Sorry couldn't wait a whole week to post these.
1. Daz negotiates all morning about having some steel brackets for our footings made with a local steel fundhi (tradesman). At 1pm the fundhi rings back with a still-extravagant price. Daz says, "No, sorry, that's far to expensive. I'll go somewhere else, thanks anyway," to which panicked fundhi replies, "Okay, okay... what then is the MAXIMUM you can pay?". Daz cracks up...and explains he's not so much after working out the maximum he can pay, but more about working out the minimum he can get the job done for!
2. Daz proving himself to be a huge help around the house after our neighbour, Elizabeth, has washed a week's worth of dusty clothing for us:
"Beck, I put all of the clothes away in their drawers."
"Excellent darling, thanks."
[pause]
"Oh, but not yours..."
"So just yours?"
"Yes"
"Sooo, 'ALL' these clothes you speak of putting away ... you just mean your own?"
"Yes"
[Lucky he can build good driveways!]
3. Getting pulled over in the ute, by a very tall, young, goodlooking, swarve Tanzanian Policeman who is all dressed up in the crispy white uniform with teeth to match. We amble through the 15-minutes of greetings required together, after which he takes a huge intake of breath and says, officially:
"Please sir, find a good parking area over there, and move your car to it, so that a policeman may interrogate you."
[He, of course, would be that policeman].
"Please sir, may I have all your partik-oo-lars"
[Daz smiles, hands over his driver's licence, car rego, car insurance, etc]
"Please sir, explain to me what procedure you have put in place to repair your vehicle's cracked windscreen"
[Another smile from Daz, who then explains the car has only been ours for a week or two - and that we have bought it to HELP US BUILD AN CHILDREN'S VILLAGE IN SINON]
At once, our eccentric officer, visibly relaxes and beams his blinding smile, answering, "Very good, keep up the good work" and waves us off.
He's proved so entertaining so far, I'm not quite ready to go, so I say to him, "Thank you, Officer, but what is your name?"
"The one who is baptizing Jesus is my name. Do you know?"
"John"
"YES!!! Ah, you know, this is very good!"
Happies all round and off we drive...
Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. The occasionally bizarre and always passionate rantings, ravings, views and opinions expressed here represent those of the author who is sometimes in a state of bewilderment and at other times in bliss as she travels on her FWS journey. Obviously, the author's sentiments are not always those held by foodwatershelter incorporated, but we indulge her none the less - for your reading pleasure.
Friday, 31 August 2007
Monday, 27 August 2007
Building begins
27 August 2007 and building has begun. Yehah! We got off to a rainy start last Monday, but Tuesday, looked good enough to get going. So we did. We started off with Mudi translating for Daz. Daz gave an introduction type talk to those Tanzanians that had put their names in our book and arrived ready to do whatever we asked of them. Daz explained who we were, explicitly pointing out that contrary to popular belief, we were not wealthy Australians building a business, but instead volunteers, here to build a village for Tanzanian orphans and that the building of the village was being funded by many, many generous Australians (youse). All seemed to understand.Daz then went on to explain that we needed 16-18 men (there were maybe 20 standing there) and that we’d take the 16 names on our books before we’d take newcomers. We asked that our workers, put in a fair day’s effort from 8am to 4.30pm each day, with an hour’s lunch – which they could all go home for since all lived nearby. For this, we’d pay the going rate of $2.50 a day. The guys seemed fairly pleased with this – because normally they’d work on their own farms from sunup to sundown, with a short lunch break for no pay, so they thought the hour lunch break, the comparatively early knock-off time and the fact they were getting paid at all was choice! [FYI, the average Tanzanian wage is about $300 a year, yep, about 82c per day, but most Tanzanians I’ve met would do well to earn that much. Most people here earn well below The World Bank’s poverty line of $US2 a day, that’s for sure. What I’m not sure about it is how the hell they survive).
Wrapping up the chats, Daz explained that he expected that our tools be looked after and kept safe and that we hoped we could all learn to work together well as a group and neighbours. We explained that we could give at least six months work to everyone and after that we would be able to offer a couple of full-time jobs at the village, but we’d pick people who had worked well in helping us build. If we felt some people were not working well, while others were working very hard, we’d be forced to ask them to leave because there were lots of men in the area who wanted a job and would work well and help us. This revelation was met with vehement nods which we took to be a good thing. So… to work.
Where to begin? “Fence”, said Darling. “Ukigo” translated Mudi. So to the very bottom of the block, near the seasonal creek, everyone headed, carrying timber poles, barbed wire, mark-out pegs and string, shovels, buckets of water for the men to drink from, wheelbarrows, pangas (local machetes used for farming), picks. We had a few of our own tools, but also asked a few men to go back home and bring more of their own, which they did. These rusted, well-worn specimens made our shiny tools look a bit silly! 
Almost immediately three men – Mohammed The Stonemason And Vice Village Chairman, Mohammed Our Chicken Coop Maker and Ruben Of The Smiling Face began marking out the fence line, painting the end of the timber posts in “mafuta chafu” (dirty – ie used - engine oil) for protection against termites, and digging post holes. It was production-line city without so much as a word of direction from Daz. Guess these farmers have put a fence or two in their time, then! Two days later and the Kesho Leo boundary fence, a job Daz had allowed two weeks for, was complete.Right, better give the guys something else to do then. Let’s build our driveway. And better yet, instead of paying $50 a load for rock base, let’s quarry it from our very own seasonal creek. A natural decision for a boy that comes from a family of top-quality sandstone quarries. “It’s the perfect density,” repeated Daz interminably. “I can’t believe our luck. It’s not too hard to pluck out (the guys jam a steel wedge into the rock which breaks out a sizeable piece) and not to soft to work as road base (ie – it wont crumble after we cover it with volcanic rock and start driving lorries over it).”
And dah-dah... the Kesho Leo driveway is born:
Our first week went really smoothly. Of course, a few hairy moments (or it wouldn't be Africa!):
- nearby Lutheran Church approaches us to say we can’t use their road to access our site anymore. (Technically, it’s not actually their road, but a public access road…and it’s not actually even that! Really, it’s a just track in the grass where no scrub grows). The concern is that our trucks will cause the earth to shake and the church will crack and fall down. We managed to speak to them and convince them that if any damage is done to their church as a result of our trucks, we would fix it for them, but we are extremely confident that nothing of the sort will occur. A seemingly quick agreement was made. We only found out later that the agreement was quick because our neighbours (most of whom have sons / husbands working for us) told the church to ‘behave’, that the community needs projects like ours, and we should not be obstructed from bringing employment and help to the area.
- neighbour rocks up to site claiming to want compensation for his half of the creek we have quarried. Fair enough. Shoulda probably thought about that earlier – doh! Oh well, let’s sort it now. Daz begins to negotiate…but then intuition steps in and forces him to pose a seemingly irreverent question, “Ah, sir, are you the actual owner of that land?”. Rough translation: “Not so much. I used to own it, but then I sold it, but really, it’s now like a stolen cow [the rock quarried], so it is my duty to take some money for the stolen cow.” “Mr, is that alcohol we smell on your breath? Bye bye please”. Crisis averted momentarily. We’ve asked around for the real owner of the land, we’ll see what shows… * Daz and I sitting in our volunteer house discussing security – making sure we’re covered when volunteers come - talking about this idea of not wanting guns on any of our security guards, when KAPOW! A gunshot? KAPOW!!! TWO GUNSHOTS??? One each? Lovely. Are people shooting at us, through our door as the sun shines in and warms our feet? Only one way to find out… We creep to the walls nearby and rubberneck to look around our yard…nothing, nobody. Just the bucolic farm fields, barnyard animal braying and blissful village atmosphere we enjoy every day. “Maybe it was a slingshot, darling. They love a slingshot here…” Scan the trees for the slingshot sniper. No such dude. Scan the fields for a ground-level guerrilla. No such bloke…And besides why are people trying to kill us when they think you’re Jesus? Kinda a bit risky for their afterlife! Okay, well all seems ok, let’s sneak out to the grilled foyeur area out the front where all the kuffuffle (a word I use only because Joe Moe likes it) began. Tools, cement bags, buckets, wheelbarrow… Hang on, wheelbarrow sitting low. A tyre blow-out! Kapows explained! Our world as we know it – safe and lovely – is restored. Just as well, or we’d have to high-tail it home, not like we’re keen to be a “RACRIFICE” as Scooby Doo likes to say.
