East African Notes and Records: University of Dar es Salaam

Showing posts with label University of Dar es Salaam. Show all posts

Saturday, 10 August 2013

COCKROACH KILLER

by Martin Walsh

I'm not a great fan of cockroaches, at least not the urban varieties, and it's hard to forget some encounters. I wasn't too thrilled by the evil antennae that emerged from a dry plughole to welcome me to the house that I'd borrowed on the University of Dar es Salaam campus in July 1980. I didn't jump for joy when I switched on the kitchen light one night (circa 1986) in Guraya, Mombasa, and was greeted by the sight of a chaotic mass of cockroaches of every shape and size swarming over the floor. And I didn't smack my lips when the body parts of a drowned roach surfaced in my soup one lunchtime in the Bella Vista off Moi Avenue (this was well before the seedy Italian restaurant became the bar / nightclub that was recently subject to a deadly grenade attack).

After living for a few years in the sweaty centre of Mombasa (Guraya, then Kibokoni), where I became an expert in spotting cooked cockroach legs, we moved out to the suburban calm of Nyali, with its Bougainvillea blooms and sea breezes. But the roaches still came. That is, until I copied down the following recipe:

Cockroach Killer recipe and chemist's label for the key ingredient

I was given this by a friend and colleague in Nairobi, who told me that she'd been given it by an older couple in the highlands out west (I've forgotten where exactly; Kericho perhaps). It worked so well, especially when placed in the kitchen cupboards, that if I saw an adult cockroach in the house -- the younger generations disappeared completely -- I was able to accuse our Belgian neighbours of being its source (we were living in interconnected maisonettes). I even wondered how much money might be made out of the recipe if production could be scaled up and Cockroach Killer balls marketed commercially. But thanks to the internet, I can now see that boric acid was registered as an insecticide many years ago, and that there are similar home recipes all over the web. So here's the one that worked for me.

Sunday, 14 October 2012

FLYING FROM DAR TO ZANZIBAR AGAIN

I can't resist posting a few more photos taken on a flight from Dar to Zanzibar, adding to those I put up earlier this year under the heading Flying from Dar to Zanzibar. The following shots were taken on a Coastal Aviation flight on 22nd September this year: we left Dar half an hour after midday and arrived in Zanzibar about twenty minutes later. This time my camera didn't run out of memory and I managed to get some images of the final stages of the flight.

Mlimani: the University of Dar es Salaam

Coastline north of Dar es Salaam

The sea, mid-channel

Controls in mid-flight (flight path and location on the screens)

Submerged island and reef

Chumbe island and lighthouse

Ras Shangani from the south

Zanzibar town from the south

suburbs of Zanzibar town

Sunday, 4 December 2011

FLYING FROM DAR TO ZANZIBAR

I've lost count of the number of times I've flown between Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. But until last month I'd never tried to take photographs of the journey. In the mid-90s, when I flew regularly on light aircraft, I didn't have a good enough camera; and in recent years I've usually been a passenger on larger aeroplanes with misty windowpanes. So in early November I was thrilled to find myself sitting alone on the back seat of a small plane with access to windows on both sides, through which I took most of the photos shown below. It was a sunny morning with a few patches of cloud, and stayed that way until we began the approach to the airport in Zanzibar, where it was pouring down with rain. By this time, though, my camera's memory chip was full, and so I didn't get any shots of the end of the flight.