Captured nature and fresh fruit.

The view from Irente Viewpoint. 

A week or so ago we went on an adventure to check out the local look-out spot. Mariko and her Peace Corps friend had been there years ago and were telling me about the amazing view. When we got up to where they thought it was, we couldn't find it. We asked around for a while and discovered that the ex-president had purchased the narrow bit of land leading up to the view point and constructed a hotel. Now they charge you to walk through their tacky hotel to get to enjoy this amazing view. Funny how that works. No value added, just a sneaky way to capitalize off of the inherent natural beauty. That's politics and economics around these parts.

On our way home we ducked into a thatch restaurant on a biodiversity reserve to eat lunch and wait out the monsoon rains. They served amazing fresh bread, homemade cheese, fresh butter, cottage cheese, vegis straight out of the ground and passion fruit juice. Our entertainment was the drum of torrential rains on the thatch roof and a slow dance performed by the little guy in the picture below. I will have to arrange to get waylaid there again soon.

Some of this grass is not like the others. I get paranoid to walk on grass now, looking down at most steps. So many beautiful things hiding, blending in, that I wouldn't want to step on. This is yet another local chameleon. 

Our village Beauty Saloon.
Right now I'm letting my hair do it's thing. But when it's time for a cut, I'm going to the beauty saloon. At my barbershop in Denver they would offer me a beer or a shot of whiskey. I imagine this place serves banana wine. It helps take the edge off of a bad haircut. Notice the shoes in front of the door. Yes, the floor is dirt, and you take your shoes off. Some dirt is dirtier than others. Many buildings are built in this style. Use whatever you can find and put a roof on it. I like it.

A favorite hangout for the local Colubus Monkeys. Fractal treetops.

Magamba forest reserve. Giant fern trees. 

 Due to forces beyond our control, we have been exploring as much of the local forests as possible. These forces are inherent in Mariko and I and probably almost every other human being, whether they recognize them or not. We must spend time in nature to feel balanced. We need to experience beauty on a regular basis. It's nice to feel the interdependence and interconnection that are the essence of natural ecosystems. Not to say that interdependence isn't everywhere, but in the forest it speaks of a deep balance. Unfortunately there are very few natural ecosystems left, even in this part of the world. 95% of the forests in the Usambara mountains have been deforested. It's a complex situation. Much of it happened in the 1970's when Finnish logging companies looted these beautiful ancient forests. The local water supply was poisoned for over 200,000 people. Nobody really cared until the 1990's when NGO's started noticing that the Usambara mountains were one of the worlds great biodiversity treasures, and they were almost entirely gone. The foreign logging companies moved out and Finnland donated money to help set up park systems to protect what was left. Yet the situation isn't that simple. Population growth has been steady increasing, and subsistence farmers need land to grow food. There is also either no access or no affordable access to any source of fuel for cooking and heating, so people cut down the forests for firewood and charcoal. They know that it's not sustainable, they just don't see any other way to feed their families. What to do? Even the local forest reserves and national parks are being cut down for fuel and farming. It's a sad situation. We will do what we can, and I am looking into some ideas to make little changes. I am fascinated by the idea of biomass charcoal making. For more info check out the work of Amy Smith. She has a wonderful TED talk on the subject.

"According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the country’s forests are disappearing at a whopping rate of 4,200 square kilometers (1,620 sq. miles) annually. That’s about four times the size of New York City."

Nature also eats. But this little seething mass of grasshoppers will give back all that they devour.

A happy day of bush whacking. The only trails through this forest are from illegal logging. Our guide spent his childhood sneaking into the reserve with his parents to cut down trees to sell charcoal.

We met a few monkeys in the Magamba reserve, some incredibly strange bugs, and this Two horned Eastern Usambara Chameleon. He's looking good in his bark browns.

An idyllic little home by a stream. 

Small villages steadily grow and expand into the forest reserves. 

Local ladies sell their wares at a bus station on our way down the mountain. The woman in front is waiting for her bus. Her luggage consists of a bag of charcoal, a bag of vegetables and a goat immobilized in a basket. Now I know how to travel with a goat.

Mariko and a Baobab tree. Apparently this is a small Baobab. 

A successful market day. Every Thursday and Sunday farmers bring their wares from the surrounding villages.  The gems of this harvest are the passion fruits (amazing juice) and the furry looking tubers in the bottom left known as Cocoyams. The cocoyams melt into a rich and creamy base in stews. I love market day.  

Cyclical time

It's the bumblebee time of the day again.
Every day at this time they come to visit. I can hear their deep drone from inside the house as they circumnavigate our roof. Not sure what it is about the roof that they are so attracted to, nothing flower-like about it. It is nice to have little guests humming away every day.