In just a week, we have whacked up a full boundary fence and half a driveway. Pretty good going, I’d say!
Till next week,
Beck
Tuesday, 21 August 2007
RAINED OUT! KESHO BUILDING DELAYED A DAY!
Today (Monday 20 August) was going to be the illustrious, esteemed, much-anticipated launch of the Kesho Leo Children’s Village building extravaganza (ie we'd actually start building Kesho). But, alas - rain. Torrents, buckets, rivers. It poured down yesterday, last night and this morning like it did in Sydney this winter (and is right now apparently, same-same!). Relentless fat, juicy droplets that soak into all in sight and echo off the roof. Mind, no noise made here could ever outdo the frogs that have started croaking in the infereji (man-made waterway) out the front. It’s a symphony, but better frogs than dogs, I say.
No work for our tools today Daz is a bit despondent – he’s been gunning towards starting the building for weeks. He’s been racing all over town, pricing and bargaining for materials, he’s been laboriously ticking off the umpteen handy-man job associated with the volunteer house-fws office so that, today, he could put them all behind him and finally, focus on building Kesho. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow – or even the day after till things wring themselves out a bit. Can’t help but wonder if we jinxed ourselves by choosing the name Kesho (tomorrow) Leo (today). Our idea was that today, we’d do the things that most put off till tomorrow. but could our clever name be working backwards on us? Surely not! Daz has headed up to the land to talk to the workers we’ve arranged. Although it is soggy and boggy, we know the men who own the 16 names we’ve taken down this week, will be there, waiting for employment. We also expect another 16 or so to rock up simply because they’ve heard the rumour that work might be meted out. It’ll be a task for Daz just to get to the land – we’ve travelled the road before in wet weather and know it’s no picnic (slip-sliding away). Hence us arranging to be here in Tanzania now, building in this non-rainy season! Global warming – gets you at every turn, doesn’t it.
But our problems are nothing
Nolasco, our village elder, who works with The World Food Program, advised this morning that our neighbours (people like Mohammedi, pictured here clearling the scrub from the bottom of our block for a small fee) will be most concerned about their maize (corn, the local staple which is used to make ‘ugali’, or as we know it, polenta, which East-Africans literally live off). The unexpected wet weather at the time has the potential to ruin the country’s maize crop unless it eases up. So let’s hope it does.
Speaking of unexpected occurrences, ever been in an earthquake? Me either, but we were in an earth tremor this morning at 6am, which was pretty alarming to a couple of non-tremored-up Aussies. I woke to the bed see-sawing and yelled this sorta garble at Daz: “Daz, there’s someone trying to saw in through the roof, it’s shaking the whole bed, the walls, the cement…” Poor, sleeping Daz, managed to make better sense of the situation. “Earth tremor!’ he answered and jumped out of bed to grab his torch (best to ensure my version wasn’t correct)! It only lasted a few seconds, but wow, you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a big one! Coolio our legendary mate advised us the week before we left that Tanzania was experiencing sizeable earthquakes (CNN put one at 6.6 on The Richter), but who knew we’d ever think about that again!
We were in Sunday Life magazine on the weekend. Did you see us? If not, no fear, Ben is going to post the piece onto our site soon. We suspected the piece must have had gone to print because we had some lovely Aussies email us to say, “G’day, read aboucha, good job, we’d love to come volunteer next year maybe”. Makes me wish even more that we were able to start building today. Anyway, there’ll be a reason…we’ll just wait and see what it is.
NEWSFLASH: JESUS GETS A UTE!
Translation: Daz, who the locals are now calling ‘Jesus’ – you can see why in the attached pic (remarkable resemblance!) – has found himself (and us, if he decides to share) the world’s most fantastic ute. We love-love-love it. Brother Frank said, "What's that heap of junk doing in my driveway? Get it out!", then said, "How much? Oh, what's wrong with it? Oh, leaf springs, bald tyres, cracked windscreen, anything else? Hmm, no big deal, what else? Oh ...but itd' be petrol. No? Diesel? Oh..." and grumped off. JEALOUS AS! Well, that's our take on it anyway! In our minds, he couldn't not be jealous - we paid 14 million Tanzanian Shillings which is about USD14,000, just under what we'd allowed in the budget and got a ute in sensational nick. Later on, Brother Frank said to me, "They're bloody hard to find - pick-ups [utes] - you know?" I said, "The dealer who sold it said everytime he gets one he sells it the day he gets it". "Well, he's not lying." While this mightn't sound like - it's high praise from Frank. To get Frank's nod on the ute means we might just have done as well as we think we have! But truly, it's absolutely the cleanest, unpranged, neatest Hilux diesel ute you've ever seen. Pure white. Bench seat in front. 4wd. Manual. Long-wheel-base. Leafsprings (easier to fix than the alternate 'coil springs'). Beautiful suspension (unheard of here!). 1995 model (brilliant - anything after '97 draws higher tax). It has been in Arusha for just 3 years (before that it was from Dubai where the roads are world-class). YES, IT'S SERIOUS THE WORLD'S GREATEST UTE!!!!
AND WE ALSO SIGNED CONTRACTS ON THE LAND (not without a hitch or three!)
Well we knew we’d always get this “utopia” block. We’ve been negotiating for it since we first saw it in April and have even had our architect do his designs according to this block… it didn't take long to agree to a good price (after we got over the hurdle of the owner wanting a tractor instead of cash!). Then just as we needed it, my family members from Mum and Dad’s side pulled together to raise the $11,000AUD for purchasing it…so we were all set to go. It was just a matter of exchanging the contracts, which were being drawn up, once I arrived. I was never worried that things would go sour and we’d miss out, which was probably a little pompous of me, but truly, I felt this block was meant to be ours so I didn't stress about us not yet technically owning it.
Anyway, finally last week we headed out to the block with the owner and his extended family (men only, apparently women aren’t needed in these type of negotiations. Strange to find myself there, talking shop with 20 or so men, me the only girl…). We marched out the boundaries on foot, with the owner pointing out each individual sisal plant which made up the border. Of course, we already knew the borders – Daz had survyed the block and drawn them up for our lawyer to create the contract of sale from, way back in April – but nonetheless, these things follow a certain procedure… so tramp, tramp, tramping through the corn, the potatoes and the okra, we went. An hour or so later, after cutting hedges, placing rocks (where sisal trees should have been), we agreed we had adequately set the borders and were ready for the contract signing. But hang on, no, our owner’s witness is tired and would rather go home right now. Maybe we could sign tomorrow, but actually he wont be around, so the owner will need to find another witness please. Okay, thankyoubye. [walks off]. Daz and my eyeballs bulge and we glance across to Brother Frank, who is all suppressed smirks and raised eyebrows.
The word for ‘problem’ in kiswahili is ‘shida’, so this is my version of the conversation that then took place:
You’ll be relieved to know that “Hamna Shida” means ‘no problem’. So at the end of the conversation that apparently talked of many problems, there was actually “no problem”.
