A new look

Since I took on the writing of our blog, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I decided to change how it looked. I have checked with Rich and he has given his approval (if I had gone for a pink colour scheme I'm not sure that approval would have been so forthcoming!!) so here it is. Hope you like it. Feel free to leave your comments on this radical change (or any other post for that matter! It is good to hear your responses to what I post).

Well and truly spoiled!

On Thursday morning, we waved goodbye to my parents who had come to visit us and have a bit of a break on our beautiful island. It was WONDERFUL to see them after nearly a year of being away and they spoiled us rotten with lovely meals out and day trips that we otherwise would no way be able to afford! Here are some selcted highlights from the two weeks that we were able to spend with them...





Their first day on the island we whisked them away from the airport and did a whirlwind tour of town. Having flown through the night they were both pretty exhausted but we kept them going until about 8ish in the evening when they very gratefully collapsed into bed! Because it was Ramadan when they arrived there were very few places in town open for drinks and meals during the day. However, just as they were about to collapse with exhaustion, we found a hotel where we could have a much needed drink while looking out over the beautiful Indian Ocean!


After a hectic first day on the island, we allowed them a small amount of time to rest and relax at a local hotel with a lovely swimming pool. Here they are looking a bit more rested and like they're on holiday!!

At Prison Island, one of the few things to do here, visiting some tortoises that were a gift from the Seychelles many years ago. Apparently this guy was 16 years old (or something like that...)

Another great day trip - harassing dolphins! This picture was taken at sunrise one morning as we were on our way to find the dolphins in order to throw ourselves out of the boat in an attempt to swim with them.

One of Rich's highlights - the hotel mum and dad stayed in had a water sports centre and they had these little catamarans which my dad and Rich took out a couple of times. They were great fun to sail around in and I think even I could manage one (with some instruction beforehand) - there was only one rope to worry about!

We took the opportunity to go on our first spice tour after 10 months of living on spice island. For some reason they made silly hats and crowns out of coconut leaves that we then had to wear for the rest of the tour...

Rich didn't approve of this...

On our last day together, we went on a day trip to a sandbank which was about 5 miles or so from the island. We had the sandbank entirely to ourselves and went snorkelling in the reef surrounding it. The boat driver set up a table and chairs and sun shade for us and left fruit platters, cake, sandwiches and soda for lunch. He then took the boat and left us there to have lunch and to enjoy ourselves until the tide came in and the sandbank was swallowed by the sea again. This picture was taken after Dad and Rich had returned to the boat leaving Mum and I abandoned on what was left of the sandbank. You can see that we were very concerned about our fate!


On the way home from the sandbank, Mum asked the driver of the boat to stop and then promptly threw herself off the top of the boat. We were all quite astonished, not least because the boat hadn't quite stopped moving when she did it and she had a bit of a swim back to the boat. Rich and I then joined her and we all took great delight in jumping in just next to where Dad was sitting :)

In his element.

These photo's are of Rich messing around with a skim board about a week or so ago. Amazing how much enjoyment can be had with an oval shaped piece of ply wood!

A new car for Mr and Mrs O cont'd...

I blogged a couple of months ago about going through the experience of getting a car on our island. I had intended to put up some photo's then, but Rich told me to wait until he had taken some nice pictures of the car (preferably on a white, sandy beach with palm trees in the background). I have now given up waiting for these pictures and have decided to just go ahead and put the pictures up that we do have, so here they are.

This is our car! Considering how nice and shiny it is, we got a really good price on it. It took us over two weeks of going to at least one cash point a day (often it was more like four cash points as they often run out of money, the biggest denomination being equivalent to £5) and withdrawing the maximum amount our bank would allow. We also had to borrow from our team mates in order to get the money together in time.

Impressive eh?! This is in fact only about 2/3 of the money we actually needed to pay for our car. We even took it in a paper bag to make the payment - shady!

Politcally Correct?

