A Storm In A ..... Cupcake ?!?

Mt. Kilimanjaro ... Africa's highest mountain. Taken from the road to the farm a few months ago.

Phew. Okay. So in the almost 2 years since I started this blog, I have only had one negative comment (& a couple of sarcastic ones, which I chose not to publish !) For the most part, my blog has been wonderfully received by people all over the world – by people who’ve visited Tanzania, and those who haven’t – by people who live here today, and those who used to – by both expat’s and Tanzanian’s alike. So it came as a surprise this week, when I was accused (and by a Tanzanian, at that !) of lying and deceiving my readers ! The storm in a teacup ? An innocent comment made in my “Easy Vanilla Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting” post about the quality of flour and sugar I bake with. (If you wish to, you can read the post and resulting comments over here.)

Long time readers of my blog will know how untrue these accusations are and how much I love my adopted country of Tanzania and her wonderful people and how I continually promote the country, local products and tourism. Which is why the comment’s made even less sense to me !

I receive many emails from blog readers who wish to visit Africa, and who have perhaps been in two minds about visiting Tanzania (or any other African country, for that matter, as Africa is ‘the big unknown’ to many people), but who upon researching the country have come upon my blog through a Google search or similar, and have been so impressed with what Tanzania has to offer, and being able to see a ‘true’ picture of the place from someone who actually lives there, that they’ve decided to come and visit !

There’ve also been a few people who’ve been offered jobs here or in other African countries, who say that reading my blog (& corresponding with me ‘behind-the-scenes’) has swayed their decision to choose Tanzania over another location ! And those people come here, spend money, employ people and (hopefully) add something back before they leave …. so, in a roundabout sort of way, my blog has helped contribute to that.

After publishing, and responding, to the negative comments on the post, I have since received more ‘choice words’ via Blogger comments from the same person, which I have chosen not to publish as I don’t want to waste any more time or energy on this person (who seems to be quite bitter & who obviously has issues in their own life – my friend Jo has a great expression “Hurt people …. hurt people” … so true and I actually feel sorry for this person at the end of the day – imagine living your life with so much anger inside you ? I think the issue here probably goes far deeper than ‘insects in flour’ !)

I have a tracking tool on this blog (which I never use, unless in a case like this !) so I know exactly where this person is posting from, as well as where else they have posted about my blog on the internet (a nasty comment on another blog, including a link back to my blog to alert people – mostly fellow Tanzanian’s – to the post) and the funniest thing of all, is that this person has infact done me a favour as because of this link on another site, they’ve sent some lovely traffic my way and caused my blog to have close on 1100 ‘hits’ yesterday alone ………… with more new visitors as we speak !

Having my cake and eating it too ? Hold the multi coloured sprinkles, please – I’ll have mine with a sprinkling of insects on the top instead ;)