Saturday October 28th
Surprise surprise, seven weeks away from home and my hair
has grown. It’s by no means long, but it
has grown to the extent where really I should use a mirror when brushing it, which,
as mentioned earlier, I haven’t got. So,
it was a case of buying a mirror or having my hair cut and the latter was by
far the cheaper alternative and seemed the more sensible. Pangani it is then!
As Denis totally shaves his head, I decided I would avoid
his barber, but Mama Gladness recommended ‘The Salon’ in the market place, so
off I trotted to the end of the road to find some means of transport into
Pangani. I’d barely been there five
minutes when a vehicle appeared out of the track next to me with a muzungu
driving and presumably his wife sat next to him. It had obviously come from either the tented
lodge or one of the few houses down there and putting on a winning smile I
nodded at the driver. He, being equally
friendly, raised his hand in a wave, turned towards Pangani and drove off. I’m glad Mama Gladness wasn’t around because
I’m sure my comment would have been enough for a life ban from the YMCA.
Dala dala, motorbike or basi; which would come first? In fact, after only another five minutes, I
sampled a new form of transport. A
Toyota pick-up truck hove into site and as it approached it flashed its lights,
which I took as a friendly gesture and not a demand that I clear away from the
road, so I waved it down. Its driver was a Tanzanian with what looked like his
whole family in the back of the vehicle and they made room for me as I vaulted
over the side of the truck and settled on the floor. Possibly vaulted is too strong a word but I
must defend myself and say that, for a man of my advanced years, my entry was
reasonably athletic. It transpired that
he was going over the car ferry and on further south so I hopped out, a bit
less athletically, when we reached the town and was left with the decision as
to whether I would go to the stationers to print photos first or risk the
barbers. In the end it was to be neither,
as I entered the stationers I found the fan motionless on the ceiling and the
computers quiet, for lack of, you’ve guessed, electricity. When I reached the market place, the barbers too was closed, for the same
reason, so all that was left was to hop a Dala Dala
and head home, only to find half an hour later that the power had been
restored. T.I.A.
The previous evening a new guest had arrived in a Safari
vehicle which he was using to transport a German couple down to Dar es
Salaam. They were staying a couple of
days at the £50 a night tented lodge next door and he had come to join the less
affluent of us at the £8 a night YMCA. As I sat outside my room, rueing my
wasted journey, he came out from the next door room and informed me that he was
going into Pangani so I hitched a ride with him to have a second go. I had 50% success as the printer in the
stationers had run out of coloured ink and the boy who runs it didn’t seem to
have a replacement that worked, but at least, as I entered the market place, I
saw The Salon had reopened for business.
Your local friendly barber spoke no English at all but
luckily I still had a spare from the passport photos I’d had taken to open my
Barclays account, so I pointed to my head, pointed to the snap and offered up a
prayer. He obviously thought it
hilarious that a muzungu had come to his shop and my attempts at Swahili did
nothing to assuage his mirth. I took all
this in good part until he came out with the only English he seemed to know
which was one, two …………nine, ten. I was
on safer ground here so I showed off my numbers by counting to twenty, but this
brought even more laughter from him as he obviously thought my accent was
funny. Right, this is war. Numbers are my business, so I quickly rattled
off the seven times table in Swahili up to 28 and pointed at him to add the
next number. After much thought and
deliberation he came out with his answer ‘thelathini na nne’ (34). ‘Hapana’, says I with a smirk on my face, “thelathini
na tano”! One up for the Brits, I
thought, as I paid my 80p and left before he tested me again with “Anything for
the weekend?”.
Dala dala home, where I had to parade round to have the crop
assessed by Mama Gladness, Eva, Vicky, Lucy and Deo. The general consensus was ‘nzuri sana’.
Being spoiled last week in Dar has, I’m afraid, exposed
again the culinary limitations of my abode, so I decided that with a new
haircut and my best ‘bib and tucker’ I’d once again go and join the toffs next
door for a meal. I checked that their
set menu for the evening was not fish, counted the money in my ‘pochi’ and set
out across the woods, torch in hand, for my bit of luxury.
 |
| The Dining Room at the Tented Lodge |
The meal was as I had hoped and I found myself sitting at a
table with a couple of ex-pats from England who lived in Tanga and seemed to
have spent their lives bringing up a family in Nepal, MonteNegro, Sri Lanka…..
The list seemed to go on for ever. They
were a friendly couple and a pleasant evening concluded with a genuine offer to
stop over anytime I wanted at their home in Tanga. As this opens up the possibility of an early
morning high speed luxury coach journey to Dar for my next blood test, I might well
take them up on the offer.
Back through the woods, made no easier by the two large
glasses of Merlot inside me, and, after the obligatory fumigation and ten
minute wait for the air to clear, I climbed into bed a contented man.
Baadaye
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