Christmas and Okra Pizza

Well, there has been another one month gap in the blog...it is amazing how life gets so busy when you are traveling and adjusting to its events. We last blogged prior to the Christmas break which found us home in Nashville for a long overdue and welcome visit with our families and friends. Before everyone left for various parts of the US and Tanzania we got together with our Dar family from GHPS and had a Christmas Dinner at our apartment. The company was superb and a good time was had by all.

Not a bad table spread considering it's a collection of assorted dishes

Back in Nashville for a quick trip we were back in our home for the first time in 6 months. It was the longest time away in 30 years for Bill although Laurel's work has kept her way for this long previously. We got a big tree and had a wonderful time decorating it as a group. The dogs were even glad to see us and quickly incorporated us back into their lives. They are much pickier than humans we have learned over the past few years of traveling.

Maple

Colin hamming it up placing the star

Claire and Rigby opening presents

Laurel with her parents, Jerry and Audrey, in Chicago when visiting with her family at the Hickey's home.

Andrew exploring gifts

Meghan, Catie and Carrie - the Hickey women

Christmas dinner at the Bob Thompson household

The other end of the table with Andrew, our oldest son

Mr and Mrs Claus, a yearly tradition at our house. Somethings never get old.

Back in Dar we witnessed Indian nuptials next door. this view is from our balcony looking toward the main street leading to our apartment. It is dirt and is just rained the evening before. It turns to mud!

Looking the other direction

These were the musicians who serenaded the wedding party as it left for the reception. The wedding was next door at a private residence.

The wedding party headed out to the reception.

After recovering from our travels we took a day trip up the coast to the town on Bagomoyo, about an  hour away. it is famous as an early trading city for commerce on the East African coast. The first settlers were Arabs who founded an outpost at Kaole in the 13th century. Only ruins persist today but are maintained by the TZ Antiquities Division and were quite interesting. The old mosque and its graveyard were toured by our group.

L to R: Laurel, Esther and Gail, all part of our GHSP Dar contingent. Our erstwhile driver, Charles, accompanied us and was most welcome. He took us on our safari and is an excellent driver. Tanzania's roads are dangerous and one needs a very good driver. Charles keeps us safe.

This is a centuries old baobab tree on the Kaole grounds. You can get a sense of scale when you look at the people underneath. It has many iron nails driven into it by locals who did so in order to tie their lives to the tree's longevity. It survived all of them.

This map at the Kaole museum depicts the trade routes used by the early Arab traders and overs the entire coast of East Africa. They came via sail in dhows and they remain the sailing craft of choice today. You will recall we saw them being made by hand in the shipyard at Chole Island. The island offshore in the map is Zanzibar. Mombasa and Mogadishu need no introduction.

Kaole's settlement was a port on the Indian Ocean originally. Now the mangroves there have grown up as the port has silted in. The "spears" hanging down from the mangroves are the reason for this picture. Mangroves grow by dropping these into the soil surrounding the trees. They lodge in the loose sand and sprout. Interestingly, we were told that they will only sprout if they fall and successfully pierce deep enough to sprout. Taking a "spear" that failed to do so and manually embedding it in the sand will get you nothing. Somehow the spears only grow if they lodge "naturally". I found this fascinating.

The growing spears of successful mangrove propagation. Each will become a tree in its own right. Mangrove forests are essentially impenetrable and serve as guardians of wetlands all over the world.

Bagomoyo is famous as the eastern terminus of the Arab slave trade in East Africa. Africans who were captured and taken for the slave trade endured horrific conditions while being transported overland to Bagomoyo. There they were loaded on dhows and sailed to Zanzibar which was the locus of the slave trade and from which they were sold and transported abroad. This is an ugly chapter in East Africa's history. Most of the the slave trade to the Americas and Caribbean islands came from West Africa countries. Millions of Africans were enslaved in this way. Bagomoyo came to mean "surrender all hope" and is infamous but largely unknown outside of East Africa.

A lithograph depicting the march to Bogomoyo by those being transported from inland destinations where they were captured. This trade persisted until it was ended by the Germans when they ruled Tanganyika prior to losing control to the British after WWI. These museum displays are at the large Catholic cathedral's museum outside of Bagomoyo. The sisters and priests who founded that settlement were instrumental in housing and nurturing the Africans who escaped and who later were freed when the slave trade was ended.

A map depicting the destinations for many of the slaves from the East African slave trade. Madagascar is the large island in the map. This trip was quite sobering.

On a lighter note we encountered some very unique yard art on our way to Bagomoyo. The cows are somewhat famous around Dar!

This is an update on my tomatoes. My homemade drip irrigation system got them thru our Christmas absence but they were sickly in the extreme due to my delayed diagnosis of an extensive mealybug infestation.

Here is the sum total of my crop after three months or more of trying container gardening. These cherry tomatoes were good but I was humbled by my foray into agriculture. Best not to quit my day job I think...

Fortunately our neighborhood produce guys keep us supplied with fresh Tanzanian produce. Tomatoes are about $1.30 for a kilogram!

As a Mississippi boy at heart the local watermelon brings a smile to my face every time.

Last but not least I close this post with a crowning culinary achievement. This is another local treat, okra! Okra pizza is actually incredibly good. Neither Laurel nor I can recall ever seeing this as an option at California Pizza Kitchen etc. and wish to stake our claim to coming up with this masterpiece.