We soon found out, from Brother Frank, who was downplaying the owner’s dramas, that the "problem-no-problem" revolved around the owner promising to get another witness and that in fact, he would have both his sons act as witnesses (One is the eldest son from his first wife, the other, the eldest son of his second wife). Of course, though, the problematic bit was that this could not be arranged for today.
We hastily convinced the owner to commit to a meeting at Brother Frank’s school the following day bringing with him, both of his sons. “No problem”.
That meeting was true African style. Suddenly we had an extra three African guests who introduced themselves as district/village chiefs. Frank nodded to me, that yes, this was the case.
My version of their ensuing conversation was:
Nolasco left my un-PC words entirely out of his translation and instead launched into the fact that FWS was here as a not-for-profit organisation, to help the local community and should be assisted to do so.
This time “HAMNA SHIDA” meant “Okay, we wont charge you 10% of the land sale to go ahead with your work”.
Finally, hamna shida really did mean no problem!
Hands shook and money was exchanged (huge thanks to the donating Delsleys!). And another huge thank you to Brother Frank and Nolasco for their tireless efforts in helping us make headway with our Kesho Leo!
If the rain turns itself off, we begin building tomorrow!
I'll let you know how we go...
Beck
No work for our tools today Daz is a bit despondent – he’s been gunning towards starting the building for weeks. He’s been racing all over town, pricing and bargaining for materials, he’s been laboriously ticking off the umpteen handy-man job associated with the volunteer house-fws office so that, today, he could put them all behind him and finally, focus on building Kesho. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow – or even the day after till things wring themselves out a bit. Can’t help but wonder if we jinxed ourselves by choosing the name Kesho (tomorrow) Leo (today). Our idea was that today, we’d do the things that most put off till tomorrow. but could our clever name be working backwards on us? Surely not! Daz has headed up to the land to talk to the workers we’ve arranged. Although it is soggy and boggy, we know the men who own the 16 names we’ve taken down this week, will be there, waiting for employment. We also expect another 16 or so to rock up simply because they’ve heard the rumour that work might be meted out. It’ll be a task for Daz just to get to the land – we’ve travelled the road before in wet weather and know it’s no picnic (slip-sliding away). Hence us arranging to be here in Tanzania now, building in this non-rainy season! Global warming – gets you at every turn, doesn’t it. 
But our problems are nothingNolasco, our village elder, who works with The World Food Program, advised this morning that our neighbours (people like Mohammedi, pictured here clearling the scrub from the bottom of our block for a small fee) will be most concerned about their maize (corn, the local staple which is used to make ‘ugali’, or as we know it, polenta, which East-Africans literally live off). The unexpected wet weather at the time has the potential to ruin the country’s maize crop unless it eases up. So let’s hope it does.
Speaking of unexpected occurrences, ever been in an earthquake? Me either, but we were in an earth tremor this morning at 6am, which was pretty alarming to a couple of non-tremored-up Aussies. I woke to the bed see-sawing and yelled this sorta garble at Daz: “Daz, there’s someone trying to saw in through the roof, it’s shaking the whole bed, the walls, the cement…” Poor, sleeping Daz, managed to make better sense of the situation. “Earth tremor!’ he answered and jumped out of bed to grab his torch (best to ensure my version wasn’t correct)! It only lasted a few seconds, but wow, you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a big one! Coolio our legendary mate advised us the week before we left that Tanzania was experiencing sizeable earthquakes (CNN put one at 6.6 on The Richter), but who knew we’d ever think about that again!
We were in Sunday Life magazine on the weekend. Did you see us? If not, no fear, Ben is going to post the piece onto our site soon. We suspected the piece must have had gone to print because we had some lovely Aussies email us to say, “G’day, read aboucha, good job, we’d love to come volunteer next year maybe”. Makes me wish even more that we were able to start building today. Anyway, there’ll be a reason…we’ll just wait and see what it is.
NEWSFLASH: JESUS GETS A UTE!Translation: Daz, who the locals are now calling ‘Jesus’ – you can see why in the attached pic (remarkable resemblance!) – has found himself (and us, if he decides to share) the world’s most fantastic ute. We love-love-love it. Brother Frank said, "What's that heap of junk doing in my driveway? Get it out!", then said, "How much? Oh, what's wrong with it? Oh, leaf springs, bald tyres, cracked windscreen, anything else? Hmm, no big deal, what else? Oh ...but itd' be petrol. No? Diesel? Oh..." and grumped off. JEALOUS AS! Well, that's our take on it anyway! In our minds, he couldn't not be jealous - we paid 14 million Tanzanian Shillings which is about USD14,000, just under what we'd allowed in the budget and got a ute in sensational nick. Later on, Brother Frank said to me, "They're bloody hard to find - pick-ups [utes] - you know?" I said, "The dealer who sold it said everytime he gets one he sells it the day he gets it". "Well, he's not lying." While this mightn't sound like - it's high praise from Frank. To get Frank's nod on the ute means we might just have done as well as we think we have! But truly, it's absolutely the cleanest, unpranged, neatest Hilux diesel ute you've ever seen. Pure white. Bench seat in front. 4wd. Manual. Long-wheel-base. Leafsprings (easier to fix than the alternate 'coil springs'). Beautiful suspension (unheard of here!). 1995 model (brilliant - anything after '97 draws higher tax). It has been in Arusha for just 3 years (before that it was from Dubai where the roads are world-class). YES, IT'S SERIOUS THE WORLD'S GREATEST UTE!!!!
AND WE ALSO SIGNED CONTRACTS ON THE LAND (not without a hitch or three!)
Well we knew we’d always get this “utopia” block. We’ve been negotiating for it since we first saw it in April and have even had our architect do his designs according to this block… it didn't take long to agree to a good price (after we got over the hurdle of the owner wanting a tractor instead of cash!). Then just as we needed it, my family members from Mum and Dad’s side pulled together to raise the $11,000AUD for purchasing it…so we were all set to go. It was just a matter of exchanging the contracts, which were being drawn up, once I arrived. I was never worried that things would go sour and we’d miss out, which was probably a little pompous of me, but truly, I felt this block was meant to be ours so I didn't stress about us not yet technically owning it.
Anyway, finally last week we headed out to the block with the owner and his extended family (men only, apparently women aren’t needed in these type of negotiations. Strange to find myself there, talking shop with 20 or so men, me the only girl…). We marched out the boundaries on foot, with the owner pointing out each individual sisal plant which made up the border. Of course, we already knew the borders – Daz had survyed the block and drawn them up for our lawyer to create the contract of sale from, way back in April – but nonetheless, these things follow a certain procedure… so tramp, tramp, tramping through the corn, the potatoes and the okra, we went. An hour or so later, after cutting hedges, placing rocks (where sisal trees should have been), we agreed we had adequately set the borders and were ready for the contract signing. But hang on, no, our owner’s witness is tired and would rather go home right now. Maybe we could sign tomorrow, but actually he wont be around, so the owner will need to find another witness please. Okay, thankyoubye. [walks off]. Daz and my eyeballs bulge and we glance across to Brother Frank, who is all suppressed smirks and raised eyebrows.
The word for ‘problem’ in kiswahili is ‘shida’, so this is my version of the conversation that then took place:
"Eoifjeoifej SHIDA oiejoeijfwijfeowi SHIDA oweijfoiewjwfoiejfw SHIDA woeuoiewjoiwj SHIDA aoudioejwofij shida… aouoijoijfoiejw …. HAMNA SHIDA".
You’ll be relieved to know that “Hamna Shida” means ‘no problem’. So at the end of the conversation that apparently talked of many problems, there was actually “no problem”.
We soon found out, from Brother Frank, who was downplaying the owner’s dramas, that the "problem-no-problem" revolved around the owner promising to get another witness and that in fact, he would have both his sons act as witnesses (One is the eldest son from his first wife, the other, the eldest son of his second wife). Of course, though, the problematic bit was that this could not be arranged for today.
