Sights, sounds and first impressions

For those of you who are information junkies I will try and give you some detail about our new life, whilst it is all still new to me. Flying into Dodoma, the landscape is not particularly inspiring; flat, though quite green and with a few rocky outcrops and the occasional hill. The guide books were right, there is nothing to see in Dodoma in terms of things of architectual or cultural interest or really anything beautiful, but at the same time it's fascinating because it's so different to home. In lots of ways it's a run-down, ramshackle town. Nothing is really finished off and the roads are mostly potholed tracks. There always seem to be plenty of people about, not really doing that much and once in a while you come across a duka (small shop) selling oddments. The one just outside our compound, where we went to buy sodas, was selling a few fly covered tomatoes, rather overripe brown bananas and bizzarely, hair extensions. The price for a crate of sodas was 18,000 Tanzanian shillings until we asked for a receipt and the price became 12,000 Tsh!

Going round the market is very interesting, an assault on the senses, in terms of sights, sounds and smells. It's a huge maze of small winding paths with stall after stall piled with fruit, vegetables, spices, rice, flour, nuts and fish. Being one of only about 120 white people in a town of 40,000 makes you really stand out at the market, and as soon as you climb out of your four wheel drive, you are immediately surrounded by beggars and accosted by street traders trying to sell you things. I quickly learnt the Kiswahili for 'not to day, thank you'. The good thing at the market was that I was able to pay a boy to carry all my fruit and veg for me in exchange for 10p and a banana. I was carrying Caleb (buggies are useless in the market), and it was very hot so I was very grateful for the help. In lots of ways it is always a relief to return to the compound and relative obscurity.

The compound is similar to a mobile-home park, or at least that's the closest I can think of to it in the UK. There are about 10 houses - all one storey - with corrugated iron roofs and their own gardens. There is lots of vegetation, banana trees, mango trees and beautiful flowers. The houses are quite nice inside and thankfully quite cool. They all have cement floors dyed red which is actually quite nice to walk on in bare feet. The windows are all screened to stop the mosquitoes getting in and we sleep under mosquito nets at night.

Cooking and cleaning is much harder work. You have to be very vigilant about cleaning up the kitchen because of the heat and the army of bugs and cockroaches that invade if you leave food out for too long. I'm still not sure how much of a buffer zone I have before the invasion occurrs, but I'm not taking any chances. We have fresh milk (straight from the cow) delivered every morning. It's unpasteurised so we have to boil it for 10 mins when it arrives, before putting it in the fridge. We can only use filtered water (even for cleaning our teeth) and everything bought at the market has to be soaked in stuff called Ansi (like Milton) then soaked in filtered water before use. Rice has to be carefully washed to remove all the stones. All the washing dried outside has to be ironed to kill the mango flies that could potentially burrow into your skin. Fortunately it's relatively cheap to hire ladies to help in the house. Mama Alexei came on Thursday and made bread, rolls, fresh tomato soup and did all the ironing. Everything has to made from scratch, including the bread. I impressed myself yesterday by making a passion fruit mousse for pudding!

Well that's enough rambling. I hope that's gives you some idea of what it's like here. I'll try and take some more photos, if I can without being too obvious.