Redecorating ... & Making Furniture Tanzanian Style !

My daughter has her own 'private' walled garden leading off her bedroom - the cats love it here !

It's a difficult room to photograph because of the odd layout & looks a bit sparse in the photo's but is actually quite cozy !

I recently posted about the fact that I was re decorating my daughter’s bedroom. (If you’re interested, you can read all about that along with the typical frustrating African process of trying to get the right shade of paint for it here.)

Nelson (our resident painter/handyman) has done a great job, and it is now complete, so I thought I’d post some photo’s for you to see. It’s difficult to see from the photo’s, but each wall is painted in an alternating shade of either pink or lilac. The ceiling is also painted in these shades, as are the doors and doorframes. I’ve also used both shades on the bed, shelving, cupboard (not visible in the photos) and bookshelf. As I said to my husband, I would only ever go really crazy with colour like this in a young child’s bedroom, and certainly not anywhere else in the house ! (Although I have just painted the back wall of our bedroom a deep Ox Blood/Paprika colour, and it looks lovely).

I still want to add another shelf, have a side table made and add some butterfly stencils on to the wall … the wall above her bed that is that odd shape, is actually the back of the fireplace in our main lounge so it keeps her room nice and warm in Winter !

Most furniture here has to be custom made, if you really want to get something nice. I went on to the website of a large well known UK furniture manufacturer and found the style of bed I wanted for my daughter, printed out a picture of it and got what measurements I could, then sat with Nelson and explained to him how I wanted him to make it. We went out and bought the wood, and – voila ! This is how I get most of my furniture made here.

It’s great fun to take, say, a picture from a glossy interior design magazine and get a carpenter to make something for you … recently I had a gorgeous king size sleigh style “inspired” bed made for our guest bedroom and it turned out really well and is better than anything I could buy in a shop here, as it has been lovingly hand carved and made by someone who really loves what he does. I wanted an extra length bed so changed the measurements accordingly – then I had a problem finding a mattress here that fit it. As we can only buy foam mattresses here I had to buy one and an off cut and glue the 2 together to get the correct size ….. nothing is really straightforward or easy here in Africa, you know ;)

Dutch Supplies Mean Christmas Came Early In Tanzania This Year - Woo Hoo !

Some of the items which arrived in the container from Holland yesterday - it was like Christmas in June !

Every year, the Dutch company which my husband works for very kindly sends us a “stock list” of items which we can order from Holland, which they then purchase on our behalf and ship to us on one of the company containers which comes across the ocean to Tanzania on a regular basis containing seed, chemicals and spares.

This stems back to the days when very little could be purchased in the shops here. Even ten years ago, when we first came here, there were simple things you just could not find – items deemed “luxury” such as sauces, mustards, toiletries, chocolate, fabric softener, breakfast cereals, nappies (diapers). Speaking to people who lived here before that time, I have been told that even toilet paper had to be imported at one stage. Imagine !

It’s very easy to forget those times …. it is just a distant memory to me, when we would go on holiday and return with our suitcases loaded with odd “necessities” such as good quality toothpaste. How much we take for granted now !

The things that we bring back home to Tanzania with us now ? Top of the list (but heavy !) are books, then magazines and DVD’s, CD’s. (My husband and I are both avid readers.)

Next would be make-up & hair products (me, of course !) and quality medicines, clothing, shoes, décor items for our home – curtains, loose rugs, bath towels, lamp shades, throws. Lamp shades & cushions ! Those are things we still cannot get here easily. Especially good quality ones. Oh, and picture hooks – of all things !

Low fat, fat free, sugar free, wholegrain items ? Forget it ! I have a special order for Fat Free Yogurt with a local supplier who imports it from Kenya for me. You can find sugar free jam and artificial sweeteners. But that’s about it.

It breaks my heart that we can’t get rye, whole grain or whole wheat flour in this country – only white ! (I wouldn’t risk ordering that from Holland as it could be on the container for months ??) Boo hoo … maybe times will change, as the country is developing at a rapid rate – the economy is booming and there is lots of foreign investment, and more and more new products and services are appearing every day.

My parents own their own courier business in South Africa – which is very handy, as they have sent us countless parcels of “necessities” over the years. There is a company based in the UK which ships luxury items to Expat’s the world over which we order from about twice a year, too. (I’m addicted to Caramel Snack-A-Jack’s although my husband says they taste like polystyrene – ha ha !) Then, of course, there is Amazon.com – a lifesaver ! (Bless them, they even deliver to remotest Africa … well, the bigger cities at least. It takes around 3 months to receive a parcel - but better late than never !)

