6 more things to know about Tanzania!

Hey friends!

It’s very rare I talk so openly about Tanzania in public so I want to share some more insights about the country. Hopefully for people planning on coming here, you will be prepared for what is to come! Feature image: Hippo Lake at Ngorongoro Crater / Jo Law

1. The power cuts here are frequent and intense. If you are going to live in Moshi like me, pretty much do not expect any electricity during the WHOLE weekend unless you live in a rather rich area like Shanty Town. It’s frustrating, but I guess there’s nothing you can really do about it. Other than complain….
2. Expats and foreign volunteers are a plenty. Tanzania is one of the top 5 countries for volunteers to find work, so it’s not surprise if you manage to meet a few other foreigners beside yourself whilst you are here. After all, I am a volunteer also.
3. Nights are the most beautiful here. Little light pollution and power cuts? Yes, please! The stars are incredibly bright and beautiful here, especially if you ever get the chance to go camping in the middle of Serengeti. I can make most bright stars in the Tanzanian night sky!
4. Most Tanzanians have 2 cell phones. This is because different network providers have different deals, so most people go for 2 sims instead of 1. For example, 2 big networks are Tigo and Vodacom that have tigo-to-tigo and vodacom-to-vodacom offers that will save them money.
5. Internet by phone. Let’s face it, there is pretty much no wifi in Tanzania, even at cafes. We have Raha wifi that’s pretty shoddy, and the super expensive Smile Technology 4G internet. The cheapest and most efficient way to get internet is by tethering your phone to your laptop and buying internet bundles on your network. For about 50p/75c, you can have 1GB of 3G internet per day, which is more than enough for one day’s worth of activities, unless you are downloading or streaming in HD. I stream a lot of video in 240p and read a lot of manga, seems to be enough but I can’t get connection all the time inside my house, which is a bummer.
6. Most Tanzanian food is vegan! A shoutout to my vegan friend Kerri who runs a cruelty-free make-up blog, most Tanzanian food is very much vegan and does not use eggs or even milk. Beans are very common additions to rice and sometimes spaghetti. Salad is accompanied by most food, which comprises of tomatoes, raw onions, and cucumber in vinegar. Pili pili is also common, which is spicy aubergine or just chilli in general in tomato sauce, along with slices of avocado. My favourite Tanzanian food? Kiti Moto, which is unfortunately not vegan; it is pork with vegetables in a creamy tomato sauce. Kiki Moto literally means “a chair set alight” because apparently Muslims are not allowed to eat pork but they love Kiti Moto so much that they eat it as fast as possible and leave the restaurant, as if their seat is on fire!

Those are the Tanzanian facts for today! Have any questions? Let me know in the comments and I’d be interested in hearing your opinions!

6 things to know about Tanzania!

Hey friends!

In 3 weeks time I will be home in England with my family. I’m really excited to see my family again, but a little sad that I will be leaving this beautiful country I’ve called my home for the past 9 months. Feature image -> Mount Meru Meru/Jo Law

So, a few people have been asking me: What is it like in Tanzania?  Well, I’ve thought about it and here are some dead hard facts about this country that everyone should know about! This is useful for you travellers out there.

1. Service is Tanzanian style- slow. Don’t be surprised if people are slow at getting some items for you at the deka or if your food takes over an hour to arrive, that’s standard. Tanzania’s most famous catchphrase is “pole pole”, or “slowly, slowly”. If you want something done fast, unfortunately Tanzania is not the best place to be!
2. There is no such thing as noise pollution. Trust me, for the past 5 months I have not slept for longer than 3-5 hours each night. How am I still alive? To that, I say I am mentally and physically too strong to let lack of sleep defeat me. Be in cicadas, the church, or turkeys, or clubs and resorts, there’s always some music going on somewhere, it is both a blessing and a curse at the same time!
3. Bugs are your best friend. Or bug spray. But there are a lot of bugs. You know ants? There are massive ones at least 1cm large in this country. And there are Jiggers. Don’t forget the Jiggers (google it o_o)
4. Choice? What choice? Due to imports being too expensive, choice in food is only reserved for us mzungus (white people) and even then, it’s rather limited. Locals sell seasonal vegetables such as avocados, onions, and carrots at a very cheap price and some fried local fish too, plus you can get some decent imported goods such as Nutella and Dairy Milk, but don’t expect gourmet foods such as salmon or a wide selection of cheeses. A lot of local Tanzanian foods use tomatoes, beans, and raw onions. Obviously there are touristy restaurants but they are more expensive.
5. Locals are really friendly and you can get by with minimal Swahili. If you say “Shikamoo” randomly to an old person, they are really happy to respond to you! Just knowing a tiny bit of the native language makes locals happy that you’re trying, even if it is a little of and they might point to what you want for reassurance. I’m the only person at my house who doesn’t take Swahili lessons, but I do know simple phrases such as “I would like….”. A lot of locals are good at English too so there’s no harm in asking what a specific word is in Swahili. This applies to most countries you visit!
6. Boda boda. Whilst crime rate in Tanzania is dropping, accidents are going up. Before the appearance of boda bodas (motorbikes), youth would steal and rob people to get money. Now, they use boda bodas as a taxi service. Most are unlicensed though so I wouldn’t recommend it, and amputees in Tanzania are sharply increasing due to the popularity of boda bodas. Dala dala, or local mini buses, are extremely cheap and a little bit safer so I would recommend that as a form of transport, or if you have the money then definitely get a taxi!

