Some Greeting Cards and Small Paintings

Dear Family & Friends,

Last year I wrote a posting with our Tanzanian friend Moris about his daily routine. He recently lost a very large chunk of his income. Diane and I continue to hire him for food shopping and other errands every week, but it's not really enough. So Moris is casting about for other ways to earn some money.

He has friends who are local artists and has arranged to get a cut of the selling price if he is able to find buyers for their work. I have agreed to display some of the pieces on this blog and to handle the money if anyone out there would like to make a purchase.

The artwork is pictured below. If you would like to order something, send me an email. Please keep in mind that postal service between Tanzania and the U.S. is sl-o-o-o-w. Also, our Internet access goes out on occasion, I'm busy as a secondary school teacher -- and a lot of things just happen more slowly in this part of the world. 8-D



Pictured above are four greeting cards, completely blank on the inside and on the back. Each card is roughly 4" by 6". (If you are familiar with European measures each card is a sheet of A5 paper folder in half.) I especially like Card A, which is done in the tinga-tinga style. Each card is $2.50, which includes postage, etc.



Pictured above are two small paintings. Painting A is about 4" by 5" at its widest and tallest points. Painting B is about 4.5" by 7.5". They are done on 1/8" masonite board. Painting A is $4 and Painting B is $6.

Again, send me an email directly if you would like to make a purchase so that we can arrange for payment (PayPal or otherwise) and address to ship to. -Earl

Our Cooling System

As I sit at home in Mtwara sweltering in the heat and humidity with nothing on but underwear and sandals and with an electric fan blowing on me, I try to take comfort from the fact that we human beings have a whole-body cooling system that is far more efficient than that of any other mammal.

The book AFRICA: A Biography of the Continent has a very interesting chapter on this. Our upright stance may have come about as a way to reduce the amount of body surface that is directly exposed to the sun during the hottest part of the day. Being off the ground also puts us up into air that is windier, cooler, and less humid compared to a quadraped.

The other component is well-developed sweat glands together with bare skin. Actually, we have as many hairs per unit area of skin as a chimpanzee -- but those hairs are mostly so fine that we are functionally naked. As a result sweating is an extremely effective way of removing heat from the body as the sweat evaporates.

Here in East Africa being able to stay cooler and more active allows humans to reduce their water requirements and be able to forage farther for food in the open savanna. This would have been the immediate advantage.

But the longer term consequence might have been that this unique system removed a physiological constraint on the development of a large brain! Brain tissue is expensive in terms of its continuous need for oxygen, fuel, and a narrow temperature range in which to operate. The brain runs hot. A researcher is quoted: "it is probably no coincidence that today the mammal with the most highly developed brain and social behavior is the species which possesses the most elaborate cooling system".

If we had not evolved a body that is so good at staying cool I might not now be expressing myself in such an intricate language as an act of a shared complex culture and doing so on a machine. 8-D

- Earl

"AFRICA: A Biography of the Continent"

"About 100,000 years ago groups of modern humans left Africa for the first time and progressively colonized the rest of the world. Innovative talent carried them into every exploitable niche. They moved across the Sinai peninsula and were living in the eastern Mediterranean ...

By the early 1970s people had been to the moon. Such achievements, and all by virtue of talents which had evolved in Africa."

- from AFRICA: A Biography of the Continent, by John Reader

We all came out of Africa. Many of the most important fossil finds of early people have occurred here in Tanzania and nearby. I feel like I have returned to the cradle of humankind.

This book has impressed on me the extent of my ignorance of this huge sub-Saharan continent from which my ancestors left relatively recently, in evolutionary terms.

The writing is lucid, well-researched, compelling, and easy to read. The content is vast, addressing topics such as the ability to make a tool according to a mental picture; the development of language; the effects of geology, climate change, and diseases; the beginnings of agriculture; early cities and civilizations; the deep and widespread social disruptions caused by slavery and the slave trade; and the codifying of culture into rigid ethnic categories as an invention of Europeans.

There's much more, and it's highly recommended. -Earl

Swinging into the new school year....

Malaria, Mosquitoes, ...

I recently read a really good series of articles online about malaria. They are quite detailed, a bit long and not dumbed down, but very readable for the layperson.

The articles were apparently written by a doctor who has lived in Uganda (a neighboring country of Tanzania) for many years and wanted to clear up the confusion around a disease that everyone knows about but with a lot of misunderstanding and misconceptions.

The articles are written as seven parts. I give a brief description of each part and provide a link to it.

Part 1. What happens when malaria gets into your blood stream and multiplies.

Part 2. Developing (partial) immunity. How the parasite actually reproduces and gets spread between people.

Part 3. Diagnosis, misdiagnosis, symptoms, and prophylaxis.

Part 4. Rapid tests for malaria and what can go wrong with them.

Part 5. Effective treatment, treatment options, risks.

Part 6. Prevention options, besides drugs.

Part 7. Prophylaxis drugs. Some thoughts about prevention.

For Diane and me, one thing I got from reading this series is that we are actually pretty unlikely to get sick with malaria, for several reasons.

First, it is only a certain kind of mosquito that can carry the malaria parasites. I have been looking carefully at the ones in our home that bite us. They are not the malaria kind. Also, we are rarely outside when it is dark, which is when the malarial mosquitoes are mostly out and about. My guess is that in our day to day life here in Mtwara our exposure to potentially infectious bites is really very low.