So, anyway … back to the luxury items we get from Holland each year. A lot of these items we can get here now, but some (like e.g. good quality shampoo) are supplied erratically. So I usually just like to order these in bulk (a case of 12/24 units at a time). Yesterday our annual “order” arrived and as my husband had to go in to the city to collect urgent farm spares (which were also on the container) he collected our order – and here some of it is sitting on my kitchen table above. So .. do you want to know what was in my order, and why ?

Shampoo and Conditioner (as explained above)
Children’s Toothpaste (erratic supply)
Wet Wipes (we get poor quality ones here, that go moldy once opened?!)
Creamed Honey (local honey is great, but this is extra special !)
French Jams (ditto)
Tinned Liver Pate (YUCK - that’s for my husband. Oh, & a treat for the cats but shhhhhh don’t tell a soul !)
Pickles - Onions, Gherkins and Hot Relish (hard to come by quality ones here)
Kechap Manis (I just wrote about this recently ! I got 2 cases of it today - woo hoo !)
Peanut Satay Sauce (1 kg buckets – I usually make my own but it’s a fiddly job !)
Apple Sauce (for healthier baking options & great winter puds !)
Quality Herbal & Flavoured Teas (difficult to get here)

So, think of me the next time you go to buy shampoo and you have a whole aisle of different types to choose from – and if you ever see a woman standing awestruck and open mouthed in the toothpaste aisle, battling to choose between “Fresh Mint” or “Spearmint” and looking as if she’s just seen a ghost – it’s probably me. On holiday in the civilized world somewhere, rejoicing in the sheer delight of different flavoured toothpastes ;)

How To Get A Discounted Taxi Fare In Tanzania .....

I know the pictures are a little blurred - but he was driving quite quickly ! As with all my photo's, you can click on them to enlarge for a clearer view

On Friday we had another school run day. My husband also had to collect chemicals for the farm from our office in the city, so we went in his Landcruiser pick-up (which is not as comfortable a ride as my car !), dropped my daughter at school and continued on to the city.

On our way in to school - once we were on the main tar road – we happened to get ‘stuck’ behind this local taxi or “Dala Dala” as they are called here. (These taxi’s are almost always overloaded and it is not uncommon to see chickens or a single goat being carried in the back “boot” section aswell.)

In the remoter areas where there are not as many police road blocks (another common sight here in Tanzania), taxi drivers often squeeze as many passengers in as they can (knowing that there are no police around to stop them and make them pay a fine !) and you will often see passengers hanging on to the back or open side door of the taxi, as this chap in the photos above was !

My husband was careful to drive slowly behind this taxi as he said to me “If that guy falls off now, we’ll run him over”. At one stage, the taxi slowed down and the guy hanging on the back let go with one hand, and turned to wave and smile at us. This thrilled my daughter no end (growing up in Tanzania, she thinks that things like this are pretty normal !), and of course we were all laughing and waved back at him. I said to my husband “Goodness, that is so dangerous, why don’t we try and get the taxi to stop and he can jump on the back of our pick-up, it will be so much safer ?” But of course there was no way of doing that.

When it was finally safe to overtake the taxi, the guy once again let go with his right arm (I could see now that he was holding on to a single small black handle fixed above the back window) and waved like mad to us as we passed him, grinning and laughing as he did so. Crazy !

As I said to my husband as we overtook him, I hope that the taxi driver at least gave him a discounted fare for the trip !

(If you’d like to see another crazy photo I took last month of a guy on a bicycle catching a free ride by hanging on to the back of a truck, you can read the blog post I wrote and see that photo here.)

Is There Such Thing .... As A Free Ride ?!

Free wheeling down the main tar road, holding on to the back of a passing truck. (At least he didn't have a basket of chickens on the back of the bike aswell )

Last week, on our way to school we saw a familiar sight on the main tar road, which of course I just had to take a photo of (because seeing really IS believing !)

It’s common here for people on bicycles to catch a ‘free’ ride on the back of a truck (or similar large vehicle) by holding on to a back portion of the truck with one hand, and steering their bike with the other ….. especially when going up a hill, or I suppose when they are just too hot / tired / bored to want to carry on pedaling the bicycle themselves !

So, here is a photo of a young chap who was out early in the morning last Friday, when there was not too much other traffic about. He looked like he didn’t have a care in the world as he happily enjoyed his free ride whilst watching the world go by.

It’s things – and people - like this which make up the ‘spirit’ of this country. It’s sights like this that make me smile, despite the poverty around me.

I suppose, it’s just another one of those ‘indefinable’ things that, despite all her faults, makes me love Africa so much …….

To see another crazy photo taken on the road a few weeks after this one, click here.

