I had the honour to be invited to being Father Christmas at Chrismas day on the Mwanza Yacht Club. On entering the floor in my red suit and cotton wool beard the 300 to 400 crowd of children managed to bring me down, where I held my box of sweets like a rugby player, covered in darkness by an impressive heap of children, until the little hands had managed to take every little peace of candy out. Afterwards, I heard that the management had gotten worried and had considered a rescue operation. The Hon. Rear Commodore of the MYC board, however, got his position through: "this guy is strong enough, he will survive". One child had managed to grab my glasses and came to return them undamaged after I had been completely scavenged. All in all a good show, and I was told it reached Tanzania prime time TV news, including some images of my handsome red outfit. I was also interviewed (in battle dress, refusing to call myself other than Father Christmas), but this was wisely suppressed: satire is not the style of government news in East Africa. On being asked the serious moral question what was the meaning of this event to the children of Tanzania, I had mainly told them I was less important than Jesus but older, endowed with real goodies instead of virtual ones and perhaps better resistant to all sorts of climate change.

My Kiswahili lessons with Leonardi seem to have some effect, though I am impatient to speak it like English, German and French. Leonardi boosts my confidence in curious ways. When, for instance, I say ugonjwa unaopa homa ("disease - that - which gives fever"), he says: "Now Kiswahili people will really be surprised, they are not used to this grammatical construction but it is good Kiswahili". I do like compliments, and he is serious, but what to think of this one: good Kiswahili that Kiswahili speakers would think of as bad?
But then,: I am used to it, my scientific publications, most of my music, and virtually anything I said in whatever language has mostly qualified for the same label: good quality thought bad by those who consider themselves experts. I really would start doubting myself if that would change. It has become my private quality hallmark: "everybody tells me this is crazy so there must be something in it

"The thing is crawling like a snake". That is how Nkaka confirmed my suspicion that my hull might be thought to be finished by Daniel, but really isn't, due to a alarming lack of stiffness.
Even after having listed his findings in an official inspection report, Nkaka kept lowering my temper with further criticisms: the whole ship actually is a blown up version of a small dhow, but the wood size has not been blown up accordingly: Nkaka judged the frames too thin, and his foreman Benedict had even suggested to take the whole keel beam out and replace it by a double sized one. In short, my idea that Daniel's approach reflected a traditional local inclination to light shipbuilding was wrong: he is simply incompetent and built me a huge match box.
I started imagining me on that lake, my ears concentrated on every little sound of cracking, going through the hull every day with a torch to monitor the bolt holes and edges of the frames, being forced to have my passengers sign declarations like:

"As a passenger of this ship I have been taken well notice that any limitation of warranty and responsibility that has ever been written in any product's or services' manual, license- or service agreement when- and wherever in the world, applies to myself as long as I am on this ship"

Captain

finally sinking in the middle of the lake, not by rocks or the weight of warranty limitation document, but just because a well formed wave smashes itself elegantly against the weakest line of frame-joints tearing the hull longitudinally from rear to front.
The very worst of consequences for me, however, was not the sinking or drowning. After all, most types of dying are worse. But I had planned to forget about this terrible Daniel as soon as I would get that dhow off his yard. With lasting defects of the dhow, however, I would be forced to remember him until my death, and even while dying I would think: I could have drowned many years later if it was not for that thug.
This thought really brought me down. It was too much, even for the very sophisticated anti-depressives that normally keep me afloat. I fled my house, roamed around in town, really wishing to flee myself. My brain stopped its services and I was simply sitting, staring and asking myself what I was doing here in the middle of Africa. While sleeping, my dreams were all sorrow and problems, and in the morning I had a hard time finding a reason to get up. Bluuhhh. This was supposed to be the period in which I would be at the yard the whole day, monitoring every step. But the nearness of this Daniel feels so repulsive that I restrict myself to one visit a day.

My new inspector Nkaka's foreman Benedict had seen my boat and talked to Daniel and Feleshi, but I had never been there together with him. Now I took him on my motorcycle, in order to turn Nkaka's general guidelines into specific step by step building instructions, comprehensible mainly to Daniel, but also to Feleshi and me. Benedict turned out not only to be good technically but also to have the social skills of a teacher and a seller of good ideas. I saw him, Daniel and Feleshi melting together as a group, discussing doubts and ideas without reservation, though I heard my cherished friend Feleshi trying, in Kiswahili, to kill some of Benedicts fortifying suggestions by saying "this man is only going to use this boat as a house". Thus, fortunately, I could correct it by assuring that, apart from that, the ship will also have to survive many tropical rainstorms in the middle of lake Victoria (size of Ireland, in many areas over 100 meters deep). Reservations by Daniel were well understood by Benedict to be money-cost inspired, and Benedict was tactical enough to clearly explain that his proposals were cheaper than their alternatives, thus redrawing Daniel to the lesson. Knowing some Kiswahili is not bad, because now I started to realize how easily three such men, independently hired and paid by me, could quickly and easily relieve themselves of the burden of the job assigned and of mutual disagreements by putting it on my neck entirely and let me sink with it. But I could not deny I too came under Benedicts spell. He did not come back to his earlier idea to replace the entire keel, probably because this would not be a job for Daniel but for himself and I had told him that Daniel should do all jobs and keep full responsibility until delivery, after which we could still consider further improvements by Benedict. I did, however, propose the three gentlemen instead to bolt a 14 m train rail upside under the entire keel. Benedicts suggestions involved a host of mninga hardwood and metal stiffeners as shown below:

