Biology Graffiti

Graffiti, Hurumzi St, Stone Town

I love this. Chalked on to the outer wall of a local school. There used to be a mitosis part but I think they cleaned it. But this little gem survived :)

Swahili 101: Cooking With Trees

My colleagues are incredibly kind.

I was trying to explain that we only have one burner on our stove, so sometimes the guys use the outdoor kitchen, i.e. a sandy patch where you set fire to some sticks and end up with cooked food. i.e. wanapikia kuni. 

What I actually said was they cooked with trees. Basically tantamount to pyromaniacal koalas, or dragging a few big trees together, setting them on fire and trying to cook.

Ah bless her soul, she didn't even laugh. Unlike me when someone told me if you keep cats inside their leaves will fall out all over the carpet.

You know how they say don't play with your food?

I don't really care about that ;)

Making kachori on Urojo Day.

Happy kachori mix (mashed potato, lime juice and a hint of chilli)

Kachori kasa! (Kasa=turtle)

The final product :)

Your Horoscope for today: The Bucket.

Sorry to all you Aquarians out there, but I have some bad news:

Your star sign is The Bucket.

Don't believe me? Here's proof.

Stars column in Nipashe, a popular Tanzanian newspaper

Ndoo=bucket in Swahili.

So apparently yesterday was a good day for Buckets to reflect on what they had done in the past.

Other star signs' translations make more sense: a lion for Leo, scales for Libra, a crab for Cancer.. I suppose buckets can hold water though, so close enough.

But gee whiz, the 60s and 70s might have been a whole lot different if it was the dawning of the Age of the Bucket. And if the command module for the Apollo missions was called "Bucket" I can't imagine the astronauts would have been quite so keen to clamber on in regardless of how many test pilots they tried to get involved.

Peace out!

Running for the bus

Usually I'm not one for daladalas. Being squashed into a 10 x 4 foot truck tray with 24 strangers just doesn't do it for me, and I get cranky when I can't feel my legs.

Daladala after the crowd had thinned out a little

Wednesday it was worth catching a daladala though for this quirky little observation:

These guys were hanging off the back of the bus. About 20m shy of the police station, they get off and start walking. 20m after the roadblock, the bus stops, and the guys you thought were getting off start running :) Some days the conductor decides to take a leak. After the other blokes get on, the driver forgets about his mate and starts driving off.

And that's how Zanzibaris train for track and field.

Despite the entertainment, when they tried to convince me to get out of an almost empty daladala 10 minutes from home and back into a sardine can, I couldn't do it. And that's how my 45 minute walk home turned into a 2 hour walk home :)

Glossary

Daladala: local bus. Apparently they "never get full". You can catch an actual bus with a strict 25%-ish overcrowding limit ;)

Reasons to love live-in in-laws #2

This is what I woke up to this morning:

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you: it's a clean sink! And I didn't have to lift a finger!

Lately I've defied my old Kingaroy ways and been the kind of person who *gasp* does their dishes straight after dinner.

Last night, I tried, but got told to relax.

Ahh I have an awesome shemegi!!!

Glossary:

Shemegi: brother-in-law

Chocolate coffee beer! Woo!

Zanzibar is known for men sitting around drinking tiny cups of local coffee on street corners. Dig a little deeper and you'll hear people from Unguja drink coffee, people from Pemba drink tea.

Turns out both are redundant.

Meet Malti. Non-alcoholic "malt drink" soda. The brown one is coffee flavoured. Or more specifically, mocha.

Like any Aussie, I have a cultural attachment to the smell of beer. But I just can't get past the alcohol flavour. Give me Maison over Moët any day, and I'll have a vodka and pineapple juice without the vodka please! 

Here we have basically chocolate flavoured fake beer. With a hint of coffee. I think at least part of the fake is because alcohol is haram, verboten, against the rules in Islam. And the guy who owns the big non-coke soda (/dairy/ferry/flour/football/juice) company was originally Zanzibari, apparently, and this archipelago, like my other favourite archipelago, is 90% Muslim.

Chocolate coffee beer has cousins:

Malti pineapple: probably too much pineapple fanta, not beery enough..

Malti Apple: for those "real men" - more beery than Malti GingerLime and Malti Coffee combined!

So we have options. But give me chocolate coffee beer any day.

Ah... Life is good!!

Peace out <3

You can buy what?? Episode 2 (episode 1 to come: hey, it worked for George Lucas)

Sometimes I wonder what kind of customer vibe I give off.

Today a man decided to try to help me learn about Islam by me buying a book. His book of choice: it seemed to be about the significance and interpretation of menstrual fluid in Islam. There's a book for that??? And I need it today why???

I mean, props to celebration of the goddess and all that, and with my deepest respect for religion, but... I didn't think I came across as the sort of person who needed that book. 

But then again, I did earn the Bimbo Bag :)

And I didn't even notice I was carrying a tramp stamp on my shoulder ;)

And the odd thing is, now I've thought about it, I'm kind of interested to see what it says.

