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Well, at last my long-suffering efforts to write and publish the story of my chaotic, tragic, hilarious and unpredictable upbringing in the bush of Tanzania, & boarding schools in both Tanzania & Kenya, between 1951 & 1966, has started to be a success and the book is taking off in the market. Sales & reviews are pouring in from around the world.

When I was writing, which, due to heavy work & family commitments, was in stolen time, I grew frustrated that I couldn’t get more done. Sometimes I only produced 2 pages in a week! One thing I made sure of was that I was honest, and didn’t try to glamorise myself, or my deeds, in the story. I put together a whole series of interesting, frightening, or outright crazy & hilariously funny events, and told them to the best of my writing ability. I had to do lots of research to check on my dates, etcetera, because some of these events happened 50 to 60 years ago, & I couldn’t trust such things only to memory. The book became a great passion for me. Wherever I went, I took paper & pen to write. This included on holidays to The Canaries, the Mediterranean, Spain, South Africa, and many others. I remember writing all day on the little balcony of our room in Tenerife, from where I could see my dear wife swimming in the lovely big hotel pool. I meant to join her, but kept putting it off – then it was too late, as the sun went down & she said it was time for supper! Lots of times like that. And the entire project took me 8 whole years.

Now, all of a sudden, people are noticing my book. It’s up to No 2 in a Website advertising the ‘Top !00 Bestesllers’ on Amazon Books UK, for example. It’s rising prodigiously in the USA. And it’s selling in large numbers. Does this mean I will finally be able to stop my part-time work as a Consultant Psychiatrist, and get down to completing the sequel to ‘Speak Swahil, Dammit?’ So many folk are asking for that!!

Our home in Cornwall is a large & comfortable house, and it overlooks the sea at Swanpool Beach in Falmouth. We can even see Pendennis Castle, built by Henry V111th. We love being here, especially in the summer. Outside, I have a huge greenhouse with a small heated swimming pool complete with a swimjet, and a big table & chairs. In the summer it’s my perfect writing den. In the same greenhouse, I grow greenbeans, tomatoes, chillies, rocket, a few sunflowers, etc. The combination of the lovely plants and the sunshine make this place, which I call ‘AFRIKA MASHARIKI’ (East Africa), the perfect place to write.

In this blog, older entries are about our visits to TZ & Kenya after 44 years as exiles. They tell it how I found it, going back to the place I will always think of as home1

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Why is holiday accomodation so much more expensive in Tanzania than Kenya?

As a former Tanzanian, I was shocked to have to pay $175.00 per night for a mediocre room at the White Sands in Dar, without flights, or even breakfast. In Kenya, right next door, holiday deals on the best beaches, in fine hotels, including half board, flights from & to UK, plus airport collection, etc, can be had for as little as &750.00 a week, or £1000 for a fortnight. What a pity!! Many lovers of Tanzania are economically forced to spend their time & money next door, in Kenya!

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Missing East Africa, wadugu wangu!

AN EXCERPT FROM ‘TREVELLAS GOES FORTH in a…

AN EXCERPT FROM ‘TREVELLAS GOES FORTH..in a human sea”’, By James Penhaligon. When not dreaming of Tanzania, I watch the conduct of my British compatriots…Trevellas, like me is shocked by them…. This A satire about life in the western world.  Details can be seen under ‘other publications’ on the website http://www.jamespenhaligon.co.uk

The following involves a strange race who flatter each other constantly:

 

Notax and Ned pull their seats forward. Then Notax begins. His story is about a court case in Flāttária. Later Ned and I agree it’s a tale most strange. It happened, according to Notax, in the High Court in that incredible country:

“You’re completely right and I do agree with you,” proclaims Adulaciόn, prosecution counsel to the defence solicitor, delighting the judge and jury. His name is ‘Flattery’ in Latin.

“But I said my client is innocent,” says the bemused defence solicitor, and just before that you said he was guilty!”

“Yes, but now I agree with you, having heard what you’ve said, and the most elegant way you put it,” replies Adulaciόn, smiling warmly.

“All I said was my client is innocent!” says the bemused solicitor.

“You foreign?” asks the judge, interrupting in a gravelly voice and looking displeased. His name is His Honour Sikofąnté, but he’s known as Siko to his friends.

“Yes, m’Lud.”

