Who on earth are you?There a lot of people reading my blog and yet I don’t publicise it. I don’t even tell my friends and family where it is. And yet you found it. Well done!
This blog is written for my own pleasure, a reminder to my older self of my years in China and East Africa, of the friends I have made and the strange things which have happened to me. Having spent 10 years in the Middle Kingdom, I cannot pretend that I have complete understanding of the Chinese culture. Just as I think I understand them, something happens and I am reminded how little I know this place. In East Africa the people speak better English but although life is easier, it’s a lot slower, people like to keep you waiting (to demonstrate their status). You are expected to overpay for services and it’s impossible to avoid paying pay petty bribes to policemen and government officials just to get something done.
I cannot imagine two countries more different than China and Tanzania.
I have travelled to almost all the provinces in China and without exception, people have been welcoming, kind and generous towards me. In the countryside and smaller cities people come up to me and start speaking English and invite me to sit and eat with them. A smattering of Chinese opens up many doors which would otherwise be closed to a foreigner.
East Africa is a place I first discovered in 1983 as a young woman walking through the bush with camels, running out food and water, being attacked by lions and then losing all our money. Strangely, that experience left me wanting more and that’s the reason I went back in the most amazing place in the world. However, if you think work visas are hard to get in China, you should try Tanzania – they are almost impossible and if they are granted, take months and months to arrive (mine was 10 months and 1 week). But on the positive side, I got in an inexpensive house on the beach in a COVID-denying country and then a president who died of COVID!
A few years later on and I’m back in the UK with only occasional trips abroad now including a very long-awaited three week Indian trip unusually this time with some friends and a short trip to the Caucasus. If I don’t post on my blog for a long time, it means I am at home not travelling. There is nothing much exciting about being at home – nothing exciting enough to report anyway.