An Idiot's Guide to Afrikan Eats

This, the latest in this sorry series of error-strewn and increasingly politically incorrect blogs, has been commissioned by my Auntie, who wanted to know what the eats are like out here, and will go some way to dismiss my previous outrageous claim that ‘there aint no food in Afrika.’ My Gran in particular will be delighted to learn that we have been eating three meals a day with startling regularity, which is a marked improvement on University dining where I considered a cheese toastie and a protein shake as a good and wholesome meal.

I may be better looking than Jamie Oliver but the lad knows a good deal more about scran than I do so if you are looking for recipe tips and flavoursome dishes please refer back to the podgy-faced bloke on the Sainsbury adverts, for I will be offering none of that. But I figured if Bryson can turn a walk in his garden into an readable piece of prose, than it should be a piece of piss to cobble together an informative number on the ins and outs of Afrikan munch.

 Obviously the taste, price and quantity of Afrikan cuisine is drastically different throughout the country, and our culinary tour will begin where we started off on the island of Zanzibar (we ignore Dar es Salaam, because its shit). Its an island, so sea-food is the mainstay of the menu (I saw their cows, not a patch on our Jersey beauties) and in our week there we munched through an aquariums-worth of barracuda, octopus, tuna, shark and lobster, each one freshly caught and barbequed on the spot, (If Grimsby could offer a similar service, it would improve the town no end). Our hostel reluctantly allowed us to use their kitchen to cook some of our own food in, so, feeling Afrikan we waltzed down to the fish market (which reeked) and attempted (badly) to haggle with the local fishermen for some of their mornings catch. The locals inevitably found this hilarious, but we soon left with three shark steaks so everyone’s a winner really. After we nearly blew up the hotel with an unfortunate incident involving a leaky gas canister and a fair amount of flame you’d think we would have left matters there. But no, we went back to the market the next day, bought a whole freshly caught tuna (to the sound of yet more laughter, the novelty of white boys trying to haggle hadn’t worn off apparently), and spent the following afternoon butchering the poor creature with blunt knives in a vain attempt to gut it. A sorry sight, no dignity in death for the unfortunate tuna, and I’m pretty sure the hotel still reeks of fish.

Its taken quite a while for our untrained British stomachs to get used to the food, spent far too long of Zanzibar jaunt on the toilet and we still have to put chlorine in the water (from the well, none of this running water extravagance) here in Njiapanda to ensure we aren’t running to the hole in the ground all night. Lovely. On a more culinary note, we have a cook who prepares our dinner for us (sounds lazy, but cooking takes an age out here, and we’ve got poverty to eradicate and whatnot so cant be doing with that), so we have sampled the delights of ‘authentic’ Afrikan cusine, as well as the stuff they dish out to tourists and those wadded westerners who get to go on safari (no time for them). The majority of meals contains maharagwe/beans (solid start, better than kidney, not as good as magic), cabbage (don’t know the Swahili for cabbage, and don’t want to know, I’m sick of it), and ugali (the local staple made from maize, not sure how to describe it except that its really, really dense and that Afrikans bloody love it). In fairness, our cook (great lady) makes it all taste damn good, and it ticks all the boxes vitamin-wise, then its fruit for dessert (yes mother, I’m eating fruit, terrific news); mangoes, papaya, pineapples, bananas (for Burley and Ben, i cant stand the things) depending on the season, not eaten this healthily since a ill-conceived and short-lived second year drive to get my ‘five a day’. Other local favourites include roasted banana and beef stew (I eat this one, savoury banana innit, not like that sweet crap) and mbuzi/nyama choma (barbecued beef/goat) always served in man-sized quantities (unlike the restaurants in Knutsford, these boys don’t skimp on portion sizes you order by the kilo or you go home hungry), and with a side of rice, chilli sauce and an unhealthy amount of gristle (I’m not sure whether the butchers seek out the gristle on the carcass or its some sort of practical joke, but either way it ends up on my plate), gristle aside though, its pretty good nosh and would recommend it to anyone passing through Njiapanda provided your not afraid to pick through the less edible bits. At the mess of a wedding we attended last month, they had a barbequed goat as part of the buffet (a buffet in Afrika, who’d have thought), the poor beast was rolled out through the guests, apple in its mouth and herbs up its, well elsewhere, so we could all see some bloke hack chunks out of its back and onto our plates. We are planning to do a similar thing at our ‘Goodbye Njiapanda’ party in February, which means we have to buy another goat, and after the tribal unrest we triggered buying the last one, I’m not sure that that is something that rural Tanzania wants or needs to see again.

I rumoured in a previous post that I suspected Njiapanda might have a drinking problem, and indeed Rough Guide: Tanzania claims that the entire has an ‘extravagant drinking culture’, a label I’ve heard given to a University sports team or two better never a nation-state before. When the local tipple, Konyagi Gin, claims to be the ‘Spirit of the Nation’ you know you’re in trouble, add this to the fact that almost every beer is above 5% and you get the feeling that this lot like to get drunk, fast. Njiapanda is almost certainly a bad example and I’m sure the rest of the country is a lot more respectable than our little rural retreat, but a lot of people seem to hit the bars early because there is a lack of anything else to do, (Hobbies are in short-supply here). As an amusing addition, Konyagi is served in one of two ways; firstly, as a bottle, you don’t buy singles or doubles, or in a plastic sachet which you suckle in a way not too dissimilar to the way you would drink a Capri-Sun, a genius idea which can’t hit British shores soon enough.