We hastily convinced the owner to commit to a meeting at Brother Frank’s school the following day bringing with him, both of his sons. “No problem”.
That meeting was true African style. Suddenly we had an extra three African guests who introduced themselves as district/village chiefs. Frank nodded to me, that yes, this was the case.
My version of their ensuing conversation was:
"Eoifjeoifej 10 per cent oiejoeijfwijfeowi Eoifjeoifej 10 per cent eoifej 10 per cent wifjeoifej 10 per cent oiejoeijfwijfeowi… HAMNA SHIDA."Now I mightn't be fluent in Kiswahili, but I pretty quickly got the gist of this chat and promptly begged to differ that rocking up and asking for 10 per cent of the sale price was not a problem. In my book, yes, problem.
Nolasco left my un-PC words entirely out of his translation and instead launched into the fact that FWS was here as a not-for-profit organisation, to help the local community and should be assisted to do so.
This time “HAMNA SHIDA” meant “Okay, we wont charge you 10% of the land sale to go ahead with your work”.
Finally, hamna shida really did mean no problem!
Hands shook and money was exchanged (huge thanks to the donating Delsleys!). And another huge thank you to Brother Frank and Nolasco for their tireless efforts in helping us make headway with our Kesho Leo!
If the rain turns itself off, we begin building tomorrow!
I'll let you know how we go...
Beck
Monday, 13 August 2007
10.25am and all’s well.
Saturday morning (11th Augustus) at the Kesho Office & Volunteer House (now also known as the Kesho Farm) and all’s well. That’s a saying Joe, my grandfather, used to whip out hourly, according to my mum. An oldie but a goodie, so I’ve adopted it. What’s it actually mean? Probably just that things are going along at their own pace and of their own accord.
And that’s precisely what’s happening here now. We have Mudi here helping Daz tinker around. That’s my version of events. Daz and Mudi would no doubt prefer me to say that they are hard at it, grinding and welding our steel safe box into the cement walls of our bedroom. We had the basic box made up by a local steel fundi (pronounced: foon-di, and meaning: tradesman) yesterday. Now Daz and Mudi are making awful noises and smells (that fiery, welding stink), fitting the safe into its cubby hole. We thought it would be a good idea to throw our cameras, laptop and computer hard-drives in it when we head off to town each day. Not that security has been a problem (well, I think someone pinched my favourite Parker pen, but stupid me for bringing it in the first place!), but we can’t really afford to lose the info on our computers and cameras. Daz has his whole building schedule (the one he spent 4 days in Kenya creating) on his laptop, and I have created artworks of excel documents outlining our expenses and guestimated budgets (I’m sure Anne, our treasurer, would think they were quite fanciful and pointless but they’re working for me at this point!). I’ve also got copies of our land sale contracts and everyone’s contact details and a job list and, and, and.... Point is: We’d be feeling pretty lost if any of it ever went missing. As for the camera – well, yes it holds some footage that we hope to be downloading onto our site or a u-tube site for you to check out soon. And of course, there’s the doco we ambitiously plan to film and edit ourselves!
That’s actually my job today (apart from my self-appointed role of cracking the whip at Daz & Mudi). I’m downloading all the filming snippets Daz & I have been shooting. It’s not as clear-cut as that as we are a team of many cameras. We’ve filmed some stuff on our handy-cam – as Shona-Stuck-In-The-Eighties likes to call it – before cracking up and saying “what are those things called now anyway?” and we’ve filmed a bit from our spiffy Canon Ixus too. So now I’m trying to meld the two types of footage together. Oh, it’s a flash finish we’ll be getting here. I can see it a mile off. Ten-minute excerpts of Blair Witch shakey filming (I’m only new at the handy-cam) interspersed with not-so-shakey-but-oh-so-short 40 second snippets from the Ixus that probably don’t make any sense. Maybe the only audience willing and able to stomach the onslaught will be the hardcore FWS fans. Do hardcore FWS fans exist?
News? We can’t open a bank account here yet. Borizimo or wot? The obstacle revolves around FWS not yet having NGO status in Tanzania. It’s not entirely unexpected. But don’t panic, we ALMOST have it. We’ve applied (it’s been a process we started when we last came in April), but it might be a few weeks away yet. In the meantime, the ever-helpful Christian Brothers have agreed to hold our money for us and to release it as we need it. We actually haven’t spent any of your kindly donated FWS funds yet – Daz & I have been using our savings but they’re looking a bit sickly, so will soon need to access the FWS funds. We sign on the land on Monday at 3pm but already Daz has purchased some poles and barbed wire for the fence we’ll erect around the boundary. We’ll grow bouganvillea (spikey thorns – good for security) in between and over the fences as is the custom here. Prettiest security fences you’ll ever see.
Did I mention how cold it is here? I can’t believe I didn’t throw in a jumper! Locals tell us the winter should be wrapping itself up soon but each days seems to drop a few degrees. Still, it’s far warmer than the Sydney weather we left, so despite my sniffles, I no complain.
Another thing I don’t complain about – because it’s pure, unadulterated bliss – is the absolute all-enveloping quiet that descends over our village at night. Yes, there’s the odd rooster, cow, kid, dog, chicken, wind whistling through the grevilleas, water galloping in the infereje (man-made river) but unlike Petersham, there isn’t the thunderous, wall-shaking earthquake of a plane flying overhead every 10 minutes. Unlike my days at Bondi, there isn’t the raucous, non-sensical, alcohol-induced arguments of the neighbours till 4am, and well Rose Bay, was also nice and quiet – but there was always the hum of the highways in the background, the odd ambulance siren, the buzz of a distant neighbour’s TV. Here, there exists a sheet of pure silence which is occasionally peppered by village sounds…no ongoing hum, no ongoing thunder or yelling. It’s a truly delightful experience. If I didn’t live here already, I’d sooo move here.
Another thing we are gobsmacked by is the meat, the meat, the meat. Sooo fantastic. We’ve been meat & vege every night, just because we can’t bring ourselves to miss a night of the plump, juicy, red hunks that hang at the deli in town. The size of the steaks has us in stitches. Daz bought two rumps yesterday (for about $7 total). Later, when we laid out the first, smaller piece, it covered a 20cm diameter plate and then some. We looked at each other and grinned. I asked him why he bought the second piece. “I dunno!” he chuckled. We cut it into three, threw some garlic and onion on it – and wow, soooo incredibly delicious. But still, it was far too much eating for us. When we’d done, we whacked the second piece in the freezer and vowed to only pull it out when we have the Brothers over for dinner – not like we could even begin to get through it ourselves!
Don’t get me started on the biltong. How can we ever justify paying $4 for 100g of stringy, crumbly, fake-flavoured ‘beef jerky’ in Australian petrol stations again? Here, we pay the same for 800g of thick, peppery, chewy biltong, cut before your eyes – would you like fat on or off? On, always on! Disaster for your arteries but divine destiny for your gob!
The vegies here are great too. The tomatoes – well you’d weep. Just like those tomatoes your Nan used to grow when food tasted like food. The bananas are the sweetest, most exotic and tropical tasting fruit you’ve ever put in your mouth. The oranges are so different - practically acid free – taste more like a super-sweet and juicy mandarin. The green beans are too good till wait to dinner – they’ve become my daytime snack. The mangoes take a bit of getting used to – they’ve a slight “earthy” flavour which at first is a turn off. Stick with it, I say, and you’ll soon be converted and craving the taste. The 100% passionfruit juice? I can’t describe how good this stuff is – you’ll have to come taste it yourself.
