Mango is here!

I’m not a cat person. But while on vacation in Mbamba bay, we decided that we wanted a pet, and the question became which type of animal. Courtney wanted a cat, but I’d always been a dog person. I halfheartedly agreed to think about getting a cat, fully intending to never agree to actually buy one (how catty of me?).

Soon after returning from vacation, we were walking around town and saw a little kitten playing. Undeniably cute. So we asked the nearest kid where we could get one of our own, and he went running off to find his father. I thought we were merely window shopping. But when the father came out of the house, he was carrying one of the cutest kittens in Africa. Once I saw her, there wasn’t even a question as to whether we really wanted a cat or not. We bought Mango on the spot.

The only reason we hesitated to buy a pet is that we would have to leave it here (sorry, she can’t come back to the USA). We worried that whatever we got would probably grow soft living with us, and have a very hard life once we left.

So with Mango, we pledged to help her stay a bit wild. Not a problem. The first night, Mango hunted and ate a huge cockroach in the house. Nice! The next night, she killed and ate a disconcertingly large and disconcertingly poisonous spider. Thanks Mango! What a great cat!

Alright, so I’ll admit that cats are cute. And having one that eats our spiders is nice too. But will I actually get attached to her? I already have. The other day, we went for a walk with Mango and she ran off. We assumed she would come back, but she never did. We looked for hours but found no trace, and went to bed catless. Poor Mango! The next morning, when local kids returned her to our house, I was so happy to see Mango again!

So have I become a cat person? I’m getting there, but not quite. I’ll admit their cute, and it’s great to have a pet here. But when Courtney and I get a pet in Michigan, we think it’s going to be a dog.

*But in the meantime, we’ll be updating the blog with the adventures of Mango the cat, so enjoy. She leads quite an exciting life!*

The cat on her first day after a bath!

Arthur working with the cat sleeping in her favorite spot
Arthur and Mango cooking

Buses

To give you an idea of what a bus ride in Tanzania is like we want to describe our bus ride to Mbamba Bay last week. The trip started at 6:00 in the morning at the bus station. The bus station is crowded because all the buses try to leave at the exact same time. Because there are so many people around, especially travelers, the vendors are out in force catering to them with anything from bottles of water to meat on a stick to toothbrushes and toothpaste. We were tempted by the chocolate crackers, but abstained.

Our bus from Dar to Songea was rather nice (the route, through the mountains, is so arduous that apparently the buses only last a year), but our bus to Mbamba Bay was just plain old and dilapidated. The walls were covered in peeling red velvet, the seats had lost all their cushion so we basically sat on two metal bars, and the bus shook uncontrollably. Our window, sadly, did not open.

This became a big deal when we realized just how many people were getting on the bus. When we left the station, there was a passenger in every seat and about 5 people standing in the aisles. But every few minutes, we would stop and let five more people on, somehow cramming them into the nooks. Within 30 minutes, we had stopped 5 more times and there were passengers standing on every inch of floor, and more crammed into the spaces in between the ones standing and sitting. We had paid about $6 each for this particular 6 hour drive, and we wondered how the company could make money. The answer is that a Tanzanian bus fits twice as many passengers as an American bus, though both have the same number of seats.

And some of the passengers made us want a bit more personal space. The woman behind us held a sickly chicken on her lap the whole way, a man got on holding a sack that was meowing (even the locals looked at him funny), and the woman across the aisle had a very unhappy baby that was vomiting prodigiously. At this point, we forced our window open.

But to only use buses to transport people would be to waste a valuable resource. Local mail is notoriously unreliable, so people have turned to the bus system as an alternative. At the stops, people would give letters to the touts (3-4 guys who stand at the front of the bus and help passengers with issues, deal with checkpoints, and fix flat tires), who would stuff them in their pockets. When we reached Mbamba Bay, the touts pulled the crumpled, sweaty envelopes out of their pockets and give them to the intended recipients. This is apparently preferable to the local mail system.

The buses are also used to transport merchandise between towns. The top of the bus is pilled high with baskets, plastic flip flops from china, mattresses, and anything else imaginable. At one point, a man carried on a 10 gallon bucket of fresh milk. We even passed a bus that had a live goat tied to the roof!

Sound like fun? Absolutely! Sitting in our seats, someone’s knee sticking into us, an arm pit by our heads, and a chicken squawking next to us, we looked at one another and started to laugh uncontrollably. Then the bus stopped, and five more people got on.

On the palm-fringed shores of Lake Nyasa...

The adventure started sophomore spring at Dartmouth. Four and a half years later, Courtney and Arthur were in Mbamba Bay Tanzania, on the shores of Lake Nyasa. After living in Songea for a month we decided to take a vacation. Tuesday morning, we got on a rickety old bus and bumped our way down a dusty dirt road for 6 hours to the third largest lake in Africa. The ride was an adventure in itself, but we’ll save that for another blog post. Suffice it to say, we made it in one piece to the small dusty town of Mbamba bay on shore of Lake Nyasa. The town is a 100 foot long line of small shacks that sell mostly produce grown in the area, and not much else. But what the town does have an ample supply of is crystal clear water, long beautiful beaches, palm trees, beautiful views, and mangoes. And, even though it clearly wasn’t a tourist town, we lucked out and found a hotel with a real toilet and a shower. Wednesday morning, we set out for a walk along the beach to explore the area. Arthur was acting a bit funny. We walked through the hills passing through people’s front yards, being followed by kids, and chatting with the locals, until we found a peaceful secluded piece of beach. Sitting in the shade under the palm trees with stunning views, Arthur proposed to Courtney. With a ring made in Songea Tanzania on her finger, Courtney said yes! Nothing could have made it a more perfect moment. After eating fresh mangoes right off of the tree and a dip in the lake it couldn’t have been a better morning! The day was topped off with drinks on the beach and a beautiful sunset, followed by a dinner of just-caught catfish at the one local restaurant. While the rest of the trip was great, nothing could top the first day. We are now back in Songea rested, happy, and very excited. We wish we could be with all of you at home to celebrate but we are thinking of you all, and having a grand ol’ time over here in Tanzania.

Courtney and Arthur celebrate on the beach after a quick dip.

The dusty strip of Mbamba Bay

A beautiful sunset over the lake

Courtney and Arthur at our romantic dinner

View of Lake Nyasa from hotel room.

View of Mbamba Bay from the hotel porch.

Hike

This weekend we went on a hike to the top of one of the surrounding mountains. It was a beautiful hike. We crossed two valleys, walked through a forest where the trees were turning (why we aren't sure), saw great views, and didn't encounter any snakes. Here are some pictures from our hike and views of our village.

One of the many crazy bugs that we came across on the path

A flower that must have been a Doctor Seuss inspiration

We climbed to the top of the mountain on the right. You can also some what see the pretty colors the trees have turned

Us at the top with our village in the background

Pictures again

Arthur very excited to have our first avocado of the season!
Courtney learning to cook chaptis with Pascaria in our "kitchen"

More pictures

Here are more pictures from the past month in Tanzania. More to come soon.

Arthur with Felix (director of the community center) at the communty center Beautiful clouds above the community center building
Kids at the dental center (also at the community center) waiting for their monthly cleaning
Augusta cleaning one of the kid's teeth

Food

We posted two weeks ago about food. You know where we get food but we haven’t told you what we eat. Well that is pretty simple. Rice and Beans! Ok we eat more than that but it seems like that is the only thing we eat. For breakfast we have tea or coffee with fresh local milk. For most people around here that is all they eat for breakfast so we had to be creative. Bananas are abundant around here and we have found local peanut butter and a good bakery so our breakfast has expanded in the past few weeks. For lunch we have rice, beans, and some kind of greens. The greens alternate between fried/sautéed cabbage with tomatoes or fried/sautéed lettuce with onions. The only flavors to add are onions or salt. For dinner it is what ever we have left over from lunch. This is all made with a few items. A charcoal stove that is about 1 foot high that looks like two bowls put end to end. Then we have a few pots and one frying pan and a wooden spoon. That is it. We are gone from the land of fridges, microwaves, ovens, toasters, or anything else modern. Cooking like this can be very challenging. What happened to Easy Mac, spaghetti, and toast? Here the first challenge was trying to light the stove. This takes 20 minutes. If you manage to get it lit you now try cooking with limited ingredients with one temperature stove. I thought we could handle pop corn. We had cooking oil and kernels so I thought this would be no problem. The first attempt we couldn’t even get the stove lit. The second try only about ¼ of the kernels popped and these were only half popped. Who knew how great jiffy pop was? We have given up and are now buying pop corn from a local women in town for a bag of for 8 cents. Mama Sofia is now teaching Courtney how to cook. This involves Mama Sofia laughing at Courtney and taking over so lunch isn’t ruined. So far Courtney has learned to make Ugali, rice, and veggies (even though Mama Sofia thinks Courtney chops the veggies too big). Each day is an adventure!

Arthur with Nyoka on deadly hoe (and wearing striped socks with sandals).
































Soccer kids with the snake (ok, not that big, but poisonous nonetheless)

Nyoka!

We’re lucky enough that our house came equipped with a few old, semi-inflated basketballs, so we have a host of local kids who come to play soccer every afternoon. They tend to be pretty dedicated to their soccer, so when we they stopped playing yesterday afternoon, we wondered what was up. Five minutes later Moses, the next door neighbor’s son and an afternoon-soccer regular, ran to the house yelling Nyoka! Snake!

There are quite a few different types of snakes in our corner of Africa, and they’re just about all poisonous. So what did we do? We followed Moses to the spectacle that had distracted all of the kids from soccer. In the middle of one of our fields, at the bottom of a 5 foot deep concrete-lined irrigation hole, was: a pile of rocks. With a foot of snake tail coming out the end.

Kids around here know the appropriate action to take when they see a poisonous snake: either run away or, if you can, kill it. Well this snake had gotten itself trapped in the irrigation hole, so was an easy target for the latter option. So for the past five minutes, the kids had been hurling bricks and chunks of concrete at the snake, and by now it was almost entirely buried in rocks and what we could see – the tail – had stopped moving. Was it dead?

We thought so, but when the kids started taking the bricks off the snake (using a 7-foot long stick, of course), it started to wiggle. When they uncovered its head, it was clearly still a very much alive – and very angry – Black Mamba snake. It flared its neck out and started hissing. So… we started throwing more bricks at it. Some hit the snake’s body, mildly impairing it. But eventually, one hit it squarely in the head, and it lost its vigor.

But it was still struggling. By this time, Courtney had run to the house to retrieve her camera and our gardening hoe (good thinking!). The snake was near the edge of the pit wall, and within the reach of the hoe for someone six feet tall. So I chopped the snake’s head off. Dead.

So what do 10 pre-adolescent boys ask one another in the presence of a dead poisonous snake? The answer is the same on this side of the world: Unataka kula? Want to eat it?
Hapana, sitaki kula nyoka, asante (no, I don’t want to eat the snake, thank you). Instead, we buried it behind the house, and went back to playing soccer.