you will see, I now know how to put photo’s on the blog, so (hopefully) I will be able to put some up of our African home, Milestone House next.

SAIDIA have rented this house for their volunteers, and so it is a big place. Hopefully when full it will have at least 8 volunteers in it, but currently we have it all to ourselves. It is a concrete rendered, semi detached, bungalow with a corrugated roof. The gate (which is always kept locked) is just off a dirt road, which is, for some reason we have not yet discovered as we haven’t walked up the road yet, quite a busy one.

So we come in through a big solid mental gate, which is always kept locked, into a courtyard area, which is partially covered. This is where we spend most of the time during the day if we are here. We have our Swahili lessons here and I am sat there now typing this out. There are four plastic chairs and a plastic table and there is a lovely breeze which flows around – the sun doesn’t hit the full courtyard, so it is a lovely place to sit. Unfortunately we don’t use it at night as this is where our Askari sits whilst here.

We then have a big iron door-grate to unlock to get into the bungalow. All the windows are barred, and meshed and some have glass. Those that don’t are like that on purpose, so as to allow the breeze through. The ceilings are high and the floors red painted concrete and so it is a cool house. We walk into the lounge/dining area. There is a desk in it, three settee’s and a dining table and chairs, and loads of room for much more furniture, but actually its better with less. All the furniture (apart from the bought plastic stuff outside) has been made here. You don’t see furniture shops here as such, you just go to a fundi (tradesman) and he makes it for you. Its all in good solid wood and the cushions are thick sponge covered in kikoi material (the thin cotton wraps which women wear wrapped around them). The curtains are made from the same material (similar pattern) and they almost close properly.

To walk to the bedrooms/bathrooms and kitchen, we go through another room which Jen & Joey have set up with a huge notice board. This contains a big map of Tanzania, maps of the nearest game parks, and one of Mwanza (which Joey and some of his mates put together and it is really good). There are photo’s up of some of the placements Joey has set up, and a few notices of useful numbers etc and from this room we go into the kitchen (jikoni), a shower room, a toilet (choo) and the bedrooms (chumba). There are rugs around and the whole place does look quite homely – in a sparse kind of way.

The kitchen is basically two tables against walls, with a sink at the corner. The sink has a cold water tap only (well there is no hot water here at all) and the cooker is a two ring gas burner. We have a kettle (or did, it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment!) a toaster and a water purifier. Water should not be used straight from the tap for drinking or cooking ie washing food prior to use. To use the purifier we are supposed to take water from the tap and ensure it rapid boils for a good while (I think 10 minutes – which seems a long time, you will have no water left by then!!) It then has to cool (covered) and when it is cool you put it into the top container of the purifier. The water then drips slowly through a filter into the bottom container, which has a tap on it. We can then use the water to bottle it and put it in the fridge. BUT, as the water has been on and off here quite a bit, it does come through the taps quite brown and mucky – so we decided to buy some big containers of water instead. I write this to give you some flavour of how much longer everything seems to take here, and why.However to get hot water, we must boil it. To ‘shower’ we take a bowl of hot water into the shower room (fully tiled and floor sloping to a drain) and wash ourselves with that water – and then rinse off with a cold shower (I actually rinse off with more warm water, unless it is really hot and sticky)

The beds are again hand made and chunky and we have mossie net frames above them, so you have to fight your way out of it in the middle of the night if you need the loo. Oh yes, we do have an en suite, with a shower and a bath in it, but yep, no hot water so ……

So that’s the house I think – there are three other bedrooms, not yet fully kitted out, and a back yard where we hang our washing and use the BBQ.

Donald has already mentioned about Doudi (our Askari / guard) and how we feel guilty about leaving him outside all night – we never know what to say to him when we come in of an evening. We can’t really say Good Night (lala salama) as that’s sleep well, Good Bye (Kwa Heri) is not right and so we have had to learn another phrase – usiku mwema (nice night), but that doesn’t appease the guilt.

We also have Violet who comes in three times a week and cleans for us and does the washing. (Tho I do our smalls – which is another long a drawn out task – tho not too onerous, one has to have something to do during the day doesn’t one!) She is lovely and speaks good English and is very smart and friendly.

The only other thing about our daily life here is that we are of course car less (tho Jen & Joey have said that we can use their car at any time.) We do however have a list of taxi drivers who a) speak some English b) know where we live and c) have agreed prices to get us from town to home etc and that system seems to work well. The Dala Dala’s really seem like too much hard work

So you now know more about where we live – its comfortable, clean and spacious and already feels like home.

One of the smaller luxuries I have, is that pedicures/massages etc are really cheap here – and good too – so I am off for a pedicure at a local hotel at lunchtime, and we may possibly have lunch and a swim there too – life is good. Hopefully J&J will meet us there and we can have a wedding ‘meeting’.

Love to all, and thanks for emails,Love J