If there’s anything want to know about Tanzania, please shoot me some questions below! I’d be more than happy to answer as best as I can.

Misc. photos and stuff

Sorry for not keeping everyone updated, I have been very busy with university! However, I have managed to take a few new photographs these past few weeks!

First thing’s first, my flatmate’s boyfriend brought her a really beautiful bouquet of flowers so I decided to take a few photographs of them. I am not a photographer, in fact I’d go a long way to say that I wasn’t one, but these came out quite lovely. I used a macro lense for them because I really wanted to capture the details of the veins in the leaves and flower petals. They were edited on photoshop after. I did want to take more the next day but by the time I remembered, the lilies blossomed and pretty much crushed the flowers I liked. I’m not a fan of lilies myself, unfortunately. I’m more of a rose person!

Sometime a few weeks ago, there was the video game market at the Leeds town hall. I absolutely love video games, as you know, so I was rather eager to go. They sold a lot of retro games, and some newer games too. There were plenty of stalls but unfortunately most of the games were NTSC1 or Japanese region-locked so I ended up not buying anything. However, it was absolutely packed and it was great to meet some new people! I was actually tempted to buy an arcade machine of Street Fighter for about £600 but I decided against it. The owner didn’t let me take a photo of it either….

And finally, this is my Skull Kid figure. I bought a small New 3DS with Majora’s Mask special edition from the Nintendo Store UK and the bundle came with the free statue. For something that was free, it’s incredibly nice and detailed! It’s not perfect but looks really cool on my shelf right now. I was mostly expecting something along the lines of the Bravely Default figure which was an absolute disaster (This is an accurate photograph of it) so this was a lovely surprise!

This weekend, if my plans aren’t tarnished by snow and rain once again, I will head to York and take some lovely photos of the Shambles. I’m heading to Hong Kong next month so I’m hoping to take my camera there too.

In a maze called Life

Recently I have been working rather hard to learn new things and to get into the right mindset when I get back into university so I apologise for not posting as much. The charity has also been a little more demanding than usual since the rebranding and I’ve been flicking through lots of graphic design books, indexing everything of interest so I can use some of the ideas later. All the mistakes I’ve made in the past year, I’m trying very hard to correct them, and I am still working on things for my portfolio at the same time.

In the meantime, I’ve made a plan for the test chapter of Infitia. The story is based around a travelling circus but I can’t go into more detail than that because the story still needs heavy improvement. This is a sketch I’ve made that will hopefully be the cover page for the chapter though, made with a ballpoint pen. It’s a little rough because I didn’t sketch it out in pencil first and inspired by a poster I saw in a book about typography (I will reference later).

I’ve never made a motion book before so this will be challenging. For those of you who don’t know, I started a project called Infitia about 2 years ago but due to college/university and general laziness, it’s far from complete. I will be planning the panels and making assets in the next few weeks and will put it together (hopefully!) when I go back to university.

Current things I’m working on

I’m going to be very busy over the summer and have a lot of projects so I won’t be posting as often, but I’d just like to briefly outline some things I will be working on:

1. Website

I am creating my own website after I learn all of the technical stuff. I have little to no experience making website at all, excluding those website builders so this will be a very long but interesting journey. I will be learning HTML, CSS, jQuery, PHP and MySQ, it’ll be an animated HTML5/CSS3 webpage hopefully that will support mobile/tablet users and old browsers as well. If you’d like to see WIPs and scamps for that then I’ll be happy to post those, though it’ll take me a very long time to develop the actual website and find a good host for it too.