“Had to be,” mumbles Siko. “I call a recess, during which time the clerk of the court instruct the young man in the etiquette and ways of Flāttária.”

“Yes, m’Lud, love what you say” shouts the clerk of the court, standing.

His Honour Siko strikes his desk with a gavel.

“All rise!” announces Flătteür the clerk. They do. Flătteür instructs the young solicitor, who, flabbergasted at what he’s being told, stares out the window for several seconds, before turning to face the speaker.

“Just agree, flatter the speaker, regardless as to whether or not I really do agree?” he asks, his tone incredulous.

” That’s it, exactly, you put it so well!” says Flătteür “But how can that be justice?”

“Who cares about justice?” responds Flătteür. “We care about flattery, that’s what counts to us. I do like the way you ask the question, by the way. And I should know, because I am the greatest Flattãrian of all, even if I flatter myself!” He smiles warmly.

“But I heard you’re Liätian,” posits the bemused solicitor.

“That’s just a lie!” explodes Flătteür, losing his pleased composure, gesticulating with an index finger and going red in the face. “I am not Liätian, my mother is not Trüthiän, and I do not have close relations with Mãsochía, and all that is just malicious rumour!”

“You want me to simply agree with and flatter the prosecutor?” asks the now nervous solicitor. Flătteür makes a great effort to pull himself together. He breathes deeply.

“Precisely,” he says, “and oh how well you say it! You’re charming, you know. Do please excuse my outburst. You are so sweet….”

“Thank you. Am I supposed to flatter you as well?”

“How lovely! Yes, you are.”

“You’re very helpful,” the solicitor begins.

“Delightful!”

“Intelligent!” he goes on.

“Lovely.”

“Good looking too!”

“Wonderful!”

“Court resumes, All rise!” says Flătteür in a loud voice. Judge Siko strikes the desk with his gavel. “The state calls the counsel for the defence,” says Flătteür.

“Is your client guilty or innocent?” asks crusty Judge Siko.

“Innocent, m’Lud,” responds the solicitor for the defence, still bewildered.

“How beautifully said,” comments Siko.

“I really think he is guilty,” interrupts Adulaciόn the prosecutor, “yet I agree he must be innocent, as it was said so nicely!”

“All agreed, then?” asks gravelly Judge Siko.

“We are,” agrees Adulaciόn, “and we love the way you ask!”

“I must say,” says Siko, smiling broadly, “that you do comment wonderfully!”

All rise,” shouts Flătteür.

“I thus pronounce the defendant innocent,” announces beaming Judge Siko, striking the gavel firmly on the desk, “and may I say to the clerk that he has, as usual, carried out all his duties to a very high standard!”

“Thank you, Your Most Gracious Honour,” Flătteür responds, “and I am so impressed, as always, by your style, and the clear justice you so justly deliver. That’s not to mention your sartorial elegance!” Judge Siko’s beam shows his delight. On the wall behind his raised dais is printed and framed advice for all those attending court, particularly his legal colleagues. It’s been there for years, and, as far as he knows, the advice has invariably been taken. 

      “But nobody gave a shred of evidence!” protests the defence counsel, in spite of his client getting off scot-free, without any effort from him.

“He protests so wonderfully and charmingly,” laughs Siko, “most charmingly indeed!”

“Who cares about the so-called evidence?” asks Adulaciόn the prosecutor, “but aren’t the sweet judge’s comments lovely?”

      “Gorgeous!” says Flătteür.

“You mean,” Ned asks Notax after a long pause, “that they decide a case on flattering each other, and don’t hear any evidence at all?”

“Precisely,” agrees Notax. “And that’s just an example of how they do things. Everything in their country revolves round flattery. People give their wares away in the market because they are flattered. Sometimes there aren’t even any goods on sale, because everyone is too busy flattering someone else to produce anything.”

“They are a very strange people,” grumbles Ned.

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Mzuri sana, asante!

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View of sea from our house

Beans in the greenhouse

The greenhouse

Our sunflower

11th July 2011, Falmouth, Cornwall.