So yes, the food here is pretty special. Of course, there is some Aussie ingredients which I already miss. For three years, I ate a daily lunch salad made of rocket lettuce, pink lady apples, coriander, grape tomatoes, mushrooms and Sirena tuna, in Sydney. Not one of the ingredients is available here – so sad, too bad. Mind, I could buy a 100g tin of John West red salmon from the supermarket in town - $10.50 USD that’d set us back!
Youch. Better stick to biltong!
Till next time, still-itchy...
Beck
And that’s precisely what’s happening here now. We have Mudi here helping Daz tinker around. That’s my version of events. Daz and Mudi would no doubt prefer me to say that they are hard at it, grinding and welding our steel safe box into the cement walls of our bedroom. We had the basic box made up by a local steel fundi (pronounced: foon-di, and meaning: tradesman) yesterday. Now Daz and Mudi are making awful noises and smells (that fiery, welding stink), fitting the safe into its cubby hole. We thought it would be a good idea to throw our cameras, laptop and computer hard-drives in it when we head off to town each day. Not that security has been a problem (well, I think someone pinched my favourite Parker pen, but stupid me for bringing it in the first place!), but we can’t really afford to lose the info on our computers and cameras. Daz has his whole building schedule (the one he spent 4 days in Kenya creating) on his laptop, and I have created artworks of excel documents outlining our expenses and guestimated budgets (I’m sure Anne, our treasurer, would think they were quite fanciful and pointless but they’re working for me at this point!). I’ve also got copies of our land sale contracts and everyone’s contact details and a job list and, and, and.... Point is: We’d be feeling pretty lost if any of it ever went missing. As for the camera – well, yes it holds some footage that we hope to be downloading onto our site or a u-tube site for you to check out soon. And of course, there’s the doco we ambitiously plan to film and edit ourselves!
That’s actually my job today (apart from my self-appointed role of cracking the whip at Daz & Mudi). I’m downloading all the filming snippets Daz & I have been shooting. It’s not as clear-cut as that as we are a team of many cameras. We’ve filmed some stuff on our handy-cam – as Shona-Stuck-In-The-Eighties likes to call it – before cracking up and saying “what are those things called now anyway?” and we’ve filmed a bit from our spiffy Canon Ixus too. So now I’m trying to meld the two types of footage together. Oh, it’s a flash finish we’ll be getting here. I can see it a mile off. Ten-minute excerpts of Blair Witch shakey filming (I’m only new at the handy-cam) interspersed with not-so-shakey-but-oh-so-short 40 second snippets from the Ixus that probably don’t make any sense. Maybe the only audience willing and able to stomach the onslaught will be the hardcore FWS fans. Do hardcore FWS fans exist?
News? We can’t open a bank account here yet. Borizimo or wot? The obstacle revolves around FWS not yet having NGO status in Tanzania. It’s not entirely unexpected. But don’t panic, we ALMOST have it. We’ve applied (it’s been a process we started when we last came in April), but it might be a few weeks away yet. In the meantime, the ever-helpful Christian Brothers have agreed to hold our money for us and to release it as we need it. We actually haven’t spent any of your kindly donated FWS funds yet – Daz & I have been using our savings but they’re looking a bit sickly, so will soon need to access the FWS funds. We sign on the land on Monday at 3pm but already Daz has purchased some poles and barbed wire for the fence we’ll erect around the boundary. We’ll grow bouganvillea (spikey thorns – good for security) in between and over the fences as is the custom here. Prettiest security fences you’ll ever see.
Did I mention how cold it is here? I can’t believe I didn’t throw in a jumper! Locals tell us the winter should be wrapping itself up soon but each days seems to drop a few degrees. Still, it’s far warmer than the Sydney weather we left, so despite my sniffles, I no complain.
Another thing I don’t complain about – because it’s pure, unadulterated bliss – is the absolute all-enveloping quiet that descends over our village at night. Yes, there’s the odd rooster, cow, kid, dog, chicken, wind whistling through the grevilleas, water galloping in the infereje (man-made river) but unlike Petersham, there isn’t the thunderous, wall-shaking earthquake of a plane flying overhead every 10 minutes. Unlike my days at Bondi, there isn’t the raucous, non-sensical, alcohol-induced arguments of the neighbours till 4am, and well Rose Bay, was also nice and quiet – but there was always the hum of the highways in the background, the odd ambulance siren, the buzz of a distant neighbour’s TV. Here, there exists a sheet of pure silence which is occasionally peppered by village sounds…no ongoing hum, no ongoing thunder or yelling. It’s a truly delightful experience. If I didn’t live here already, I’d sooo move here.
Another thing we are gobsmacked by is the meat, the meat, the meat. Sooo fantastic. We’ve been meat & vege every night, just because we can’t bring ourselves to miss a night of the plump, juicy, red hunks that hang at the deli in town. The size of the steaks has us in stitches. Daz bought two rumps yesterday (for about $7 total). Later, when we laid out the first, smaller piece, it covered a 20cm diameter plate and then some. We looked at each other and grinned. I asked him why he bought the second piece. “I dunno!” he chuckled. We cut it into three, threw some garlic and onion on it – and wow, soooo incredibly delicious. But still, it was far too much eating for us. When we’d done, we whacked the second piece in the freezer and vowed to only pull it out when we have the Brothers over for dinner – not like we could even begin to get through it ourselves!
Don’t get me started on the biltong. How can we ever justify paying $4 for 100g of stringy, crumbly, fake-flavoured ‘beef jerky’ in Australian petrol stations again? Here, we pay the same for 800g of thick, peppery, chewy biltong, cut before your eyes – would you like fat on or off? On, always on! Disaster for your arteries but divine destiny for your gob!
The vegies here are great too. The tomatoes – well you’d weep. Just like those tomatoes your Nan used to grow when food tasted like food. The bananas are the sweetest, most exotic and tropical tasting fruit you’ve ever put in your mouth. The oranges are so different - practically acid free – taste more like a super-sweet and juicy mandarin. The green beans are too good till wait to dinner – they’ve become my daytime snack. The mangoes take a bit of getting used to – they’ve a slight “earthy” flavour which at first is a turn off. Stick with it, I say, and you’ll soon be converted and craving the taste. The 100% passionfruit juice? I can’t describe how good this stuff is – you’ll have to come taste it yourself.
So yes, the food here is pretty special. Of course, there is some Aussie ingredients which I already miss. For three years, I ate a daily lunch salad made of rocket lettuce, pink lady apples, coriander, grape tomatoes, mushrooms and Sirena tuna, in Sydney. Not one of the ingredients is available here – so sad, too bad. Mind, I could buy a 100g tin of John West red salmon from the supermarket in town - $10.50 USD that’d set us back!
Youch. Better stick to biltong!
Till next time, still-itchy...
Beck
Vehicular stalling, sunnies just like yours, bang for buck,
Five days later and we’ve no car purchase despite spending 4 hours, looking at two 4wds that sounded promising.
The first was a 1999 Toyota Hilux ute with no door locks, average suspension and a weird burning smell that was possibly the clutch. Asking price: $US 14,000. Hmm, let’s get serious, please Mr Owner. Oh, okay, then we can have it for $US 9,000?
Given it’s worth about $US 7000 in this market, no deal was struck. Besides, growing up with a family of mechanics, it’s hard for me to reconcile purchasing a vehicle that emits any type of weird smell, so I’m glad to leave this one on the pit-holed dirt track for the next buyer. I’m also happy to leave our second possibility on the dirt track. It was a 1996 Landrover TDI. Perfect structure – ute, big, hardy shell, long wheel base – for what we require, but the plastic bag recently wrapped around the oil sump and the serious clah-unk of the gear stick every time Daz shifted into 2nd, 3rd or 4th had us a little edgy. When this Mr Seller explained that it would be costing us $US 26,000 not-negotiable and had a hard life servicing him in his civil engineering job that required him to travel across the Serengeti often, and don’t worry about that noise – it’s just a “differential bolt”, we took our car-finding man aside and asked him to stop wasting our time. He said no problem, but there was also a little something he forgot to tell us. We must pay him a 5% commission upon finding the right car. Daz laughed and said, “We? But not the owner?” to which we received a retiscient nod (ie yes, actually he would be collecting 5% from the owner as well but it’d be better if we didn’t know about that). Daz then asked “So this is why you are showing us very expensive cars that are not within our budget?”. Big grin, raised eyebrows, nod of the head. Oh and there is a left-hand drive car we can look at now if we want… Daz and I decided to run away instead!