On the other hand, if we should go travel somewhere on a wildlife safari the exposure could shoot way up. As long as we are in Tanzania we should not become complacent.

Second, the fact that we are both taking a prophylaxis called mefloquine provides a lot of protection against the parasite should it be introduced into our bodies. According to the author, he has not seen a single case of a patient taking mefloquine properly who has had malaria. Other types of prophylaxis are also extremely effective.

Third, the symptoms that indicate possible malaria can all be caused by other diseases, of which there is a plethora in sub-Saharan Africa. Missing those others can be serious.

If we do get sick and suspect malaria we should be careful about the diagnostic process. Malaria seems to be greatly overdiagnosed.

In any case, besides the risk of malaria I get a fair number of mosquito bites that are just plain very itchy and annoying. So we use a mosquito net on our bed, I often wear long pants at home even when it's hot, and I keep insect repellant handy if we do go out at night. -Earl

Sunshine, serenity and solitude by the sea...

A gently swaying hammock under the whispering pines. A lonely dhow anchored a hundred yards offshore. A vast sea-green sea that stretches to forever. Coconut palm fronds waving in the wind. A brisk salty sea breeze. Although we were surrounded by fragrant frangipani, flame trees, fiery red hibiscus & brilliant bougainvillea, there was not a soul around.

Sunshine, serenity & solitude by the sea! How delightful!

Taking advantage of our month long school break , Earl & I hopped on a tightly packed bus for a 9+ hour rough & tumble ride to Dar. After a couple of days at the less than luxurious & very cheap YMCA (shared bath, cold water & no towels), we boarded the Sea Bus ferry for a 2 hour sea voyage to the magical isle of Zanzibar aka Unguja Island.

Greeted by Father Damas at the hustling, bustling & extremely chaotic ferry terminal, we climbed into his old army jeep and circled around Zanzibar Town. On our way to the heart of the city, Stone Town, we caught glimpses of narrow streets & cobbled alleyways, women draped in black, overhanging verandas, colorful TingaTinga art, bustling bazaars, the Sultan's Palace, Beit El-Ajaib (House of Wonders), street-side vendors, and numerous Moslem minarets piercing the azure sky. The sun was sizzling hot & there was a spicy aroma in the air. Father Damas dropped us off at the Bishop's House, next door to St. Joseph's Cathedral. Also known as "Kanisa la Minara Miwili" (Church with Two Towers), the cathedral was built in 1898 by a French architect. At first glance, one might think one was in Paris!

Sister Laurent, our hostess, escorted us to our simply furnished room with bed & bath. Our window overlooked the narrow street below which was splashed with brightly colored paintings of everything African: dancers & drummers, zebras & giraffes, sun & seascapes, mud huts & mangroves. The highlight of our Stone Town stay was the House of Wonders, home to the Zanzibar National Museum of History & Culture. Besides viewing a life-sized mtepe, a traditional Swahili sailing vessel made without nails, the planks held together only with coconut fibers & wooden pegs, we learned about Princess Salame who secretly eloped with a German soldier & spent almost the rest of her life in Germany. A woman before her time, she was an advocate for healthcare & the education of women.

After our brief stay in the soul of Zanzibar Town, we bussed 60km to the northernmost tip of Zanzibar where we were perched on a small seaside outcrop with a spectacular view of the Indian Ocean. We stayed 3 days at the Mnarani Beach Cottages in Nungwi (private bath, hot water & BIG towels!), a real splurge for us - once every 16 years. The last splurge was on our honeymoon at the Keltic Lodge in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. On Cape Breton we were 46+ degrees north of the equator and here we could practically touch it! Mnarani means "lighthouse" which was right next door. Built in 1888, the 70 foot tall lighthouse is still blinking!

Earl & I also ventured on a Spice Tour where we met other tourists from England, Holland, Liechtenstein, Canada & Tanzania. Nassor, our Zanzibari tour guide, led us on a leisurely stroll through the jungle-like plantation sprinkled with wild orchids. We nipped nutmeg from the tree, plucked lemon grass from the earth, scraped cinnamon bark off the tree, painted our faces with red Masai powder, whiffed vanilla beans on the vine, rolled peppercorns between our fingers, sniffed a bouquet of fresh cloves, and fingered smooth cones of cayenne peppers. We also sampled a medley of fresh picked fruit such as papaya, jackfruit, star fruit, mangoes, marmalade oranges, and pineapple. Our guides adorned us with woven jungle leaf jewelry - ties, necklaces, rings & bracelets. After a hot lunch of traditional foods such as coconut soup, pilau, & sauteed spinach (all seasoned with the spices we just sampled) in the shade of a thatched roof banda, we descended into the deep dark seaside Slave Cave. After Nassor shared a little Slave Cave history, we climbed out of the dark & into the light to take a refreshing dip in the Indian Ocean.

After an exceptionally crazy non-stop school year, we had a wonderfully relaxing holiday! Diane

Zanzibar Island Trip - Photos

In December we took the ferry from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar, a beautiful two-hour ride on calm seas. While Diane slept, I went outside to enjoy the ocean and the warm winds. We stayed at guest quarters at the Catholic Cathedral in town and explored the streets a bit. It's a small historic city with a very Old World feel to it.



We did something very touristy -- we went on a "spice tour" to visit a farm where various kinds of spices are grown (along with fruits also). Zanzibar is known for this.





And we splurged on a stay at an idyllic beach cottage resort at Nungwi, which is at the very northern tip of the island. -Earl