Spent the day in the garden. Beautiful, mostly sunny, summer day in Falmouth, Cornwall. We began the day with a dip in the freezing but most refreshing and bracing sea at Swanpool beach, which we overlook from our house. Quick jacuzzi, to warm up, then into the garden. Since late Spring we’ve been planting not only decorative things, but vegetables too. Runner beans (had our first crop 2 days ago), tomatoes, rocket (taking some for the salad every day for 2 weeks already), red & green chillies, brinjal (aubergine), carrots, spring onions…. I feel so comforted watching all these things grow, mostly in the big greenhouse. Some, planted outside, are okay-ish, but quite a few have gone into decline, withered & died. So very like a person with severe depression, only the plants die – minus the act of suicide!
But why am I so comforted by these green growing-things, what is so special about them? Lots of people enjoy plants, but for me there is definitely something else. The plants outside the greenhouse, which wither in the cold of evening, and those thriving in the warmer climes within, reflect me. My parents may have come from this pleasant Cornwall of ours, and I may be genetically Cornish ‘through and through’, like the advert for a well-known, but to me unpleasant, brand of pasty, but I AM AN AFRICAN! That’s where I was born. Where I learnt to walk. To talk. To play. My language, in which I delighted, was Swahili, like my friends. English was for me a foreign tongue, much to my parents’ and other ‘Wazungu’s’ (white people’s) bewilderment. It’s what I wrote about in ‘Speak Swahili, Dammit!’, the book describing my chaotic, sad, tragic, hilarious upbringing in the bush of Tanganyika, later to emerge as Tanzania, in the 1950′s & 60′s.
What’s the point?  All the plants I mention were growing in our garden in Geita. Every one! There was Mum, assisted by the vertically challenged, enormously strong and profusely sweating ‘Tembo”, or ‘Elephant”, as she had named the quiet and uncomplaining little man, digging up and together rolling away enormous granite boulders in the garden, clearing space to expand her ever-growing garden. There, on the left, growing against home-made lattice-work, was a profusion of runner beans. Down the centre of the garden ran the flowerbeds, with huge tomato plants bending almost double under the weight of their ripening fruit. Closer were beds of rocket, flanked by chillie bushes on both sides. Further away, near the un-marked boundary of our garden, pawpaw trees seemed to groan with the suspended burdens of huge, multi-shaped pawpaws. To one side were bananas, huge dark-green leaves affording shade, where our two cats slept and the old dog lay panting, yet grateful to escape the white-hot African sun. Brinjals, ‘bringali’ in Swahili, otherwise called ‘aubergines’ were planted in a long flowerbed next to the carrots. So what? Well, bananas and pawpaws can’t be grown in Cornwall. That’s that. But every other one of those plants from Geita is growing in our garden in Falmouth.
So now I’m getting to that point: in what often to me feels like an alien environment, my genetics notwithstanding, these plants transport me to what was for me a better time, a better place. They, like me, are susceptible to the fickleness of climate, the uncertainty of weather in northern climes, and hence the need for a greenhouse. Only in there is the protection they need. And that makes us fellow-travellers, exiles together in a foreign land. I commune with them, though they are but plants, for they take me back to Geita, to our garden, to the sun, to the warm love of my mother, to the kindness and humour of the Swahili watu, to the joys and delights of the Swahili tongue.
If you should pass and see me tending my beans or tomatoes, or any of these plants, and should you think I appear to be talking to them, please do try to understand! Oh yes, there’s a huge sunflower blooming out back. Didn’t tell you about that, did I?
Tonight, to celebrate the health of my fellow-exiles in the greenhouse, we shall go somewhere I can get an ice-cold bottle or two of Tusker beer, all the way from Kenya. Pity nobody’s importing Kilimanjaro lager!! Oh yes – Mungu ibariki Afrika!

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Tatu on a Boeing seat

Konokono at Waghill Jetty

Lizards know the dog!

