Title 5. Kenyatta Drive 25. The house seen from the garden, and Charlie and Choka are watchdogs.

We had some very special moments during 1994 and 1995, the one being that Else celebrated her 50 years birthday at a rooftop restaurant in Dar es Salaam and the second was, that our dogs got nine puppies, which we had to take care of, and the third thing was, that we were visited by all our four children with families, and even other family members wanted to visit us, and for that reason we did a lot of Safari Tour driving.

For Else’s birthday we had rented a roof top restaurant and its bar at Taverna in the Msasani village, as the restaurant was famous for its huge outside servings of fresh fish and lots of salad. We often came for dinner at Sundays together with friends or family and the view from the roof was fantastic, overlooking the Msasani Bay, where we also would find the Yacht Club, where we were full members for the next 8 years.

We had hired an amateur New Orleans Jazz Band to play for us during and after we have had dinner. At the same time Tanesco found it necessary to give us a couple of hours power cut and no backup generator was available at the restaurant Taverna. Our future was in the hand of candle lights and it was rather nice as the African night was taking over the whole Msasani Village, but that was not the only surprise that evening. We had forgotten everything about a table for gifts, so when the guest arrived, they all queued up to greet Else and to give her a present. We just managed to find a table in the last minute, so the only one who was surprised of getting any gifts that night was Else. I wanted to hold a short welcoming speech with some relevant details of the events of the evening, and I winded up in a friendly argument of “who had known Else the longest”, with the Ambassador of EU to Tanzania, Karl Harbo, a very good and long lasting friend of Else, and the Ambassador of Denmark to Tanzania, Flemming B. Petersen, who outmaneuvered me by arguing, that he had danced with Else in Aalborg Jazz Club, when he was still at High School student, but I shouted the loudest, and my speech was well received.

Nine puppies to feed showed to be too much for Choka, but I insisted that we should keep them all for the next eight weeks, no matter how often we had to bottle feed them in the beginning. It happened, that it was a 24/7 job to feed the puppies every second hour in the beginning, and what was even more problematic, that was my disappearance up-country on a long planned two weeks trip to service shortwave radios stationed at the homes of the Norwegian Experts, but I was lucky that Else’s sister Jonna visited us during that period, and her help with the puppies was invaluable. My own star on the sky was fading and very low when I returned from my business safari. It was no wonder, for all the staff was requested to participate in the feeding program, day and night, but we got nine healthy puppies through their first eight weeks, and they were all a lot of fun, when we walked together with them in our garden. Everyone got a name according to their behavior or special ornaments on their fur, like Rebecca, Dot and Blacky. When they were eight weeks old, nine new parents came to collect their special selected puppy, and we had the good fortune to follow them all, until we had to leave Tanzania in 1995 at the end of our term.

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