We’ve started paying a local lady, Eliza, to do our washing. We pay her the going rate, which is the equivalent of 10c per small garment, 20c per larger garment. Her first wash was a windfall – as she got the large and financially rewarding job of washing all the clothes Daz & I had put on our back since our departure from Sydney. She was absolutely stoked with her $4 payment and decided then and there to buy a pair of sunglasses just like mine. She asked for a lift into town the following day and was dressed to the nines for the experience when Daz and I picked her and her young son up. I hear the purchase went smoothly but am yet to see the end product. Assuming she's happy, then that makes two of us because Daz's bunyip aromas seemed to have magically dispersed. Now I can sleep a whole night through without being woken by the stink! Woohoo!
8 August 2007
At least one purchase went smoothly this week. Daz and I have had an absolute shocker with our buying and negotiating this week. The biggest disaster was our printer/scanner. We had a budget of $200. Daz desperately needs a system whereby he can print out architect Rob Not Dentist’s drawings, make annotations, scan the annotations then email them back to RND to assist with advice & chats. So I went into town, did some searching around and came up with a good deal, despite it being over our budget. We’d buy a $140 scanner (reasonable) and a $195 (very good) lazer jet printer. The lazer jet would be perfect b/c it was for small to medium output, suitable for us right now and for a while longer. The real win though, was the fact that, being lazer jet instead of ‘ink jet’, we’d save a heap on the print cartridges which are astronomically expensive over here - $45 minimum reaching up to $128 each. Ink jet cartridges are a rip off at home anyway, if you ask me, but that’s when you’re paying $35 a cartridge. Imagine trying to get comfy with paying a minimum of $45 each! So yes, I was very satsified with this deal, especially when I managed to get them to knock $20 off the whole purchase. So we get the scanner home and it works. Nice. But wait… no such luck with the printer. Daz’s Apple Mac laptop recognises the printer, but won’t work with it. We ring the shop and they advise that it should have come with a Mac installation disk, and since it didn’t we now have to go into town to the internet café and download the Mac driver required. We do this the next day. Of course, there is no Mac driver to be found anywhere, on any site, and on further reading we find that this particular printer is NOT compatible with Macs. Ever. Hmm, so why was it pointed out to us a suitable printer when we’d explained we would be working from both Macs (now) and PC (in future when Kels & Shona come)? We take it back to the shop. They are seriously unkeen to allow us to make a simple return. Instead we must make an exchange. Problem is, they’re a bit like Bunnings Hardware – except 1/kabillionth of the size – they stock the dodgiest cheapest stuff OR the slickest expensive stuff. No middle range whatsoever. So suddenly we’re being shown a lazer jet printer, compatible with both Macs and PCs that costs $430. If we’d bought it and kept the lazer, our printer system purchases would have reached $570 – well beyond our budget. So I said no. We were then forced into selecting from a cheaper range of ‘ink jet’ – the very type we wanted to avoid – machines that were all-in-ones (photocopier, scanner, printer, fax). Kinda annoying because as I said we didn’t want to pay for their more-expensive cartridges and because we don’t need a fax and were hoping to buy separate machines so that if anything broke down, we wouldn’t have to do without the machine’s other services while the entire machine was sent back to town to be fixed. Anyway, there was a $350 machine that we were assured had been checked – and worked – despite the crack on its side where it had been dropped. Darren who was doing all the negotiating at this point, since I’d become a bit to grumpy to be reasonable, insisted that we be allowed to check that machine in the shop before we took it home. Lucky we did. It obviously hadn’t been checked for working order – as the scanner was entirely kaput! At this point, sick of the lies, I left the shop to go and price some salt and pepper shakers, can openers and cooking pans across the road. When I returned Daz had done an excellent job of convincing the shop to not charge us for the ink cartridges we’d opened to check the kaput scanner-printer machine, convincing them to sell us a small $184 All-In-One (pictured) that worked (he’d checked it) and to return the rest of the money we’d given them. Perfect outcome, but man, Daz worked hard for it!
Another negotiation that bamboozled us occurred in one of the seed selling shop in town. We went in to buy the vegie seeds required to grow our own food at the Kesho Volunteer House and the farming tools we’ll need to work the land at Kesho Leo. Straight up, as is now standard practice, we asked the owner if we’d get a discount since we were a charity, were making a bulk purchase and were paying cash. Yes, yes, no problem. Afterwards… Expenditure: $50. Proposed discount: 60c. Serious. Daz and I looked at this guy and said “Are you joking?” and he laughed and said, “No, it is a good discount”. Daz and I looked at each other and back at him, eyes boggling. Daz said, “It is a good profit. Did you hear us when we said we are here, volunteering, to build an orphanage?”
“Yes, I support many orphanages – one out at somewhere or other, do you know it?”
“No, we don’t know that one. Here I will give you $45 cash, no more”.
Haggles ensued, but in the end we got our discount there too – and found out that the guy also holds the building contract for one of Arusha’s fanciest buildings and has implemented an interesting pressure-based water system in it. We might talk to this guy, who we’ve now nicknamed Sixty Cent, about some of his systems when Corky, our environmental advisor gets here.
So far, we’ve come out on top with most of our bargaining. But every situation, as you see, offers some new challenge. We were again scratching our heads after recently locating ALL the furniture we need to quickly outfit the Kesho Volunteer House entirely in one fell swoop. We’d read a notice in town at the deli outlining a whole home’s worth of furniture up for grabs, cheap, due to the owners moving. We made the calls and eventually headed over to Njiro, a wealthier part of town where most of the UN staff and Arusha-based Indian business owners live. We met a lovely couple from Jordan who agreed to sell us their 3-seater, 2-seater and 3 single seater lounge suite, their 7x7 foot bed, their mirror & lockable dressing cabinet, their single bed, their 2 bedside tables. Their office desk and ergonomic chair. The prices were already rock bottom, but as we were tallying the amount, the man of the house offered to give us a $US160 discount. Well, you can imagine how that one made us beam! We had them write us a receipt for the deposit we left (which accounted for about ¾ of the total price) and shook on it. Sweet.
All the way home Daz was beside himself, saying, “Babe, see how the universe works? Look at what an awesome deal we just got. It was reasonable to start off with and then they must have liked what we were doing, so they gave us that discount…” I being my comparatively wary self, replied “Yes, it’s excellent indeed, fair love, but forsooth, I can never get excited about these things, until the said items lie in my abode and it’s all a done deal”. (Even with the stove and fridge, I’m only just beginning to feel warm and fuzzy about having them …a week later and they’re still working!)
Daz, gorgeous boy replied, “No, it’s all good babe, don’t worry”.
And shame upon shame, my negative thinking must have seeped out into the ether because sure enough in an hour’s time, we received a phone call from the woman of the house. “I’m sorry, my husband made an error when he gave you a discount. He gave you 10% instead of 5% so the price is wrong…”
Darren, ever-calm negotiator, queried. “Well, this is a little bit unusual. We agreed on a price, we shook hands, had a receipt written up…”
“Yes, but my husband made a mistake…he meant to give you 5%...”
“So what is the final price you want us to pay?”
