On Passover, rotten eggs and failed pavlova

Unusually Passover this year fell both on Shabbat and Good Friday – like the original Good Friday when Jesus was denounced at the Seder meal.   Passover is an important festival in our family and for the past few years we have gone to my lovely cousin Jessica’s house where she hosts a Seder meal for up to 36 people!  When I was growing up we went to Jessica’s parents house where my Uncle Denis and Aunt Yvonne held the celebrations.  So this year was hard for all the family as it was the first Passover without Denis and for us it was difficult as we were so far away from friends and family.  Camilla and Jeremy were in Israel so we were on our own for the first time that I could remember for Passover.

So being me I had a plan.  The boys were going stir crazy since our return back to Moshi from Fish Eagle Point so I had invited some friends over for them to play with.  My plan therefore was to combine childcare with Pesach baking….  Of course all the best laid plans go amiss.  There was no electricity which was a nightmare as not only could I do no Pesach cooking or baking but Aaron decided to go out “shopping” which involved going to the coffee shop for a long time.  When the children became fractious I couldn’t put a film on as there was no electricity so I resorted to lots of drawing games!

The electricity finally came on at 4pm.  Aaron excelled himself by baking Matzah.  I excelled myself by exploding the egg in the cooker.  Of the 18 eggs we had bought lots had gone bad so I kept boiling and boiling more and more eggs to eat in salt water and we finally shared 2!  My pavlova wouldn’t whisk as the eggs were bad so I turned my chocolate pavlova into a cake which looked great when I brought it out of the oven but like my Mother’s famous cheese soufflés of the past I watched it sink in horror.  Aaron then managed to drop our dinner on the floor but we scooped it up and ate it anyway….  I found an all hebrew and an all English hagaddah on the internet but not one with both so kept trying to flit between the two.

So it was an interesting Seder night but we managed it.  It did bring it home to me how much family means to me and to our boys and we said “next year in North London”

Passover by Josh and Zac HT

Everything went wrong and it felt like there was something in the house making things go wrong.  Daddy made nice matza which is a type of Jewish food that you are only allowed to eat on Passover.  He made Mummy one shaped like a heart.

On the Point and the month of mud

Zanz has been on at me to write something for the blog, I think she has adopted a Murdoch persona and this is the beginning of her global media domination via the Internet. Anyway, as you have read we have been away for a break...holiday within a holiday some may think! I won't go on about how beautifully picturesque it was or, how the stunning sunrises were the precursor to warm heady days...But. Most of the my days were spent chasing the boys and finding different bits if equipment Zanner and Zac dropped in to the sea whilst out kayaking. The journey both ways took around six hours with large tracks of off road driving which were fun. Fish Eagle Point comes highly recommended, set within a mangrove cove it has a relaxed atmosphere that captures many of the most stunning elements of places we have been to around the world, from the Bandas in Bali to the far away and hidden fish island off the Thai coast. Everything about the place has been well thought out by the Zimbabwean owners who are continually developing the site to capture more and more of the beauty of the setting. In progress as we left was the honeymoon Banda with a small private beach and sunken pool within the confines of the structure.

By the time we returned to Moshi we had entered the 'month of mud'. Basically it rains here with such intensity it would peel your skin if you stood out in the downpour. The plus side is that it generally only occurs when you are tucked up in bed, so in essence the weather is very civilised but boy does it leave the place muddy come the morning. The 4x4 rules here and some roads you would think are impassable. However, the fortitude of the Tanzanian piki piki (small 125 motorbike) puts to shame the cosseted WASP school run 'I need a 4x4 because my arse is too big' mum and her dog by their ability to keep traction and get through roads many of our school run mums (and dads) wouldn't attempt as it would dirty their shiny rims! It is lots of fun driving and sliding around at the moment and I have started to look for more challenging roads on which to test our 20 year old land cruiser. The boys are enjoying the mud as exemplified by yesterday's trip to watch some of the Rally of Tanzania. We managed to place ourselves on a decent corner which was ankle deep in gooey mud. The boys spent most of the time sliding through the mud made worse by an afternoon deluge. They finished looking more like locals with their deep brown masks of mud applied like sun lotion to any exposed skin surface. We finished the day with a HASH set in Tanzania's largest sugar plantation(TPC) it was run by the Arusha Hash House Harriers. Completely different to the uber competitive Moshi courses this one was very frustrating as every time I hit the lead we had to stop at a checkpoint for everyone to catch up. Suffice to say it was a bit Taka Taka but we enjoyed fantastic food at the end in the day in the TPC restaurant. TPC retains most of it colonial heritage with tennis courts, swimming pool, club house and of course the obligatory 18 holes over which to spoil a good walk. Well that's me done, oh yes I turned 42 so I am officially middle aged and now can look forward to more morning aches and pains, memory loss, hair loss, fatigue, memory loss, arthritis, rheumatism and memor

On happiness, harmony and holidays

On the boat trip by Josh HT

At Fish Eagle Point we went out on a boat trip with our friends Luke and Josh. The boat was big and made of wood and had a big white sail but also a motor. The men on the boat helped us fish and showed us around the good snorkeling points. At a sand bank where we caught lots of fish and we used a hand-line and we put bits of squid onto the hooks and they called it calamari. We caught a parrot fish and a orange fish that had a very spikey fin and I was the first one to catch it. My Dad caught a very long grey and blue fish (Daddy says it is called a trumpet fish). We put the fish into a bucket but we threw the parrot fish back into the water because it was a mummy parrot fish. The mummy parrot fish would have died very quickly and it needs to protect its babies. We caught a yellow fat fish with blue stripes on it. We should have thrown all the fish back but the naughty men on the boat didn’t because they wanted to eat the fish. Then the owner of Fish Eagle Point called Steve told them off. One had his head down whilst Steve was talking to the other so the other one poked his head up and he was going to run away. Then Steve caught him and told him off again!
There is a swimming pool and it has lots of chlorine in it so you can stay in it for a short time or your eyes will be stingy.
For breakfast there was yoghurt and I ate 5 pots of yoghurt and then I threw up in the toilets and then I played in the pool with my friends called Josh and Luke.
On the beach there were big red army crabs and they had ginormous claws and they had orange big round eyes on big fat stalks. We picked up hermit crabs that were very small and they hide in shells so we had to scare them so they went in their shells and then we could pick them up and put them in our t-shirts and scare Mummy with them coming out showing Mummy their claws. Then Mummy screamed!!

On Stranger Tides by Zac HT

When we got to Fish Eagle Point we were very tired and then after lunch we went for a walk around the rock pools. It was very beautiful and we played on the house built at the end of the jetty. When we were walking along the beach we saw gigantic red fiery crabs scuttling along the sand. A few days later we went out snorkeling and I saw the biggest fish which was called a lion fish. It had long sticky out white and black fins that looked like they had been burnt in a fire and it looked like a big zebra fish but with seaweed fins.
Then I went out kayaking with my daddy and my daddy tipped over the boat so I fell out. Luckily I had my goggles on and then he made an anchor attaching the kiyak to a rope attached to the bottom of the sea. Then I went swimming under the water and saw a lot of colourful fish and another trumpet fish who was swimming on top of a big rock. My favourite fish that I saw was the lion fish and I saw 2 whilst I was swimming.

Another cappacino please.....

Have you seen my eggs?

The fisherman at Pangani

After 5 nights at Fish Eagle Point we drove to another beach called Pangani where we had to take a ferry across the river to get to Beach Crab Hotel. At Beach Crab we found a pirate look out point where Josh and I played in and used the alcoholic bottle lids as treasure. Our favourite was the elephant tusker tops. My Mummy went riding along the beach with a Spanish man called Carlos. He was very funny and we went riding in the sea with the horses called Swallow and Mephisto. The sea came up to the horses tummies and then I jumped off without my goggles on so I got some water in my eyes. I really enjoyed it because now I know how to ride a horse in the sea and the horses really enjoyed it too.

On the stretching and contracting of time

I remember arriving in Tanzania in November and that smell of Africa assaulting my nostrils and seeping through my being.  It had been so long since I had last been to this continent, 1995 I think but it didn’t seem that long ago.  The first 6 weeks we were here went so very slowly and they were hard.  It is always difficult adjusting to a new place but our house was decrepit and depressing and I found it hard to find my place at work due to the African communication, or lack of it.  We had no transport and it seemed no way out of our contracted world of the hospital compound, the RDTC and ISM – all within walking distance with brief forays out to town for shopping at the market and the occasional decent coffee at the Union Coffee shop.