Redecorating ... African Style (& a Recipe for Homemade Wallpaper Glue)

The border has stayed put with this homemade, flour based wallpaper glue/paste for over 3 years now - amazing !

I am busy doing some re decorating in the house at the moment. (Or, let’s be honest here – I am supervising Nelson, the painter who is doing all the hard work for me !) My daughter has had a “Peter Rabbit” theme in her bedroom since she was a newborn baby, and I thought is was time to upgrade it a little, seeing as she is now (as she keeps pointing out to me) a “big girl who goes to school without crying”. When I was in South Africa earlier this year, I brought a whole lot of décor items for her room back home with me, as we can’t get stuff like that here easily. You know the sort of thing – linen, curtains, bedcovers, loose rugs, pictures and ornaments. We’ve (the “big girl” & I) decided on a pink and lilac theme of butterflies and fairies. (*Update - you can see photo's of the new room here)

So all I needed to get here, was pink and lilac coloured paint. (Not as easy as it sounds.) This week when in town, I went to one of the local hardware stores to look at their (limited) selection of tinted (coloured) paints. After dodging the beggars outside the shop (it’s in a bad part of town), and vegetable “mama’s” balancing baskets of onions on their heads and harassing me to by a few, I side stepped a man who spat on the pavement (sidewalk) – a common trait of people here – and entered the dimly lit shop (they were in the middle of a power failure), narrowly missing tripping over the display of cheap Chinese generators “Spesial ofer this week only” – which I must say, made me wonder WHY they weren’t, infact, using one during the current power outage).

I finally made it to the service counter, explained what it was I wanted, and was handed a well used booklet of grubby paint swatches to choose from (slightly tricky to see the exact shades with no overhead lighting). Once I chose my colours, my order was shouted through to a back room where a man in a white coat & glasses (thankfully, sans stethoscope) mixed it up for me (once again, slightly tricky with no overhead lighting).

From previous experience, I know that this is usually “hit or miss”. I know that the colour on the swatch will NOT match the colour in the tin exactly. I know that I’d better order enough (and a little bit extra, just in case) because if I return say, one week later, to order some more paint in the exact same colour, I will get a similar ‘version’ of the original shade which won’t match 100%. I know that the colours in the tin are usually a shade or two darker than the swatch sample. So I have learnt, through trial and error, to always order a few shades lighter to get the shade I actually want.

I came home with the paint and Nelson will be starting on my daughter’s room next week, as this week he has been busy re-painting our bedroom and bathroom and part of the veranda.

Anyway, now on to what I was originally going to post about …. wallpaper glue. Wallpaper is not as commonly used in Africa as it is, say, in the UK where most homes you go into have it. Growing up in Zimbabwe, wallpaper was something completely foreign to me ? Living in Tanzania, wallpaper is non existent. So when I came back from the UK in 2003 with a “Peter Rabbit & Friends” wallpaper border for my (then unknown) child’s bedroom in 2003, I was flummoxed as to how I was going to stick it on to the actual wall.

I had a quick look around the local hardware stores and the best I could come up with was “Simba Glue” (“Lion Glue”) which smelt awful and goodness only knows what it contained – did I really want my newborn baby breathing in those toxic fumes ? No. So I set about searching for a homemade wallpaper glue (wallpaper paste) recipe with ingredients I could easily come by, and this ‘recipe’ below is what I found – and it worked a TREAT. The wallpaper border has been stuck firmly to the wall (no lifting, tearing, mould or the like) for over 3 years now. So I highly recommend it. Now the only problem is how to get the jolly stuff OFF the wall for the new “butterflies & fairies” theme. (I’ll let you know !) *Update - it came off perfectly by simply using a sponge and some boiling water, you cannot even see that there was once wallpaper there !*

Non Toxic Homemade Wallpaper (Paste) Glue Recipe:

1 ½ cups white Flour
½ cup Sugar
1 tbsp Alum (a spice I couldn’t find here, so I left it out & it still worked fine)
1 cup cold Water
2 cups boiling Water

Combine the flour & sugar. Slowly add the cold water & mix until there are no lumps. Place mixture in a saucepan over a low heat. Add the boiling water, stirring constantly. Bring the mixture to the boil. When the mixture is stiff, remove it from the heat and add the Alum (I left it out). Store in an air tight container – it keeps for several weeks. If the paste hardens, just soften it by mixing small amounts of warm water into it.

The Meaning of Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro - so many meanings to her name .....

I know this photo of Mt. Kilimanjaro looks similar to one I’ve posted on here before, but it’s actually taken from a completely different spot on the farm to that one. Kilimanjaro can be quite difficult to see, let alone photograph. She is usually only visible clearly in the very early morning, and most times is covered in cloud which moves quite fast, so you can miss her if you’re not quick (or up early) enough !

