Karibu Tanzania!

Now for those yet not fluent in Kiswahili, let me explain. Karibu is Kiswahili for “welcome”, so I’ve been welcome in Tanzania as of four days ago, and I’m now welcoming you to a taste of Tanzie, via my blog, as well.

Where to start. Well, obviously a lot has happened since Daz and I left Sydney on Wed 27 July after packing our entire house into a container and waving it off to its Belrose destination. [pic attached].









Packing up the FWS head-office (ie our home) into a shipping container
So a big, muscley thanks to Daz’s sons Robbie and Daniel for helping us with this ginormous job, and also Daz’s brothers, Daniel and Jay, and Jay’s lovely girl, Alanya. This impromptu packing team went off! And they had to – we gave ourselves just two days to complete the task.

Noticeably absent: Joshua James Delforce. Yes, where was my well-regarded brother Joshua James Delforce during this epic move? Texting me asking if he could have Outback Rex The Fun Car, my Toyota Surf while I was away. Hmmm, if I’d been smarter, I would have answered, “Yes, but only if you get your posterior over here and help lug and load NYOW!”


The fanciest food, water or shelter for Daz & I
Speaking of smarter, it took Daz & I a while to work out that once we returned the keys to our rental home to our estate agent, we wouldn’t have anywhere to sleep that night. Der. We sat in Rex and came up with the quazi-brilliant plan of living it up for our last night in Sydney. This, we decided, meant a room with a Sydney Harbour view and a flash-ish meal…for the menial sum of $200. We rang the Novotel at Darling Harbour. $450 a night. Click. We rang the Holiday Inn at Potts Point, $380ish a night. Click. We rang our ever-helpful mate, Coolio in Queensland, who works with Virgin Blue Airlines and asked him where the hosties stay, as we figured those places might be more affordable. Still no. Then we went to a pub in Pyrmont to Daz’s work and sat down with a lemon, lime and bitters (from the tap, not from a bottle, so delici-oceana) and logged into the pub’s wireless internet. I began searching through LastMinute.com.au and found a little place in The Rocks which sounded pretty good. Especially the bit about the whole place being non-smoking! Hello, The Stafford Rendesvoux just off Argyle Street (where we held Kujenga Sydney). Well, we rock up, ready to pay $250 for our mid-range bedroom and the lovely boy at front desk upgrades us to the penthouse. This is their $750 a night room with panoramic harbour views of the bridge, the oppie house, and all. Double-king bed, with 400-thread count sheets (I’m big on that thread count!), our own huge bathroom, our own walk-in closet (good to get our 20,000 bags & backpacks out of sight), our own loungeroom and our own spiffy kitchen. We quickly decided the harbour view was too spectak to actually leave and go out for dinner, so just ordered room service and watched Sydney-siders walk and boat around while Daz played his back-pack guitar (specially bought for this trip).

Think it ended there? The morning sunrise was one in a million. We got a few pix thanks to Jay very generously handing us his camera to use for our entire trip. How gorgeous a goodbye is that?





Then a medical check (bit late, but hey!), and to the airport to give Josh the use of Rex and to show the family the pix and drawings of Kesho Leo that Rob Not Dentist, our architect, has spent the last three months drawing for us. These of course, were meant to be shown at Kujenga, but because of the appalling AV service (not supplied by The Argyle who were fantastically organised and generous), weren’t. But don’t get me started on that. Our plans is to get them up on our website asap so you can have a look at them soon. They’re pretty incredible. Our roof can harvest 900,000 litres of water (given the current Tanzanian rainfall stats). This is far more water than we’ll need in a year, which means we can offer the excess to the local community – exciting stuff. Of course, there’s plenty of other terrific stuff about the architectural plans, but this is probably the most revolutionary. Compliments of Rob the Revolution, the architect formerly known as Rob Not Dentist.





Plane Trip Dramas & Delights
Flights to Africa? We won’t talk about this, except to say they were long and our flight on Emirates out of Dubai into Nairobi was called and re-called so many times that we each walked away with a FREE return ticket from Dubai to anywhere in southern Africa (Seychelles, Mauritius, Capetown, Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi). We reckon we can probably make pretty good use of these tickets! Woohooo!



