Things to cook on a 2-burner stove #3

Banana and currant pikelets

Stir together

1 ½ cups plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

3 heaped dessertspoons raw sugar

3 heaped dessertspoons full cream milk powder

1 tsp cinnamon

Mash 3 small bananas (~ ½ cup) and mix in 1 egg.  Mix into dry ingredients.  Slowly stir in ¾ cup water to which you have added 1 tsp vinegar. 

(The batter should be ‘pikelet’ consistency so don’t add all the water at once and use your judgement.)

Stir in ¼ cup dried red currants.

Cook dessertspoonfuls in a hot butter-greased frying pan, about 2 mins each side, until risen and cooked through.

We had dinner at the Yaasila Hotel last night to admire the ‘super moon’. In Tanzania it is being suggested that this super moon may bring on the ‘big rain’, which is now overdue – a big problem (shida kubwa) following the failure of the ‘little rain’. The sky was still cloudy after a very rainy day (see, it’s working all ready!) but was an impressive sight nevertheless.

[The barge you can see in the picture just washed up several years ago, no-one seemed to know from whence, and is now used by the local boys as a swimming and fishing pontoon.]

Tanzanians on the whole are superstitious people.  The biggest news out of Tanzania currently is regarding a retired Lutheran cleric near Arusha who is selling a potion that he claims will cure cancer, AIDS, diabetes and high blood pressure among other things.  The price is moderate – Tsh500/= a cup (around 35 cents) but you have to travel to his village to get it. [Read the story here.]

A friend was telling us that donations are being solicited in her work place to fly a dying colleague from Kagera to Arusha so he can be ‘cured’.  What would you do?  Here you would just pay up, knowing it’s a donation to Precision Air.

On the work front it’s been a very slow week but with all the signs that work life could become frantic at any moment.

The BRDC officers who told me several weeks ago that they would take care of the logistics for the new seminars that had been to begin on March 7^th are nearly there with their budget and planning and we may be ‘good to go’ on March 28^th with twice the number of training days originally planned and at less cost to the BRDC.  I may have to run workshops on topics I’m less familiar with – writing Schemes of Work and Lesson Plans – but I have this coming week to sort it out.  I think in the current plan I will have the best of the teachers from ‘my’ wards to help and that they will get some financial recognition of their extra work.  It’s looking like a win for everyone.

On Thursday I mentioned I’d also been working on a practice exam for this year’s Standard VII, converting one I’d written to the new multiple choice format.  “Yes, that will be good.  We’ll do the mock exam for the District on April 1^st”  - not an April Fool Joke but I think I can be ready.  Steve has done the proof reading on the english language version and checking of answers and I have discovered that under the security arrangements thought necessary I will now have to shoot him!  The office will proof read the kiSwahili version.

So all is going well.  The data I have just prepared for a VSO-DFID review says in the 7 months we have been here I have directly influenced 211 teachers and education managers and through them a further 292 teachers and 15,569 children.  [ We will have a meeting with the review team this week too, so it’s lucky time is so elastic! ]  And the next few weeks should boost these numbers as we move out into more wards of the Bukoba rural District.


A post script to last week's blog - we evidently left the hospital opening too early - there was music, dancing and speeches.  Maybe that cheered-up PM Pinda!

Lately I have been thinking about the arbitrariness of life in Tanzania.  Why do things happen the way they do?  Who makes the decisions and why?

Today we went to the official opening, by the Prime Minister of Tanzania, of a refurbished hospital at Izimbya.  The hospital is owned jointly by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT) and the Bukoba Rural Council.  It is close to Josiah’s shamba so it was an opportunity for us to visit his family and for him to avoid a crowded minibus ride home.  We visited Josiah’s 80 year old mother and talked to some of her grandchildren including one, a human rights lawyer, who is visiting home between finishing work in Geneva and starting a project in Jamaica.

We came to the opening expecting loud music, traditional dancing and long speeches.  There was none of that!  The PM, Mizengo Pinda, walked around the complex, with the local ELCT Bishop, talking to employees, clients and lookers-on.  He cut the ribbons without fanfare.  I don’t know how he felt about the gifts of bananas, dried fish and a goat.