Many people have come here on safari and not seen her at all – I know it took me 2 years to catch a glimpse of her, but that was when we were living in another part of the country, so those 2 years included the times we traveled to this region (which is the only time we would be able to see her).

This photo was taken on the last stretch of our farm road before we hit the main dirt road leading to ‘civilisation’. In this photo, she is on our right as we are traveling down the road (on an early morning school run !)

I thought that I’d share some interesting facts about Kilimanjaro’s name with you, which I discovered when we first moved to the farm and read up about it.

There are different versions of what the name “Kilimanjaro” actually means. A local Kiswahili translation is “mountain of greatness” or “mountain of water” and it has also been called “mountain of caravans”. I found this fascinating. Caravans ? Whatever for ? (Especially since I have never even seen a caravan in Tanzania !) I went on to learn that some say it was called the “mountain of caravans” because it served as a landmark for caravans which used to travel around looking for slaves. Yes, this country has an awful slave trade history. Really, truly horrible. The reason for that name turned me cold, and made me feel quite sad.

Some say that the name means “demon of the cold”. Snow in Africa is very rare, so I could imagine how Kilimanjaro’s snow could be perceived by some superstitious people back in the day (before TV, radio and books opened our eyes up to the rest of the world) to be ‘evil’ . I have found that to this day, different people have different interpretations for it and likewise, the mountain means different things to different people.

The one thing that makes her really stand out though, is that apart from the fact that she is the tallest free-standing mountain in the world (and, of course, the highest in Africa) she is only three degrees south of the Equator, yet is covered in snow – and that in itself, makes her pretty unique, I’d say !

Tanzanian Tangawizi Bananas (& A Tarangire Story)

These are best served with vanilla ice cream - off a freshly picked banana leaf (pictured) - if you happen to have one handy !

When we first came to Tanzania in 1998, we ran a luxury tented camp in the 2600 sq km Tarangire National Park, which is a beautiful park in the North of the country, known for it’s “forests” of Baobab trees, elephants herds in the hundred’s and birdlife - it has the highest concentration of breeding bird species in the world. (If you’d like to read more about this amazing park, which used to be my home, you can go to the Tanzania National Parks website’s Tarangire page here).

I had the pleasure of working with a local Tanzanian chef there called Mbise and to this day he is hands down, the BEST chef I have ever worked with. Such a talented young man … when our employer went bankrupt we moved on, and Mbise came with us. He is now a first class chef working for one of the top hotel operators in the country, and I am very proud of what he has achieved. I have never – before or since – eaten food as good as his.

Like most chefs, he had a fiery temper and one day him and I came to blows over some trivial thing (living in a tent in the bush for 3 months with no telephones, no TV and no internet will do that to you !) and I was horrified that evening when he ‘got his own back’ on me, by serving me a stew for supper which contained both green pepper AND mushrooms (two things I cannot – will not – eat). Of course he was well aware of this, and when I approached him about it he acted sorry and said it was a mistake, he had “forgotten” – ha … but I knew better !

That was the first and last disagreement we ever had, and we are still in contact 10 years later (and I’m happy to say, no more green peppers or mushrooms have ever come between us !)

Anyway, he used to cook the most amazing banana dessert and it was something – as far as I know – that he had come up with himself one day. It was a great “stand-by” dessert for whenever we had unexpected guests or were low on camp supplies. I wish I had the actual recipe but I don’t, so I have tried to recreate it over the years (just going on my memory of the flavours, and watching him cook it – I’ll have to ask him for it the next time I see him, & post it on the blog) and this is as close a match as I can get ….. the recipe uses fresh ginger which is known as “Tangawizi” in the local Kiswhahili language, so seeing as this is not Mbise’s exact banana recipe, I have re-invented it and named it ‘Tanzanian Tangawizi Bananas” -:


Tanzanian Tangawizi Bananas

1 tbsp Butter
2 tbsp brown Sugar
½ tsp fresh Ginger, finely grated
5 finger bananas, sliced lengthways
½ tbsp fresh Lime (or Lemon) Juice

Melt the butter in a hot pan until foamy, then add the sugar and stir on a lower heat until it has dissolved & becomes like caramel (be careful not to let it burn !) Add the ginger, stir and then add the bananas. Toss the bananas to coat them and keep turning them until they just begin to soften around the edges. Add the lime juice, stir to blend and serve the bananas hot with the caramel sauce poured over them.

These are great served straight off a banana leaf with vanilla ice cream, which melts on contact with the hot bananas – ahhhhh, heaven on earth !