I finished a book I was reading and it was spectacular. It’s part of my East African season and I couldn’t remember as I was reading it which of the two Kenyan female authors it was by – the older one who wrote shortly after independence, or the recent one, a young hope. It was […]
Chaat soup
Today we tried urojo, which is a mango coconut soup with vadas and crispy chatpatta stuff, drizzled with chilli and tamarind, and topped with a skewer or two of grilled beef. It was the first food we had which was tasty, distinctive and local, a trifecta that has largely eluded us (getting even one has […]
Both negative
We went for a careful excursion yesterday, to a cafe which had genuinely good filter coffees. We both had their light roast, I in a kalita wave (in memory of our Cholula cafe, Bartolo – possibly my favourite cafe anywhere) and the GF in a V60. Very pleasant, and it was a nice part of […]
My turn
Today I woke up and realised it was my turn – a fever, weakness, and a heaviness around the chest. The poor GF, still very unwell, had to take over cooking and getting foodstuff, which nearly felled him (it was his first time outside since we arrived, and then he was too out of it […]
Not disaster
The GF’s test result came back and, to both our startlement, is negative, so he does not apparently have corona. He is also a little better today, very weak, but the fever is down and either I have got the hang of the oximeter or oxygen saturation has improved. Nevertheless it was a day of […]
Disaster
The GF might have the corona, it seems very likely. we arrived in Stone Town – happily well masked, and by the end of the journey he looked like he was ready to keel over. Then our room wasn’t ready, so we found a rooftop restaurant to wait as he felt less and less well. […]
Bad nights
The place we’re staying in Jambiani is one of those that looks really good on Airbnb, and has all that is advertised, but is just dinghier, darker and has other defects that are hard to identify without seeing the place. One is that our rooms are set up so that air circulation is quite blocked […]
Stand on Zanzibar
Which is where I am, and it’s been a very long time indeed since I posted anything other than a frontpagefury and even those, I must admit, were stored up and posted in a couple of highly delayed batches. So here we are on the island of Zanzibar, with its dhows and fierce white light […]