Picture:
Left red: mninga hardwood perpendicular stiffeners on every sixth bottom frame and every other deck frame
Middle red: angle steel bar triangle stiffeners on main high beams, the stern "Shire triangles" are my invention, about which later.
Right red: mninga hardwood stern stiffener
Right and left red and black: my plan to bolt a 14 m train rail upside down under the too light keel, a novelty not greeted enthusiastically by the experts

I did go some way to argue for my train rail:

for longitudinal stiffening for ballast, since I would carry extremely little weight for a boat of this size to stabilize by lowering the centre of gravity to protect against rocks due to the elegant profile of a train rail, to increase perpendicular water resistance thus reducing drift.

Despite my brilliant and superior arguments for this historical novelty nobody got impressed, so this must be a very good idea and I am going to do it.
For now however, it was a matter of bringing Benedict back to his own yard, buy the angle steel bars, adding the price to the list to be subtracted from Daniel's end payment - not telling him so, of course. My good mood came back, even my frames started to look bigger again.

Photo: arriving at Feleshi's workshop with two 6m angle steel bars 50 cm-50cm-6 mm (a two-strong-men-load to carry)

The Continuing Story Of Mr. Fat's Harbour Shop, Part 2: I had agreed to be at MYC in the evening to download some digital pictures that board member Gerald had taken of the Father Christmas events. He did not show up so I sat with Noel, a well-fed gentleman with little expression in his fat swollen round face, well known to me, though he would never talk much in company. Curiously enough, one time, while shaking his hand on arrival, the notoriously silent mouth in his immobile face told me: we have met before.
I know, I said. After all, he was a regularly present MYC member.
Today, the mouth in the brown basket ball sized poker face even phrased a question: Do you remember the first time we met?
Yes, here, at the club.
Did you not come one time from Uganda by ferry on a red motorcycle?
Now, the light went on: Noel was Mr. Fat. No, I've always come with my pickup, I said, pointing to the club gate, where, fortunately, I had indeed just arrived with my pickup and not with my red motorcycle.
Yes, I know that car, Noel said, clearly transpiring it was his business to meddle with other people's property.
So this guy, corrupt to the bones, is even keeping an eye on his own club members, I realized.
I took you for a muzungu gentleman...and Noel told the story.
That must be a strange guy, I say. I never met a muzungu who had no money to spare for border officials. You guys are not expensive at all, at least to muzungu standards.
Noel could not agree more. I think your temporary import license of your car has expired, he said.
What is this guy trying?, I asked myself. Is it normal Tanzanian procedure for a customs officer to annoy people in leisure time, at bars, far from borders, with his bureaucratic bullshit? The license is unlimited, I replied.
Noel seemed surprised, as far as anything could be read in his face. Bring it tomorrow, Noel says, I will check it.
The bloody limit! I hid my rage for the fool. Fortunately his appearance is too different from that of donkeys and monkeys to lapse again into misusing those intelligent and charming animals for swearing purposes.
His food was brought. A impressive bowl filled with boiled chicken and potatoes. He cordially invited me to join.
I offered him a drink. Whiskey.
Gerald seemed not to come. I shook hands to say goodbye and slapped his fat shoulder: see you again.
If God wishes, Noel replied devoutly, still eating.

At home I check my temporary pickup import certificate, obtained half a year ago crossing Mutukula border. Under "It is my present intention to re-export the vehicle the the Custom station at............on or about (date)............", the officers wrote: Mutukula, One month.
Nowhere it is stated that the certificate is invalid if these "present intentions" change, nor even that the bearer should report somewhere if they do. Except for one fat thug at the Mwanza Yacht Club bar nobody ever asked me about these papers, though the shady Mwanza police stops me just about every day checking my seat belts and asking for all kinds of documents over and over again, even passports, with they are not even allowed to ask for and are refused, at least by me. Extensions of temporary import certificates probably go with some milking of the certificate holder. In the present service oversupply of the Mwanza crime scene, it will be cheaper to have this Noel disposed of - to the benefit of this beautiful country, but no, if he starts again about it, I'll just tell him I gave the certificate to my lawyer, who told me it is OK and every customs officer who would try to harass me would be fired, fined and jailed the same day. Due to Fat's regrettable facial outfit, it remains unclear whether he tries to prey on me as a fellow club member or simply means to offer his help to me, unsolicited. Anyway, I will inform our commodore Munisi about his behaviour and highly questionable customs business record, and make sure he is monitored. He surely has no license to exercize the "duties" of his esteemed official job on the club's premises.

And of course from now on I park at MYC's neighbour Hotel Tilapia.

Later inquiries teach that Mwanza harbour is an important gateway for illegal weapons to Burundi and East Congo.