 

2. Infitia – web comic

I’m still working on this project, it’s just taking a very long time because I’m still thinking about the kind of direction I want it to go and still considering the kind of platform I want to use. I was thinking about using Flash but because it is being made redundant, I might just make a separate website and animate it using Adobe Edge instead. I have no idea when I’ll release the first chapter.

3. Volunteering

I have my current graphic design volunteering job so I might be posting work for that on here and I’m seeing someone tomorrow about a voluntary placement in archiving. I’m quite interesting in heritage and conservation so I would like to develop some skills in those fields. They’re not necessary for me to pursue my interests in web design and illustration but it won’t hurt to try it out and to help out a local archiving resource centre. 

How to remove window gel decorations/clings from furniture! (and doors)

I thought I REALLY had to make this post so people in the future will know how to get rid of it in the future!

Okay, so I bought some Christmas gel decorations from Poundland and put them on my toilet door. I left them there for a few days and one of them fell off so I picked it up to put it back, but then I noticed a little stain that was left on the door. I took the rest of them off and panicked because all of them left a horrible stain on the door! Obviously since I’m only renting on a 9 month contract, I don’t own the flat or anything. I asked the guy at reception about it and he said that I had to remove it before inspections or else I’d have to pay to replace the entire door!

What the door looked like at the time:

A quick search online, I tried various things to get it off the door. Bleach (did nothing), Magic Sponge (again, did nothing but it’s good for cleaning the sink and toilet!) and Goo Gone (made it a bit fainter but didn’t really do much else). At a loss, I went back to reception and this time it was a woman there. She said she didn’t want me to get fined since it wasn’t intentional damage so she checked the door out herself and gave me some graffiti remover. And you know what? IT WORKED.

This is what my door looks like now:

So yeah, this is from personal experience. If you get crap like stains on your door/furniture from gel decorations or window cling-ons, use graffiti remover! You might have to scrub it with a sponge or towel for a while but it WILL come off! What a miracle 😀 No fines for me, and I hope you’ll take my advice if this ever happens. Don’t listen to any other advice from the internet because I spent all that money and it did NOTHING. e.e Graffiti remover all the way! I’ve learnt from this, no window decorations for anything other than windows and mirrors from now on.

Osamu Tezuka Heartful Life collection

Recently I ordered some Osamu Tezuka stamps and they were so good, I want to share it with everyone!

The set is called Heartful Life and features stamps and prints from Tezuka’s most famous works. Being a massive Black Jack fan, I’m glad there are some illustrations of him and Pinoko in there. I ordered mine from YesAsia and considering it was made back in 2012, I’m surprised I could get one! I guess it didn’t sell very well? I can’t imagine why, they are so adorable!

  

Youkai Watch release!

The first episode of Youkai Watch released today! (Or yesterday depending on your time zone) I really enjoyed it, it was definitely worth the 2 year wait for me! For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a new anime that aired today. The plot revolves around a boy named Keita Amano. He tries to find big bugs in a wood to impress a girl, Fumi, but stumbles upon a gacha machine instead. Inside one of the pods was a ghost butler named Whisper who introduces the main character to the supernatural world~ I can see that Hino was trying to target the female audience as well as the boys too. The main characters are Keita and Whisper obviously and a ghost cat called Jibanyan who seems to have become the mascot of the series too. You can watch the RAW (no subs) here.

The show is just so adorable and very funny, not surprising of a children’s show. It’s actually really great because the game was a little more serious; I died of laughter the more Jibanyan got hit by a car (it sounds horrible out of context but you’ll understand when you watch it!). I find it really cute how Keita really likes Fumi but he knows he’s worthless and tries so hard to impress her but either forgets or fails miserably! That’s the way I see it anyway, I can’t understand Japanese but he didn’t seem to give two shits when the guys were making fun of him at the beginning and when Fumi says something, he was distraught!

I’m really excited about what Youkai Watch has in store, what I don’t understand is the amount of hate Youkai Watch gets. If you go on YouTube, a lot of the videos have many dislikes. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it’s because it’s very very similar to Doraemon… But other than that, I don’t see any reason to hate just an amazing franchise. Can’t wait for next week’s episode, or when it gets subbed!