The Rock Pool overlooking Lake

WAG HILL LODGE

        We park under one of several big leafy trees. The shade’s welcome. We’re now on the property of Wag Hill Lodge, but only just. This is the road entrance, and one of two boat-jetty entrances, to a private lakeside nature reserve which extends for many hundreds of yards along the shore, and a long way up and over several heavily wooded, ubiquitously bouldered, tree-clinging hillsides. Because it’s a long walk along a winding lakeside footpath to the lodge, our luggage is ferried onto Kononkono for a mini-cruise from this jetty to the closer one. Bill, accompanied by Tatu and her 14 year-old adopted mother, Kali, also a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, has motored Konokono across especially from his mooring at Mwanza Yacht Club, there where the Wazungu still boat but no longer drink. Usually he collects his guests there, & brings them to Wag Hill the water-route. Our shopping trip with Robyn altered his plans.
        Konokono is an amazing old boat. She’s 28 foot long, snub-nosed, and has to be one of the earliest fibre-glass hulled boats on Lake Victoria. They built ‘em strong then! About an inch thick. Osmosis? What Osmosis? When Bill won her in a long-ago and drunken card game at Mwanza Yacht club, she was powered by a huge inboard diesel. Eventually he tired of the old engine’s sicknesses, ripped it out, and replaced it with two 115 horse-power Yamaha outboards. Sometime later, an elderly, Russian-crewed Boeing 707, overloaded with Nile Perch and bananas, opened its throttles wide, wobbled skywards, lacked corrugated-iron perimeter height, tried to lift its nose, hit stalling speed, and flopped into the waiting lake. Bill got involved in the salvage operation – his reward five of the old plane’s seats, and bits from her dashboard. To drive Konokono he sits on one of the 707’s pilot seats. Passengers sit on two pairs of joined aisle ones. Very comfortable, still in original blue vinyl upholstery. I’m relieved to hear nobody died in the 707 crash! I cannot think of a better new name for this venerable old boat than the Modern African Queen! Bill isn’t forthcoming about being Dirk Bogard, and Robyn’s not too keen on Katherine Hepburn!
        Bill was, however, Robyn tells us with a wry grin, made famous in Mwanza, by Kononkono. Every time he found a new girlfriend, usually a passing nurse or aide-worker in Tanzania, Konokono suddenly got a facelift! I take a look around. You don’t really need a toilet with all those bushes and rocks ashore. A fridge, well there’s a small rusty paraffin one in the corner of the cabin. Cold wine and beer. Food? There’s shelves for cans, fresh fruit is always around, there’s plastic plates, some cutlery. What else? Oh, a bed. Yup, one of those, convertible to a double by joining the long cabin seats. Cruise in moonlight, food, cold wine, peace, and a double bed. What else could a paramour offer a lonesome lady?
        “Does he still fix her up for you, Robyn?” I ask.
        “Nah, reckons he doesn’t need to!” she laughs.
        Mzigo or luggage aboard, cavorting Tatu showing her sealegs by galloping at speed along the four inch coach roof side-deck, a more cautious Kali boarding and taking a place on an old Boeing seat, Bill taking his wheel, Robyn, Ingrid and I sitting next to Kali, and Bill fires up the big Yamahas. We cruise at barely one knot just a stone’s throw offshore, a distance of five to six hundred yards to the next pier. Short as it is, it’s a spectacular mini-cruise. The rocks, the rocks! What can be said about these huge, magnificent, multi-shaped, smooth boulders, which cluster together in arrangements of pure poetry, lean out over the water like ancient sentinels from a different epoch, as indeed they are, and fill the soul with naked awe? Why is it when nature decides to put on a spectacle, it does it in such overdose? A tenth of this, & I’d be impressed forever.