We barley drink out here (gotta be in the office at 8:30am) but on a rare excursion to the Njiapanda Strip we bumped into some parents of pupils from our school and they demanded to join us for a couple. What happened next was the equivalent of a bi-lingual, very drunken PTA Meeting, which concluded with a parent (a school governor) ringing his home and getting his children (our students) out of bed and down to the bar to say hi to their boozed up teachers. A deeply regrettable and unsavoury incident all round (I do hope the same thing never happened at Manor Park Primary School), but something that sums up Njiapanda’s terrific attitude towards drink and its ‘extravagant drinking culture’.

So don’t worry Granwin, Auntie Anne, and anyone else who was worried about our nutritional needs whilst we were away. We are eating (and drinking) very well, and shouldn’t come back looking too dishevelled. Saying that I do miss English food, having a fridge, downing a pint of milk whenever I want or popping into Tesco’s and getting one of their shitty 99p sandwiches. Upon our return to London in February I plan to go to McDonalds and order everything (including Fillet-o-fish, and they are terrible). I’ve got a lot of time for Afrikan food, its proved my preconceptions of their diet wholly wrong, some genuinely enjoyable dishes and plenty of food provided you have the money to buy it lines the market stalls of every town and city. Any Englishman who says they prefer it to western eats however, is wrong, if you are one of said people, please make yourselves known and I will slap you with one of New Cod on the Block’s beautifully battered fish.

An Idiot's Guide to an Afrikan Wedding

What do you call an ex-arms smuggler, a self-proclaimed Prophet, a former Soviet-trained Tanzanian Communist and three constantly bemused Brits? The guest list to an Afrikan wedding, thats what.

When the weekend began with a ‘Tusker Party’, getting kicked out of a bar and a German throwing up in our house, we should have guessed things were going to slide into the farcical. We had two pressing engagements on the following Saturday, firstly a meeting with a local Pastor (called a Prophet by his following), and then a wedding of a couple of young things we had never met. I’ll deal with the Prophet first.

Dreadfully hungover and smelling like a Konyagi bottle we headed off to the Pastor’s church up in the hills, as we arrived we were greeted by the entirety of his congregation (over sixty) singing, dancing and chanting local Chagga dances, we returned a mixture of confused smiles and a fair amount of head scratching. After a meeting with the Pastor/Prophet and a few other religious blokes, we made it quite clear that we had no money to give them (which dampened the mood somewhat) but that we would help them draw up project proposals to get international donors, (which triggered more hangover-unfriendly chanting). It was around this point when I saw the stage.

As soon as I saw it I knew they would want us on it. White folks are rare round these parts so when they do arrive, there tends to be a big hoo-haa about it (can’t imagine why, we’ve caused nothing but trouble since we’ve got here). Sure enough as more of the congregation filed into the ‘church’ (about 100 or so plastic chairs under a piece of tarpaulin), we were ushered like the prize goats at auction up onto the stage and provided with a microphone to address our waiting public. They spoke very little English, I wasn’t ordering a beer, so was fresh out of Swahili, so our three separate (but very similar) speeches comprised of rudimentary Swahili, slow-pronounced English and a lot of smiling and waving. To be honest I don’t think it would’ve mattered if we had been reading from Mein Kampf, we went down a storm regardless. The Pastor/Prophet loved it, the crowd chanted (again) and we were pretty much sober, we thanked them for their hospitality (we got fed, like the racial novelty we are) and proceeded down the mountain to the wedding.

I should point out we had a legitimate invite to the wedding. This isn’t Wedding Crashes, my nose is more normal than Owen Wilson’s and none of us are as fat as Vince Vaughen. The groom (mr Shein I think, Mr Shen possibly, defiantly not Martin Sheen) is the brother of the headmistress/head nun at our school, so we managed to weasel an invite out of her, but unlike Wedding Crashers our aim was to keep things civil, get into no family disputes and go nowhere near the bridesmaids. We were told it was traditional to give the married couple a gift, being three thoughtful and selfless guys we were all over this like a Njiapanda trucker. We knew a guy who wanted to sell a goat, and we were willing to lay down some serious dollar to get that goat. Our original plan was to present the goat (named Matty) to the couple at the reception, sobriety and the logistical nightmare of transporting the beast to the church put paid to this plan, so we had to limit ourselves to handing Matty over a couple of days later. Much to our disappointment and the relief of whichever bloke who cleans the church.

We arrived at the church at ten past two. The wedding was due to start at two. The wedding didn’t start until about four, the excuse given was ‘Afrika Time’ which apparently allows three hours leeway when it comes to the starting of social events.  I will refrain from voicing my opinions on ‘Afrika time’ at this point as they might land me in trouble, but lets just say they are not complimentary but might explain why some things in Afrika are like they are. Moving swiftly on, as soon as we arrived we were introduced to all the heavy hitters of the ceremony (father of the groom, rest of the grooms extended family etc), again conversation was limited but (as always) there was an active interest in what a gaggle of white boys were doing there.

The ceremony was subdued (it was catholic after all, they are a subdued bunch), neither bride nor groom looked happy to be there, which was surprising as the bride looked pretty fit. There was the obligatory chanting and a kick-ass brass band, but the main talking point was the fact that we (and our German friends) had mistakenly taken the front rows of seats clearly meant for someone slightly more related to the affected parties, and were oblivious to everything Swahili-related going on around us. My own highlight of the ceremony was one of the teachers stumbling into the church about two-thirds through the ceremony, and then slumping into the seat next to us stinking of gin, his motorbike was parked outside, apparently drink driving is not an issue out here.

