"Self Contained"!

Driving into work this morning i came across a hand painted sign board that read :

"3 BR for rent.
S/Contained."

I chuckled! It reminded me of when i was house hunting myself a few years back and where i learnt a few things about 's/contained'!
On translation the 's/contained' means 'self contained' and on reading back the ad on the sign board it seems quite sensible - a 3 bedroomed - house probably seeing as its self contained - and that's how i understood it!
Now little did i know as i searched through newspapers looking at houses which were NOT self contained - that i would be wondering outside into the garden in order to use the bathroom as it turns out if you're not self-contained - chances are there's a loo somewhere round the back (more than likely shared with many other houses on the compound - or perhaps in the immediate vicinity) and that the chance of their actually being a bathroom at all are minimal as a non-self contained bathroom is more than likely - get your water in a bucket and stand in a concrete room with a drain hole in one corner - and WASH!

The nightmare of living in Africa!

I don't know what it is about Africa and technology but they just don't gel!!
It may sound terribly colonial, pompous or whatever you like to call it, but you put technology in Africa and all you get is a complete nightmare of disasters.
In my company it seems no matter how many 'technicians' we employ to keep our machinery running no matter what we do the staff just break it anyway! Solid metal parts - guaranteed for a lifetime in any other part of the world - are snapped in 2 here. The totally 'unbreakable' just becomes the 'lasts a little longer than the usual'!!
It seems there is absolutely nothing that these people cannot destroy, it is unbelievable and makes me just want to scream!
Right now i would like to just hurl myself off the fridge freezer - but of course not even that's an option - as it's in for repair!!!!!!!

Con Artists!

Over the last 3 weeks or so i have been receiving emails about winning a fortune - Yea really!
The first email came in saying I'd won 900,000 Euros and all i needed to do is reply to the email to claim my money. Well i know these things are always fake but i was intrigued to see what happens next.
Anyway the usual - please give us your bank details and we'll transfer the money - well yes - i certainly have "Gullible" printed on my forehead - - -NOT! - so funnily enough i never replied to that one.
Well they obviously thought that i was still worth a shot so then they sent through another email saying if i didn't want to send my bank details that was no problem but i would need to send through 800 Euros or something so that they could do me a bankers cheque and post it to me! So again i never replied.
Well i tell you - there's no stopping them - someone then called me from Spain can you believe - so much for auto signatures on your email that give out your office numbers and all! (I really must switch that thing off!) - anyway some fellow called and said he needed the money transferred to him so that he could give me a bankers cheque. i told him i was not sending him anything and if he needed the money he could take it from my 'winnings' and send me the balance!! So then he got annoyed and told me that if i didn't wish to send the money through transfer then I'd better get on a plane to Spain within 24 hours and pick the cheque up in person because then it would cost me nothing and he put the phone down.
Anyhow i thought that was the end of it but oh no, the saga continues - 24 hours later i got an email to say that if i wasn't coming in person i should nominate a charity and they would contact them to give them the money for the transfer and give the charity the 900,000! Once again i ignored the messages. Yesterday i got a badly scanned copy of a Lloyd TSB credit card with my name on it which i was told was loaded with my money and today i got a further email to tell me to transfer 2000 Euros to some fellow in Spain in order to activate the card and another 400 or so so that they can post it to me!
Now come on - what planet do these people live on that they think I'll give them 2 bob?
Mind you - i suppose somebody must otherwise they wouldn't be so enthusiastic! I find it really sad that people like that exist in this world but it reminded me of one of the points on my 'As i mature' blog i posted a while back:
"As i mature i realise that no matter how nice you are some people will always be a...holes!"
- HOW TRUE! -
My faith in humanity would be entirely lost i think if it wasn't for my son - he's always so jolly no matter what happens in his world.
he fell off his bike the other day and took all the skin off his elbow - but we were watching the 'Tour de France' and some poor fellow hit a dog and came off his bike and took all the skin off his elbow too - but that fellow got back on his bike - had a bit of a patch up at 45kph riding alongside the doctors car and went on to win the stage - so that cheered my son up no end realising that it happens to real professionals too!
- My faith is restored once more! How i love kids and the way they see life - we should all stay as kids and the world would be such a better place!!
Mind you - i read a brilliant little piece in the newspaper the other day telling of how an NGO has been set up that is giving away the new $100 laptops to disadvantaged school children in West Africa so they can get connected to the Internet and learn more about the world, and they got a bit of a fright when they found porn downloaded in more than one of the computers! So much for the digital age and the corruption of the innocent!

What's going on?

Just browsing the news stories for the region and came across this superb bit of info:

East African Standard (Nairobi)21 July 2007
Oldonyo Lengai mountain in Tanzania has finally erupted. This brings to an end the numerous earth tremors that have hit East Africa for the past week. The seismic waves responsible for the movements emanated from this point.
The powerful eruptions that occurred on Thursday from 10pm will, according to experts, reduce the underground activity that was responsible for the tremors. It will also restore calm in the region that had for the last one week been engulfed in fear and anxiety.

- Now please will someone fill me in with who the 'experts' are that say 'it brings to an end the numerous earth tremors ..'
- So what, pray tell me, do the 'experts' call the tremor we experienced last night - the biggest I've felt so far can i say.
AAAAAAARRGH! - Looks like no-one really has any idea what might happen next! Best i start getting more pro-active than holding my breath!

Tremors and security!

Last night as i sat watching the end of the local news the sofa i was sitting on began swaying. I thought i must be tired and should go to bed and then the weirdest thing happened. The whole house began swaying and the news presenters looked horrified - as they were getting what i was getting. My curtains were all moving side to side - not by much you understand - but enough that it was all pretty scary - and what did i do - after all those "What to do in an earthquake" articles we keep getting through the email every day - er . . . nothing that's what. I realised that i just sat completely still waiting to see what would happen next! So much for rolling off the sofa into the foetal position - as comes highly recommended from some fellow working at the UN in Nairobi!!

It was all jolly scary though. I was shaking for a while afterwards - wondering if it was more tremors or just me! When i did finally go to bed - every creak or groan i heard - whether it was the dogs shuffling about in their baskets or the normal sounds that go with having a mabati (iron sheet) roof on my house - i kept thinking "My God, this is it - the house is coming down!!" and what did i do with those thoughts ... er ... same thing ... nothing - just held my breath and waited to see what happened next!

I really think I'd better brush up on my earth tremor articles i feel!!

It's quite funny really - made me think - you never really know what you'll do in a situation like that until it actually happens to you. - Well it seems i now know what I'd do - Hold my breath and sit perfectly still! - Very useful!

When we were kids i remember so many conversations we used to have - what would you do if ... We generally spoke of what we'd do if someone broke into the house - a fairly common occurrence here sadly - generally with not too horrific consequences but sometimes awful things happened to people - and I'd like to say here - "Touch Wood" - nothing too horrific ever happened to me or my family - but it brings me back to - You'll never know until it actually happens - no matter what intentions you think you'll have.

In the last house i lived in - i went through a spate of break-ins in the last few months i was there - which made me move in a bit of a hurry. It started off with a gang coming in and tying up the night watchman and trying to get the wheels off my car. I never heard a thing and the dogs didn't make a sound - although the garage wasn't that far from my bedroom window. Luckily a car drove by and they panicked and all they got away with in the end of mine was my bicycle that was out in the garage - and they were welcome to that - as it always been a pretty crap bike - won by my father in one of many raffles he won prizes in.

Sadly though they took the watchman's mobile and what little money he had in his pockets - and after that they came back - once a week on average - and basically took almost everything the staff owned. They kept coming back and breaking down their doors and took even their bedsheets - it was awful. Why take from people who have so little in the first place - but sadly that is how it is here - they generally rob from the much less fortunate - as we all live in houses with great big bars on the windows - and now where i am - an electric fence all the way round the entire 10 acre compound.

One night they did cut the bars in my father's house which was at the other end of the plot to mine and he woke up and starting shouting and screaming which woke me and i called the 'Ultimate' people who came with armed police and chased them all away. (The 'Ultimate' guys are a bunch of guards in riot gear who travel round in a van and we all have 'panic buttons' in our houses in most rooms and if you press one of them the control room registers it and sends out the closest van to you). It was all pretty scary though with them throwing rocks through the window at my father - and him waving his baseball bat. - thank god, he didn't have a heart attack - all that excitement - think i might of!

Anyway i moved not long after that and here i sit in relative safety - i hope! My house is in the middle of the compound and i have the staff compound directly behind me - the landlord's house to one side and another tenants house to the other side of me. i always think - or hope more like - that if anyone ever got into this compound - god forbid - i would be the last house they came to - especially as i have the biggest dogs in the place so hopefully they'll have that little bit of info on board before they get in and leave us alone! Fingers crossed!

Anyway enough of all that negative thinking. I think if you live in Africa long enough - the best way to deal with these things is to be aware of them but not to worry about them too much!

'Suicide Hour' in the tropics!

Yesterday morning i woke up angry - angry because i was fat, felt like crap and just .... er ... angry really! Actually i don't really know why but of course my son got it in the neck for the most minor incident, the dogs got it because i tripped over them and then their baskets and everyone in the office got it because ... er well ... they were in the office!
It was awful - i spent until lunchtime fuming - then decided i better leave the office and stop upsetting anyone any further so i went round the shops - bought my son some new shoes - through sheer guilt of course for my morning's outburst - then went to the book shop and bought an exercise for fatties book and the most perfect diet book called "The Hibernation Diet"! It professes to make you thin whilst you sleep, and the forward reads:
"If you wake up tomorrow morning and dreamt you'd got thinner during the night, you'd think 'Oh Yeah, great. If only!' BUT that's just what you could be doing with the Hibernation Diet!" -
Now how could i possibly resist buying that?!?
I also bought The Times for last Saturday which also cheered me up immensely as there was a special holiday puzzle section with 8 full pages of sudoku and the like - superb!!
Final highlight of the day was a little tidbit i picked up in the Times with the following warning found on a packet of earplugs - "These earplugs are non-toxic, but may interfere with breathing if caught in the windpipe!" - Now you don't say!!!!!
Anyway after such a generally rubbish start to the day, now approaching evening and thinking of settling down with the papers and my marvelous diet books, it made me think of a good friend and her kids and what we named 'Suicide Hour'!
Any mother should be able to relate to this time of day, every single day everywhere in the world, as early evening sets in, and kids get tired and whingy and no matter what you do or say general chaos usually breaks out in the house (that tends to include some incredibly loud screaming).
With one child it is generally controllable as if you can get food down their neck quick enough it tends to avert the extreme whinging BUT, after food, tends to turn the little blighters into bouncing beans until you can slot them into the bath and their beds!
With two plus children, it's a little tricky, as one will start the whinging - generally smack one of the others round the head - and the chorus begins! This one is not quite as easy to control as food can just cause further chaos as they'll start stealing from each others plates which only causes further screaming on board! - This is the classic 'Suicide Hour' when the best thing to do is get yourself some earplugs (trying of course your best not to get them stuck in your windpipe!!), open a bottle of wine, shout for the ayah (nanny/maid) and settle in with the paper! - That is what living in the tropics is all about - someone else to deal with the mundane daily nightmare - and I'd just like to say that if anyone out there who has a large family of kids - do the right thing and move out to a country where staff are part of our lives and are an absolute god send. If not - you'll be the one 'Suicide Hour' was named for and will be launching yourself off the fridge freezer come 6 o'clock this evening!!

The croc man and friends.

Decided to get out of the big smoke for a couple of days as its so damn cold at this time of year and we headed for the coast. Thing is all it really did since we got there is rain! Anyway - shouldn't complain really - at least its fairly warm rain! Mind you - we've had given up club chukkas to sit in this grey drizzle - so i did have some times over the weekend where i wish perhaps we'd stayed home! However change of scene probably did us lots of good so i should be grateful for that.