Car-less in Kenya
Our plan was to buy a 4wd in Kenya but when we spoke to Dougie (a New Zealander that our mate Pete Murph told us about), who is based in Karen (of Karen “I had a farm in Aaaaah-frika” Blixen fame), we had a re-think. Apparently we’d need to pay tax on it twice. Once for it having been imported into Kenya, and then again, for us importing it from Kenya to Tanzania. And we’d also have a car that was registered in Kenya but lived in Tanzania, so we’d have to cross the border to fix its rego papers each year. Dougie reckoned we’d be better off to just wait to find something in Arusha. Yes, the roads in Arusha are far worse than the roads in Kenya, so an Arusha vehicle would be more likely to have busted shocks and all sorts of mechanical issues we’d have to look out for – but Dougie advised avoiding a problem vehicle would be less of a drama than combating the issues outlined above. We’re happy to take advice from residents of this crazy continent (for we respect their tenacity!), so that we did and spent the next three days chilling out at Dougie’s accommodation – Karen Camp. We read books, played guitar and ate them out of their biltong stocks. Oh not to leave unmentioned a major achievement: Daz spent hours and hours, days and days, drawing up an incredibly comprehensive building schedule, all colour coded, detailing what’s happening building wise in which weeks etc. It’s a work of art. The process reminds me of the process involved in creating the many magazine production schedules I’ve done in the past – layer upon layer of colour-coded organization. And then you have to spend hours explaining it all to those who will use it. Sometimes (ie always), it’s easier to understand these schedules when you’ve created them, than it is to simply be shown them and expected to follow. But as far as schedules go, Daz’s is a ripper - comprehensive, but simple enough to follow. I’m quite impressed with my darling’s work. Who knew he’d be so organised?

Doing The Harmless Shuttle (to Arusha)
The five hour bus trip to Arusha was extremely pleasant this time. First time ever. One, the weather was mild – if anything a little on the chilly side. Two, the passengers opened their windows (doesn’t always happen) so we could breathe and, three, the driver was extremely cautious and possibly even ‘slow’ by African standards. My hair only stood on end three or four times, as opposed to the normal 50. The whole trip I felt confident that I would arrive in one piece. Riverside Shuttles are by far the safest and most reliable shuttle service in Kenya-Tanzania but it’s always a bit unnerving to ride on any African transport because there is a different system of overtaking, braking, indicating – and for us road-rule-driven Westerners it can seem like there might be no system at all!




Home, sweet EMPTY home
I have a farm in Aaaah-frika. Look, yes, I know it’s not MY farm per say, but stop wrecking it.

Before I left Sydders, one of my best friends ever, Cindy Macdonald, enquired as to how many times the FWS team had said “I have a farm in Aaah-frika” since the land purchase. I said I couldn’t speak for the others, but I personally am up to 74. Mind, I said it a lot BEFORE I had a farming plot in Africa. To be honest, I’ve been saying it randomly since I was 7. That and “I didn’t make him for yooo!” (Rocky Horror Picture Show). I think IHAFIA has a thrilling sound to it. So exotic. Imagine then, how it might feel to actually arrive on your farm in Aaaah-frika. Of course, the farm I’m referring to is the Kesho Volunteer House Come Office block that we purchased while here in April 2007. Having never seen inside the house, we were pretty pumped up by the time we reached the front door on Monday night. It took us a while to work out the locks, but eventually, presto, we were in. A gorgeous big loungeroom, a generous bedroom with an ensuite with a shower and Western flushing loo (who knew?) and a big-for-Africa kitchen…but hang on, where are the other two bedrooms? Oh…One out the back – entirely separate from the rest of the house but seemingly joined on…and no other bedroom. Oh…they meant a THREE room house, not a THREE BEDROOM house. One of those little African misunderstandings we’ve come to know and love. No biggy, we had always planned to have some volunteers camp on our block until we find the funds to build a basic volunteer bedroom block anyway. On reflection, I decide the separate room out the back will make an excellent office one day, so this can be the home of the FWS manager and the office FWS office block, all in one. Which is exactly what we’d hoped for anyway. And then the vols can be in their separate bedroom blocks out the back one day, one day. Meantime it will be either camping al in the loungeroom, or camping outside in tents. We’ll sort it all out. Or, we might even be able to rent Frank’s Millenium Volunteer House for a while. Depends how beasty, tough and hardcore our volunteers are. For months, Shona and Jono, have been advising potential vols that the set up is going to be INCREDIBLY basic this year, so only to come if they really really really like camping!

Now, for some strange reason, I’d imagined we’d have an oven, a fridge, lounges and a bed. I have no idea why I thought this. If you bought a home in Australia, you wouldn’t get free furniture, so what was I thinking? Immediately, it means that we have nothing to sleep on – or to cook on. So we head up to the Christian Brothers up the road and they throw a spare mattress at us. We carry it home on our head, African style, chuck it on the cement floor and go to bed without dinner. We wake a bit achy and hungry, but again…we have no way of cooking anything. We walk up to the bustop (30 minutes), wait for a dula dula (local bus) which arrives soon after, and then sit on it for 45 minutes while the driver waits for other passengers to arrive and fill it up. We finally head off to town in a cramped, 30-plus PAX dula dula, ignoring the fight that breaks out about a young boy who has paid the fair of three people so he can transport his huge bag of lettuce to town. He argues that the driver MUST stop picking up more and more passengers because he has paid for three passengers so his lettuce will not be trampled on, but now because the driver continues to pick up passengers, the lettuce is being squished, stood and sat upon. Let me tell you, it can get very claustrophobic very quickly in a dula dula when there is an angry vibe going on. There’s no way to escape, windows too small, door too far away…and it’s a bit scary when you think an all-in brawl is going to break out in the small, hot space. But in my 1,000 dula dula trips, this is only the second time I’ve felt frightened. The first, was of course, my first-ever dula dula trip. But everyone feels frightened on the first trip – we Westerners are not acclimatized to sitting on each other while enjoying our public transport. We’re not so used to packing 30 people into a Tarago van, driving at break-neck speeds, ploughing headlong into 50cm deep ditches in dirt roads, beeping the horn at people, cars, donkeys, goats, maasai warriors, chickens, hand-held carts, wandering toddlers and the prime-minister to get out of your way instead of applying the breaks. We are not used to having some intricate traditional print that covers a healthy African backside shoved in our face, or of being handed someone’s crying kid to nurse for the trip, or of having to watch our pockets in the cramped conditions, or of the whole bus bursting into song because…well, why not? We’re also not used to a 7km trip from our home to town taking the better part of an hour… (but never a dull moment).