After communion (I got my bread, long ceremony and wanted a snack) we trotted over to a local bar/restaurant/venue for the reception and was introduced to Mr British, an ex-arms and ivory smuggler, but now apparently a decent car mechanic. I asked him why he was called ‘British’ and we replied ‘Because I like the British.’ Fine answer. We have commissioned him to make a bbq for us, but I’m secretly hoping for a couple of AK’s and a chunk of elephant. As with the ceremony, we occupied the front seats for the reception as well, right in front of the quite frankly miserable looking bride and groom. Apparently, (according to a very unreliable source) a length of rope should be presented to the couple as a symbol that a goat is in the offing as a gift, and apparently (this source was frightfully unreliable) it is traditional (terrible word, lets them get away with anything) for the givers of the gift to dance up to the couple to present it. So there we were, three bemused Brits dancing through an African wedding giving a length of rope to a couple who we’d never met, needless to say, the crowd loved it and even the bride cracked a smile. After that incident we kept a pretty low profile eat our free food and drank our free booze, had a little dance (during which I managed to exchange numbers with the hammered MC, not sure what he had in mind, but I am yet to answer his calls), and went home in the back of a converted ambulance.

I apologise for the length of this post, I wasn’t intending to give you a blow by blow account of our weekend, but I am currently sat in our house in the dark (electricity’s gone) its pissing it down outside, and as I’ve mentioned before our house is less than waterproof so unfortunately my bed is soaked through. Obviously I’m delighted its raining because it means that stuff will grow for the farmers and reminds me of home, but what isn’t so delightful is the fact that I’m having to wait for my bed to dry before I can go to sleep. What a farce. On a separate note, we have been invited to a Christening just before Christmas, will keep you posted about that social event.

An Idiot's Guide to Child Protection

This may or may not surprise some of you (given the drivel you’ve been treated to over the past few weeks, it will probably surprise you), but I am a fully qualified English Language Teacher. Shocking considering I have the grammar of a disabled seven year old and have think that anyone with a southern accent is trying to sell me some sort of second hand car. Despite this, for our first month in Afrika, we have been teaching at an amusingly named local primary school; The Holy Childhood Primary School (Ridiculous), shaping young minds, moulding the leaders of tomorrow etc etc. They don’t fanny around with CRB checks, ohhh no, one look at our pasty skin and Ben’s Oxford twang got us thrown to the front of the class faster than you could say ‘Child Protection’.

Holy Childhood (you don’t get used to the name, its one their books and everything, preposterous!) is not like Manor Park Primary School, Knutsford. Partly because it forms part of a Catholic Nunnery, which means about a third of the teaching staff are Nuns, which has led to some terribly awkward chats about religion in the staff room, (none of us go to church, and Burley and myself have been baptised and still don’t go to church, heathen bastards) but at least it takes office romance well and truly off the table. Added to this, the kids are unnervingly obedient (think Damien from the first Omen film, except without, you know, the devil bit), the day begins with an 8 assembly which sees the children (about 200 of the little nippers) line up in military-esque precision, do a spot of chanting (At ease, attention, at ease, so forth and so forth) before marching to class in a manner which Manor Park’s teachers could only dream of.

Keeping a class of 40 kids interested in education and the English language is a tough task, and one which I gave up on within 30 seconds of starting my first lesson. The English ability of the kids isn’t really good enough for extensive conversation; they still say ‘Good Morning’ in the afternoon, and claim that they drive to school every day, I’m getting sick of their lies. I’ve never taught a class of more than 15 before, and as a result my lessons are chaotic, often unplanned and usually end up with at least one kid in tears, (which inevitably means someone else is pissing themselves laughing). I got my favourites of course, little Felix has got free reign over my lessons, purely because he pulls fantastic facial expressions and slaps himself in the face when I ask him a question, I caught him stealing watches the other day but he got away with it cuz all he had to do was throw his arms and pull a mongish expression about and I was putty in his hands. My former English Language Tutor would be horrified to discover that lesson plans are usually cobbled together on the school bus on the way to school at the very earliest, or occasionally in the twenty minutes before lessons kick off at 8 20. The result of this is a hell of a lot of hangman, charades and other such games used excessively to fill those awkward moments (well minutes) were I have forgotten to plan anything. These kids are so lucky to have us.

Fridays at Holy Childhood are a completely different kettle of catholic, Fridays are Sports Days, and sports days are bloody mental. Because we are neither nuns nor elderly alcoholics (as another third of the teaching staff appear to be), we are also default PE teachers, and therefore took charge of the most brutal football match I have ever seen. The ball was rock hard. The tackles were harder. In the two-hour battle, stoppages were exclusively for goals, even a five minute goal mouth scramble which featured a number of red card offenses and conclude with the goalkeeping face-planting the post so hard it fell over did not warrant a whistle, though the ‘keeper did get a warm round of applause and a healthy dose of concussion for his contribution. It aint Fifa 2010, I’ll tell you that for free, most of the kids twat the ball in whatever direction they happen to be facing, but the effort they put in is enough to put certain premiership footballers to shame (Dimitar ‘Half-time Fags’ Berbatov to name but one)*. The schools attitude to sport is one I appreciate however, the girls don’t play sport, they watch the boys play their football and occasionally do some bizarre aerobics routine when God lets the nuns have the afternoon off, if you mention the idea of Women’s Football round here you’d get a frown and a slap.

This last week has marked the end of the school term and with that the end of our time at Holy Childhood, the children sat their exams (my boys in Class 3 did pretty well considering that neither hangman nor charades featured in the English exam), and we had a whole day Parent’s Day to mark the end of term. During the whole-day festivities, the classes took it in turns to ‘entertain’ an increasingly confused audience, the highlight was a 15minute play which tackled such child-friendly issues as domestic abuse, under-performing students and drunkenness in the workplace, the laughs were few and far between, but fortunately the mood was lightened by the reciting of dozens of Swahili one-liners by some other children, which only added to my confusion at the whole affair.

Despite my constant mocking and belittling of the children the five weeks we have spent at the Holy Childhood Primary School have been great fun and I will miss the kids and their constant fascination with my facial hair. (I will not miss, however, the fact that all the teachers consistently got me and Ben confused, all white boys do not look the same.) We do plan to go back for a day after the Christmas holidays (and maybe a couple of sports days, there’s something oddly hilarious about a kid kicking another kid in the head), but I am sad to report that our teaching days in Tanzania are over, whether or not the kids learnt anything it is hard to say, judging by the chorus of ‘good mornings’ we still receive at all hours I’d say they have learnt bugger all. But what they have learnt they are saying in a delightful north Cheshire accent, which will stand them in great stead of course.

*My criticism of Dimiatar ‘Five-Goal’ Berbatov was written before he single-handedly destroyed Blackburn, I apologise to him and the Bulgarian nation as a whole. Though they are shifty.

An Westener's Guide to Life in Rural Afrika

My mother has been pestering me for a while now about an address and phone number for our new bachelor pad in rural Afrika. I still have nothing to offer her, as far as I can tell the house doesn’t have anything constituting an address and I have still failed to secure a phone number. and it suddenly dawned on me that in all my posts so far, I have completely failed to mention anything about the place which has now served as our home for a month, and will continue to do so (foundations holding, by no means a guarantee) for a further two months. Therefore this latest post is to be put aside to describing our new surroundings including the assortment of Afrikan insects we now share our house with, and our seamless integration into rural Tanzanian life.

I was not overly concerned about the house we were due to live in. If anyone saw my house in Sheffield you will understand why, (after two years at 76 Heavygate Road, I figured Afrika would be a walk in a sub-Saharan park). Its owned by one of the charity directors, and we live here rent-free as payment for our work for the charity (which I will explain at a later date), so considering that is a whole £58 a week cheaper than Heavygate Road its one up to Casa del Afrika! There are subtle differences, the view from our concerete shack out here is of Kilimanjaro, largest mountain in Afrika, the view from my room at Heavygate Road was 78 Heavygate Road, a group of middle aged blokes from Barnsley...2-0 Afrika. Admittedly, this place is smaller, consisting of two rooms; one with a small table and a gas stove, (The living room), and the other with two rickety wooden beds and a mattress crammed between the beds and the wall affectionately known as ‘The Bitch Bed’. Toiletry matters are dealt with outside in a corrugated iron shack, where you do your business down a very small hole, never thought I’d write this sentence but dear lord I miss the feeling of porcelain when sitting on the crapper. (I’d say thats Sheffield 2-2 Afrika). Showering is done in the same shack, which is convenient and ultimately a tremendous time saver, if not particulary hygienic. A simple set up; a hole, a bucket, a reasonably clean white fellow, Sheffield 3-2 Afrika. Who’d have thought?

Our party pad is located in a bizarre little place called Njiapanda (meaning the junction in Swahili), and even amongst the locals it has a pretty bad reputation, to acquire a bad reputation out here a town really has to put the effort in and bless ‘em, Njiapanda really has. Our hosts at the charity told us that we should not be out after dark because at that point the entire clientele of the town are either truckers or hookers, (a shame as in my experience, truckers and hookers are amongst the most sociable and fun-loving demographic group). And it seems to be true that there are a disproportionate amount of drunks wandering the streets, heckiling and muttering at us, harmless for the most part, but saying that nobody wants to be shouted at by a local drunk at seven o’clock in the morning. This isn’t Glasgow. Despite the drawbacks on this destitute, wild west-esque town we have established ourselves as the laughing stock of the community; we have a couple of  local haunts (the regulars at both seem both bemused and suspicious every time we enter their bar), one of which is possibly the only place in town which doesn’t turn into a brothel after midnight, and has the good grace to show premiership football and provide us with cheap, cheap Afrikan beer. (80p a bottle).

We have become very popular with the neighbouring children, of which there are many, more seem to rock up at our house every day demanding all sorts of things. Partly because we give them pens, and paper and whatnot, let them use our cameras (not GameBoys though, any kid messes up my game of Pokemon and I’ll give Afrika a new problem), but mostly because we do funny western things such as put on sun cream, attempt to farm the local land, and, of course, try and speak Swahili. All the local mothers have an opinion on our attitudes to household chores and are not, it seems, afraid to voice them, its true our house is a mess, it does have a peculiar smell and we are terrible at washing our clothes using the local detergent/skin remover Toss. (Yeh, its a funny name). On the nights when we are not mixing it up with the truckers ‘n’ hockers in the local bars, theres very little to do apart from get through an decent amount of reading or watch pirate DVD’s (probably from China, you know what they are like), which are so fake you can actually see the other people in the cinema stand up and move around during the screening.

This brings me onto the shameful finale of this latest Idiots Guide, that of our integration into Tanzanian rural life. The main part of this has been our vain attempt to learn the local language, that of Kiswahili, (though with the amount of variations of it, I fear learning it from a western book is the equivalent of a non-Englishman learning cockney rhyming slang and then going to Newcastle telling the Geordies about ‘Apples and Pears’ and ‘Adam and Eve’). I have never been great with languages, I have been half-dutch for going on twenty-two years now and have spectacularly failed to learn my mother’s native language. I took French at GCSE and was heading towards a grade at the lower end of the alphabet before my dad decided that no son of his was going to fail a GCSE and promptly got me a private tutor to drag my grade into the more respectable letterings. So learning Swahili was an optimistic venture at best. We’ve learnt the basics, I can exchange pleasantries and casual greetings until the cows come home, I can order three beers and ask where the port is, (useful in Zanzibar, not so much now, 300 miles from the coast), but unfortunately the English language is still viewed with a certain amount of suspicion out here, with one drunk shouting at us for being in his country and not learning the language. We could do little about this about from thank him and wish him a good day. 

We have not perhaps, picked the best place to reside whilst out here. Our weekend excursions to nearby city of Moshi, or up into the much greener slopes of Kilimanjaro are greatly anticipated and usually result in us getting over excited and drunk when we do get there. Njiapanda will never be a tourist hotspot, it will, however, always be a drink-fuelled truckers paradise. Still, as long as our roof continues to keep out the majority of the rain, our bar continues to provide us with premiership football, and our neighbours continue to provide us with their opinions on the failings of white people, then we should just about, make it to 2011.

An Idiot's Guide to Afrikan Democracy (Election Special)

When the army rolls into a city, it usually means its time for you to roll out. As two truckloads of heavily armed soldiers piled into Stone Town (Zanzibar’s capital) market, adding to the already sizable military presence on the island, we came to the conclusion it was time for us to leave the city. In fairness, we should have seen this eventuality coming, in the guide book that we are religiously using for this trip, it clearly stated ‘Travel to Tanzania during October 2010 is strongly discouraged as Presidential elections at this time will inevitably increase tensions and possibly put tourists at risk.’ Not only did we choose to ignore this advice, but we also decided to travel to the most politically volatile region of the country; the Spice Islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, and whilst there proceeded to attract trouble wherever we went. Yes, this really is an idiot’s guide to the 2010 Tanzanian Election.

Afrikan politics has been a bit of a laugh ever since the end of the Second World War. They always seem to be having coups, or insurrections, or army takeovers, but it seems that the end product is always pretty much the same, just another bloke with a beret and a load of medals on his chest claiming to be the new Nelson Mandela. Tanzania, apparently, is a shining light of Afrikan ‘democracy’ having successfully traversed twenty years without invading anyone and anyone invading it. And according to the internal Electoral commission, this latest election (31^st October) passed off as democratically as a PTA Meeting, which, quite frankly is bollocks. Only one man could be seen on the countrys TV, his pencil-moustached mug plastered across every spare bit of wall as if he was an Afrikan George Clooney, it was of course, the President Chagua Kikwete. He was so confident of winning (and rightly so as he no doubt filled in half the ballot papers himself) that he announced his new cabinet a week before the election results came out. By all accounts, his superb facial hair and slick army-green suits are reasonably popular on the mainland, but it was on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, with their majority Muslim population, dissident parties and penchant for independence were this idiot had most of his fun.

Firstly, there were the boys with their toys at the market. I have never seen the British Army storm a Tesco’s in Altrincham, there are no guns hidden behind the papaya. End of. On election night, which we spent (again, ignoring all sound advice) at a bar near our house, a local squad of riot police could be seen hunkering down with some beers in the next bar along. They were in full riot gear (AK’s in the truck) so should trouble have kicked off, they could have no doubt stumbled into action and belched all over the nearest rioter. As we left the island of Zanzibar to the ‘deeply religious, conservative and superstitious’ island of Pemba, leaving the under trained and over excited Tanzanian army behind, we got a very different taste of election fever. It would not be an overestimation to say that we were the only white folks on the island at this point (all other travellers apparently listening to the foreign offices warnings), which meant that we were receiving a lot of attention from all quarters, and I don’t mind the good sort of attention you get from the token older gal at a Hen Party. As we walked through the town of Wete (a place with no electricity, and quite frankly, no idea), we noticed a crowd of people descending on a park nearby, curious (and bored) we joined in, only to discover it was a political rally being held by the opposition CUF party. CUF, it should be mentioned, are a separatist party and we suspected, may have been blacklisted by the CIA due to an idea regarding implementing Sharia Law in Zanzibar they floated during the 1990’s. Thinking that this looked like a laugh, and not realising that most opposition rallys got broken up by drunk soldiers firing tear gas everywhere, we joined in and soon became a warm-up act for the main speaker of the day. As party activists spoke to us (curious at our peculiar skin colour and what we were doing on their little island), we noticed that we had attracted a crowd of our own who just stood and watched us, nodding occasionally and looking rather confused at the whole affair. We jokingly claimed we were EU Observers. After about half an hour, a fair amount of chanting and independence chat, we decided it was time for us to retire for the evening, before the gathered police force retired us permanently.

A couple of things could be taken from this whole experience. Firstly, when an Afrikan nation claims to have a democratic election, odds are it is not. (The ironically named Democratic Republic of Congo is neither democratic nor a republic). My second observation is more of a tip for Afrika than anything else, if you want to cut down on the amount of coups you have, don’t send the army to the market, and dear lord, don’t let riot police drink on election night, its just good sense. Thirdly, when the Foriegn Office says ‘travel to this area is unadvised’ they don’t mean it, they are just being killjoys. I was a fake EU Observer, a drunken political commentator and a warm up act for an Islamic Party all in one week, might check the calendar to see when the next Afrikan elections are and do a tour. (I’m joking mother, that would be ridiculous...)

As an potentially tragically comic aside, it should be worth noticing that we could be seeing Blightly and you lovely folks rather sooner than the pre-planned 22^nd February. We were advised (see, that word again, people shouldn’t advise us to do things, they should just tell us, that way we might listen to them) by our charity co-ordinators, that due to the elections, the authorities (those lads with the guns) would be clamping down on volunteers living and working in the country on a cheaper tourist visa. After quickly weighing up the pros and cons of possible deportation versus the extra $70 in the pocket, we pumped for the dollars, (we always have dollars on us, for bribes and whatnot), and are now very conscious of the fact that we are working here on wholly inappropriate visas. See you real soon folks!

An (Slighty drunkern) Idiot's Guide to Afrikan Travel

It’s so hard to find a good Gin & Tonic in East Afrika. When we realised that over the space of one weekend, we would be spending two nights and a culnmative 18 hours on a couple of ferries, it was unanimously decided that, not only that we would be getting drunk on the voyages (to aid with sleep, nothing more) but also that we would be doing it with the most colonial drink possible. This realisation triggered a frantic city-wide search of Stone Town, Zanzibar, for a lime, some sort of tonic water, and (Most importantly) some Konyagi gin, which, we were informed is Tanzania’s national drink and easy to come-by, but apparently the majority Muslim Zanzibar missed that memo and we spent a good hour trekking through the city’s back alleys asking everyone and anyone if they could fix us up with some of Afrika’s finest gin.
 I am writing this latest blog from the questionable comfort of the SS Majewla’s ‘Foreign Class’  deck, whilst sipping the aforementioned Konyagi mixed (subtley, as the rest of the deck is predominatly children or men in army uniform), with Sprite, and getting ready to settle down for a 9 hour voyage up Tanzania’s east coast to Zanzibar’s smaller sister island of Pemba. The floating health and safety nightmare which is the SS Majewla is oddly indicative of Zaznzibar’s transport system as a whole, something which looks god-awful, but works in an oddly intriguing and hypnotic way, much like Peter Crouch or Stephen Hawking’s voicebox. The roads out here are surprising good, unlike the maniacs who use them, taxi drivers it seems only use two instruments in the car; first and foremost, the horn, which is used in the same way that the Driving theory Hazard perception test works, honking every time a potential hazard (be it a rogue chicken or another car) comes within earshot. The other is the accelerator, used liberally and excessively, usually to scare cyclists (of which there are far, far too many), but also to evade make-shift police roadblocks, where bored policemen demand payment for use of the public road. Just the other day, whilst in a taxi from the northern beaches back to Stone Town, our mentalist taxi driver proceeded to jump roadblock after roadblock, apparently not aware that his taxi was blessed with three pedals not just one, and only stopping to hop out and buy a bunch of bananas, which he proceeded to wolf down whilst cruising through thee rural traffic. We only found out at the end of the trip that his license had expired over a year ago (by the sounds of him probably due to alchoal, or his banana obsession), and that that would probably explain his keenness to tear through the police roadblocks. Saying that though, few taxi drivers seem willing to use the brake unless they are cruising the streets late in curbcrawler fashion late at night, looking for unsuspecting muzungos (white people) to coerce into paying them thousands of shillings for a two minute trip down the road.
So if the taxi drivers are like Schmachur in a family saloon, the Zanzibarian buses (called Dalla-Dallas) are like Mega-bus on crack. Essentially a small mini-van, with a seat for the driver and then a long two parallel benches in the back onto which people cram into for as little as 40p a trip, the most I have seen on one Dalla-Dalla was thirty-three people (not including two babies) condensed into a space which, on our prudish, dull roads, would have fitted six people. The conductors, far from the aging, balding folks on Northern Rail who refuse to accept your railcard once your on the train, hand off the back of the vehicle offering seemingly imaginary seats to perspective customers. A terrifying experience, but without doubt a worthwhile one, as it is much, much cheaper than taxis, and whilst it isn’t the safest of rides, nothing which takes to the roads of Zanzibar can be considered safe.
It has been a combination of mental taxi drivers and excessively social dalla-dallas which has left us on this charming boat. It more resembles a pre-war fishing trawler than a P&O Ferry, and the amount of people sleeping on deck has given it a bit of a refugee ship feel. Our ferry on the way to Zanzibar from the mainland played Rowan Atkinson films on a loop, which was nice in a odd sort of way, but as yet the only thing to flicker onto this TV has been some bloke reading from the Koran. I’m not sure who he is, but it certainly isn’t Mr Bean. Still, with the majority of the Konyagi left, fingers crossed that Mr Bean makes some sort of appearance by the end of the voyage.

No blog about Tanzanian transport would be complete however, without an honorable mention to the country’s jaw dropping rail system. The entire country (40million people, about the size of France) has two rail lines, one from the capital Dar es Salaam heading west and then south, and the other heading north along the coast to Tanga, before following the border to Mwanza on the opposite side of the country. We briefly toyed with the prospect of catching the train from Tanga to our temporary home in Moshi, about half way to Mwanza. However, our arrival at Tanga ‘Train Station’ put paid to that particular idea. The tracks where, remarkably, the greenest and grassiest place in the city, the trains which supposedly use them were built by German colonists prior to the First World War (yes team, thats 1914, almost one hundred years ago), and as much as the prospect of Victorian-era locomotion excited us, having just stepped off a ferry which was probably an pre-second world war creation, there was not a sniff of a timetable, nor scent of a conductor anywhere to be found. In Manchester, I’m upto my eyeballs in conductors and timetables, but then again in Manchester I need to pay 20p for a piss and the tracks don’t resemble the things the Teacups go round on at some local fair. Needless to say, we were gutted.

An Idiot's Guide to 12 hours in Dubai.

It was never my intention to write a piece on our 12 hour stop off in the city of Dubai. It was only supposed to be a rest from what otherwise would’ve been an insanely long flight, and a chance for the Dubai customs officers to rifle through our belongings and us to make as few social faux pas as we could. But the city was so drastically different to anything Cheshire or South Yorkshire (as you might have guessed, I aint a well travelled chap) had to offer, I figured I’d give the boys at the Dubai tourist centre a favour and spread the word about their pokey little city.

As I have suggested, I am useless when it comes to all things foreign and anything which can’t be bought from Tesco’s or Weatherspoons. I was genuinely excited by the prospect of flying out of Gatwick, as if it would offer something different to my usual aeronautical haunt of Manchester. Our twelve hours in Dubai started with us swanning through customs with the same sort of arrogance as a seasoned bingo gal struts into Mecca Bingo, we then proceeded to get lost in the airport, before getting confused by their notourisly simple and easy to use tram system. (Driverless, as a security guard was delighted to point out). The city itself was an incredible testament to what a blank chequebook and some boozed up English architects can achieve. Every building was stunning in both design and scale, tearing up out of the Arabian desert as if in some utopian sci-fi film. We visited two of the most jaw-dropping of these monster buildings, firstly, the Dubai Mall, the largest in the world (again, according to the security guard, who had a lot to say for himself), and containing an ice rink, a waterfall, a full sized aquarium and something called an Underwater Zoo. (we never discovered how an Underwater Zoo differed from a aquarium, suggestions included snorkelling elephants and drowning monkeys were never confirmed). After the Mall, we were going to drag our homeless tourist asses back to the airport, this was Dubai, alone and bed less in a British city would have inevitably resulted in a 8 pint session at a local pub, a shouting match with locals and a subsequent trip to some sort of late night eatery. Alas, this was Dubai, and thus, at least two of the above would have not been welcome. But as we left the Mall we came across, without doubt, the most outrageous, unnecessary building in the city, the region, and quite possibly the world. The Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, the entire emirate dedicated its economy and workforce to its construction. Over one hundred floors of gold-plated decadence, a the grand opening of the building earlier this year cost well in excess of £100million. It looked like a space-age rocket, the lights flickering and dancing up and down its huge exterior. We saw it, we liked it, we decided to go and have a drink in it. I have never felt more out of place at a bar than in the Armani Hotel Lounge (yeah, it aint a bar, its a freakin’ lounge). I have never been forced to put three drinks onto my credit card, because i don’t have enough cash to get a round in, (I had in excess of £30, no dice). As we sat and drank our solitary drink discussing the economics of the Emirates in the worlds biggest building, I’m not gonna lie, I felt pretty bloody cool.

Time seems to stand still (or at the very least get oddly subverted) when dealing with planes, I just can’t get my head round time zones or the time difference. So come 3 o’clock in the morning in Dubai Airport, we’d pitched up outside Burger King, we were all wide awake and watching various sheikhs and businesspeople waltz around the vast expanse of marble and stone which made up the airport. This was odd, as earlier that morning (about quarter past ten), I had cracked through a couple of beers on the plane, because drinking that early on the plane doesn’t make you an alcoholic, it makes you a sociable traveller.

 I’m going to leave you with a piece of travel advice; between the three of us we only managed to bring two DVD’s for the entirety of our four month stay. One of these was the aforementioned Blood Diamond, which will be perfect for those long evenings alone in secluded, rural Afrika. The other was Four Lions, a comedy about four would-be suicide bombers who for two hours make a series of malfunctioning bombs and Jihadist videos. A hilarious film, though quite why we decided to watch it in the middle of Dubai airport I’m not sure, I couldn’t imagine a more inappropriate film to watch in the airport than one about suicide bombers, but I suppose we couldn’t leave the city without making one massive faux pas. So, would-be Livingstone’s and Stanley’s, remember, take films appropriate to where you are going, maybe a Rom-Com, or some sort of Ben Stiller flick, but not a film about Afrikan civil war and another making fun of Islamic fundamentalism.

An Idiot's Guide to Packing for Afrika

(Due to the rather darsh internet connection they have over here, these next two blogs are a little belated, thought I'd stick them up at the same time as I have long since packed and left Gatwick/Dubai)

Everyone prepares for big events in different ways; Rocky prepared for his fight against Apollo Creed by chasing a chicken round a street and doing an uncanny impression of a moron, whilst Spurs footballers prepare for a big game by way of a three day bender in Dublin some some sort of related sexual assault charge. For my own ‘big event’ both these seemed tempting as preparation, but an earlier incident in Dublin and a distrust of mobile poultry meant that the cornerstone of my preparation for Afrika consisted of watching the film Blood Diamond.

Little tip for any other budding Afrika-bound travellers; don’t watch Blood Diamond. A brilliant film it may be, but the constant gunfire, casual genocide and perennial screaming did little to sooth over any underlying fears about the continent. Though saying that it did provide me with three invaluable lessons which I will adhear to over coming months; firstly, don’t trust anyone with a dodgy South African accent (he’s only after one thing), secondly, everybody in Afrika wears wife-beaters, and thirdly, never, ever, use the phrase ‘Your just another black man in Africa,’ when speaking to the local population, it does not go down well.

Blood Diamond aside, my preparation for the trip has been fairly coherent and surprisingly organised, thanks in no small part to the willingness of everybody to impart some sort of ‘advice’ or insight when it comes to Afrika. These ranged from my brothers insistence that driving from Tanz, through Somalia and Sudan, and back to Manchester was a ‘do-able exercise,’ to my uncle’s solitary piece of travel advice, namely “Make sure you don’t catch anything uncureable out there,” said with a wry smile and the knowledge I knew exactly what he was getting at. As a result, the subsequent packing for this particular expedition has been comparable to a Columbian man stumbling across a world of drugs but only having one, small mule to put them all in.

I can sincerely recommend the website gapyear.com, as a solid place to sort regardless of your destination; essentials such as mosquito nets, water purification kits and a wind-up torch can all by found with relative ease. They are all rather pricey, but as it turns out there is a limit on the crap Tescos is willing to sell, the idiot traveller is often given little choice. After spending on this fun-filled website the equivilant of what  Tanzania's answer to Alan Sugar earns in a year, and filling up my man-size backpack with such gear, I had a similar amount of difficulty deciding on what clothes to take.

Now, this isn’t a night out in Sheffield. A dirty shirt (nobody will notice the smell once we are in the club, and if they do, theres usally someone whose pissed themselves in the corner I can blame), and shoes held together by an ecletic mix of glue and gaffer tape is unlikely to impress the locals. My next thought was inspired by Roger Moore, and his one-man mission to resurrect the safari suit in the 1980’s Bond films, however a jumped-up white bloke in a linen suit waltzing about rural Africa teaching the ‘Queen’s English’ is one thing that my degree taught me not to do. Africa’s twin tormentors of sun and mosquitos, mean that it is wise for those of a fairer complexion (no one cares if you don’t burn in Rochdale, this is Afrika) to cover up as much as is possible, with long-sleeve shirts and preferably lighter trousers. Obviously, I am also taking a range of Topman’s shorts for those days when I fancy a breeze circulating, though this in itself brings a new problem as knees are considered offensive by many of Tanzania’s more conservative population, and we have been advised to wear shorts which cover the offending body parts. Sure, drunk policeman and ‘white man bus fares’ are part of life, but as soon as someone shows a bit a knee everyone kicks up a fuss. Typical.

An Idiot's Guide to Travel Writing (Sorry Bill)

I never liked the idea of travel books, I thought Bill Bryson was shit. Palin, of course, was a different matter, he actually did stuff; Pole to Pole, Around the World in 80 Days etc., travels which were worth reading about, things that a tiny percentage of the population would even consider doing, let alone actually undertake. Bryson just goes for a walk, (plenty of other writers write about what Bryson writes about, but I don’t know their names, so please bare with me whilst I launch an unprovoked attack on the poor man). Not only does Bryson go for a walk, he does so often within his own country, or a country hes been to before and suchlike. That isn’t travel, me and my mate did that a couple of years ago, walked from Knutsford to Sheffield in two days, we were going to write about it, but we decided not to. Not because we couldn’t be bothered, nor because it was such a traumatising experience that we didn’t care to repeat it, but because reading about a walk undertaken by two lads across the Pennines is not really a scintillating read. Sure we would’ve made it interesting, we saw a dead badger, a herd of sheep with massive balls and got verbally abused by a chav outside Poynton, there was even a boozy conclusion; upon reaching a pub in Sheffield I had two pints and threw up over a flower pot outside the pub. But chavs, well-endowed livestock and puking students are just conventions of the northern landscape, and not something which demands a witty title page, a blurb and a £7.99 price tag.

What we have in mind this time is a little bit bigger and a little bit more advanced than the ill-conceived Sheffield hike, and the even more ill-conceived pissed up walk back from Manchester Airport to Knutsford after a night out a couple of months later. I’d like to make it perfectly clear from the outset that this is not a holiday, a holiday is something for which it takes about ten minutes to pack for and the essentials include; aviators, a wide range of floral swim-shorts and a fiendish amount of condoms. My own preparation for this trip (not holiday) includes deliberating over which malaria tablets to take (the ones which give you hallucinations, or the ones which makes you extra sensitive to sunlight), checking out the political stability of the east Africa region and at the moment of writing this, sitting up to my eye balls in articles, journals and research papers about Tanzania’s education system. Bryson never had to worry about the affects of sunlight in downtown Manhattan, and nobody has ever worried about separatists kicking up fuss on Magaluf.

As the title of the blog suggests, this is an ‘idiots’ guide to Afrika (I was not aware of my misspelling of the continents name, proving the ‘idiot’ point from the outset), so whilst attempting to offer hostel reviews and high-brow cultural insight, this blog should in no way be used as a guide for anyone who actually wants to travel to the ‘dark continent’, as I am more likely to comment on the quality of Tanzanian McDonalds, the strength of their beer and the availability of their dirty mags than anything particularly useful.

Whilst we aren’t exactly fishing off the coast of Somalia, or diamond hunting with Naomi Campbell in Sierra Leone, Africa is Africa and I hope that our experiences firstly in Zanzibar and the eastern Tanzanian coast, and later on teaching and working in (to quote an overused clichéd phrase) ‘the foothills of Kilamnajaro,’ will provide us with enough experiences and inspiration to keep writing for the five month duration of our expedition. (Note, not holiday.)