Seeing as all its really did is rain for 90% of the day, some failed sandcastle attempts and a few games of noughts and crosses on the beach is all we really achieved - but we decided to put a little excitement into our Saturday afternoon and take a trip to the 'Crocodile Farm & Snake Park'!

Little did i know that it was run by some drunken stranger i met Friday night over dinner and he couldn't string a full sentence together!

Anyway turned out that sober he makes some kind of sense - i say 'some kind of sense' - as although he's perfectly literate today - what he has to say for himself is really quite 'off the wall'! He has hundreds of crocs as they mainly farm them for their skins. The bigger ones it seems are kept just for the happy tourists such as ourselves to admire but really i felt he had some kind of rapport with the big ones. He's named half of them - amongst which he has 'George Bush' - who had killed 4 people before he was caught, 'Lady Killer' - had killed some poor lady (funnily enough), Margaret Thatcher - who's was a portly one that was always picking a fight with the others and 'Saddam' - who had picked a fight with 'George Bush' and had come out of it with a broken jaw - so now lives with a bit of a squiff face!

There were snakes there - highly poisonous, semi-poisonous and supposedly harmless - puff adders, pythons and mambas for Africa - not my favourite - but my son thought it was all excellent entertainment and actually it's always great seeing snakes under glass - as they scare the living crap out of me any other way! I think they do shows in the hotels where they take some of the snakes and educate the tourists on which are dangerous and which not and what to look out for - probably wise as most hotels in the area have makuti (grass) roofs and the snakes love hanging out in there! There's also a famous rock python - who weighs about 15kg - that they wrap round your neck and let you hold - i of course opted for the 'no. no. you first' line - and didn't hold it at all! However that did nothing for the bravery of my son who kept insisting 'ladies first' - and because i wouldn't do it - he wouldn't either!

Anyway back to 'Mad Marc' - the 'drunken stranger' who owned the park. He had some brilliant stories - 'Marc the Hippo Killer' - 'Marc the snake catcher' - 'Marc the crocodile hunter'!

It turns out he does some work with the Kenya Wildlife Service and tracks down rogue hippos and crocs who go round the villages killing the locals and trashing their shambas (smallholdings)- in the case of the hippos. He has stories of paddling up rivers and snakes swallowing lizards twice their own size, deadly snakes caught in his neighbours kitchen and crocodiles in his own swimming pool!

Anyway 'Mad Marc' insisted we took some hippo meat back to town with us - great in stews and curries apparently - also a crocodile tail - although can't remember what gourmet delight we are to make that one into - but if we ever do I'll be sure to document it. I'm sure it'll be incredibly useful information for someone somewhere! - "What to do with a hippo leg and a croc tail that happens to look rather tasty down at the local butchers!"

Turns out his wife - a rather wild German woman with bright orange hair (- who on the night i originally met them - was even less coherent than her husband!) has the most beautiful pure bred Arab horses. She has a stallion, a mare and a 5 year old offspring who is the most beautiful horse i think I've ever seen. The young mare has never been ridden and has done nothing but hang out in her beautiful stables along with Mum and Dad - occasionally being led out with one of the others and occasionally escaping and running amok in the compound I'm sure! So that was an amazing treat - as we certainly don't see many Arab horses around these parts - ours are mainly thoroughbreds.

As we were leaving - and had of course already fallen in love with the beautiful large eyed long lashed 5 year old - they told us that they'd like to sell her! Well, now there's an offer it's going to be very hard to refuse! No idea what we could do with her - as i don't think she's any bigger than 14.1 or 14.2 hands - but she's just so lovely. We talked and talked about what we would do with her - came up with a bunch of ridiculous ideas - just for any excuse to keep her - the best scheme (thought out by me of course) - is to breed from her with a beautiful thoroughbred stallion and see if we can get the speed of the thoroughbred with the stamina and great legs of the Arab and make them into polo ponies! - Definitely worth a shot i reckon!