When there are more power cuts than power, you don’t tend to tick very much off your to do lists. And here in Kigamboni, the “rural” neighbour to Dar Es Salaam, over the last few weeks we have had power cuts lasting days and nights and days again. Putting up blog posts is down at…
Tag: Tanzania
Dadas at the fish market
I’ve been painting this picture in my head for months now. The Kivukoni Fish Market in Dar Es Salaam is always busy. Both inside and outside the market walls there are scores of people; inside fishermen and traders huddle together around the many different catches of the day, outside house dadas dressed in brightly printed…
“How do you avoid the tourists in Stone Town?” said the tourist.
In the blistering heat of the sub-Saharan sun lies a labyrinth of narrow alleys lined with tall once whitewashed, now crumbling buildings. A walk through Stone Town’s higgledy piggledy streets, most of which are too narrow for cars, is like stepping back in time, providing you can ignore the high-tech gadget carrying tourists. The town,…
Matemwe Beach – Far Away in Time
At 31 degrees centigrade and with a hotch potch of people who frequent it, Matemwe Beach is a melting-pot in every sense of the word. Between sunrise and sunset the beach, situated on the northeast coastline of Zanzibar, becomes a hive of activity with scores of Zanzibari women wearing bright coloured kangas wading into shallow…
If you don’t know where you want to go, then it doesn’t matter which path you take
I took this photograph of a path leading down to the Indian Ocean at dusk as I was leaving my local restaurant a couple of weeks ago. The path, at Sunrise Beach Resort, in Kigamboni, Tanzania, looked particularly beautiful as it had been lit up with fairy lights to celebrate Christmas. But I couldn’t mention…
Hope over the Horizon – Sunrise on the edge of the Ngorogoro Crater
While camping on the edge of the Ngorogoro Crater in Tanzania I decided to wake up early to watch the sunrise. What I witnessed was nothing short of breathtaking. Snuggled up inside my hoodie and scarf, I sat alone, mesmerized by the changing horizon before me and watched as the African sky changed from an…
Colours Speak Louder Than Words
The colours in Tanzania are so vibrant and varied that I am almost certain there must be more shades here than there were in England, my homeland. I used to take many photographs in black and white, but in Dar Es Salaam, it seems such a waste to ignore the vast spectrum of shades that…
Endless Abstract Land
Endless Abstract Land is my interpretation of the Serengeti and is painted using ink and acrylics. Serengeti comes from the Maasai Maa word Serengit and means endless plain and this vast area of grassland spans northern Tanzania and southern Kenya and covers approximately 12,000 sq miles. As I travelled through these immense plains, which are…
Chaotic commuting
Twice a week I commute from the rural outskirts of Dar es Salaam to centre of the city to where I teach in a school. My not-always-but-sometimes chaotic journey consists of three sections. First a car from Kisota in Kigamboni, along bumpy rural roads, where we sometimes get stuck behind a herd of cows and…
Neon Lights in Downtown Dar Es Salaam
I love the anonymity of driving through a busy city at night. On this occasion I was sat in the passenger seat and so I was able to capture some of Dar Es Salaam’s neon lights on camera. These photos were taken as we drove through the centre of Tanzania’s busiest city from Masaki to…
Moja, Mbili, Tatu… Jump.
There is nothing more fun than jumping into a swimming pool with your friends – and this is the moment nearly 30 boys jumped into the water together. The photo was taken during the last Saturday School session of the year at the school I have worked for the last couple of years in…
Kittens Versus Mosquito net
Bedtime for the children, which means it’s time for the kittens to attack the mosquito net – again.