Maybe I am the sort of person to read a Muslim guide to the moon goddess type book. Hrmm... I can feel a book review brewing.. ;)

Zanzibari Life Hacks #1: keeping meat fresh in a fridge-free world.

We've lived the last 6 months without a fridge. It's honestly not so bad: we buy veggies every couple of days, something meaty for the boys every day, nothing to it.

But how do you keep meat fresh? It's tropical, and the best markets are 3 hours away by the time you wait for the bus and walk each way.

Well, here's the secret:

My seat mate's solution to the refrigeration issue.

No worrying about meat going off on the way home; just butcher when ready! I think she'd keep for a good few days if you decided to have exotic aquarium fish or octopus instead. 

'Drive through' dead exotic reef fish and octopi at Kinyasini

It seems obviously really, although I can't see this catching on at Woolies any time soon ;)

Incidentally, I saw some cute chooks today on the road to the bus stop. Why did the chickens cross the road?

The road to Hamburu (the daladala station/bus stop) with our local shops in the background.

There's a Fort at the end of our street...

The view looking down our street

We're lucky enough at the moment to have two places in Zanzibar: the house with the 1 minute walk to the beach and gorgeous breezes, and an apartment in the heart of town.

For those of you who know where I've place in town with you it might seem obvious. But it was only a couple of weeks ago that I realised:

There's a fort at the end of our street. A FORT!!!

With like, brick walls and turrets and stuff, that's older than all the mzungu stuff in Australia. 

To backtrack, I spent the last few years in the peanut (and navy bean) capital of Australia. The last two years in particular, I had a backyard view of arguably the most iconic structures in the district: the peanut silos. 

At home in Oz with my awesome view of the silos.

At the end of my street were the peanut roasting sheds. When the roast is on, half the town smells like peanut butter. Depends on the wind direction and stuff I suppose. I love peanut butter!! So I was pigs in mud, in love with my awesome spot within sight of the silos and smell of the sheds.

Fast forward 6 months...

So, at the end of our street in Stone Town (Shangani, where the port and hotels and city tour and Persian baths and slave market and cathedrals are) is the Old Fort. It was built on the site of a former Portuguese church and later used to defend against the Portuguese, hold prisoners, that kind of thing, at the end of the 17th century. Nowadays it's a cultural and heritage site, home to festivals and markets and traditional music that floats in through our bedroom windows some evenings. 

As if that wasn't enough, when I look out the windows next to the door to the apartment, I see... Not just the neighbors washing lying on the roof, but, The House of Wonders: the Beit al-Ajaib.

The Beit el-Ajaib

To put this in context, this building has actual cannons out the front of it. Fat lot of use they were, cos in 1896 it was the site of one of the shortest wars in history (38 minutes, apparently: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Zanzibar_War). It was called the House of Wonders in part because it was the first building in Zanzibar to have electricity (I'd make a cheeky comment about electricity in Africa except we've been pretty lucky lately with power and I don't want to jinx it, touch wood). Anyway, it's a special building. A harem used to live there! Then it was a museum. Right now it's the backdrop to scenic roof-laundry pending repairs:

Our neighbours' laundry

From the roof you can see the ocean, the fort, the harem house and Forodhani Gardens simultaneously.

Turn 180 degrees and you'll see the rooftop restaurant of the hotel I booked to stay in 4 months before meeting and deciding to get married to my Mr Aussiebarian, who had a place literally 30 seconds walk from my hotel (we met in Nungwi, before I knew this, though):

And here I thought peanut silos were impressive :) (I still do!! I'll always be a nut who's 'bean' to Kingaroy :) ) but I can't help but think the fort wins :)

Any opinions?

Cathedral, Mosque and I think a mobile phone tower...

Oops! Mitandio fail!

Glossary:

Mzungu: white person. Strictly speaking, you would say "wazungu" for plural, but in our version of kiswa-english it's easier to leave the prefixes alone.

Mitandio: headscarf

Shemegi!! Reasons to love live-in in-laws #1

Recently my brother in law came to see if he would like to be our watchman at home. Enslaving your younger siblings (including cousins, extended family, in-laws, etc) appears to be a Zanzibari tradition I am yet to fully wrap my head around. But if Shemegi Aussiebarian is typical, they are worth their weight in gold.

Reason 1 to love your live-in in-laws: cooking!!!

They can teach you how to make deliciousness like this:

Saturday's Urojo Day feast :)

NB: Urojo Day isn't an official holiday, but hey, let's start a trend: every last day of May I can cook urojo in memory of the first time I learnt to cook Urojo, King of Zanzibari food :)

Home-made urojo... I think I'm obsessed..

And they cook dinner!

Rice and mchuzi wa mbatata

Nom!!!

Asante sana bwana shemegi!!!!

Glossary:

Shemegi: brother in law. Also applies to cousins and close friends of husbands, or wives of siblings in certain circumstances.

Brother: also applies to first cousins.

Mchuzi: sauce/vegetables in sauce

Mchuzi wa mbatata: potato sauce

Asante sana: thank you very much. See the bird in The Lion King.