The Rift Valley

We crossed the Kenya-Tanzania border on yet another nine hour bus journey, but with our previous experience we made sure we had the front seats with plenty of leg room and no other people around us. Entering Tanzania from the north, we could see yet more improvement in the road quality, vegetation and housing and had high expectations of the next place on our hit list. Arusha is a small city and is used by most travellers as a base for expeditions around the northern circuit of safaris and mountain treks. We weren’t planning on making any exception to this rule as we were all worked out and really needed some good time off.

Stepping off the bus we were welcomed to a sea of touts all shouting and grabbing us trying to offer a taxi ride, place to stay or safari trip, as if we wanted to go to his office straight after a nine hour bus journey and negotiate a good deal anyway! One guy said “just take my card”, so I did. He then proceeded to ask me where we were going to stay and that we should go with him to his office to talk about his safari packages. I politely thanked him, explained we were very tired and would get in touch with him via his company card if we were interested. He then aggressively said “give me my card back then if you’re not going to come to my office”. That’s how it started and has followed to be quite a common trait of a lot of the natives here; unfriendly and rude, unless they are getting some sort of financial gain from you, and even then it’s not a given. We ended up finding the budget but good value for money Arusha Tourist Centre Inn.

On the streets of Arusha we saw more of what we had seen lots of all around Kenya; odes to Obama. T-shirts, mugs, pens, flags, bus logos, street art- anything that has the potential to be written on had his name on it and it was great to see. His election has given so many of these people a role model better than the average G-unit dope head, and boy are they proud of it. I feel reading his autobiography just before coming out to Africa and actually being here has really given me good insight into his character and motivations and I respect him all the more for it.

We managed to get ourselves onto a last minute discounted safari to the world’s most famous and arguably best safari destinations; the Serengti National Park, Ngorongoro crater and Lake Manyara. We met our safari buddies- two ice cool Hungarian chaps and an extremely annoying and thick as two short planks American girl, who became quite difficult to put up with towards the end. We headed straight for the Serengeti through a variety of terrains ranging from rolling plains of savannah to colourful greenery with our guide and ranger, Cyprian and our personal Chef, Freddie. There we saw all the animals we had seen at Tsavo and more and at a much closer distance. The real gems were the lions stalking a pack of wilderbeast in front of our jeep and a leopard lazing in a sausage tree, with an impala carcass hanging down from an adjacent branch. We camped out in the bush with magnificent lush green landscapes around with giraffes, baboons and impalas grazing in the distance. There was no electricity and whilst in our tents at night, armed with only a pocket torch and trusty Victorinox pen knife, we could hear the sounds of lions and hyenas only meters away. Each early morning Freddie would fix us up some scrumptious fried eggs and fresh tomatoes for the boys with fresh fruit and coffee as a reward for not being eaten by the lions, before heading out on another game drive. On our way to the 20 km wide Ngorongoro crater we stopped off at its rim which offered one of the most spectacular and breath-taking views I have seen in a long time. There we saw many more animals including the endangered black rhino and cheetah and made our way to the often under-rated Lake Manyara, where we saw tree climbing lions and had a very close encounter with a herd of bathing elephants.

On the way back to Arusha, we stopped off at a small Maasai village. The Maasai culture centres around their cattle, which are considered to be sacred, and which provides many of their needs. This includes milk, blood and meat for their diet, and hides and skins for clothing. These people believe that their creator, Ngai has entrusted them with his sacred cattle to own and defend. Therefore they believe they have the right to any cattle they please, whether they ‘belong’ to someone else or not, making it a case of who can defend their cattle best. I guess it is for this reason we found them to be quite hostile and aggressive, but it was interesting to experience their dances, houses and schools.

After returning back to Arusha for a days rest, we set out to do a one day trek a third of the way up Mount Kilimanjaro through forest and moorland. Due to cloudy weather, we only got to see a small part of its famous snow-capped peak but the trek was tiring and rewarding nonetheless.

After all our budget bus journeys we thought we’d splash out a bit and take a luxury coach from Arusha to Dar Es Salaam. It started off very nice with air conditioning and soft reclining seats. I wasn’t feeling too well from the previous night’s episodes of nausea and vomiting and eventually settled myself into a comfortable sleep three hours into our eleven hour journey. I feel Hiba’s hand tap me on the shoulder and I begin to wake up. I here her say “Hubi, I feel sick”. Before both my eyes have fully opened she proceeded to vomit last night’s dinner and breakfast all over me and my seat! I shouted “Does anyone have a plastic bag?!?” to be met with stone cold and confused faces as if I was talking a different language. Oh wait, I was! So in a panic I said “A7had enda kees?” which brought even more confusion when I realised I was speaking Arabic! While all this was going on, poor old Hiba was continuing to vomit half her insides out onto my seat until I finally managed to get her a bag and some tissues, when she managed to stop vomiting, look up at me with a smile a say “I feel much better now”. Having to wait fifteen minutes drenched from head to toe in vomit until we got to the next service station, we quickly got cleaned up and fully changed into clean clothes before making our way back onto the cleaned bus to continue our remaining eight hours to Dar Es Salaam.

When we arrived in the busy and well developed port of Dar Es Salaam, we decided to indulge in a bit of luxury for all our sufferings and spent a couple of nights in a Penthouse suite overlooking the harbour with a Jacuzzi, WiFi and plasma screen to suit. We might get sick more often!

Our plans are to spend New Year’s on Zanzibar Island before heading out to Malawi for more work.

Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year

Marwan

Travelling Teacher

Mombasa......what a place. I only have to take a look at a few photographs and the words are racing through my head in competition to get out on paper. This place is like no other; it has an incredible charm and is brimming with things to do. Despite the sub-optimal living conditions in the village (no running water for three days, cold showers, cockroaches, poor mattress and small living space) we’ve found ourselves to be so happy and at peace with the place’s bustling yet laidback nature. The heat was close to unbearable for the first few days with not only the scorching temperatures of 35-40° to deal with but also the immense humidity, which hangs heavy in the air, making it difficult to breathe at times. However despite our claims that the weather seems to have cooled slightly, we’re told by the locals that there’s been no change and it’s simply that we’re getting used to it. It’s not all bad though; whenever the heat is getting to us Khamis is always ready to scurry up a palm tree and throw down some coconuts, crack them open for us and let us sip the cool, refreshing juice of the madafu and then scoop out the soft, sweet inside, Mmmm!

Whilst at the Khadija Centre I have found myself to be useful not only as a dentist but also as a teacher at the school. A few times a week, I would take class six (11-13year olds) and teach them English and Maths in preparation for their end of term exams. When exam time came, I was responsible for marking their English papers and was impressed by both the standard of teaching and the pupils’ motivation and aspirations to learn. It was a very rewarding and eye opening experience and the children welcomed me with a special “Senorita” applause-highly entertaining!

Where there’s sun, there is sure to be sand and that’s certainly true for the beautifully sanded beaches of the Swahili coast. When staying in Mombasa at the weekends there’s only a single string of top end Mazungo-filled beach resorts between us and the sunny shores of the Indian Ocean. It’s a fantastic place to relax and catch the sea breeze.

It’s also not a bad spot for some souvenir shopping and once you’ve shown even just a flicker of interest, you’re bound to buy from them and nothing will come in their way. Even when we had no money on us, we managed to walk away with handfuls of woodwork which we hadn’t paid for-“I’m here till 6pm” the man said, “I trust you”. And so it was, as wrong as it felt, we actually took a load of goods home having agreed on a price but not paid a penny. Perhaps they know how to judge their customers because the guilt couldn’t keep us away for long and we soon went back to pay our debts!

One of the highlights of our trip here has been meeting some wonderful people, in particular the Fazel family who have become amazing friends to us and with whom we’ve shared many wonderful Kenyan experiences. We met them on our first visit to the Khadija Centre since Adel Fazel’s construction company is due to be involved in the expansion of the masjid there. We hit it off with their two young sons Atif and Mazin and accepted their kind invitation to join them for lunch the next weekend. Never had we been greeted by such immense hospitality. They picked us up from the house and took us around with them to stop for drinks, visit the Bombolulu Cultural Centre and workshop, enjoy a Chinese lunch, visit the children’s art display at school including Afreen’s (their daughter) stunning masterpiece of a rural village scene. We spent the afternoon at the impressive historical monument of Fort Jesus, with a guided tour around the grounds saturated with historical facts from the kids and sipped tangfastic lime juice on the fort walls looking out to sea. We then retired to their lovely home for a good old home made Pilau dinner in the garden. The night ended with an artistic take as we all sat round the table drawing and sketching and sharing our creative skills. (It turns out Adel, Asma and the children are all very talented artists). Asma and Adel’s generosity didn’t stop there. They were there for our every call, from DHL shipping enquiries to Safari and hotel bookings; they had a solution to our every query and went out of their way to arrange things for us including the best short stay safari package around! (Thank you Asma)

And so the very next weekend we were off to the Tsavo East National Park for a two day safari, eagerly in wait of seeing something far from tame. Having spent the Friday night at the Fazel’s after our dinner with them at Island Barbeque, we enjoyed an early family breakfast before being collected by our empty air conditioned Southern Cross Safari bus which drove us the two and a half hour journey up towards the Tsavo. We met our safari buddies Ruth, an English girl from Melbourne and Gabby, a Dutch travel agent who was on safari as part of work! (Lucky lady) On arriving at the park we were met by the most impressive of the vehicles available, our own open air land rover which took us on the first game drive as we made our way to the tented camps at Satao. It didn’t take long for us to spot our first sighting of some buffalo grazing under a tree only five to ten minutes into the park. And from there it began, the “stop” and “wait” every time “something brown” was spotted across the savannah. From waterbucks to eagles, Thomson gazelles to zebras, ostriches to hartebeests, we managed to see so many of the Tsavo’s inhabitants all on our journey to our new found haven amongst the wilderness. As we pulled up to the camp we were shown the twenty tents and waterhole before being greeted with a glass of fresh watermelon juice. After a quick familiarisation with our tent we reconvened with our buddies under the Tamarind tree for a sumptuous outdoor buffet lunch, before heading out again in the afternoon for a second game drive which was to be the most promising of them all. On this venture we saw everything from hippos to giraffes, elephants and lions; we even managed to spot a cheetah up on a termite mound prying on some hartebeest, which we were told was a very lucky sighting. The sun set as we made our way back to camp for a BBQ lit dinner before getting an early night in preparation for the sunrise game drive the next morning which brought us into closer proximity with some of the animals we’d seen the day before. After breakfast, we made a regretful drive back to the park gates along with Ruth to be met by our bus which sadly brought an end to our magical adventure in the wild as it drove us back to the unfortunate reality of sun, sand and sea!

An Enchanted Island

I write this on the enchanted island of Lamu, my feet dipped in the soft shallow current of the Indian Ocean on a white sandy deserted beach. As I look out the night sky is scattered with shiny shimmering stars on a backdrop of a full moon, lighting the vast ocean that lays before me with wooden dhows slumped in the calm waters like a ghost ship graveyard. All I hear is the sound of the waves slap against the shore and the odd donkey shriek echo down the narrow white stone washed alleyways and bazaars behind. Time has cleaved its way past here, leaving a gap of serenity. A highlight of our trip.

Getting to this slice of paradise was certainly not a heavenly experience. We took the economic option of the bus; an old rusty dirty un-oiled machine, packed full of sweaty smelly people and a conductor who looked like he was certainly not competing to be crowned ‘employee of the month’ in December 2009. The first four hours were spent sat next to a young guy who I was convinced had ants his pants due to the number of times he kept changing his position; but this was bearable. The road for the next two and half hours was not meant to be driven down, especially by a bus. A narrow dirt track with so many pot holes I would regularly be lifted off my seat into the sweaty body of the man sat next to me as the driver pretended he was driving in a rally car race.

Approaching the island on a speed boat felt like something out of a bond movie, giving me the expectation I would be greeted at the other side with a dry martini; shaken, not stirred. As we came closer, our lenses focused past the salty sea water spray to the harbour at the forefront of Lamu. The harbour was a busy place with fisherman bringing in the days catch, seamen unloading cargo and the good-old donkeys peering into the action from the sides, optimistically awaiting a fish to fall loose, some free potatoes or even just a dirty old sack to chew on. We were staying at a lush hotel in Shela, the cleaner and uptown partner to Lamu and had managed to get a great discount from knowing a friend of the owner back in Mombasa. Our days in Shela melted together like one long dream we didn’t want to wake up from, lazing through the narrow alleyways, bazaars and deserted beaches. From our hotel room we could see out onto the sea front and there were lots of tiny private islands dotted around us, so one day we took a boat out to one of them and spent the day on a small stretch of beach with no-one in sight for miles around us. As the tide rose, the island slowly began to disappear until the whole island was totally submerged in the sea and we were left perched on some rocks sticking out of the water, waiting for our boat ride home to come and pick us up! Back on the coast we enjoyed a plethora of fresh seafood delights from crab to lobster to fish and shrimp.

Back in Mombasa, we made a visit to a local drug rehabilitation centre and got to meet some of the patients there. Lots of these guys get into gangs and hard drugs and eventually make their way to prison, hospital or the morgue. The ones who survive and want to reform enter a four month rehabilitation programme with daily timetables of meditation, discussion, sports and household tasks and trained counsellors speak to them on an individual level. It was a real eye opener and great to see the effort being put into helping these guys out. Our work at the Khadija centre finally came to an end and we were sad to say goodbye to all the children and staff we had met and become good friends with. We tried our best to improve the functionality of the medical facility as well as seeing patients at the clinic. There was a large variety of illnesses seen with a few emergency cases and I had to call on Hiba’s wrath to pull some infected teeth out of a few occasions! I’m feeling an immense sense of gratitude for the medical training I’ve had in the UK as it is managing to help me adapt to the differing situations I’m coming across in terms of medical knowledge, teamwork, leadership and most importantly communication.

We wished to spend Eid in Mombasa as we were told it would be very special, starting with Eid prayers at 8am. At 7.55 we got up and rushed to the local mosque to find that they had already prayed at 7am! Unlike our local mosque in Manchester, where they have a second round of prayers for the late comers like ourselves, by 8am they had finished and were going back to work (!). We ended up praying on our own in our house which was a first, but luckily we were invited out to some friends house for dinner.

We head out to Tanzania next week...

Marwan

Mombasa, Kenya with Doctors Worldwide at the Khadija Centre

doctorsworldwide.org

khadijacentre.org

Coconut, mango, papaya, pineapple, banana, orange, apple, tamarind, melon – all the fruits of the tropics are here and they’re ours to devour!

We arrived in Mombasa to be very warm and humidly welcomed at the airport by Mohammed Mapapa, a friend and partner of doctors worldwide, the charity we are working with during our time here. As we arrived late on Friday night, we were told that we would be spending the night at his house before making our way to the Khadija Centre. We were expecting him to live in a small cramped house, offering us a single bed to share in a sweaty room; this couldn’t have been further from the truth. His car pulled up to the gates of his house which was draped by coconut trees and a guard opened the door, revealing what looked like a hotel with private swimming pool to suit. After acquainting ourselves with our lovely room with a four poster bed cooled by a fan and air conditioning, we made our way down to the grand dining table carved from solid wood. We were greeted by the Chef, named Safari who has massive dread locks tied together, lifted up and put in a white hat to make him look like he’s wearing a chef’s hat! We were treated to a fantastic homely meal which was a far cry from our deceased Rosemary friend.

The next day we walked to the picture-perfect white sandy shores of Nyali beach, with few people around except for the annoying local beach boys, who will do anything to chat to you and offer a boat ride, snorkelling session or water sports. We resorted to making out that we had come straight from Iraq and couldn’t speak a word of English, which worked a treat, probably because they thought we had explosives wired underneath our t-shirts! One man said that we were the first tourists from Iraq he had ever seen in Mombasa! We took a boat and sailed out to the coral reef to snorkel with the marine life, which was moderately impressive.

We later met with Mr Faisel Sherman, founder of the Khadija Centre- a school in a very remote, rural and poor area called Rabai, about an hours drive from Mombasa. He is a charismatic businessman who originates from Yemen but spent most of his life in Mombasa. His family moved to London about seven years ago so that their youngest son could complete his education, and this is where they currently reside. Faisel took us in his air-conditioned car and did a whistle-stop car tour of Mombasa, pulling over at various sites to breathe in the air and smell the spices. There is a deep charm to Mombasa, which is a mix of African fun and laziness, Indian spices and textiles and Arabic foods and language. Walk down the Jasmine-scented streets with fireflies lighting your path, gaze into the crystal clear start-lit sky and smile as you crack open a coconut and drink it’s sweet juice. The majority of Indians here are powerful businessmen and are the ones in the fancy cars and big houses. We stopped off on a cliff overlooking the Indian Ocean, where we ate deep-fried fresh Casava crisps with chilli and lime juice. Later that night Faisel invited us to his brothers house where we were served with a slap-up Kenyan meal followed by spicy Masala tea.