        Then there’s the plants. Wherever the majestic boulders allow, diverse bushes of every hue and shape cling to the thin strips of exposed earth. In some places, though how they do it I don’t know, fully grown trees have forced their way skywards, to bathe their olive-green leaves in the dazzling sunlight. On the rocks and between the shade-throwing foliage, purple-headed igama lizards hunt for insects. On a broad expanse of smooth rock, a four-foot monitor lizard watches us carefully. He’s an old resident here, Bill says, and he’s used to Kali and Tatu tormenting him. Here I have to give way to the beautiful on-line brochure of Wag Hill prepared with such love and care by Bill and Robyn (or Robyn & Bill?), because I can’t hope to compete with the prose or the photography. The link is http://www.waghill.com And, take my word for it, it IS as described!
        I can’t even keep up with the list of the bird varieties to be spotted on this blessed piece of lake shore, but, quoting just part of their list, there are pied kingfishers, grey headed kingfishers, malachite kingfishers, ibises, groups of untroubled small white egrets poking about in rock crevices with narrow bills, cormorants, storks, bui-bui’s, an occasional sunbird, several wagtails, shrikes darting from branch to branch, monarch birds, flycatchers and fisheagles. It’s fortunate we don’t see them all at once, or we’d be overwhelmed. The joy here is in seeing just one, or maybe two, specimens, going about his or her daily business, noting us, but knowing we’re no danger. I’d advise any bird-lover or “twitcher” visiting here to take a good book for East African bird-identification with them. And, if they’re really keen, binoculars.
        For a proper description of Wag Hill Lodge, I defer again to the brochure (not a thing I’d normally do, but Wag Hill is special, and not the ‘commercial’ type of enterprise I’d shy away from promoting myself).
        My description from here on is existential, meaning what I saw and experienced, not necessarily with much insight or understanding. How humbling! After thinking of myself all these years as a native of these very parts, I find I remain ignorant of so, so much of the natural world which gave me succour as a child, and with which I am still so much in love. What does this say to me? That I’ve cut a narrow course in experience, seen only what was vital at the time, ignored, sublimated, blocked out the rest? Suppose you don’t focus on a honeysucker when a hyena’s getting close! But can that change now? Can I revisit, re-see some of what I omitted to prioritise? There’s a lovely old Swahili proverb which goes ‘Mlimbua nchi ni mwananchi!‘ It means ‘he who enjoys the first fruit of a country is son of that country’. Am I still a son? I hope I am!
        Here we go, being shown the lodge. It’s spectacular. There’s a huge thatch-covered verandah overlooking a generous blue swimming pool, carved out of native rock, creating an horizon-pool effect. Natural rocky outcrops have been left in place, making it feel very natural. Sitting at a huge table overlooking the pool, and beyond to the lake, Bill announces it’s “that time of day” and snaps the top off a bottle of Tusker Lager for me, and, to my surprise, off two bottles of Heineken for Robyn and himself. Must be too much sun! Here I am, after travelling all day, tongue hanging out to pour my remembered and long-missed African nectar down my dry throat, and these two drink imported Dutch beer!
        Bill begins to tell me about the problems on Lake Victoria. There are many, he says. Where to start? Well, to begin with, the Nile Perch……

