Brief visit to Bagamoyo

I need to be close to Dar for my flight to Madagascar but don't want to be in the city and so have come to Bagamoyo for a couple of nights. It's on the coast, 70kms north of Dar, which puts it a 2 hour drive to the airport at silly o'clock when I'm travelling but a 4 hour journey in Dar's notorious rush hour traffic.

For four short years, 125 years ago, Bagamoyo was the capital of German East Africa and before that it was an important coastal town for trade. With this in mind it's not surprising that many of the sights are now fairly crumbly.

The German boma - administrative building:

The German customs house:

The most exciting and lively part of Bagamoyo today is the beachfront fish market preparing and selling the day's with neighbouring stalls selling delicious deep fried fish and the dhows, sails billowing, in the background out at sea.

As the town's importance has waned so too has the wealth of the people and there are warnings to take care of your possessions. However, I found it friendly and welcoming. I chatted to the men playing the ubiquitous chequers game and then discussed world politics, the royal family and fishing with other interesting characters I met!

Kichangani

In Kichangani, (and Tanzania as a whole), most people farm some land. If you're a resident you're entitled to buy up to 5 hectares from the village council. In some villages I was told that each family were given a set number of hectares. Otherwise livelihoods are made by keeping shop, running market stalls, teaching, weavering, driving piki-piki taxis and chefing at food stalls. Here are some of my memories of the people and places in the village. 

Rice and beans - 5 different varieties! 

Onions, tomatoes and aubergines - to mix it up a bit 

Pounding.... beans

Weaving the local reeds

Piki-piki taxi loading up in the centre of the village 

Delicious fried banana snacks

Always a fast and furious, competitive draughts game going on with the men 

Farewell Kichangani

I am really sad to be leaving Kichangani and the friendly people who have made me so welcome.  Also it's a bit of a wrench to leave the project when there's still more that can be done.

My home was on the edge of the village, about a 10 minute walk to the centre where there was electricity to charge torches and phones. Pretty much everyone was calling me, "Deb-oR-ah", by the time I left,  particularly the women and the children. Walking in took longer as I stopped to chat, bump knuckles or shake hands. If I wasn't called by my name it was Mamma, Sister, Teacher, Mister and even Grandmother on one inauspicious day!

The walk into town 

Checking on the older children's homework progress 

My daily chaperones

Mangos, mangos everywhere

Fantastic that my trip has coincided with mango season... almost as if it were planned!

The many mango trees in Kichangani, actually all areas of Tanzania that I've visited, are laden with small mangos, often with a carpet of sweet, ripe fruit lying on the ground underneath:

The guys at camp would occasionally head out and gather a bucketful that we could all gorge on:

Alternatively, hang around the school children who are expert at harvesting them and happy to share:

Kiswahili

I've tried to learn Kiswahili to get by and have learnt enough to entertain the locals and occasionally fool them into thinking I know more than I do, which of course always backfires.

Greetings, among the first phrases to learn, are not straightforward. First of all you have to gauge the age and if they're older than you there's a specific etiquette. At the grand age of 50 I'm older than the majority of Africans but I still need to know the appropriate response!

Some of the words are tricky as they are so unfamiliar but others are easier, more familiar, although spelt differently:
- Kazi = work
- paalay = there

If in doubt it's worth adding an 'i' to the English word:
- ofisi = office
- basi = bus

My old favourite is a keeplefti, which is a roundabout and my new favourite is tangawizi, which is the word for ginger. (They have delicious gingerbeer called tangawizi.)

Although they have 'r' in a number of words they tend to get these confused with 'l', particularly when it's the first letter.... very Chinese! A, "Rion Loaring", doesn't carry quite the same urgency.

I've been introducing myself as Deborah which was a good call because it's a name they use, among the Christians anyway (Tanzania is 1/3 Christian, 1/3 Muslim and 1/3 other, tribal etc).  They pronounce it in a really delightful way, very musically, deb-oR-ah. Or, some of them pronounce it deb-oR-la!

The Final Field Trip

We have done some great camping and enormous walks over the last fortnight. We were mapping and photographing water holes. Whilst doing that we noticed an escalation of cattle being grazed in the area and so decided to repeat some earlier surveys to gather the data to prove it.

I wrote it all up in a report and I should hear in the next day or two if a court order has been granted to remove the cattle by force and make arrests - fingers crossed.

We camped at a super spot. Here's the team:

We arrived after rain and on the first evening, having pitched our tents, we walked the surrounding roads and found lots of interesting tracks left in the rain softened ground.

Water mongoose tracks:

African civet tracks:

Porcupine poo:

Hartebeest and hyena tracks crossing in opposite directions - at different time methinks:

We set up the camera traps and captured some great hyena shots, about 200m from camp! Also some up close photos of a curious civet.

