Go To: Satellite Picture of Jogging Track

If the last 500 m steep uphill (50 up) sometimes is too much to bear, I can take a short cut. If, however I feel the courage to continue for the last affliction, the steep hill, crowded with very simple hut-like houses, children bringing water and cooking firewood, mothers starting to prepare food is a concert of laughter about the crazy mzungu. All children say "shikamoo", hoping the mzungu has breath left for "marahaba", but he hasn't. In one of the early reconnaissance trips, my jogging was arrested at the hill top football field, where a large crowd watched well organized village youngsters playing on a field littered will very big rocks peeping out of the ground with there ground surfaces. I was loudly invited to join. Under loud cheering, I gave my GPS to the referee, and under even louder cheering I took off my shirt, since I was to join the naked torso team. Luckily I scored the only field goal of the match, a quite well directed 20 meter ground shot from a high and descending pass, taken on the back of the forefoot. That made us equal. In a similar shot I hit the post's outside. In the penalty shoot out most penalties are held, mine also, since the goal is less than half the regular one. On exit I taught my team (average age 18, exactly a third of mine, to correctly pronounce "van Nistelrooy". They acquire shamefully incorrect pronunciations from British TV that, as a Dutchman, having lived a few miles from the village Nistelrooy for many years, I feel my duty to correct. On a later occasion the top-hill flag was not reachable because a crowd was dancing on drums and indingidi, an African sisal snared violin with a little drum as resonance box. I clocked after counting the seconds it would have taken me to reach my finish flag and was encouraged by a man to join the dancing, a girl put herself before me, swinging. I joined, but the noise arising was so loud that she got scared and fled. I thought I 'd done my duty but was grabbed once more by a woman at my hands. No other choice than dance. But she also quickly finished her desire for the general attention. I was grabbed once more, but my running sweat was slippery enough to escape under big smiles of the entire village. Lately, I got running company by a younger mzungu, more than 30% lighter than me and more than 20% faster even though I broke my personal local track records since I ran while seeing his back quickly become tinier.
After running, it is time for the well-deserved beer (the excellent brand: "Kilimanjaro"), and to turn on the lights. This, of course, if there is no power cut. The dark falls as a stone on the equator. We also experience peak voltage dips at cooking time (there is a lot of electric cooking here) at which out TL tubes refuse.  During power cuts I grind my coffee with a hammer in a cup (didn't break one yet) and boil on my high school paraffin burner that was waiting for over 25 years to be used again.
My two house mates, Tanzanian brothers in law of Kees, do the cooking, since I fear they do not like my food. I limit myself to cleaning the dishes, the kitchen and sweeping the house's concrete floors. It is dry season, so it is dusty, and a house here has no glass window panes but only anti burglary steel bars and anti mosquito wire netting. We do all the house work ourselves because we all prefer to feel sure that any thief must be one of us.

Photo: Sato (Tilapia): made by my house mates, left: with rice, right: with plantain (a not sweet banana type, "matoke", Kiswahili "ndizi" ). Background: mninga wood (like what is still hoped to be my dhow).

Photo above: Tropical rain shower, our garden from the kitchen door, good for our flowers, even arousing virile instincts to the dweller (Photo below)

Photo: Kitchen breakfast view at Isamilo

Finally, after nine years of Africa experience without any any dangerous wildlife encounter, not even when a few years ago I passed on my motorcycle a group of lions at 80 m, it happened:

Photo: My first dangerous African wildlife encounter
a scorpion in the kitchen sink

Photo: my motorcycle is a great todler attraction

Near my house is a restaurant with a very good western menu. Kivuli Kitchen (KK). An NGO supports am all young women group to run it with the training by a young Austrian woman. In the restaurant, they run a shop with local art and textiles.

Photo: The KK waitresses dress for ...., author ordered a shirt suitable for restaurant visits on these days.

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Photo: The KK waitresses dress for ...., author ordered a shirt suitable for restaurant visits on these days, which he prefers due to his preference of the cloth design.

[Related: Finding a room, Mwanza from above, Isamilo Shopping Centre]