Mr Ratty

We need a spaki  to fix our shoti. Our neighbour, the doctor, confidently tells me that this is the reason for the intermittent and irregular power cuts we are experiencing. At home, there would be chaos – the freezer would need de-frosting, the central heating clock re-setting, the shower would run cold, TVs PCs and X-Boxes would cease to function. Here it makes very little difference. Our shower is a jug of cold water poured over your head, and we can cook our rice and beans on our charcoal stove or jiko.

Living here for the past few days has made me reflect on one big difference between here and home – between the under-developed and the developed worlds. Here things are dear but time is cheap. In mzungo land things are cheap, but time is dear. It cost me the same for half an hour’s time of a skilled tailor as it did for a packet of clothes pegs. I might see if I can employ someone to make loud noises in the kitchen all day to keep Mr Ratty away. Caroline found him sniffing in our pantry last night and all is not well. I wonder what his relationship was with the huge cockroach I killed yesterday; I say cockroach, but I’m not sure. This creature was prehistoric in its dimensions, scurried across the floor, leapt a yard when I first attempted to tread on it, and was the size of a small hamster; absolutely nothing cuddly about it however.

My first day in College let me see at close quarters the meagre resources and dreadful constraints facing education in Tanzania. I sat in on an English lesson where approximately ninety students, some sitting or standing outside the classroom, notebooks balanced on their knees, listened to a talk about reading skills, given by an under-stated but confident tutor. Most students listened; all were quiet throughout, except for the couple of minutes when they were asked to discuss in pairs, their ideas for getting early readers to read aloud, or the benefits of the class reader as opposed to the library. The lesson ended as unremarkably as it had begun and I had to be signalled from the front of the room that it was in fact, time to leave.

Tomorrow I think we are going to take a bijaji up the coast to see Mikandani, a traditional Swahili port and former German fortress. We may very well also pay a visit to one of Caroline’s favourite stores, a so-called mzungo store. They are called mzungo because its only white people that want or can afford to shop there. I had first imagined slick window displays, air-conditioning and expensive and utterly unnecessary beauty products. This collection of mzungo stores turns out to be predominantly Indian owned shops, with the atmosphere of an American frontier store at the turn of the century. They sell everything from beans to biscuits and from Vim to Vimto. I wandered round bemused, determined to treat us to something from our world. I settled on a Knorr packet soup. Tomorrow I think it might very well be something for the wikiendi  for Mr Ratty.