It was a great spot and provided us with some stunning sunsets:

I brought my own tent out with me but have been envious of the tents the rest of the team use; they're so much cooler. However my tent came into its own when we had torrential overnight rain and, made for the British weather, it withstood the floodwaters while everyone else got very soggy. The cook gave up altogether and slept in the truck. The following morning lots of tent pegs were whittled and run offs dug! 

Hello Teacher!

Part of my brief here is to teach at the local schools, a day a week, but December is their long summer hols so I didn't start until January.  We decide on the subject and prepare the lesson plans which we try to make as interactive as possible to keep us all awake, particularly for afternoon lessons in the airless, sultry classrooms.

I've really enjoyed it although some of the classes have been more successful than others. The primary school children don't understand much English, and my Kiswahili is at pre pre-school level, so everything needs translating.

Kichangani primary school having survived 'Deforestation and Overgrazing':

The older secondary school classes are pretty fluent in English if you're careful about the vocab you use.

Kichangani secondary school's environmental club after a 'Wildlife management' lesson:

Morning break at Igota secondary school:

There are a couple of rules that all children need to follow:
1. Everyone must have short hair. This made life a little tricky for me as I identified a lot of the local girls by their amazing hairdos but they all vanished overnight on 5th January.
2. Everyone must bring to school a small hand broom for tidying the school grounds.

Kindergarten children with their brooms:

Even in the holiday working groups from the school children have to go and tidy up the school grounds:

Corporal punishment is alive and well in the schools. I saw a few beatings! There was a much more entertaining punishment when 2 classes who had failed tests had to jog up and down in the quad chanting, "We are stupid", to the delight of the younger children. The stupid ones are on the right below. 

Udzungwa Mountains

I escaped from work to the Udzungwa Mountains National Park, a fantastic, unspoilt park with only walking trails.

It was a bit more DIY, I was going to camp and self cater, so I borrowed a pot, plate and cup from camp and headed off to Ifakara to buy my provisions. Ifakara is a veritable metropolis and I had met an Irish /Brazilian couple who lived there and told me about a supermarket which, at 6m x 6m, didn't really live up to my expectations but did have cheese and milk, treats indeed!

A quick stop in the market and then the requisite hour on the bus waiting. I stayed at a super place at the foot of the mountains called Hondo Hondo (Kiswahili for hornbill) and it's well named. I shared the campsite with Bella the donkey who I thought was very cute (plus could make a sacrifice to a hungry leopard if needed) until I came back from a wander to find her munching my washing.

I did a huge 17km walk which climbs just shy of 1km, so a challenge to the thighs & lungs on the way up and knees & ankles on the way down. I was accompanied by Mechek my guide with great english and patience. Also as there are buffalo and elephant in the park I had Dixon the ranger with his SMG. He made me a little nervous as he was behind me with a loaded automatic weapon on uneven terrain but he didn't fire off an unintentional volley when he tripped... phew!

It was a bit rainy at the beginning and quite cloudy most of the day, which I didn't mind as it meant it was cooler with some atmospheric cloud. The forest was amazing and we climbed through different terrain with lovely cool air in the higher riverine forest. 

I was lucky enough to see 2 endemic species; the udzungwa partridge and sanje monkey. Also saw 4 other types of monkey, oh and leopard and buffalo:

... leopard tortoise (above) and buffalo spider... 2 of my 'small' five.

We took a steep side trip to one of the waterfalls (Moyer Waterfalls). It's about the driest time of year now, I can only imagine what it's like in the wet season, must be quite a racket!

The butterflies were wonderful and because it was a cloudy, cool day we were able to really study them as they rested, wings akimbo,  trying to warm up.

This is definitely somewhere I would recommend, should you find yourself nearby. Be prepared to get very sweaty although there are waterfall pools that you can swim in to cool off! 

There is no escape!

You must all be fed up with Donald Trump news and thinking how fortunate I am to miss it all. Well.... imagine my surprise when I studied the side of my bus at the ferry crossing, the Trump publicity machine has even reached here:

Mind you there is also a Bin Laden chip shop in a nearby town with Osama's  picture!  I think it's more to do with someone thinking they're using a current, popular icon and getting it wrong.

Flying Beauties

Some pictures, particularly for Mrs S. I hope you enjoy them Ann and if you can help identify the final picture, let me know!

The pictures were taken during survey work, time off at Udzungwa and waiting to chat to the Village Chairman... 

Lilac Brasted Roller, Minepa:

Southern Brown Throated Weaver, Igota:

Brown Headed Kingfisher, Mangola:

Leaf Butterfly, Udzungwa:

Butterfly (to be identified), Udzungwa: