Puff And Papaya: Tuesday November 13th: My first ever coffee-morning

What a super day. I bunked off school, because I had four meetings elsewhere in Dar. But oh Lord. I’ve reached an age where I go to coffee-mornings. This was the regular Tuesday meeting of the Corona Society, which is for ex-pat women. I hasten to add that I had an ulterior motive: trying to gather together a group of women to volunteer at the school, but I have to admit that it was really enjoyable and I am now a big fan. I found myself sitting next to the wife of the CEO of one of the telcos here, and she said she’d ask her husband if they can involve the school in their Corporate Social Responsibility Programme. She also invited me to come to her house for a bath.

Then I bought some Christmas crackers for the nuns and whizzed off to meet the playground designer and builder, Swedish Per, to sort out the contract for the new school playground. He has a very European house, contrastingly staffed by Maasai wearing traditional costume (red/purple blankets). I love Per. He is being really nice to me because I’ve kept with him even though he’s had a disagreement with the very nice woman who recommended him and who is now telling me to use someone else. But I feel solidarity with anyone at the mercy of client recommendations, so I am being bloody-minded. Anyway, I like him. His English is enjoyably eccentric - he says “stand by!” inside of “hang on a second”, which makes me feel excitingly military, and he’s got me a trampoline for the children for free! I can’t wait to use it and the children can just queue up for hours while I bounce up and down in glorious isolation.

Per gave me a lift to Evil Whiffy Kariakoo, except he didn’t, because he got pulled over by the infuriatingly powerful and arrogant traffic police here, and we had to go to the police station. The policeman was moaning to him about how untidy his car was inside “look at all this CARGO you have!” – so obviously going for a bribe, as the general standard of cars and driving here is absolutely appalling, and interior untidiness of a private car clearly totally irrelevant. So I took a taxi, and went to a meeting with my friend Frida, who works for the Book Council of Tanzania. I have totally slimed up to her by sending her pictures of the adorable children at the school from Book Day (see post about the trip out in the pick-up truck) and going on and on about how they have no books to read. She is going to try to start up a project for disadvantaged children in Dar, and it will involve our school (if it happens). She also said that I had “lovely big legs” and complained that hers were too slim. She really wasn’t being nasty: it is the second time someone has stroked my calves and commented on their marvellous largeness, but it was still vaguely unnerving.

Then to the stinky Post Office, where I was repaid handsomely for my courage in fighting through Kariakoo to get there. My mother had sent an individually wrapped present for every child in the nursery class (just slightly disappointing that there wasn’t one for me, Mum) and Sandra, Official Best Friend in all the world, had sent me a T-shirt she’d had printed up for me saying “Nina jina. Si mzungu. Ni Loossi” – “I’ve got a name, and it isn’t Mzungu, it’s Lucy!”. It is to wear when I am feeling feisty, but I am sporting it right now despite very calm lack of feistiness tonight. It is marvellous and I shall wear it running to the Tortoise and Hare Club on Thursday. I’ve given up the Hash club, because I am too intolerant to bear the enforced group jollity, communal singing, and dreadful nicknames everyone has to have, like “FrozenScrotum” and others too vile to put online. And (back to getting presents) the lovely Jane Fowler had sent some plastic folders to hold paper in, which I am totally delighted by, as you can’t buy them here, and I really love pointlessly sorting out papers as a work-avoidance activity. Also some blank templates for the “famous” PA problem-solving system, Top-Down Thinking, care of the very thoughtful Stu, which will doubtless come in very handy when I try to teach the adult deafs how to manage a project.

My final meeting was with these adult deafs – I’d asked them to write down what they thought their roles and responsibilities were last week, and they brandished their constitution at me today, thinking that would do. Tsk.

My knees are vilely and comprehensively bitten last night. I don’t know what flew up inside my trousis yesterday, but it had big teeth and scored a decisive victory for the animal kingdom. This photo only shows about half the horror: