South East Asia - A tour of the city

During the two days we had prior to our conference, we were able to have a bit of a holiday and do a bit of shopping and site seeing.
We decided to go and visit the grand palace and as it was close we thought we would walk there. On our way we met a man who very helpfully informed us that the palace would not be open until the afternoon and that because it was the week of the Queen’s birthday we could benefit from a special tour offered by the local tuk tuk drivers. For a bargain price of around 50p for both of us, we could have a 2 – 3 hour tour of the city and visit most of the sites (mostly temples in this city). Usually we are fairly stubborn and like to do things our own way according to our own plan. However, we decided to through caution into the wind and climbed aboard the next tuk tuk that passed us and began our city tour. It soon became obvious that it wasn’t so straightforward as paying 50p for a city tour. As various shops and outlets were included in our tour and our driver became more and more disappointed with our very brief stops and these outlets. We soon discovered that apparently the drivers get a fuel voucher for bringing along customers to these shops and because we had no intentions of buying anything from any of the places we were taken too (they weren’t what you would call the most bargainous of shops) our driver wasn’t doing too well out of us.
Eventually he told us the situation and we decided to humour him by taking a bit longer to look around a jewellery shop and factory and showing a bit of interest in buying something. However, by then the damage had been done and he told us that he would take us to one last temple and leave us there! We were a bit surprised as we thought we had done our best to be obliging and helpful to him, but apparently not...

The view from our tuk tuk and our driver.

The tallest Buddah in the city.

A Buddah in one of the city temples.

A pretty bulding!

Reverse Culture Shock.

We were once told that returning to our home culture would result in almost as big a culture shock as coming to Africa in the first place did. We were doubtful after all, what could be more normal than returning to the culture we have spent our whole lives in?
On our recent trip to South East Asia we discovered that the advice we had been given was 100% accurate. Although, strictly speaking, South East Asia is yet another culture, there are many similarities between the cities we visited and our beloved home country!
We were gobsmacked by the sheer size and variety of everything. From Starbucks and McDonalds to Topman, Whittard and Boots. Glittering, air conditioned shopping centres that frankly put West Quay to shame. We were literally walking around with our eyes wide and our jaws dropping at each new discovery, not unlike children in a toy shop.

Good old Maccy D's!! Been a long time since we last saw the golden arches!!

Central World Shopping Mall - loads of shiny, glittery shops.

The main tourist hotspot - loads of stalls selling food, clothes and souvenirs lining the street.

Photo's from our recent travels

We arrived back yesterday from South East Asia where we have been for the last 10 days. Part work and part play. We had a couple of days before the work part of our time began to enjoy yet another culture.
There are many stories to tell from this trip and I shall endeavour to write about some of them over subsequent blog entries. For now I will mainly post pictures for you to enjoy and to get a bit of a taster of our time away.

At Dar es Salaam - Literally after travelling for less than an hour we stopped at the capital to pick up more passengers only to find that one of the engines would not start again. We were all taken off the plane and given soda and pie type food while fundi's (technicians) took the plane apart in order to put in a new starter motor...

One of Rich's favourite parts of our holiday time was all the food that was available on the streets for bargain prices. Often he would buy street food after just eating his real dinner in a restaurant. Why he isn't fat I don't know... life isn't fair.

The boys bravely eating fried grasshoppers!! Yet more of the street food on offer.

Public transport along the river.


At one of the MANY temples in the city.


For the first time in 10 months Rich found a drum kit in one of the upmarket shopping centres. Left me free to do some browsing and kept him entertained for a while.

At the airport waiting for our flights home. We had 12 hours to wait for our flight back to Africa so thought we would pass the time watching some films. Somehow we managed to book separate flights to Addis Abbaba and Rich and I got bumped up to Cloud 9 (Ethiopian airways first class) - bonus!!

