In Africa IV

In Africa

IV

Malaria; The Fishermen; The Dhows

Our neighbor Mike had malaria all last week and a few days before. Mike is a thirty-something American who has been here for four years and hadn’t had malaria until now. I didn’t know until I saw him on the roof terrace on his first day out of bed. Malaria is endemic in Tanzania. When I stayed at the Southern Sun Hotel in October, one of the items in the bathroom, along with the small bottles of shampoo and almost sufficient mini-bars of soap, was insect repellent cream. Mike went to the clinic for a test at first sign – as is recommended. He showed negative because the disease had not sufficiently matured in his system at that time. He returned with a 105 (40.56 C) degree fever the next day and was kept for two nights. It takes a week or so to recover and in the meantime there is not much activity. It is in fact quite debilitating. We didn’t know Mike was sick. We thought he was traveling as he often does as part of his work. Lisa is out of town doing a short-term assignment on the Turkish-Syrian border. Mike was home alone but had friends and colleagues contacting him periodically to make sure he was okay. We assured him it is okay to bother us with things like that. In any event, he is okay now.

We don’t take malaria prophylactics because we are here long term. Doctors, including ours in Florida, recommend that people visiting malaria prone countries for short periods of time take the medicines to prevent the disease. On a long term basis, the medicines are not recommended. We use preventive measures such as mosquito repellant and nets over our bed. We tend to stay indoors during dusk and dawn hours when the mosquitos are most active. Here, the clinic doctors are quite familiar with the disease and its treatment. Treatment is usually effective when caught at an early stage. Although malaria is less prevalent in the large cities like Dar es Salaam, it is the rainy season now and there are large areas of standing water, which facilitate the breeding of mosquitos. This may have attributed to the higher incidents in our area recently, including our neighbor Mike.

 

Deep puddles in our dirt street. Our driver calls this one Lake Victoria

A bijaji attempts a crossing. The rain lasts for all of April and part of February and May

Local people often say they have had a bout of malaria when in fact it may be a flu type bug. They do get malaria quite frequently however and tend to be able to combat it better over time, although they never become immune. USAID and other donors have programs to provide free nets to the people in the villages. Here in Dar nets are sold on street corners.

With incidents like Mike’s, I wonder about the fishermen on the beach in front of our house. How many of them, I wonder, have battled the dread disease in the past week or month. I wonder how they are treated in that unfortunate event, and by whom. Beyond the walls of the houses and businesses that line the waterfront of the bay on which we live, there exists a unique and separate village of fishermen. Although they do not sleep on the beach, they are there day and night, working the water as they have done for centuries. We are told they work in shifts.

What has happened with the development behind them is of little concern since their livelihood is on the waters of the Indian Ocean. At high tide the beach is fairly narrow; no more than a hundred meters from the wall to the water; but at low tide, the water line is half mile or so off shore. It is always shallow even at high tide, but the tides here are significant, maybe two meters. The result is that there are not only fishermen working the beach but people who repair boats for the fishermen and others. A large tour boat was out front for several weeks while the local repair crews stripped and applied a new bottom to the boat. They would make sure she would lay with the side they were working on up as the tide receded. Then, for a full working day, they would strip and paint the bottom. When one side was finished, they had her roll to the other side on outgoing tides to give access to the unfinished portion of the hull.

Two cats in for some quick repairs

 

Working on the bottom

As the tide recedes, the work begins

The hull is nearly finished

A road, or more accurately a path, runs along the top of the beach just beyond the walls. This, like all roads, is the service link for the fishermen and boat repair people for all of their daily needs. Mostly people walk or use bicycles along the path, but I have seen bijajis (three wheel taxis called “tuk tuks” in Thailand and “baby taxis” in Bangladesh) using the path to pick up and deliver people. The tea man, carrying his kettle atop a charcoal filled base in one hand and cups and crackers in the other, stops at each gathering to sell tea. At one end of the path are the mosque and the fish market; both just down the road from our house. At the other end is the public beach and place for access to the road. All day there is a steady stream of people coming and going. Clothes hang to dry on lines strung between the few trees along the beach. In the evening a crude soccer field, spanning the drain from the catch basin on the street above, is filled with energetic and vocal young men playing football as it is played here. I watch in the morning as young men workout doing exercises and even lifting a barbell made from a steel pipe between two concrete filled cans. The chickens run freely; once the goats even made a pass. It is indeed a village of its own.

Soccer on the beach

Some evenings thegame get serious

Our wall; the path

Friends stop to chat

 

Man selling tea along the path

A man walks the path in the foreground. Bijaji near the water.

The boats used by the fishermen are not as sophisticated as the tour boat that was worked on. In fact they are the same construction used for centuries, perhaps millennia, by those plying the waters off the African coast and Zanzibar, the Arabian Peninsula, and India. Dhow is the term used to describe the vessels. Characterized most recognizably by the lateen sail and a single short mast, they are all built of wood. Smaller ones are from a single tree trunk and built as a dugout. Some of the dugouts are propelled without sail by paddles and even poles in the shallow water. A few are equipped with outboard motors. A close look at the vessels reveals conditions that we would consider unseaworthy at best. The dugouts are inherently unstable, although some use outriggers. Larger boats have a more familiar hull shape and construction, but the state of repair of all is questionable. Holes are patched with whatever is available; small sheets of metal screwed into the wood hull, fabric glued with whatever is available, other pieces of wood, are nailed into larger openings in the hulls, anything that will help keep the water out is used. Even then, the skippers are constantly bailing the boats as they work.

Thee boats are on the bay side of the fish market just down from our house.

Note the solar panels on the large dhow and the outboard motors on the two boats in front of it.

The construction techniques have neither changed nor improved over the centuries. Yet the boats seem to glide effortlessly over the water whether under sail with a ghosting breeze or being paddled. They can be seen as far as the eye can see; dots of white on a distant horizon. Cotton sails are patched and lashed to a flexible yard, hoisted up the mast with the help of wooden blocks with wooden sheaves. Larger boats fish far from shore, or carry goods between islands and across the great Indian Ocean. The smaller ones come and go daily and the crews rest on the beach in front of our house. The sailing and boat handling skills they have learned are nothing short of incredible.

The hardwood hulls in a tropical environment such as Tanzania attract wood eating insects and worms. These lead to damage that sooner or later will require repair. In order to keep the insects in check, the fishermen will burn the hulls. At low tide it is common to see one or two boats being burned. Sometimes they will lay small brush and twigs around the hull as it sits on the sand and mud bottom. Sometimes old tires are used. The burning process is enough to heat the wood to drive out insects, but not enough to cause the hull itself to catch fire.

Burning the hull to get rid of insects

These fishermen are using old tires

As the tide lifts the fleet of tiny boats moored out our window, one lone fiberglass dinghy among them, I am confident that the scene will not change appreciably after we are long gone from this place. Our time with the fishermen is but an insignificant and unregistered blip on the timeline of Tanzanian history. We feel fortunate to have witnessed this scene, but our presence is not likely to leave a permanent mark.

Until Next Connection,

Dan