Another cyclical event in the house is the ill-fated tower of termite.

They keep building, and I keep knocking them down and relocating the builders outside. A few days later, I find a new tower growing grain by grain out of little holes in the enamel hardened dirt floor. Tenacious little guys.

In the realm of cyclical events, we cannot forget the monsoon rains. Every afternoon a torrent comes. Usually we are holed up at home working or spending time with friends who are also waiting out the storm. The day before yesterday we waited it out under the awning of a little bakery with a couple school kids. I splurged on a round of tiny muffins for all of us as we watched the deluge and waited.

Today's medical news is pretty interesting. I visited the local Montessori compound where they have a school, nunnery, little store that makes cheese and jam, and the best medical clinic in the area. The head doctor worked in Southern Tanzania in the 70's with a Chinese acupuncture doctor. He was impressed at his ability to use needles to take away pain in a very short period of time. The Chinese doctor trained him in some basic techniques, but he hasn't been able to practice them since due to lack of supplies and support. We exchanged numbers and I will give him a call soon see if he is interested in renewing his studies and/or having me treat some of their difficult patients. 

Now it's time for another cyclical occurrence, the afternoon nap. There is a puddle of sunshine on the couch that is calling my name.  

This is the Africa I dreamed about. 

We made it out of hellish Dar es Salaam yesterday and into the mountains. It's amazing up here in Lushoto. Forested, lush, calm, and cool. It seems like a paradise after the past month and a half in the city. This morning I spent 30 minutes watching a horned chameleon cruise around and eat bugs. He was so tame and friendly that he would crawl up on our hands and hang out, looking up curiously with his swiveling ball and socket eyes while gently balancing on his little two toed mitten feet. After that entertainment I sat on my bed and looked out over the greenery and meditated for a bit. Much to my amusement a trio of white breasted crows did an aerial dance with three large brown hawks in front of my window. I think I'm home.

Eastern Usambara Two Horned Chameleon

There are about 30 different Chameleons in Tanzania. They make up an odd bunch, with varied horns and head gear, different sizes and colors. I highly recommend you do a google photo search of African Chameleons. There are quite a few different ones up here in Lushoto. I will try and get a few to pose for your pleasure. 

On a walk through the forest we were followed by a flock of inquisitive Silvery Cheeked Hornbill.

I'm feeling much healthier now that I'm out of the heat and pollution. Nothing like cool mountain air and relaxing daily hikes through monkey filled forests to clear the city from the lungs. It was getting pretty bad in Dar. I guess it's usual to have to go through some levels of hell to make it to the more paradisiacal places. Not quite a trip through Dante's inferno, but a close human approximation.  Dar is the one of the fastest growing cities in the world right now. With no infrastructure, no running water for 80% of people, no housing, no trash collection, poor sanitation and sewage, no medicine and extremely expensive food you can imagine the chaos and suffering that ensues. Yet the exodus continues as almost an entire generation of youth swarm to the city. I shudder to think what it will look like in 10 years without an intervening miracle. 

Lushoto on the other hand is the polar opposite of the city. As I type this there are two brightly colored tiny tropical birds with long curved beaks doing a little mating dance on my window grate. I love this place. I've started treating a few patients. It seems that most everyone has health issues, which is status quo for having a human body. The difference is that they don’t have much access to medicine, and typically they can’t afford to see doctors or pay for the drugs they prescribe. Average yearly income here is $300. Gas prices are more than $5 per gallon and food prices aren’t all that much different than in the US. Needless to say I keep meeting wonderful people who have learned to live with all sorts of health problems that are totally treatable. I would describe some of these but I will spare the squeamish, as well as my own stomach, which is working on a big breakfast of banana pancakes made with cassava flour, finger millet flour, bananas, cow fresh milk and organic yellow yolked eggs. Even the food here is better. You can see it growing in little farms covering the mountain sides. Everything tastes so fresh and vital.  

Hanging out with my new friend. I like his hands.

A master of disguise

So far we have been too busy settling into our new house for me to do much leg work for the education project. Even so I have a few leads on some healthcare practitioners to train in acupuncture and TCM. There is one local doctor so far who wants to learn a little acupuncture and moxa. I have also started teaching a few patients how to treat themselves with moxa and next week I'm going to go visit a few tiny village clinics to show them some simple moxa techniques they can use for TB and immune compromised patients. We are off to a great start.

Two of my favorite South American flowers growing together on the edge of a wetland rice paddy. This intertwined entheogenic pair is Morning Glory (Ipomoea tricolor) and Angel's Trumpet (Brugmansia). I wonder if the locals know that these bushes induce visions. 

