Off the Island

Since our last entry we have managed to get off of the Island and been to some areas of cooler climate which has been totaly amazing. We attended a conference near Nairobi last week and decided that it was cheaper to drive there than to fly. So we have had a bit of a road trip 4 adults and 1 child travelling about 2,400 kilometers over 4 days with at least 20 police stops, 3 new tyres, 2 border crossings, 2 ferry crossings and 1 speeding ticket!

Some of the views driving through Tanzania

There were some paved roads which was nice and they are constructing others but there is often no diversion road so you just find a way around along the side somewhere!

We saw this Zebra just at the side of the road but he started to walk away when we stopped

This is our team car which is kept on the mainland for such trips. This was us changing our first tyre after a blow-out at 100kph. We had another flat and ended up buying three new ones. Notice the bits of tree on the road behind, this is not the reason for the blowout but standard practice is that when broken down (quite often in Africa) these bits of bush or rocks or whatever act as a warning to others. They are usually left there as well!

Kilimanjaro

I had been warned about the amount of traffic police who seem to be everywhere so had kept an eye on my speed, however at one point on the main road to Kenya there was a 30kph limit (thats pretty slow-18.64mph actually) I slowed down and after going through the supposedly hazardous area sped up only to be confronted with yet another cop with a speed gun saying I was going 68kph when it was 30. I explained that I thought we were between a 30 and 50 limit so I was ok but he told me I was wrong and needed to pay a fine, go to court or pay him a gift. I paid the fine only to find on the return journey that I was right and that I had been out of the 30 limit!

We were also stopped on the way back with another cop with a speed gun saying we were going 58 in a 50, we were actually going about 35 and he hadn't even pointed the gun at us so we told him were to go!

We stopped for a couple of nights on the way up near Arusha with some friends. This was really nice as we had our own little banda in the foothills of Mount Meru. It was cool in the evening and we enjoyed wearing jumpers, having a duvet and hot showers for the first time in almost 5 months.

We also made the most of being there and went to Arusha National Park, we were told that we may see hippos and elephants however they must have been hiding. We did see flamingos, buffalo, girafes, zebras and other animal things which I am not sure what they were.

I also saw this there and have included it for all the Land Rover fans as it is quite something.

Once in Nairobi, Paula made the most of civilisation and chopped off all her hair. She is holding what used to be on her head, she said it was too hot or something. We also enjoyed being able to go to supermarkets which had things in them. We were able to get a few things to take back with us such as breakfast cereal, pork sausages, bacon, olives and diet coke.


Just before the conference we were invited to go camping with some English friends who live near Nairobi. We went to a place near Naivasha which was great, it was out in the bush with nobody around, no toilet etc. We were able to enjoy toasting marshmellows on the fire and wearing jumpers and jeans.

The conference was also a really good time. We met lots of people and were greatly encouraged. I think we gained a few pounds due to the amazing food of which I ate alot.

I have saved the best till last. Upon driving into Nairobi we saw big banners over the road advertising a Jars of Clay concert. That is the Jars of Clay, i.e. my favourite band who have not been to England for ages if at all. I need to explain that we used to talk about going to America to see them! We had planned to be in Nairobi for 2 nights and 1 night after. The concert was on the night after the conference so we went. This was best described by Roxanne who said that this was a gift from God.

End of school and start of building

It is now the beginning of February the hottest month of the year here although we are having a few periods of heavy rain which is unusual but very welcome as it is cooler for me and it helps the locals shamba's (gardens for growing loads of fruit and veg).



At the end of January we finished our beginners class at language school which was good fun and we learnt a lot. This is us in our classroom with our teacher who was very encouraging. I am glad that it is over with for now as our days were very busy and I feel that any more information would have gone straight over my head.



This is a picture of us at our house with the certificates from the school. We are unfortunately moving out of this house this month as we are moving into our friends house for a few months while they are back in England and then we will have to find another place!

On Saturday the 24th of January we had the official ground breaking ceremony for the vocational training centre we are building. This was attended by lots of influential people such as some people from the government the German consulate, members of the board of the school, local traders, etc


This involved a few speeches from various important people including our project manager Mr Alex Kittow. This was followed by a viewing of the proposed site (with the sign which Paula painted) and then the Principal Secretary for Education (the guy in charge of the ministry of education), dug the first part of the foundation and finally we had some refreshments.

(Note the lady in the red top with the camcorder just behind the guy's head, she is filming for the local TV-enough said)

We did manage to record the local news which I have included for you to see although it is in Swahili you can see what happened. We are all in it at some point except for Alex although when Hans is explaining details of the site he is called Alex!

Since then work has begun. We have dug the foundations, installed a water supply and the laying of the foundations starts tomorrow. (For those of us who are interested this is not done with concrete as cement is expensive but is done by packing bits of coral rock closely together with a little bit of mortar in the gaps! We will see how it turns out.)