Let’s Eat Now - And Tonight!
So having left at 9.30am and arriving in town at 11am, we ate brinch (that’s breakfast, lunch and dinner from last night), before searching for more food-eating means – an oven and fridge. Haggle, haggle, finally yes, we’ll buy it. I’m not taking you through this 6-hour process of haggling, money finding (minimum amounts of cash out of ATMS, Visa’s 5% surcharge, arranging delivery to … somewhere where this is no address (If your farm in Aaah-frika happens to be in semi-rural Tanzania, you don’t actually have an address…) and why must we only get a ‘verbal’ warranty when we KNOW for a fact, that when our friend purchased an oven from you earlier this year, it blew up after 20 days and you REFUSED to acknowledge it was lemon or take any responsibility for the “verbal” warranty you offered him at the time of purchase? Anyway, you get the idea: we were lucky to close this deal in a record-breaking 6 hours and were exhausted by the time we got home with the booty (which also included a few basic foodstuffs, pots & pans & utensils – which we spent time purchasing from different outlets in Arusha. No one-stop shopping here!). Fortunately though, both our appliances worked like a dream as soon as we plugged them in (via a Voltage Regulator – you can’t plug appliances directly into the sockets here because of the electricity surges. The surges will blow up your computer, fridge, oven without a second thought, so you need to place a Voltage Regulator between the appliance and the electricity socket on the wall). Our first meal? Fried eggs on toast. Very satisfying!



What a beasty boy!
Mudi, the Tanzanian who will soon become Kesho Leo’s Assistant Manager under Manager Kelsey Wilson, has found us a car to rent until we manage to buy our own (which Daz is looking into this and next week). It’s a … rather rundown Land Cruiser Defender [pix attached]. Its gears jump out while driving ALL THE TIME, none of its window or doors shut properly, the steering wheel doesn’t turn easily (Ie Daz nearly puts his shoulder out if he has to turn a corner), and until yesterday, it had a flat battery so required clutch starting every third pothole. She’s a beaut. But at least she KINDA does the job. The thing it really does do is highlight what an awesomely beasty boy Darren Stratti is. As you may have picked up, travelling on East African roads is a thrill-seeker’s joy at the best of times. Driving on them – and driving on them in a vehicle like this, is truly only for the brave and capable. It’s not every person that would or COULD jump in a car like this, on roads like this, in conditions like this and make a go of it. Within an hour, Daz, was driving like a true African (yes, this would get him arrested at home, but here it is a good thing). I couldn’t have picked a better partner in life, or a better partner in this project, if I’d tried. I’m so impressed by his let-me-at-it attitude and his sheer ability to accomplish ANYTHING he decides to. It comforts me no end to know that he’s heading up the building of Kesho. The FWS girls have made some awesome decisions in assigning the roles within FWS and Kesho – and this assignation absolutely highlights that, to be sure!


And next?
Today’s primary job will be all about bedding. We’ve been using our old clothes for pillows which, wasn’t so good last night, as some portion of Daz’s pillow absolutely stank. I’ve started calling him Bunyip (because I think Bunyips might smell like Daz’s pillow did last night). So he’s decided it’s a priority to sort out some pillows. I am not about to argue!

It’s also important I set up a meeting with our lawyer to officially swap contracts on the Utopia land we’re building Kesho on and to chase up FWS’s status as an NGO in Tanzania.

Some might say it’s a priority I clean the house too. I’d agree. In Africa, you’re always sharing your house with animals but it’s about to what extent…We need some serious dusting, sweeping, cobwebbing and mopping… and it’ll be easier if we do all that before we bring in furniture such as lounge chairs, beds and bookshelves. So now would be the time for that.



An African woman is singing outside my window. I’m typing this from our make-shift mattress in the loungeroom of Kesho Volunteer Come Office (and will post it online tomorrow). What an amazing place. Imagine what a lovely atmosphere our Kesho kids will enjoy at the children’s village, right next door to a chapel – we’ll hear these beautiful African songs all the time. Can’t wait.

Meantime, I’m off to start dusting. I’ll be back in a week. Till then, take care, and let’s hope I’m able to report a 4wd purchase, an official land purchase and a step toward NGO in Tanzania status for FWS. Oh, and it’d be nice to have a proper bed by then too! But no stress…


Beck, xxx.