Rich watching the luggage during the loooooooooong wait for our connecting flight to Addis

A new car for Mr and Mrs O

Given our perception of life in Africa being very slow and very laid back, sometimes things can happen with astonishing speed. We often joke that Africans are relaxed about time until you put them behind the wheel of a car or dala dala (mini bus/death trap!) and then suddenly it’s all about ‘time is money!’ This speed with which things can happen has been our recent experience with buying a car here.
After our pre-Christmas experience of being robbed by the man who ‘bought’ our car from us, and nine months of waiting, we know now that we will never see the money from our dear old Landy and actually just need to get on with getting our own vehicle here.
Now bear in mind that there’s no auto trader here. The way it works is that you put the word out that you are looking for a car and they just turn up at your house. Bizarre, but that’s how it is. Well we hadn’t quite gotten to the point of putting the word out, so our team leaders worker/guard decided to take matters into his own hands. We had never spoken to him about our desire to begin the process, he just decided that enough was enough and we should get our act together (plus he will probably get some sort of fee for organising the deal!).
So on Tuesday I headed off into town early to do the shopping and banking and bits and bobs like that. I was just finishing when Rich called to inform me that some men had turned up with a car for us and could I come and have a look at it. So off I went back to inspect the car.
What awaited me was a Honda CRV (silver for all the rest of the girls out there – that was my first question!) in very good condition and way out of our price range. However, after some fierce negotiating the price of the car was reduced to well within our price range and a deal was made. Shocking. Unbelievable. I had not had the slightest thoughts of buying a car when I had woken up that morning, but there you go. That’s how it can be here sometimes and you just have to go with it.
Now we have to go to the cash point every day in order to withdraw the money for the car. No such thing as cheque or bank transfer here. Just cash. So in about two weeks time we should have been able to withdraw enough money and we may once again be car owners.
Our whole car saga over the last few months has taught us a lot about trusting that God is ultimately in control of all these things and that if he wants us to have a car he will provide the car and the means of buying it. We are so thankful for this and so many other ways he has blessed us since arriving on this Island.

Eating my words.

The general rule whilst driving here seems to be, every driver for themselves. This is particularly the case by the market in town where the daytime traffic and driving is unbelievable. Any side of the road will do as long as there is space, there are about a million bicycles, piki piki (scooters) and pedestrians at any one time and there's none of the politeness (ahem....) that we are used to on the roads back home.
I made this point to Rich this morning on our way down into town. I particularly emphasized the 'no give way' rule that seems to operate here. You just don't do it. If you want a chance to join the flow of traffic and get where you are going, you just don't give way because no one will give way to you (plus the fact that the traffic behind you will just go around you anyway so there's normally not much point in the exercise!).... or so I thought. Not half an hour after I had expressed this opinion I was forced to eat my words as a man very kindly let us out of a junction right in the middle of the chaos of traffic next to the market. I doubt it will change our 'every driver for themselves' attitude, but we were grateful to be let out!
(By the way, I told you it wouldn't take long for me to take over the blog...)

Apologies and a nagging wife...

First of all, let me begin by apologising for our slackness in updating our blog recently. We could give all sorts of excuses such as moving house and pants internet connections, but we are basically just slackers when it comes down to it. Sorry.

We do have lots of news and pictures to update the blog with. Some of the smart ones amongst you may have noticed that the usual author of this blog is not writing these words. In an effort not to be a nagging wife, I have instead offered my services in updating the blog occasionally. We shall see how long it takes me to take it over entirely...

Some of you may know that we finally moved into our own place about a week ago. It is so good to finally be able to settle a bit and know that we won’t be moving into another house in a couple of months. This has resulted in us being very busy in trying to get the house equipped and prepared for us to move into. Rich has virtually re-plumbed the whole house as all taps and toilets were dripping (by the way, these were all brand new and had just been installed by a fundi (not sure on the exact translation for this word but it is basically someone who is a ‘skilled’ worker... really??)) and we have given the whole place a good clean out with bleach and hydrochloric acid (pretty much the only cleaning products we can get our hands on here). We feel so blessed to have such a lovely house for us to live in here and God has provided a working fridge-freezer and washing machine which is just brilliant.