“Well, we meant to give you a 5% discount…”
“Now, we didn’t ever speak about 5%-10%-20%. We spoke about numbers. So what is the final amount you want us to pay?”
“A 5% discount...”
“How much?”
“An extra $100”
“Right, so you gave us $160 discount, but now you us to pay $100 of that back to you?”
“Well 5%...”
“Can I speak to your husband please – he is the person who gave the discount and made the mistake…”
“No he doesn’t want to speak about this…”
“Can you just put him on the phone please…”
“No, he didn’t want me to call you, but I wanted to call you about the mistake of 5%”
“I need to speak to your husband because he is the one who offered the discount – and he didn’t say 5% or 10% or whatever % - and I need to find out what total figure you want us to pay so I get the money out of my bank account. Please put him on”.
Daz has a quick chat to the husband who is mortally embarrassed and says he is happy for the $100 to be a donation to FWS as it was his mistake and we are doing good work.
Daz agrees and hangs up feeling good. Negative Nelly, I just feel weird. We have a conversation where I reveal I feel like WE are ripping people off because all we do, left, right and centre, is pressure for discounts. Daz says patiently, but emphatically, “Nooo, actually we are combating being ripped off. We are protecting our money and the money Australians have donated to us. This is a bargaining country, it’s our duty to bargain, get involved and come out the best we can each time…and when we have shaken on a deal, a deal is a deal and that’s that.”
Wise boy spik da wise words.
So I begin to feel more comfortable after our conversation and the next day am totally okay with the highs and lows of bargaining world, when Mudi, our Kesho Leo assistant manager, pops up out of nowhere and pipes with this one: “Sorry guys. I am trying, but sometimes I’m still getting the rip off, even when I am African. Yesterday, I bought the rope for you and I got it for $7. And today, you ask me to buy some more and I find the same rope in another shop for $4. I’m sorry, I’m trying to ask around a lot, like you, and get the right price so we don’t get the rip off, but sometimes I am making a mistake”.
So yeah, if you were ever worried that we weren’t trying to get bang for your buck, please don’t! We are all TOTALLY amongst it, even if we are stumbling occasionally. But so far, the stumbles have only been a few dollars here and there. Not so bad, in the scheme of things.
Till next week,
Bargaining Beck, xxx
PS – Non dollar related stuff: Daz & I suffered our first bout of Deli Belly (good to get that out of the way!), Daz got saw dust in his eye (pretty badly when making our kitchen bench, pictured below, but recovered in 24 hours), and I got bit on the bumski by some kind of bully ant. We’re trying to work out if this is why I’m insanely itchy all over. It could be the bite, or it could be an allergy to the hard-core soap they use to wash clothes here, or the change in diet (from low-fat soy milk to natural cow’s milk with cream included!), from light-spray olive oil to heavy palm oil (so bad for you!) or coffee? I haven’t drunk coffee in years, but it’s sooo yum here, I can’t help but go a cup a day! Could coffee make you itch all over? Who knows. Meantime, I’ll do some experiments and see if I can ditch mystery itch within the week. Will report back soon!
Oh…der. You probably want to know when we will start building Kesho Leo. Next 15 days, we reckon. We’re setting up to sign contracts on land this week. I have contracts in my hot little hands (actually they're cold, we've got a crazy-cold African winter going on here), we have the money in the Christian Brother’s Account… and we have the land owner ringing us to say that he is sick and wants the money before he dies please! We think he is joking…but aren’t real sure.
The first was a 1999 Toyota Hilux ute with no door locks, average suspension and a weird burning smell that was possibly the clutch. Asking price: $US 14,000. Hmm, let’s get serious, please Mr Owner. Oh, okay, then we can have it for $US 9,000?
Given it’s worth about $US 7000 in this market, no deal was struck. Besides, growing up with a family of mechanics, it’s hard for me to reconcile purchasing a vehicle that emits any type of weird smell, so I’m glad to leave this one on the pit-holed dirt track for the next buyer. I’m also happy to leave our second possibility on the dirt track. It was a 1996 Landrover TDI. Perfect structure – ute, big, hardy shell, long wheel base – for what we require, but the plastic bag recently wrapped around the oil sump and the serious clah-unk of the gear stick every time Daz shifted into 2nd, 3rd or 4th had us a little edgy. When this Mr Seller explained that it would be costing us $US 26,000 not-negotiable and had a hard life servicing him in his civil engineering job that required him to travel across the Serengeti often, and don’t worry about that noise – it’s just a “differential bolt”, we took our car-finding man aside and asked him to stop wasting our time. He said no problem, but there was also a little something he forgot to tell us. We must pay him a 5% commission upon finding the right car. Daz laughed and said, “We? But not the owner?” to which we received a retiscient nod (ie yes, actually he would be collecting 5% from the owner as well but it’d be better if we didn’t know about that). Daz then asked “So this is why you are showing us very expensive cars that are not within our budget?”. Big grin, raised eyebrows, nod of the head. Oh and there is a left-hand drive car we can look at now if we want… Daz and I decided to run away instead!
We’ve started paying a local lady, Eliza, to do our washing. We pay her the going rate, which is the equivalent of 10c per small garment, 20c per larger garment. Her first wash was a windfall – as she got the large and financially rewarding job of washing all the clothes Daz & I had put on our back since our departure from Sydney. She was absolutely stoked with her $4 payment and decided then and there to buy a pair of sunglasses just like mine. She asked for a lift into town the following day and was dressed to the nines for the experience when Daz and I picked her and her young son up. I hear the purchase went smoothly but am yet to see the end product. Assuming she's happy, then that makes two of us because Daz's bunyip aromas seemed to have magically dispersed. Now I can sleep a whole night through without being woken by the stink! Woohoo!
8 August 2007
At least one purchase went smoothly this week. Daz and I have had an absolute shocker with our buying and negotiating this week. The biggest disaster was our printer/scanner. We had a budget of $200. Daz desperately needs a system whereby he can print out architect Rob Not Dentist’s drawings, make annotations, scan the annotations then email them back to RND to assist with advice & chats. So I went into town, did some searching around and came up with a good deal, despite it being over our budget. We’d buy a $140 scanner (reasonable) and a $195 (very good) lazer jet printer. The lazer jet would be perfect b/c it was for small to medium output, suitable for us right now and for a while longer. The real win though, was the fact that, being lazer jet instead of ‘ink jet’, we’d save a heap on the print cartridges which are astronomically expensive over here - $45 minimum reaching up to $128 each. Ink jet cartridges are a rip off at home anyway, if you ask me, but that’s when you’re paying $35 a cartridge. Imagine trying to get comfy with paying a minimum of $45 each! So yes, I was very satsified with this deal, especially when I managed to get them to knock $20 off the whole purchase. So we get the scanner home and it works. Nice. But wait… no such luck with the printer. Daz’s Apple Mac laptop recognises the printer, but won’t work with it. We ring the shop and they advise that it should have come with a Mac installation disk, and since it didn’t we now have to go into town to the internet café and download the Mac driver required. We do this the next day. Of course, there is no Mac driver to be found anywhere, on any site, and on further reading we find that this particular printer is NOT compatible with Macs. Ever. Hmm, so why was it pointed out to us a suitable printer when we’d explained we would be working from both Macs (now) and PC (in future when Kels & Shona come)? We take it back to the shop. They are seriously unkeen to allow us to make a simple return. Instead we must make an exchange. Problem is, they’re a bit like Bunnings Hardware – except 1/kabillionth of the size – they stock the dodgiest cheapest stuff OR the slickest expensive stuff. No middle range whatsoever. So suddenly we’re being shown a lazer jet printer, compatible with both Macs and PCs that costs $430. If we’d bought it and kept the lazer, our printer system purchases would have reached $570 – well beyond our budget. So I said no. We were then forced into selecting from a cheaper range of ‘ink jet’ – the very type we wanted to avoid – machines that were all-in-ones (photocopier, scanner, printer, fax). Kinda annoying because as I said we didn’t want to pay for their more-expensive cartridges and because we don’t need a fax and were hoping to buy separate machines so that if anything broke down, we wouldn’t have to do without the machine’s other services while the entire machine was sent back to town to be fixed. Anyway, there was a $350 machine that we were assured had been checked – and worked – despite the crack on its side where it had been dropped. Darren who was doing all the negotiating at this point, since I’d become a bit to grumpy to be reasonable, insisted that we be allowed to check that machine in the shop before we took it home. Lucky we did. It obviously hadn’t been checked for working order – as the scanner was entirely kaput! At this point, sick of the lies, I left the shop to go and price some salt and pepper shakers, can openers and cooking pans across the road. When I returned Daz had done an excellent job of convincing the shop to not charge us for the ink cartridges we’d opened to check the kaput scanner-printer machine, convincing them to sell us a small $184 All-In-One (pictured) that worked (he’d checked it) and to return the rest of the money we’d given them. Perfect outcome, but man, Daz worked hard for it!
