The cat was sick in my doll’s house.

 Not sick like she was lying in one of the miniature beds with a thermometer in her mouth and Mrs Cottontail (the rabbit hostess) serving her hot lemon and honey. No.

It was lunchtime when I noticed her creep out of the doll house’s windows, cautiously sideling out of sight. I peeped through the window myself and saw, to my dismay, the chairs toppled over and the cupboards and tiny oven and fridge lying on their side.

I sighed, oh what a bother it would be to carefully place the tiny plastic knives and forks back in their bowl. Poor Mrs Cottontail, I noticed, the perfect hostess had her tiny glass eyes quivering with  fear. I imagined her politely asking my rude, interfering cat to please take a seat and have a biscuit and a cup of tea while joining her book club.

It was only until a few days later that I decided to clear up the mess and to my horror (I have always hoped that my writing is poetic, but the next sentence, I have to say, is certainly not poetic,) I saw the lovely green crotchet carpet that Asina had given me was covered with cat sick……

“That Cat! ” I said   

We’re moving, not from Tabora, but from our house with the tiny garden. We’ve found a nice house with a much bigger garden, although I couldn’t tell that it was bigger the first time I saw it. Everywhere I looked there was maize, and mum had fun teasing me that we were going to leave it there.

 The new house is quite small but there are two buildings, one which is obviously the house and the other which is what we call Ben’s flat. Before we move into the house we have a lot of things to do, such as the garden, so far most of the maize has gone and we are planting grass. “Here we go again” I think, since I can still remember when we first moved to Tabora and the grass seemed to take forever to grow!

My favourite part of the garden is the Flamboyant tree, since they look lovely when the red flowers bloom. We are also going to have a rockery. This of course is not because we want to cover up the horrible water tank sticking out of the ground.

In the beginning of the renovation, to my disgust, I was having to put up with the thought of sharing a room with Amelia. This suggestion was held until Bens flat came into view and luckily, I am now going to have a room to myself.

The first time I was exploring the house I found an old phone in what is going to be mum and dad’s room, you know, those ones with instead of buttons the round circely thing. Well mum taught me how to use it, I am now wishing that we had one, like I wish that I have a type writer and a camera that produces the photo as soon as it’s taken.

So, by the 1^st of July, we are going to be in a new house, I can’t wait!!!! 

You are lucky if you got to spend your Sunday morning relaxing and reading a book, instead of pushing cars. That’s what I did.

We were driving out to a nice place to have a picnic breakfast.  So we drove through the bushes quite easily but we never realized that we were going through thick murky water, and that’s how we ended up struggling to get back onto firm ground.

Dad tried reversing, which not only was useless but the car began to sink into the thick sludgy mud. So we then realized that we’d have to call Tom, one of my dads Taboran friends.

While Dad waited on the road Mum, Ben, Amelia and I dug trenches and stuffed them with leaves and branches, hoping that this would help.  After a while I started to feel quite excited and deliberately smeared myself in mud from head to toe. I felt like a pure African child. 

Finally Tom arrived with his rope to see if he could tow us.  So we gratefully thanked him and got to work attaching the two cars. Then mum called me to the side and we watched as Tom started the engine and dad went back into reverse. Even though the wheels were going round neither of the cars weren’t moving and things didn’t stop getting worse – Toms back wheels were starting to sink!

And so again we set to work cutting down branches and gathering chunks of wood, although this time we did it differently. We got the Jack out and put the wood right under Toms wheels, then I climbed up a tree and acted like the boss of this procedure watching as everyone begin to push and what a thrill it was to see Toms car getting out and since we were all so exhausted mum got the breakfast out. (Even though now it was more like brunch!)

After that we did what we had just done to Tom’s car to ours, and again I sat up the same tree and watched as the others pushed our car and I could have screamed to see it get out of that muddy spot because boy did I want a nice hot shower!