Rich under the kitchen sink

Less than a week after we moved into our new place we were visited by some friends from our home church in Winchester. Ed and Alex were on their way to Uganda and thought they would come and visit us and briefly experience some of the delights of this Island on which we live. Needless to say, we quickly got them to work at the school! (Be warned if you intend to come for a visit – you will be put to work!) Alex enjoyed welding on the roof and Ed helped to wire our computer lab, new skills for both of them I believe. Ed also helped Rich with his latest project: building a BBQ in our garden.

Alex using his new welding skills to put the roof up over the workshop area.

Ed helping to wire up the computer lab.

Ed and Rich building a BBQ at our new house.

Rich making a grill for the BBQ.

You will see from the pictures how the building work is progressing. The computer lab is coming on really well and has now had window frames put in, plaster on the walls, wiring put in, a roof and is ready for the floor to be laid next week. It is exciting to see how progress is being made and we are now trying to get to grips with how to go about opening a school and all that involves.

Friday morning chai break in the computer lab.

The walls for the classrooms, reception area and stores are all up to height now and the ceiling is being put in.

We have many exciting things to look forward to over the next couple of months including visits from both sets of parents as well as some friends who are coming to see us. We are so excited about seeing them all and sharing the experience of living in Africa with them all. Plus they have all very kindly offered to bring out supplies of chocolate, teabags and other miscellaneous items that we miss out here!

New house, radiators and a witch doctor

As I briefly touched on before we have found ourselves a house to rent which will be something we can make our home whilst we are here. It was the first house we looked at and decided to go for it as it was a decent house in our budget.

This is the outside of our house and what you will immediately notice is the colour scheme. I'm not sure what is going on, to me it looks like and Christmas tree. You can just see the pink colour in the porch which was the colour used to paint all the inside walls, but now has been changed at our urgent request. The local people like bright bold colours, we asked for the owner to put up mosquito nets on the windows which he agreed to but he decided to put up bright green ones.

We have also started the process of buying furniture which can be a total headache, especially as most stuff is second hand and is likely to break in the near future as our team mates all found out. So far we have found some great stuff which is new, packaged and imported from the UK and is about the same price as the 20 year old dirty ones - in the same shop too.

The building of the school continues to progress and as can be seen above, any visitors we have get dragged along to put in a few days work.

Current state of building with gate and classrooms almost built

After our second stint of language school we decided to get off of the Island for a few days (our second time in 7 months) to buy some things for the house and get some good food. We also decided to by a new radiator for the car we are borrowing as it had died and thought that the big city on the mainland would be the best place to find one at a good price. This adventure meant taking the old one with us and driving around with locals to find one. We asked were we could get a second hand one and shortly arrived at a street with lots of half chopped up cars outside and it didn't take long to find some that matched ours. When we enquired about the prices we were totally shocked to find that second hand ones (which have no guarantee that they would work) were twice the price of new ones. When I asked why this was they told me that it was because the second hand one was 'original' i.e. it was originally in the original car! I told them that their logic was ridiculous and ended up getting a brand new genuine one for half the price back on the island.

The other day we also took part in a local village tour. This was because a friend was starting up his own business and wanted some pictures of westerners enjoying themselves on his tour. He also wanted us as we had a camera too. The tour involved seeing how lots of things are made such as rope from coconuts, pots from clay, etc. We also went to meet a local witch doctor, which was pretty weird but interesting to see.

It was quite a good tour though, amongst other things we got to ride on a cow cart.....

....learn to cook local style...

...and then eat local style. We are eating a mixture of rice cooked with a kind of green lentil rolled in our hand and then dipped in a cocount, octopus sauce. It was pretty good.