2/28/13

Despite my good intentions, I don’t seem to get the opportunity to blog or use the miracle of Skype to call anyone from home that I’m missing. Our power has been going out pretty much daily, sometimes for several days at a time. We asked about it and were told it was accidental, but it keeping going off and coming back on right on the hour or half hour. Alas my digitally powered pen and technologically enhanced voice are silenced. The one power company here has been getting millions and millions of dollars from foreign donors and the government to update it's infrastructure over the past few years. Apparently most of that has gone into bonuses for the CEOs, paying for their company supplied mansions, and paying for their own personal state of the art power generators at these mansions. Reminds me of our bank bail-outs. The government just announced that the incompetence of the power company might bring the entire country to a new state of financial ruin within the next few years. Without a complete overhaul of the current system things look dire. Luckily they have been in negotiations with the World Bank, who will of course step in to save the day and give a mountain of money to make it all better. That is if any of that money ends up going where it is intended for. The World Bank will require their usual stipulations that the Tanzanians open up the energy market to “competition” with foreign companies. Have you ever seen an ant compete with an anteater? All I can say is, something’s gotta give. A city haphazardly built somewhat attempting to mimic the northern European model cannot function without power.

 My air conditioner and water don’t function without power and meanwhile I've been down yet again with a heat and toxin related illness. It arose after spend all night without power, awake, sweating in the heat and breathing in thick suffocating clouds from a giant trash fire. I've got a nasty rash-like heat induced something all over my neck, thick yellow mucus, nausea and dizziness. Fun stuff. Thankfully I've got a giant box of yincare to keep the skin stuff at bay and I happened to bring along the perfect Chinese herbal formula for my current conundrum. I love Chinese Medicine.

I haven't searched out an herbalist around these parts. It's not easy in a city of 4 million with no infrastructure to find a decent herbalist. There certainly isn’t any nature around from which to pick herbs. I also discovered during my research that the form of herbal medicine here in Dar es salaam has an interesting belief system. They feel that leaving their herbs on trash heaps and compost piles until it starts to rot makes it more potent. This isn’t just metaphorical, apparently they actually aim to supercharge the herbs. It relates to the observation that life comes from death. I find it an interesting philosophy, but I have no desire to take their medicine. Luckily up in Lushoto (mountains) they have a more sophisticated herbal tradition and some good healers I have been invited to meet. Just need to hold in there a little while longer.

The local water supply. It runs outside of our compound, and our waste water flows into it. I was a bit startled the first time I saw a neighbor dipping in for drinking water. 85% of the city has no running water and relies on ditches like this or local water taps that seldom work.

Tuk Tuks are the easiest way to get around, but incredibly dangerous. These guys drive like madmen. 

I don't know when we can leave yet. We are waiting for Mariko to get her residence permit. Unfortunately it is an epic endeavor. There are mythical trials including evil witches (can also be spelled with a B), corrupt petty bureaucratic warlords, constantly changing riddles and requirements, and astronomical fees that raise day by day with no warning. Poor girl has had to go there 5 times so far and every time they are incredibly mean and rude and corrupt. Maybe today we will find out when we can leave town. We should have found out yesterday but they decided to add on a new $50 fee only payable in US dollars and didn't let anyone know or post anything about it anywhere. Yep, interesting times, learning patience and learning what it's like living in the bureaucratic heart of one of the world poorest and most corrupt governments.   

Hanging out at the local corner store. The pineapples and mangoes are delicious.

This is the little tiny closet sized shack of one of my neighbors. Their 2 1/2 year old boy is my buddy. Every time I walk by we wave at each other and smile and laugh. It's nice to have a friend. He has a little car made of a plastic water bottle and another little water bottle boat he sometimes plays with in the gutter. They don't have room to sit in their house, and it's all corrugated metal so it is probably hellishly hot, so they use the dirt street as their living room. It's nice to see them out there braiding hair, playing, resting and preparing food. A very domestic scene. I hope my little buddy finds a way out of the shanty town.

A few old masks from the wood carvers market where Stoney came from. 

Che Guevara and Bob Marley, patron saints of Tuk Tuk drivers and motorcyclists.

Stay Tuned... good developments, brighter days, and the beauty and culture of Tanzania begin in our next episode.

sick today. Incessant trash fires and heat left me up all night with a sore throat and a bit of a cough. Today it's worse out there. Hellfire and brimstone. I'm staying inside, closing all the windows and being thankful that the power is on and the A/C works. Mariko and I were ruminating yesterday that all of the elements that we humans weave into our hell mythologies actually exist in some reflection of our collective experience. The one about being stuck in a burning iron box? My neighbors live in a little tin shack that must be a similitude. I had a little taste lying in our room a few nights back with no power, no air moving and sweltering heat, dripping sweat, being eaten by mosquitos, unable to sleep and breathing in the foul plastic stench of garbage fires. Being human isn't always fully humane. And we've got it lucky you and I.

