The Tides Lodge Pangani

Mombasa to jungle junction Nairobi

3/11/09


500ks


In New Zealand when the police man stands in the middle of the road with his hand out, this means you must stop. In Kenya this is totally different.


You must change down gear, hit the horn, twist the throttle around to full and bugger of as quickly as possible. The only reason they are pulling you over is for “money”


This happened 3 times today at check ...

... to do so we've booked a flight on a small plane to Pemba Island which leaves at 4pm today. Pemba is close to Zanzibar and promises mangrove swamps, loads of spices, palm wine, octopus and some excellent snorkelling - who could ask for anything more?
Hope you are all well - and please keep us informed of all the important news - we hear Patrick Swaze AND Keith Floyd have died?

love Ant & Lucy

... so my friends and family can enjoy a good laugh (thank goodness for bad lighting). This past Sunday, I also went to my first African church service. One of the CCS staff members goes to a Pentecostal chrurch in the neighborhood and invited a few of us to join her, so we did. It was a great experience, and even though we snuck out early after 2 hours, I will hopefully go back again. Tons of music and singing (slightly more animated than the traditional Presbyterian services ...

After around six hours on a cramped daladala, we were relieved to arrive at the bus stop in the sleepy costal town of Pangani. For the first time on our trip in Tanzania, we weren't greeted by a hoard of tour guides and taxi drivers. This came as a welcome change at first but as the bus pulled away, we were left stranded with our heavy bags knowing the hostel we had in mind was too far to walk…. An ambitious young local did come over and begin to undo the string on the rack of his ...

... are supprting the community by buying the art as well.

There are also some things we've witnessed that demonstrate a very different side to the people here. Granted it's a small slice of the culture, but it exists and it is disturbing. One story is long and more personal, so I will save it for another post, but one that happened a couple of weeks ago was when "Mama Christine", the woman at CCS who handles a lot of the logistics with the volunteers and home ...

... and we were on the 3rd or 4th repeat of the dance mix they had going, I decided to call it a night. Hakuna Matada. Turns out the band never made it, so I'm not sorry I went home without experiencing a true African pop phenomenon. Another side note to the nightlife is that, the African men seem to really latch on to the Western women-- truly everywhere you go, you have men wanting to show you around, asking for your number and telling you they love you ...

... One of my biggest succeses so far (in my mind at least), was getting a successful game of "duck, duck goose" organized. Again... not being able to speak Swahili makes it a little difficult, but I was able to communicate circle, and since I couldn't remember the name of any animals, I decided I could just subsitute "no, no, yes" instead. They seemed to love that one, so I am trying to think back to all my other childhood games (freeze tag, red light green light, etc) for ...

One Saturday night at Stopover Bar, our nightly restaurant, we meet Mr. Alex, who drives around in a green Land Rover fighting corruption wherever it may lurk. That's actually his job, as part of the government's Anti-Corruption Unit and not just a personal hobby. Mr. Alex is a stocky and powerful man with quite possibly the strongest handshake I have ever been on the receiving end of. He uses the 'Early Engagement ...

The whole issue of foreign aid and volunteering and its impact on local people has got us thinking a lot. There seems to be a slight unspoken tension between the locals and us mzungus. Inevitably it always comes down to money: they think we have it and we think they want it. The situation arises again today. While Jane and I are sat in the office, working, this local guy named Moodi comes in. It's an appropriate name ...