On Friday we are heading to the mainland and will be driving up to Kenya for a conference. I am looking forward to this as it sounds like an awesome road trip and we haven't been to the mainland yet but have heard that there are such things as supermarkets! We will also spend a couple of days in Northern Tanzania on the way which I am looking forward to as it is supposed to be beautiful and a bit cooler!

This is a picture of my friend who helps me with my language. Here I am writing stories in Kiswahili and then I tell them to him and he corrects me. I wanted to include this picture because if you look closely he is wearing a Royal Mail T-shirt-Amazing!

Finally here is a picture of me attempting to windsurf in no wind. I think that I this will be my hobby whilst I am here because our team leader has the equipment and there is not much in the way of waves as can be seen below

Language School

January has been a busy month so far. We started language school at the state university which is from 8 till 12 everyday. This is intense but we feel that is worth while as we are both learning lots everyday. Paula is doing really well and I'm following closely behind. I am already better at Kiswahili than I ever was at Fremch which is encouraging because I studied French for more than 5 years at school and at university. Our class is great it consists of the teacher, Paula and myself - more like one on one tuituion. There was supposed to be more but they didn't turn up.

Paula after another big dinner

This morning we had to go to the place where they issue a sort of MOT based on how clean your engine is. I watched one guy check a vespa moped, (lots of them here, they are called piki pikis), he looked at the engine, kicked the tyres and tested the horn. All in all took him about 30 seconds! We had to go to this place to prove to a guy, who was going to issue our national driving licences, that we could drive. Apparently our UK licence didn't mean anything to him so we went for a drive with him. He asked if we could go half a kilometre to quikly get something from his house - this ended up being about 8km to drop a chicken off at his sons shop. When we got back we asked if we could have a licence for a piki piki as well which he agreed to issue one to me as he thinks that anyone can drive these. Unfortunately he decided not to give one to Paula saying that she was not fit to drive one of these as she has to wear glasses but more likely because she is a girl!

Project stuff is going well. We started work on it this week installing a gate and digging a trench for electricity and water supply. We have an official opening ceromany on Saturday in which important people will come and give speeches etc. Ill post some photos of that event in the next blog. Here is a little drawing I did to give an idea of what the Vocational Training College may look like.

Some girly stuff. The girls held a suprise baby shower for Julie....



....and Paula had yet another birthday.

Happy Christmas and New Year

I trust you all had a happy Christmas and New Year. We have had a good few days however they were very different to what we are used to. The culture here carried on as normal as Christmas isn't celebrated here. We have continued to settle in and have had many adventures such as taking a few thousand litres of water in a trailer to some friends the other side of town as the local pump was broken. I wish I had some photos as this was another great experience especially when the empty 2000 litre tank fell out of the trailer at full speed along the road!

We have good news regarding the project, the Memorandum Of Understanding between us and the college we are partnering with has been signed. (This took 1 year!) So we plan to start on the building work soon, this is very exciting and I am looking forward to being involved with some of the building work which will be a bit different than in England - No machines, no pointless paperwork, no safety!

This my language helper/gardener/day guard, Im not sure what his job is really but it is great to have a friend that I can talk to and help me with the language. Here he has just climbed our coconut tree so we could drink the fresh coconut juice! In our garden we also have bananas, passion fruit, papya, sugar cane, lemon grass, advocado, and more which I dont know what they are.

Roast dinner on Christmas eve with Alex and Julie. Windows were shut and air conditioning was put on all day and by the evening it felt a little cool which felt a little bit like an English Christmas. (Although I guess the first Christmas was probably hot without any snow)

Christmas day on the beach, with Paulas home made mince pies.

Christmas Dinner - Not bad. All the trimmings such as stuffing and bread sauce all made from scratch by my amazing wife. (You cant just get packets of stuff like that)

Team Girls - Roxanne, Paula, Julie, Doro. Kids - Annikah, Analie, Romy, Nasia

This was Boxing day with the team, Its good to have our team

leader (Hans) and his family back on the Island

And the boys with the meat - Jason, Alex, Hans, Me

New Year
This was spent on the best beach on the island, which was amazing beautuful white
sandy beach, swimming under the stars, nice food etc.

Looking into the year ahead, January will be a busy month for us and will bring a bit more structure to our days as we start language school on Monday. I am again looking forward to this as we want to learn the language quickly and so far we have just learnt a lot of vocab so would be good to understand some of the grammar.

Lessons learnt

Its another hot day here and we are very grateful for a new (second hand) fridge and freezer provided by our landlord as the other one didn't work. This is great as we can now have cold drinks to refresh us in the day and of course keeping food fresh. Power can be a bit of a problem last weekend there wasn't any and then sometimes there is only a bit or too much. This can mess up all the electrical items that are plugged in as we found out with our internet router which we bought in England used for one week and then it burnt out in one of these so called 'brown outs'. This however is not the end of the story, the following morning we plugged it in and with some help from above it works as good as new!

Random camel at side of the road

We have also quickly learnt that where you buy your petrol is very important, the price is the same, the provider is the same, but the fuel is not! Unfortunately we took this advice too lightly and after being turned away from a recommended petrol station, (because there was no power to work the pumps!), we decided to get some from the one around the corner which had a generator. This seemed fine as we drove on our day out to the other side of the island, however on our way back the problems began with the engine stalling and periods of unresponsive accelerator. It was getting dark so we decided to continue like this all the wayt back taking more than twice as long stopping at the side of the road every couple of minutes with all the locals standing around and staring. Some petrol stations mix kerosine in with the petrol whilst other places don't have water tight tanks and in rainy times you get water mixed with the fuel. A lesson well learnt.

We are trying to get into the festive spirit but it is a bit difficult as it is not celebrated here and there is a severe lack of misty cold days. We managed to find this small tree and are listening to Christmas music. Paula managed to find one shop which was playing Cliff Richard though. We are looking forward to it though as we are planning maybe a BBQ on the beach and a roast in the evening! (Paula has been looking for recipes online to make stuffing, bread sauce and mince meat.)

Paula is really getting into the culture, her friend persuaded her to get traditional henna which the local women have especially for celebrations. It doesn't look so crazy on the locals as their skin is not so white! He she is with her friend learning how to make chapati (like a bread pancake) - very nice. You can see some of the henna on Paula's hands and arms.

You may have noticed that I have put a clock on this page showing the local time here. This is not only quite a cool thing which took me ages to work out how to do it but is also so people know what time it is here. (This should be particularly useful for a certain guy in Glasgow who likes to phone at 2am!)

Although rainy season is over it still seems to throw it down every day or so which is nice as it makes it a little bit cooler. We are slightly jealous of the English frosty mornings that you guys are having there.
I have worked out how to get the photos small enough to upload (nothing over 1 Meg seems to work here) so I have attached the ones for the last blog entry as well as some new ones.

This is a photo of our team minus the team leader and his family (they have been in Germany having a baby but are back this week). This is the most beautiful beach you can imagine – white sandy beach, sparkling turquoise sea, palm trees - it is an hour’s drive away but worth it on your day off!

We had the opportunity to attend a friend’s wedding on Friday which was a great insight into the culture here. The guy getting married lived in the flat next door to the place we stayed with a local family when we first arrived. Alex and Julie were also invited as they knew him as well. The men first went to the mosque for the ceremony in which no women were allowed, (not even the bride!).

This lasted about an hour and we didn’t understand much as it was not in English. We sat

around on the floor and drank some coffee and ate samosa’s and some people said some prayers at the front. Now that they are married the men then went to the bride’s house, where all the women were, to pick her up. This was where Paula and Julie should have been while we were at the Mosque but they got lost and then were stopped by a police man for doing a u-turn so they ended up missing that part of the celebrations. In the end they came back to the Mosque and followed the men to the Bride’s house where they were ushered inside to have their photo taken with the bride. This seems to

be a tradition. The bride sits in a bedroom on the bed and everyone takes their turn at going in and having their photo taken with her.

The photos show me and two guys from the family we stayed with outside the flats before the wedding, the wedding car arriving at the brides house and the Bride and Groom at the brides house (the bride traditionally wears green on her wedding day).

I have also included a picture of me and my first catch (an octopus) using a spear gun whilst snorkelling on Saturday.

In other news, Paula has had traditional Swahili henna on both her hands and feet, which I’m not too wild about but it’s all about getting into the culture!!

It's hot here! It’s just been rainy season which has been refreshing but also very humid. We spent our first 2 weeks on the Island with a local family in a 5th floor flat quite central to Stone Town. This was a useful experience as we learnt a lot from the family and made some good friends. We lived like the locals which includes eating with our hands and having spicy soup with bits of octopus in it for breakfast! Our days were spent walking around the streets of Stone Town browsing and trying out our few Swahili phrases on the local shopkeepers. Many evenings we went out visiting numerous members of the family which is quite complicated as most men have more than one wife!

Our first impression of Stone Town is that it is very safe and the people are very friendly. The whole of Africa is madly in love with Barak Obama! There is an Obama tree in Stone town which is dedicated to him and you can even buy Kanga’s (sarongs) with his face printed on them!

We have been staying with friends for the past 2 weeks and have just moved into our own house which we will stay in for about 3 months. Until we moved into our house we spent most days going out to the local shops and buying a coke, learning new words and phrases, playing draughts and making friends with the many men who just hang out everywhere. We are slowly learning the language through these conversations and plan to go to the language school in January. We have also enjoyed being able to go for a quick dip in the sea to cool off just before the sun goes down every day which is great and is only about a 5 minute drive.

We have been trying to put up some photos but this has proved difficult with the internet connection we are using at the moment. We will try and put some up as soon as we can.