I just have to take a break in this dialogue to tell you that Josh has somehow managed to fall fully clothed in trousers and freshly laundered T-shirt into the foot bath leading into the swimming pool.  To make matters worse he came back whinging that he had also wet himself and I just don’t understand how a clean and tidy Josh turned into a soaking wet and smelly Josh in the space of less than 5 minutes in a footbath less than 0.5m squared!  He is now wandering around naked partly clothed in a towel and hitting me in a very grumpy fashion.  This is because I keep commenting on his nakedness and I have managed to take a photo of him in his towel on the bridge back to our gorgeous cottage at Fish Eagle Point.  I am feeling slightly guilty as my child knows me so well and told me in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want a photo as he didn’t want me to put it on the blog.  He was trying to extract a pinky promise from me (I am not entirely sure what this means but it is something to do with your little finger) but I managed to distract him as he thought I had lost his toy car over the bridge so forgot about his promise so I am hopeful about posting said non-compromising picture on the blog!

So where was I?  I think I was telling you how slowly and somewhat painfully the first couple of months here in Tanzania went.  Painfully as it had been my dream and my rose tinted future for over a year so to admit to myself that I wasn’t really enjoying myself was an impossibility!  But as with anything new it does take 3 months to settle in and find your feet no matter how you don’t believe it when you hear people say these words.  After 3 months we had moved into the dermatology houses in the Doctors’ compound as our toilet in B22 decided to seep sewage and KCMC in their usual efficient manner didn’t fix anything.  This and the fact that 2 out of 3 of the Dermatology houses were empty meant that Professor Grossman relented and allowed us to move in with strict instructions not to let the children dig up the garden!  It is amazing how different I felt in a more aesthetic living space.  The Dermatology houses are only 15 years old and are beautifully maintained and whilst smaller than our old house are worlds apart.  We have breakfast and dinner on our gorgeous veranda and from the garden is the most magnificent view of Kilimanjaro.  Such that communing with the mountain is a breakfast ritual with me now, and the kids look back to check the weather on the mountain on their way to school each day….

So what I am trying to say in my long winded fashion is that after the initial  months dragging by in a slow and painful fashion now they are flying by and I am terrified of the thought of returning to the UK in 6 weeks.  Six weeks!!!  Where has the time gone????  How am I going to manage without this full and active community of people and this amazing social life.  Mondays is horse-riding/ jumping lesson, Tues morning is netball at 7.30am and I have discovered a demon talent for goal shooting and obviously missed my vocation in life,  Tuesday evening is Flamenco class with Mafalda who last taught Flamenco when she was living and working in Iceland, Wednesday is full body workout at the Moshi gym complete with water bottles filled with sand instead of weights – an amazing workout in an old squash court with a mirror, where the sweat actually drips into your eyes, Wednesday evening is film club, like a book club but better as you watch a film and eat lots of chocolate chip cookies, Thursday morning is netball again and often riding again and Friday is tennis lesson, Saturday is swimming and Sunday Pilates… I will need to go home for a rest as everyday I cycle to and from work and the ISM school. 

We have met an amazingly interesting and kind close-knit community of people since being in Tanzania and everyone does far more activities together.  I was thinking about this and not only is it that the Mazungus stick together and arrange things together but also how no-one spends their free time in Tanzania on house improvements!  In the UK the weekend is often taken up with boring jobs such as gardening, clearing the gutters, going to Homebase or worse still Ikea, clearing out the loft, painting things not to mention washing, ironing, sorting, boring paperwork, stuff on the computer…..

 Josh has just reminded me how much he liked pulling up weeds in the garden at home but only when we played the Viking weed game.  For those of you who are not familiar with this method of getting your children to weed Josh will tell you the basics:

“We find their home and destroy it so they will all leave forever”

I don’t think this violent wanton destruction will work for those of you with lovely colouring in girls…….

Anyway where was I this time?  Oh yes marvelling at how much we have done in our 5 months in Tanzania partly as we spend little time at home, I have only been shopping once at the Memorial second hand market which was fantastic actually.  It was Martina’s birthday so us girls got a free pass to spend all morning there while Tobias and Aaron looked after the boys.  You did have to rummage a lot but hey I have been starved of shopping and I came up with some amazing finds although one of my lovely green flowery tops turned out to be a dress for a girl aged 8!  I can never find trousers to fit me in England but here at the market I pulled on trousers to try under my summer dress and Martina was my very effective mirror telling me whether my bum looked big!  I came back with 4 gorgeous dresses, 4 pairs of trousers which actually fit me which is an impossibility in England and 1 of these was my demon find a pair of Seven jeans which is apparently a very expensive posh make in which my bum apparently looks very svelte!