The next morning we made our way to the Khadija Centre and were welcomed by the bubbly and motherly Mama Hawa (Mother of Hawa; Eve), local manager of the Khadija Centre. She looks after us in every way possible, cooking us meals and making sure we settle in well. The centre is a very impressive, purpose-built complex with classrooms, offices, a mosque, teacher’s accommodation and a medical clinic, surrounded by acres of coconut palm and mango trees. The clinic is very basic and is usually run by Fernando, a retired nurse (clinical officer) with a background of obstetrics and gynaecology and serves the children at the school and all the people in the surrounding village (around 4,000). The nearest hospital is about an hour away on a terrible dirt track road and the majority coming to the clinic are extremely poor and cannot afford to get there anyway. This leaves a massive amount of responsibility on the clinic and the lone clinical officer running it, so Doctors Worldwide regularly send doctors from the UK there to support the clinic and improve its service and operation. Clinics run all day from Monday to Friday and cases typically seen include simple malaria, viral and bacterial infections and administration of childhood vaccinations. I was initially surprised to see mothers freely and openly breast-feed their children anywhere, be it during my examination of their child to quiet them down or in the waiting room! Someone has recently kindly donated a light microscope to the clinic so we’re taking blood samples and checking for malaria using thick films and have seen quite a few cases already.

The palm trees scattered all around the area are full of coconuts and whenever we want to drink their sweet juice or eat their soft flesh, we ask a man called Khamees (meaning Thursday) to climb up the tree and get us some. He would climb up the thirty foot palm tree with his bare hands and feet with no support and chop them down for us. Or there are the fresh mangos, papaya or any number of delicious fruits to delve into - simply divine!

It was very easy picking up the language with the local lads, I simply got a football out and off we started getting to know each playing footy on the slanted, cow-pat infested, crater mine field pitch. Just keeping the ball at your feet was difficult enough with all the natural obstacles never mind the players!

To get into town we take a Matatu which is a microbus that evidently has no maximal capacity. Hosting about fifteen seats, we have been on when at times there are some twenty-five people squeezed into every crevice, sitting on imaginary seats or on the window ledge, with the bus going at ridiculous speeds doing crazy manoeuvres it’s a miracle we’re still alive. Once we’re dropped off in town, we hop on a Tuk Tuk which is a cross between a bicycle with a motor and chasse and Brum from the children’s TV show. These guys weave in and out of the traffic taking short cuts down tiny alleyways and places vehicles certainly aren’t built to go down. But it’s all good fun in the spirit of Mombasa!

This weekend we plan on going on Safari in the Tsavo, can’t wait.

Marwan

Time's up in Ethiopia, the herds have moved on.....Next Stop: Mombasa, Kenya!

There Goes Ethiopia……

The two weeks following the departure of the surgeons left us with the responsibility of looking after the patients who had had operations, some of whom required more attention than others. It is truly remarkable to see how the patients coped with the aches and pains of the days following their surgery, a great ordeal within itself for anyone, let alone some of the young and lonely children/adolescents who had travelled alone, across the country for days to a strange and unfamiliar place. In addition to the dressing changes and wound care, moral support and reassurance was what they needed most, and there wasn’t much that a generous amount of TLC couldn’t fix. However the language barrier did present us with some challenges with the explanation and reassurance side of things. Then came the farewells. Day by day we were reviewing each patient and assessing their recovery in lieu of their fitness to return home. Along with Dawit, we arranged for them to return to their villages, sometimes in groups so that they wouldn’t be travelling alone, or along with their guardians who had come to collect them. Saying goodbye was a happy-sad affair. There was a reluctance to see them leave after having spent so much time getting to know them, yet simultaneously a huge deal of pleasure in seeing them fit, well, transformed in some cases, all happy to be able to go back home. As the patient numbers began to decrease from the original forty down to the current remaining six, the work at the Cheshire took less and less of our time. Following the daily morning round we often found the afternoons free for us to wander around the hillside, or take a ride into town, or as became our popular choice explore the surroundings on horseback.

We came to know of Eve, an English guy living in Ethiopia who owned some stables on the Cheshire premises. Since this was so convenient and easy to arrange we went out for hours trekking through forests, jumping over streams, galloping through fields. With Jigsaw and Polly as our noble steeds, we soaked up the sun and immersed ourselves in the beautiful highs and lows of the hills and valleys surrounding us. On route we spotted hoards of magnificent African fish eagles by a semi dried reservoir in the fields, as well as ibises and a mongoose.

Ethiopia has been a very pleasurable and hospitable host to us over the past six weeks. Our experience here has been unique in many ways and the links and ties we’ve made here are strong and sure to last. The people we have met have been so broad in their lifestyles from local Ethiopians to foreign aid workers or foreigners who have married and settled amongst Ethiopians, all of whom have inspired us in their own way. The lessons we have learned from the way of life here have taught us to appreciate the lifestyles we have back home and that we have much to be thankful for in way of opportunities and potential. Most of all it is a reminder that wherever you go, although life may not always be fair, it is still a life worth living.

Hiba