In my last blog story, if you remember, I mentioned my Bantam chickens. I suppose I should better tell you where I got them, when I got them, who I got them from and the disaster that happened a few weeks ago.  I was spending my birthday at the coast where my great Uncle Fuzz lives. He was the one who gave me three bantam chickens for my birthday. I didn’t think much of them at first but now I have actually seen them up close and they are here in Tabora they are such a pleasure to have around and I am extremely grateful to Uncle Fuzz. Well actually we only have two now, here’s why.The three chickens we got are a cockerel and two ladies. And when Amelia first saw them – in a box in the car -  she said promptly,“I won’t ask,”Although she enthusiastically helped name them. This is what we got, Egghead, (the cockerel) Flip Flop (the brown one) and Fruitcake. (The black one) I have recently named the two remaining also Mr. and Mrs. No eggs, seeing as we still have to eat light yellow eggs and they have no children. So back to the story.Because we had to stop in Arusha before going back to Tabora the chickens stayed in a fairly big cage. This was fine but on the last day when we had to put them back in their cardboard box for traveling Fruitcake ran away.You may think that it’s easy to catch a bantam chicken, but its not! First of all they’re fast and second of all – they can technically fly. So we left for Tabora without her. Egghead crowing whenever possible. I don’t think any African that passed us had ever seen a Mzungu family with chickens in their car.Two days later we got a call from our friend saying that he’d successfully caught Fruitcake (although with a lot of bother) and now he was keeping her at my friend’s house. So I’ll be able to write about her adventures once she joins Mr and Mrs No Eggs here … we hope to collect her next month.

What shall I write today? That is the question I ask myself everyday when I finally lug myself down to the computer to work on my blog.

Shall I write about our bantam chickens, shall I write about home school, shall I write about our dogs or our cats or the lizards that climb up our house wall. Or most commonly of all shall I tell you what the weather is like today.

This quite often happens to me when there is a clean sheet of paper in front of me, although I want to be a writer and sometimes I just can’t stop scribbling, I am very often struck dumb.

If I were a scientist in the Antarctic, a game tracker in Kenya or explorer in the middle of the Sahara desert, yes I would have a lot to say. Actually I would have masses! But no, I am a girl in the bush in Tanzania. Of course there’s the fact dad and I finished a 1000 piece puzzle, (well, mostly dad) and I don’t suppose that you’ve heard about the bantams I got for my birthday, or the lizards climbing up the wall.

But those are other stories for other days. 

I hate disappointments – especially in Tabora, because stuck here it seems like my whole life depends on this one thing. Like for example yesterday when I was going to have my first guitar lesson with the guy from the church but he didn’t turn up. I don’t know if I even wanted to play the guitar I think I just wanted to talk to someone new. That’s what it’s like in Tabora; you want to talk to anyone coming your way. Even a little chat with our askari is what we crazy Taboran people call a social event! So that was one of my Tabora disappointments. And another when I couldn’t get through to a friend of mine that I desperately wanted to hear from. And again it’s for they same reason, I wanted to talk to someone – badly!  

Mum says if I want to be a writer I’ve got to write every day. But the question is why do I want to be a writer? I guess I just like filling up a whole clean white gleaming page. I mean there’s no rule in writing. You can write about anything- your house, family, pets, weave out a whole new story or just write about life itself. I admire J.K. Rowling with her writing; she just makes everything fit together, like a puzzle. There’s no loose ends in her “Harry Potter” series. I hope one day I can be as clever as her. I also hope I can be as successful a blog writer as mum, and put humour that can make people laugh out loud like she does. I also hope that I can make people cry. Only months ago I thought it would be horrible to make people cry, even in writing. But somehow I’ve changed. I love to cry watching movies or reading books. That’s sounds weird I guess. So if anything you read on this blog that makes you cry, tell me please!

Dear Readers,

I am so sorry that my blog has been the most unsuccessful blog in the history of blogs. This is why I am probably wasting my time writing this because no one will be reading it. Of course I can’t blame these people. Although there is my loyal friend Rachel who is most likely to be checking it whenever possible. So for her and for whoever wants to read this I will actually try this time.

from

totoafrica

There is a really nice big dam in Tabora that me mum and dad go to in the evenings sometimes. It is a nice chance for the dogs to run about as are garden is quite small, and the swimming pool takes up a lot of space. Sometimes we sit by the side of the dam all evening munching olives and bilton. (Dried meat.) If we do stay long enough in the evenings we can hear all the birds at the other side of the lake. Its quite nice hearing them from were we sit but if we were much closer it would be a really loud noise! The best thing about the dam is that there is a beautiful sunset! The whole sky becomes red and orange. It is really wonderful!

I have now been doing home school for about 2 months. During the first week I was a little grumpy, but now it is a lot of fun. I am doing some new subjects like History, History of art, Science, Geography and Grammar. I find History and History of art really interesting. Science is really challenging but sometimes it can be very interesting as well. I do school for 2-3 hours a day and then in the afternoon I do about an hour of homework or unfinished work. So I would say home school isn’t that bad, but I always feel envious of the dogs when I see them running about in the garden!