The U-Turn Journal #2
Deck Tent, Proto-Hut, Power, and Mashabala's Excess Peace

New network found. Google Earth location is spot on the (football field size) near rectangle of water you see, our harbour, and the android ring circles around...the place in the boat where it lies on the table. Unlike my Garmin GPS, I has satellite signal inside the hold.

Electronically, we caught up to the state of the art with an HTC Desire android. They call it a  "smartphone"  but it's actually a computer with: built-in modem, WIFI transmitter, Ipod, electronic compass, GPS, gravity sensor, alarm clock/stopwatch, video audio camera, sound recorder, torch, FM radio and, yes, phone. The android is ready to host your Outlook calendar and synchronize with its copy on your computer, absorb all your Outlook contacts from you computer and allow its phone book to be managed and synchronized from there, send all of it to you skype-phone book as well, serve, in the meantime as your water level, direct you over road to your destination, show you the names of stars and constellations by you holding it in their directions, email, skype, download files (you have 3.6 GB), make internet connection and relay this connection to your computer through its own portable WiFi hotspot (11Mbps) or cable (425Mbps), measure your heart rate if you put your finger on the camera lens (?? don't ask me how this works) and even... make phone calls! Of course it is devouring battery power, but the need to have it on charge all day and carefully keep unused power eaters off when you take it out is a small price indeed. Anyway, my truck has 230 V so in the car all features can be boasted about!

Our protohut: the bow bed stead (double). Floor 1.5 m above keel. Can be closed with a mahogany slide door

The bow bedstead ("Royal", for it has a second exit through deck hatch) is now ready. It has a slide door. Door, posts, wall and shelves all mahogany. But it cost us 500 000 (� 150). That is crazy to Ugandan standards. Four more big huts, maybe some small, and an 8 to 10 person boat (replacing our canoe) to go... We will pause when our present wood stock is finished and hunt for mukusu hard wood (similar to mahogany) on Sese Islands. We shall try to have logs cut, dry them on Dom's Banda Island, then take them for cutting to Kampala by dhow. But the drying might take up to 3 or 4 months. And getting cutters to bring logs requires frequent spy/policing activity carrot throwing and stick beating. And dry them out because if you pay each log promptly they have to finish seventy beers before they go back to the forest to cut the next.^{[more about previous experience]}.

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Rewiring the dhow. Two batteries 24V- connected to solar and inverter make the grid's 230VAC

Meanwhile I rewire the dhow: all 12V shit out, we enter, a bit late, the age of the 5W energy saving lights. While we run out of our existing stock of wood, Mashabala gradually runs out of any inspiration to do things. I decided to make the picture collage below to illustrate the remarkable process:

Philemon working, his assistant Mashabala in peace

This is Mashabala's fourth visit to "work" for me. Philemon in private scorns M's recent excess of peace. But M seems to be socially unavoidable to Philemon. Now the peace has become total except for some very loud yawning. I decided to come to Philemon's help: "Tell M that Roland and me do not want him next time you come". Exit Mashabala, but with a last surprise: leaving for home, he left the ship with a nice 1x4x100cm piece of left-over mahogany.
"Utafanya nini?" (what are you going to do) I asked.
"Kazi" ("work") was his answer.
Sacked with a mahogany handshake...Philemon told me that Tanzania customs might well spend half an hour to force 20 eurocents mahogany import duty out of M's pocket. Even though pitying Philemon, I enjoyed the idea.

The hunt for cheaper hardwood, from about the last hardwood trees on Sese Islands available for cutting, is bound to become quite a separate chapter in the process. While I hunt for wood, Roland likes to hire Philemon to replace the present unsatisfactory harbour sheeting workers so I might host him again sooner than required for continuing the dhow's refurbishment. A four month wood hunt delay to save far less than 2000 euro's? Yes! This is Africa. Moreover, would I earn 2000 euros sailing tourists 4 months earlier? Far from sure. Better start earning my money right now on Sese! Let us see if our African experience will make us do better this time.