Saturday October 13th
Not long
after I returned from Tanga yesterday we had some new guests. A young couple turned up on a motorcycle and
booked into the room next to mine and immediately I saw Eva bringing a tray
with drinks over. I did comment that I had
never had room service and was even more vocal when later on she turned up with
a tray of food for them. When I found
out that this was kuku (my chicken)
I was almost apoplectic. This morning at
breakfast I asked if they had left yet and was told by Eva that they had left
last night and hadn't stayed over. I did
ask if they registered as Bwana na Bibi MSmith but I think it got lost
somewhere in the translation.
I had another run to Pangani this morning to print some photos of the students and to do some shopping for Eva. She was planning to go as well and as the things she needed were for me to eat, mkate (bread) and bluebandi (margarine would you believe), I said I could as easy pick them up. I like walking round Pangani, as unlike Tanga I don’t feel I am under any deadline as the journey home is so short. I must admit though, I know how Daffyd Thomas in Little Britain must have felt, ‘The only Muzungu in the village’, as even after a month there are still new roads to walk down and new people to see. Pity lycra is not really my style.
I left it a little later this week and went down about 10:00 I've found out from Denis why many of the shops don’t open until then on Saturdays. This is down to an edict by the High Commissioner for Tanga District that Saturday is cleaning day and all establishments are supposed to spend four hours on Saturday morning cleaning. What they do the rest of the week no one seems to know.
I returned home only to receive a text from Hadija, my Saturday student, saying an emergency prevented her attending her English lesson, so I decided to use the time improving the efficiency of my laptop. As you might know by now the Internet has been a source of exasperation, in one way or another all the time I have been here. Daytime use has proved quite expensive and only working 10 pm to 7 am can have its drawbacks. I finally investigated and found a monthly package I can use which is quite economical, so I can finally work during the day. The one problem left was the best, and sometimes only useable, signal is on the veranda outside my door, but my laptop is not sunshine friendly and the screen is very difficult to read in the very bright light here. So, I have used the skills nurtured over many years of watching Blue Peter and produced a sun screen (see below patent pending)
I had another run to Pangani this morning to print some photos of the students and to do some shopping for Eva. She was planning to go as well and as the things she needed were for me to eat, mkate (bread) and bluebandi (margarine would you believe), I said I could as easy pick them up. I like walking round Pangani, as unlike Tanga I don’t feel I am under any deadline as the journey home is so short. I must admit though, I know how Daffyd Thomas in Little Britain must have felt, ‘The only Muzungu in the village’, as even after a month there are still new roads to walk down and new people to see. Pity lycra is not really my style.
I left it a little later this week and went down about 10:00 I've found out from Denis why many of the shops don’t open until then on Saturdays. This is down to an edict by the High Commissioner for Tanga District that Saturday is cleaning day and all establishments are supposed to spend four hours on Saturday morning cleaning. What they do the rest of the week no one seems to know.
I returned home only to receive a text from Hadija, my Saturday student, saying an emergency prevented her attending her English lesson, so I decided to use the time improving the efficiency of my laptop. As you might know by now the Internet has been a source of exasperation, in one way or another all the time I have been here. Daytime use has proved quite expensive and only working 10 pm to 7 am can have its drawbacks. I finally investigated and found a monthly package I can use which is quite economical, so I can finally work during the day. The one problem left was the best, and sometimes only useable, signal is on the veranda outside my door, but my laptop is not sunshine friendly and the screen is very difficult to read in the very bright light here. So, I have used the skills nurtured over many years of watching Blue Peter and produced a sun screen (see below patent pending)
 |
| The Laptop Sunscreen |
Baadaye
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