So today, just some pictures for you to enjoy. I'm going to meditate a bit and go back to bed.

 Our trash burning heap. Even the rich burn their trash, plastic and all. I did see a garbage truck of sorts the other day. The funny part was that the garbage men were lighting little trash fires in the street as they went along.

I had a dream, where the whole world was turning into gated communities and shopping malls. Here, this is the dream, to live in your own little ubiquitous streets of identical middle class houses. This one is surrounded by guards and next to a mall. A little bubble amidst shanty towns.

This is the other part of that nightmare, the part with the mall. Yes, there is a shopping mall about 20 minutes from us. I do have nightmares about being stuck in one never ending all encompassing mall. This place scares me a little. The tower of Babel is happening in reverse. All human cultures are being replaced by this and slums that could be Calcutta or Sao Paolo or Beijing. Yet in reality a mall is just the fate of the lucky upper class. One of these days soon I will try and snap some photos of the surrounding neighborhoods, so far I've been over protective of my only camera and haven't taken it out much yet.

Luckily this is not all of reality here. I will nap for now, and hopefully dream of the mountains and those little wild places where mal-developed city hasn't yet invaded.

A common thread, a mild obsession.

There is one thing that connects us all. Well actually many things connect us all, but there isone that is the most tangible and tasty. One thing that you can talk about anytime, with anyone, and get a visceral reaction. Talking about the weather never made someone drool, it never made a stomach rumble. Only talking about food has that magical power of communicating to both the body and mind. So today let's talk about food. Not just any food, but my favorite food. The pancake.

I've been called many things over the years. More recently I have no idea what most of them mean. My Swahilli is still just budding. One of the most flattering has been Pancake Master. It's not just an innate skill to make a pancake out of almost anything that gave me that moniker. It has taken taken a lifetime of practice and experimentation. When did this all begin you might wonder? I think it started in boy scouts when I got an award for my pancakes, and the praise of my scout master for making what he called the "perfect pancake". I still remember watching it's surface bubble up and saw in my minds eye the golden brown that lay hidden on the other side next to the hot griddle. At that moment I fell in love with pancakes. Little did he know that was just the humble beginnings of a lifelong obsession. A few years later I watched a show on TV about what lumber jacks ate for breakfast. What I saw was amazing, they ate colossal teetering stacks of pancakes with huge log jams of bacon on the side to hold back a waterfall of maple syrup. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to be a lumber jack. So where is all this rambling about pancakes and lumber jacks headed and what does it have to do with Tanzania or medicine? All this is just an appetizer for a new and monumental discovery. A brand new pancake.

Mariko just looked over my shoulder and said, "You are silly, but I appreciate your pancakes." So true. 

These delicious breakfast treats are made with all local ingredients. Feel free to try this at home.

Begin with Ugali flour. This is probably the most common staple food for Tanzanian villagers. It is a finely ground white corn flour that is usually mixed with water and cooked into a paste which you can eat with most any meal. A traditional breakfast is ugali porridge. Dinner is a thicker ugali paste eaten with vegis or when you can afford it some meat.  Most people eat ugali with their fingers, so I made these pancakes in a crepe fashion for all you finger food fans.

Corn is not indigenous to Africa, so how did it get here and become a staple food so far from it's origins in the new world? Most historians theorize that it was introduced by the Portugese into the costal regions as early as the 1500's. According to Marvin P. Miracle in the Journal of African History;

"Maize was probably introduced to tropical Africa at more than one point and at different times. Maize was widely grown along the coast from the River Gambia to Sao Tome, around the mouth of the River Congo, and possibly in Ethiopia, in the sixteenth century. There is reference to it in all these places, in Zanzibar, and around the mouth of the River Ruvuma in the seventeenth century; and it was not only mentioned but described as an important foodstuff and a major provision for slave ships between Liberia and the Niger Delta during the same century. Much less information is available for the interior, but it clearly seems to have been unknown in Uganda as late as 1861. Until well within the present century, it was neither a major export nor a mainstay of the diet in most of eastern and central tropical Africa, the bulk of the areas where it is now of major importance."

I digress, we were talking about pancakes not history.
Mix 1/4 cup ugali flour with 3 white yolked eggs. Blend well.