I was standing with a group of ladies who had brought their babies to be vaccinated.  He shook my hand, and then chatted to the ladies standing near me.  It was all very calm and relaxed.  The police who were with him also looked calm and relaxed.  We chatted to the cameraman from the Tanzanian Broadcasting Corporation who was travelling as part of the PM’s retinue about how stable Tanzania is compared with much of Africa.  This is a nation with much to be proud of and thankful for!  And the people of Izimbya, including Jenny (below) have a beautiful new clinic and hospital that they can now officially use.

Yesterday, unannounced, a pile of printed documents appeared on Josiah’s desk.  They were from the Examinations Board of Tanzania announcing a change in the format of the Standard VII National exams.  All are to be entirely multiple choice.  There was no consultation and no warning, at least in this part of the republic, that this decision was likely.  It means the Practice Exam in my book is less useful as a trial exam and I will have to rewrite the exam I had written for my Wards in the new format.  Teachers have 5 months to prepare themselves and their pupils for this unexpected change.  I can understand the reasons – easier marking and instant improved perceived performance (with A, B, C & D to choose from each candidate should at least get 25%!)  It will now look as if my efforts have improved standards; whether there is improved learning will be harder to judge.  I don’t know if anyone thought about the increased cost to schools of printing the inevitably longer revised exam format.

Over the last week or so someone has been busy in Bukoba with a spray can of red paint.  Every second shop or dwelling, some quite new and substantial, on the two main roads has a large red X and the word BOMOA painted on the front wall.  ‘Bomoa’ means demolish.  Someone, probably in Dodoma, Tanzanian’s capital, has decided to enforce a law about how close a fence or building can be to a main road. 

Immigration Office

Now many buildings, including the Magereza Club (Prison Bar) and the Immigration Office are slated to be removed!  So far no demolition has occurred and we have heard that the people affected are planning to fight the decision - it’s a bit crook when overnight you can lose your home or business because a law changed after you built it.  It’s also a bit silly as most of the buildings are not a danger to the flow of traffic (the traffic manages to be a danger without any help from the buildings!) and the economy cannot afford to rebuild perfectly serviceable buildings.  It will be interesting to see what happens next.

Lina's Night Club - where will the public phone go if the fence is demolished?

First, news on my book.

I picked up the first 100 this afternoon.  They look great!  Eight went to Katoke Teacher Training College for the library and the Mathematics Tutors, the rest came home with me.

I was proudly admiring my great work and (Oh no, minor swearing) discovered a mistake – entirely mine – in one of the puzzles.  Tomorrow Steve and I will fix 92 books, just a minor change of a 1 to an 11 and a 34 to a 44, using correction fluid and a black biro.  Sheila, Librarian at Katoke, will fix the other eight!  When I pick up the remaining 900 I will organise a working bee among my friends here to fix them all too.

I have written a new book – it only took a morning and is illustrated in colour!  I hope it won’t have any errors.

It is drawn on the back of old calendar pages – I hope it will give teachers some ideas of their own on counting books that they and the children can make together.

Second, our do-it-yourself safari to Serengeti.

It was a loooong drive from Bukoba to Speke Bay around the southern end of Lake Victoria – 10 hours!  It was worth it though as we saw new countryside and villages with customs different to what we are used to.  We saw donkey carts for the first time in Tanzania, and many more girls on bicycles (Isabelles) than we are used to seeing.  The bikes are mostly men’s bikes with a bar and the women are mostly wearing ankle length skirts so it is very awkward.

Speke Bay Lodge was as enjoyable as the first time around and we saw many familiar faces.  We hope to visit again before we head home in July.

Gonolek - Some birds don't make it easy!

Serengeti NP had all the animals we wanted to see – pictures attached – but none of the infrastructure we’d expected.  The western corridor anyway is totally undeveloped – it is nothing like Kruger NP!  The map we bought was useless to the point of being dangerous if you expected to use it to know where you were.  The ‘highlight’ was watching around a dozen 3 – 4 metre crocodiles rip apart a wildebeest who had ventured down to their pool for a drink.  The brutality and power of the crocodiles rolling was amazing to us though the hippo who was sharing the quite small pool looked like he’d seen it all before!

Dinner time

I love zebras too!

The baby zebras are quite brown.

Tanzanian Red-billed Hornbill

Many antelope

This Secretarybird was not cooperating

They are still tall when sitting

Spotted Hyena

Brutal thorns

And Around Mwanza

Cattle & goats

Mwanza Rocks

The next bus had 'Tehran' on the back!

No trains to worry about!

Traffic chaos 

Peaceful village