Political correctness is a concept that has yet to land on these shores. Coming from a country where PC-ness is highly valued (or at least expected) we are times shocked or amused by instances of political incorrectness that we come across, or more usually are the recipients of.
It is very rarely that we are able to leave the house without local children and sometimes men (it seems the women are above this sort of behaviour) calling out ‘mzungu!’ Now the literal translation for this word is ‘one who walks around in circles’ and apparently the expression was coined when Westerners first arrived in East Africa. Ask someone now what it means and you will hear that it means a white person or westerner. The thing that I am surprised by is that the children and young men in our neighbourhood are quite accustomed to seeing us and other ‘wazungu’ (plural form) on a regular basis, so I find it odd that they still feel the need to call us this particularly as we do in fact have names that they could call us by.
This daily surprise (sometimes mild irritation – I do have a name!) I experience was eclipsed by a recent experience in a photo shop. Rich needed to get some passport photo’s to update his UK driver’s licence, so we headed to the photo shop in town. Now here there is no photo machine. A lady sticks a camera in your face and takes a photo which she then edits to change the background colour and re-orientate the picture so that you are not diagonally across the picture. The pictures are then printed out, cut up and put in a little envelope for you to take away upon payment. When I turned up to collect the photo’s I was immediately given an envelope although I hadn’t been asked to give a name. Why? Because someone had written ‘mzungu’ across the top of the envelope and that obviously must be me!
This insistence of referring to us and our team mates as ‘wazungu’ often leads to confusion. As many of you know, our internet is tediously slow when it works and sometimes it just gives up all together. There have been occasions when we or one of our team mates has had reason to call our ISP in order to get an engineer to come and see just how bad our connection is. Now, back home our name would be taken and written down in order to ensure that the engineer goes to the correct address. Not so here. Although we may give a name, they seem to choose not to take any notice of it and instead sent the engineer to the mzungu’s house in Chukwani (the, sort of, area we live in). This leads to engineers turning up at Jason and Roxanne’s house and refusing to understand that their internet is actually fine and they don’t need an engineer while ours is up the creek and we would actually quite like some help please! Oh for some order and organisation!! This all just goes to show that it IS important to use people’s names and that political correctness can be useful in its own way!!

Rich the Chippie

Rich has always faniced himself as a bit of a chippie. He loves wood and has always talked about working with it. Of all the trades, carpentry is the one he loves and most enjoys. However, back in the UK he had not really had the opportunity to indulge in much wood work. (Mostly because the majority of his spare time was spent in the garage fixing the cars, putting in kitchen's, bathrooms or re-building the mini.)

Here everything is different. Firstly there is no garage for him to disappear into for an evening's entertainment. Secondly, there is no Ikea or Argos for cheap furniture. Everything is made to order in town by carpenters.

We had decided that we should upgrade our coffee table from a cardboard box to an actual table. Rich decided that this was a project he could take on himself in order to prove his skills as a carpenter. After an evening drawing up plans and discussing designs, he and James (who was visiting at the time) headed off into town to try and locate some suitable material for the project. They returned with wood of various shapes and sizes and started work the next day.

After a day of listening to the noises of circular saws, planers, sanders and hammering they were finished and ready to present their creation to the world, and here it is!

Half the fun is working with the power tools!

Measuring it all up and fitting it together.

Getting a good finish on the wood.

The finished product!

A visit from Mr and Mrs Pinto!!

Today we were sorry to say goodbye to James and Anna Pinto who have been with us for the last two and a half weeks. We have absolutely LOVED every minute they have been with us and have some fab memories and photo's to share on our blog!

We began our adventures together by driving north from Dar es Salaam to stay near Arusha and use that as a base for then going on safari. We spent a day at lake Manyara about an hour and a half's drive from Arusha and then headed on to the Ngorongoro crater. Both of these places were just incredible and we saw some beautiful wildlife. Although the crater was very impressive, we loved lake Manyara as we were so close to the animals. At one point our car was almost charged by an elephant which seemed to make our guide a little bit nervous, but we were just so overwhelmed and excited to be so close to a real life, wild elephant!

On returning to the island, we dragged James and Anna around while we did all our jobs and tried to get back into our usual routine. They did brilliantly and even attempted an outing on a dala dala (local mini bus) all by themselves!

Rich loved having someone to play with and gad about with. It gave me the opportunity to get on with some reading, rather than being called upon for entertainment!!

Anyway, enough of all this talking, here are some photo's from our time together for you all to enjoy!

Anna and James eating an early breakfast while waiting to enter the crater.

We saw loads of hippo's at both of the parks we went to. They are such weird looking animals!

This is the elephant that started to get a little bit too close to our car (there's no zoom used in the picture, he really was that close!)

This is the car that we spent the better part of 48 hours in driving round lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro crater trying to find exciting wildlife.

We had hoped, but hadn't really expected that we would see any cats on our safari, so we were very happy when we saw thes lions lazing in the sun!

We came across another car with a group of tourists all intently looking at a big stretch of grass. When we asked them what they were looking at they informed us that a Cheetah was lying down in the tall grass. So we waited and our patience was rewarded by this glimpse of a Cheetah.

One of many giraffes at lake Manyara.

Our day in the crater was really cold! We were in our element wearing thick jumpers and even wrapping up in warm blankets!

The best cake in Tanzania! We found this amazing little patisserie/coffee shop which served incredible food including these yummy cakes. At the top is chocolate cheesecake, carrot cake on either side and an eclair at the bottom.

Once we were back home we went to the south east corner of the island and went out on a boat to go swimming with dolphins which was AMAZING!! This is a picture of Rich with a group of dolphins. They were incredible beautiful, graceful and somehow peaceful to watch.

After we saw the dolphins, the boys all went off snorkelling and as they were coming out of the water, James fell on a sea urchin. The whitey/purple areas on his thumb and first two fingures are where the sea urchin spikes broke off in his hand. We estimate that he had approximately 30 or so spikes in his hand.