White yolk eggs were quite a surprise to me at first. I'm used to the yellow variety. These little pale beauties are relatively tasteless, which can be great for any of you who abhor the taste of egg. Why are they white? I have no idea. I couldn't find any definitive answer in my brief research into their edibility and nutritional value. Some egg specialist say it can be genetic or it can be due to the diet of the chickens. I'm guessing it could be either. Do the chickens I see running though the streets raised on white corn and city trash make white eggs? I guess so.

I think my eggs might come from our neighbors chickens.












Mix with a teaspoon of sunflower oil and a 1/4 to 1/2 cup boxed milk. Don't even think of using fresh milk, it only comes warm and packaged for a long shelf life in a handy box.

Make the batter thin so you can easily spread it across the bottom of the pan. These pancakes come off best as crepes.

Cook over medium heat until toasty brown.

The best part is the fresh fruit. Mangoes are my favorite, but Pineapples and bananas are tasty too.

According to Mariko, she has never seen a Tanzanian pancake made from these local staples foods. Now she sees them most every morning. They just keep getting better too as new innovations in batter mixing and cooking times develop.














Please enjoy responsibly.

Greetings from Tanzania!

Greetings from Tanzania!

My lady and I made it to Dar es Salaam and found a nice little apartment to settle into for a couple months while she does research in the city.

Jet lagged, hot, sweaty and happy.

 As luck would have it, we "randomly" got a place that ended up being owned by a professor who runs the institute which my girlfriend is being supported by. We showed up to move in and asked who our neighbor in the compound was and were introduced to the professor and his large and friendly family. It turns out he had a stroke a few weeks back and wanted to try acupuncture to improve his recovery time. I've been working with him a few times so far, and he loves it. I’ve also started treating one of his wives for diabetes and I have a growing list of friends and family who want treatments as well. Every time I go next door to treat I meet new ministers and more of the local ruling class. Not what I was looking for, and not necessarily who I would like my work to be limited to in the long run, but they are curious about Oriental medicine so perhaps this little auspicious coincidence will bear fruit in connections to local medical organizations. Who knows. My place is just to ride these little waves, treat whoever needs my services, and see if it turns into opportunities to teach acupuncture and moxa to those who need it most. 

So far it's taken some time to get used to the unique climate here in the city; hot, sweaty, crowded and dirty. It is strange coming from the high snow-filled mountains only a week and a half ago. Seems like a different lifetime. If it wasn't a dirty crazy hot city I might be tempted to stay in Dar and set something up. Our plan is to live here in the city for a few months, after which we are trying to make it up to the Usambara mountains where it is cooler and we can enjoy nature and the peace of village life. Mariko lived in a tiny village in these mountains for two years and has been dreaming of them ever since. I’m told it is one of the most peaceful places she has ever been. I can’t wait to see it. There is a little clinic out there that serves the area. I’m hoping to be able to set up a relationship with them and see if I can do some training there. There are still many unknowns about how the medical part of this journey will unfold, yet we just arrived and already everything seems to be continually falling into place.

It is my hope to get out of the city and into the wild for a few days in the next couple weeks. I want to meet a hippo and bask in the new set of equatorial stars. That adventure comes next. Our current one is set in a little bubble amidst shanty towns, with tuk tuks zooming around, constant chaotic traffic jams and a teeming sea of human life. 

The view from my bedroom window. Poverty and relative wealth sit side-by-side. Our side is protected by a big fence with sharp spikes on it and guards lounging under the trees 24hrs a day. At night "the dog" is brought in. He sounds like a real beast. I saw where they kept the dogs at another house we looked at. Tiny little concrete boxes in the sun with small air-holes in a metal grate from which a frothing and barking set of jaws would poke out when I passed. I hope our guard dog has a better life.

Fortunately the Tanzanians are incredibly nice and welcoming. Compared to many places in Africa it's safe here. We still have to live in a guarded compound, but we get lots of hellos and smiles every time we venture out. As I type I can hear drumming off in the neighborhoods close by. Yesterday we found it’s source. A little shack with a wide open dirt yard filled with older Tanzanians dancing and singing up a storm. Another little gem to explore in the coming days.

My daily walk to the market for fresh vegetables and fruit takes me through the traditional woodworkers market. It is a several block row of little stalls filled to the brim with “ebony” elephants, statues of Masai warriors and carved masks. I made my first purchase of local art from a nice and talented woodworker named William. I had no intention of buying a rhino, but William was so nice, and so hungry, and the rhino was so full of character I couldn’t resist.

His name is Stony Tangawizi.

I will keep you updated on our adventures. Mariko, Stoney and I feel so fortunate to have this incredible opportunity and I am happy to have you join us.

Much sweaty and sincere love from Tanzania.