Kimberly Jong-il

I meant to explain in my last post why the new picture of me at the front of the blog is so big, in a horrible creepy dictatorish way. It wasn’t meant to frighten anyone, although I can see that it might. I did try for at least half an hour to reduce it, but reducing the file size just made it grainy, and clicking some stupid “shrink to fit” option just made it a stupid shape. I do love Google a lot but I think they should sort out the coding on their Blogger offering.

It has not been a good week for wildlife here. Tigers, rhinos, elephants, things that cost a lot to see and involve staying in a luxury safari lodge and drooling over Hot Guide: good. Anything else except the cute new little calf here at the convent born on Easter Monday and hence called Pasaka, bad.

Today the biggest spider I have ever seen outside a ZOO marched into the nuns’ common room where we were all having dinner. If it’s got any siblings I am booking my flight home for next week. I was alerted by one of the nuns shouting “dudu mbaya!” (bad bug) and I caught it in my peripheral vision - much like one might catch King Kong in one’s peripheral vision if he was right next to you, waving to get your attention. I ran across the room still holding my plate, whimpering pathetically. Luckily for me, the mean chicken-neck-wringing sister whacked it with a purpose-built Bible. Luckily for the spider, she got there before Sister Pollonia could try out her village toe remedies on each of its eight legs.

Yesterday there was a cockroach inside the fridge! Yes, people, inside! I thought it was a moth at first (it was only little) and felt quite sorry for it being trapped in such an unnatural environment until it moved uncharacteristically fast and scuttlishly and I realised what it was. Bleeeugh. Although marginally better than when a big one flew into my face last week.

And on Wednesday I got bitten by a spider. I know it was a spider and not a killer moskweet because a) it hurt rather than itched and b) there are two little fang bites and a big red circle of reaction on my skin rather than a white bump. I tell you, I have never seen a spider kill a fly and until I do, I’m going to carry on killing them, or at least helpfully supervising bloodthirsty nuns killing them.

Here is a nice photo of a spider for you. It is not the one that bit me, nor the one that so unwisely sought sanctuary in the convent. It is one from Zanzibar. They hang in trees (in Dar too) and are probably plotting to swing on vines and bite me on my nose. Fred took the photo and foolishly forgot to hold up a 50p piece to give an idea of scale, but I think they are about three inches long.

Finally, an update on my plan to walk to my social life last Thursday. Despite a small iPod glitch involving me trying to add my new album of uplifting African music by a local band and instead wiping off everything, everything, except this album (30 Gb of memory left unused: as the iPod cost £240 I could have used the money to pay said local band to accompany me on foot and sing live) I made it. I offer sincere apologies to Stu and Dayff, who helped me set up my iPod in the first place and probably hadn’t reckoned on quite such a bravura display of stupidity.



Tanzania has no street lights outside the city centre, and it was too rainy for the moon, which is normally bright enough here to cast shadows and glint off palm trees. Isn’t real darkness dark? I couldn’t see my own feet! Who knew? How nice it will be to return to the reassuring orange glow of London.



NB the next post WILL feature Amina in some way...