NEXT BLOG NILE PERCH, BILHARZIA, SNAILS, MERCURY, POVERTY, OVERFISHING, WATER HYACINTH

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The barabara (road)

                      

 

Mwanza Town

Mwanza Town Again

Leaving Mwanza Town

MWANZA TO WAGHILL LODGE 19/10/2010

        Robyn needs supplies, so in town we pull off onto a short dirt-road, to park on dusty, pot-holed ground. Care is needed not to collide with milling, unhurried pedestrians, supremely oblivious to danger. The Nissan is surrounded by watu going this way or that, some in colourful kanzus, others in casual western garb, here a smartly suited, briefcase-clutching mwananchi, or citizen, walking determinedly to somewhere important, treading a hurried and sinuous path in front, behind or to one side with hardly a casual glance. Traffic-respect doesn’t live here! Gaining a parking space requires inching determinedly at a knot of people, clearing space like the bow-wave of a ship pushing flotsam. Accepted way here, no unpleasantness, just “you win” grins and waves as happy people give way. If you do this in England you’ll get a very different reaction!
        The ‘supermarket’ is just a big duka, or shop, with the atmosphere and interior of Indian-owned stores of times gone by. There’s a scent of incense. On shelves are packets of sliced, dried mango, hot curried peas, and real home-made-looking potato crisps, which my friends and I long-ago called ‘chips’, and consumed with passion. Chips and Coke! Our rallying cry at Lone Cone Club in Geita, only seventy miles from where I am standing, gazing whimsically at this evocative display of edibles. No matter it was really Pepsi in Geita, or our ‘chips’ were crisps, we loved them! I’m amazed at the variety of goods on sale. It isn’t a very big shop. Yet over there is a fridge, there a lawnmower, there a hairdryer, there a row of gleaming childrens’ bicycles, and, on that shelf, of all things, only feet from a row of golden-labelled bottles of Tusker “Hakuna Bora Kuliko” (there isn’t better than) beer, a full-on aluminium Zimmer-Frame! You have to laugh. Reminds me of a business card a friend used to give out: “Carpentry, plumbing, bakers, florist, dental, electrical, mechanical, translations, body-building, horoscopes, estate agency, brain surgery, gynaecology, tap-dancing, card-sharking, double-glazing, virgins deflowered, lesbians converted, assassinations arranged, burglaries commissioned, undertakers…. Our Motto: ‘we’ll bury you so gently, you won’t even know you’re dead!’ ”  This is Tanzania, I love it!
        “Let’s go!” Robyn says, handing me a bagful of food for Wag Hill Lodge. Personal service for our two days there – Robyn and husband Bill are staying with us! Where else than Mwanza do hotel-owners stay with their guests?
        The road from town follows the lake shore on our right. The few tall, glass-fronted modern buildings punctuating long rows of older constructions with bati roofs, with chaotically milling watu and traffic in never-ending attendance, are behind. We pass the yacht club. Don’t see much from the road, except wire fence, big green bati roof, and a glimpse of lake behind. The bar here was famed as favourite ‘watering hole’ for local Wazungu, but the honour has transferred to Tilapia Hotel, passing on our left. In there, Robyn says, you get the news, scandals and rumours of the restless expatriate population. We veer lakewards, away again, only scattered low buildings now breaking the vista of water, multi-coloured wooden boats of varying decay pulled on shore, designer rocks, hardy trees and scrub, each clinging for life to paradoxically parched, yet water-eroded, deeply gulleyed earth.
        The road, pitted and runnelled, rock-strewn, broken and discontinuous, winds up into low hills, guarded by outcrops of sentinel rock thrown by a mighty but careless hand. Clinging precariously to a steep slope is a village of mud and thatch, then another. Footpaths ascend. Old and new. Behind, air-conditioned, glass-fronted offices pierce the dazzling sky. Here lives antiquity, robust, unchanged, still beautiful!
        An mzee leads a small, critically loaded donkey with a broken soul, a brightly clad bicycle youth wobbles the other way. Two kanzu-wearing wanawake carry bundles of firewood balanced on heads, nonchalant arms swinging free. A motorbike weaves slowly between potholes, two big-bellied men straining every bolt. This road is not for the timid. Only bits exist, the passing of the rest commemorated in deep serpentine gouges which could lose the Nissan’s wheels and balance us on the lip. Wind left to avoid that one, right for this, back, centre, straighten, pull onto verge to allow towering sugarcane-loaded donkey-cart to pass. Donkey’s eyes say he, too, has given up.
        More water-carved rock. Too many, even. A few would make a spectacle. These make a statement. Can’t nature dream up some shapes? Road goes up, down, around. Clang goes the suspension. How much can it take? The engine growls angrily. Watu pass, old, young, laden, empty-handed. Road straightens. There, to the left, is the university. Doesn’t look much. Low, rectangular, bati-roofed buildings, separated by dry, dusty ground. It’s break-time! Students, modern-looking wakijana or young people, milling around, satchels on backs, briefcases in hand, walking with intent, some just chatting and laughing in the sun. One’s carrying a radio, an upbeat Swahili song is playing. Not like universities in Britain. The road outside, under those feet, is unmetalled, eroded, dusty, uneven, broken. Do they care? No, not judging from the smiles, laughter and friendly waves. How do the watu stay so happy? Is it something they eat? Is it in the water? Happiness is a natural state here, doesn’t require an external cause. My heart swells. I’m catching it again. Watch out, an epidemic of joy!
        Fifteen miles from Mwanza, we thread through a village of old and new. Thatch and mud, concrete block and bati. Here live several of Bill & Robyn’s employees. Helping the village develop is an on-going joy to the owners of Wag Hill Lodge.
        Wag Hill Lodge. We’re at a high steel gate, the other side is a uniformed security guard. He approaches to let us in. At his heel, prancing with excitement, is a stout little black dog. She’s also got the happiness-bug.
        “Hello Tatu,” says Robyn, opening her door. Tatu jumps on her lap, delightedly and determinedly licking her face. Down the path we spy Bill. “He came by boat,” Robyn explains. Now there’s an idea, I muse, beat the hell out of this once-barabara, or road! Down a thickly wooded, windy path, I can see the back end of a motorboat, with two large outboard motors. That, Robyn tells me, is KonoKono, or snail, the name of their boat.

Giriama kids who just ran up, entertained us, then ran off into the sea!

Hope you enjoy this half-minute video. The soundtrack was composed & recorded by Sam Gibbons, of Watford, England.