Another negotiation that bamboozled us occurred in one of the seed selling shop in town. We went in to buy the vegie seeds required to grow our own food at the Kesho Volunteer House and the farming tools we’ll need to work the land at Kesho Leo. Straight up, as is now standard practice, we asked the owner if we’d get a discount since we were a charity, were making a bulk purchase and were paying cash. Yes, yes, no problem. Afterwards… Expenditure: $50. Proposed discount: 60c. Serious. Daz and I looked at this guy and said “Are you joking?” and he laughed and said, “No, it is a good discount”. Daz and I looked at each other and back at him, eyes boggling. Daz said, “It is a good profit. Did you hear us when we said we are here, volunteering, to build an orphanage?”
“Yes, I support many orphanages – one out at somewhere or other, do you know it?”
“No, we don’t know that one. Here I will give you $45 cash, no more”.
Haggles ensued, but in the end we got our discount there too – and found out that the guy also holds the building contract for one of Arusha’s fanciest buildings and has implemented an interesting pressure-based water system in it. We might talk to this guy, who we’ve now nicknamed Sixty Cent, about some of his systems when Corky, our environmental advisor gets here.
So far, we’ve come out on top with most of our bargaining. But every situation, as you see, offers some new challenge. We were again scratching our heads after recently locating ALL the furniture we need to quickly outfit the Kesho Volunteer House entirely in one fell swoop. We’d read a notice in town at the deli outlining a whole home’s worth of furniture up for grabs, cheap, due to the owners moving. We made the calls and eventually headed over to Njiro, a wealthier part of town where most of the UN staff and Arusha-based Indian business owners live. We met a lovely couple from Jordan who agreed to sell us their 3-seater, 2-seater and 3 single seater lounge suite, their 7x7 foot bed, their mirror & lockable dressing cabinet, their single bed, their 2 bedside tables. Their office desk and ergonomic chair. The prices were already rock bottom, but as we were tallying the amount, the man of the house offered to give us a $US160 discount. Well, you can imagine how that one made us beam! We had them write us a receipt for the deposit we left (which accounted for about ¾ of the total price) and shook on it. Sweet.
All the way home Daz was beside himself, saying, “Babe, see how the universe works? Look at what an awesome deal we just got. It was reasonable to start off with and then they must have liked what we were doing, so they gave us that discount…” I being my comparatively wary self, replied “Yes, it’s excellent indeed, fair love, but forsooth, I can never get excited about these things, until the said items lie in my abode and it’s all a done deal”. (Even with the stove and fridge, I’m only just beginning to feel warm and fuzzy about having them …a week later and they’re still working!)
Daz, gorgeous boy replied, “No, it’s all good babe, don’t worry”.
And shame upon shame, my negative thinking must have seeped out into the ether because sure enough in an hour’s time, we received a phone call from the woman of the house. “I’m sorry, my husband made an error when he gave you a discount. He gave you 10% instead of 5% so the price is wrong…”
Darren, ever-calm negotiator, queried. “Well, this is a little bit unusual. We agreed on a price, we shook hands, had a receipt written up…”
“Yes, but my husband made a mistake…he meant to give you 5%...”
“So what is the final price you want us to pay?”
“Well, we meant to give you a 5% discount…”
“Now, we didn’t ever speak about 5%-10%-20%. We spoke about numbers. So what is the final amount you want us to pay?”
“A 5% discount...”
“How much?”
“An extra $100”
“Right, so you gave us $160 discount, but now you us to pay $100 of that back to you?”
“Well 5%...”
“Can I speak to your husband please – he is the person who gave the discount and made the mistake…”
“No he doesn’t want to speak about this…”
“Can you just put him on the phone please…”
“No, he didn’t want me to call you, but I wanted to call you about the mistake of 5%”
“I need to speak to your husband because he is the one who offered the discount – and he didn’t say 5% or 10% or whatever % - and I need to find out what total figure you want us to pay so I get the money out of my bank account. Please put him on”.
Daz has a quick chat to the husband who is mortally embarrassed and says he is happy for the $100 to be a donation to FWS as it was his mistake and we are doing good work.
Daz agrees and hangs up feeling good. Negative Nelly, I just feel weird. We have a conversation where I reveal I feel like WE are ripping people off because all we do, left, right and centre, is pressure for discounts. Daz says patiently, but emphatically, “Nooo, actually we are combating being ripped off. We are protecting our money and the money Australians have donated to us. This is a bargaining country, it’s our duty to bargain, get involved and come out the best we can each time…and when we have shaken on a deal, a deal is a deal and that’s that.”
Wise boy spik da wise words.
So I begin to feel more comfortable after our conversation and the next day am totally okay with the highs and lows of bargaining world, when Mudi, our Kesho Leo assistant manager, pops up out of nowhere and pipes with this one: “Sorry guys. I am trying, but sometimes I’m still getting the rip off, even when I am African. Yesterday, I bought the rope for you and I got it for $7. And today, you ask me to buy some more and I find the same rope in another shop for $4. I’m sorry, I’m trying to ask around a lot, like you, and get the right price so we don’t get the rip off, but sometimes I am making a mistake”.
So yeah, if you were ever worried that we weren’t trying to get bang for your buck, please don’t! We are all TOTALLY amongst it, even if we are stumbling occasionally. But so far, the stumbles have only been a few dollars here and there. Not so bad, in the scheme of things.
Till next week,
Bargaining Beck, xxx
PS – Non dollar related stuff: Daz & I suffered our first bout of Deli Belly (good to get that out of the way!), Daz got saw dust in his eye (pretty badly when making our kitchen bench, pictured below, but recovered in 24 hours), and I got bit on the bumski by some kind of bully ant. We’re trying to work out if this is why I’m insanely itchy all over. It could be the bite, or it could be an allergy to the hard-core soap they use to wash clothes here, or the change in diet (from low-fat soy milk to natural cow’s milk with cream included!), from light-spray olive oil to heavy palm oil (so bad for you!) or coffee? I haven’t drunk coffee in years, but it’s sooo yum here, I can’t help but go a cup a day! Could coffee make you itch all over? Who knows. Meantime, I’ll do some experiments and see if I can ditch mystery itch within the week. Will report back soon!
Oh…der. You probably want to know when we will start building Kesho Leo. Next 15 days, we reckon. We’re setting up to sign contracts on land this week. I have contracts in my hot little hands (actually they're cold, we've got a crazy-cold African winter going on here), we have the money in the Christian Brother’s Account… and we have the land owner ringing us to say that he is sick and wants the money before he dies please! We think he is joking…but aren’t real sure.
Friday, 3 August 2007
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.
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