Whether you live in a condominium, office building, hotel room, apartment block or in your own house, finding that you can’t get some relaxing peace and quiet, is a pain. Even in brand new homes and buildings it’s still possible to hear straight through the walls and ceilings, often it’s even louder than in older buildings.

Loud disturbance is constantly a problem as it can be heard through floors of apartments and houses and is usually more of a problem when there is no background noise to help mask it inside your own house.  However, normal commonplace noises such as normal speech, normal tv and radio volumes and sounds should not be heard by the next door neighbor. The present-day regulations for noise control through separating walls have been introduced to stop this.

If you are experiencing this kind of noise problem, there are sound insulating materials that will offer a solution.  Nonetheless, before corrective processes can be attempted, it it should be determined what type of noise is being experienced.

Is it airborne, flanking or impact noise?  

Floating noise is the sort emitted by speech or music.  Impact noise is created by for instance doors opening and closing in the building and so on.  

Or Impact noise?

Impact noise is usually constructual sound which is directly transferred through walls or floors whereas the route of floating sound actually penetrates dividing structures i.e. walls and floors – without any other helping factor.

Or is flanking noise?

Flanking disturbance is noise reaching a room by an indirect path. For instance noise coming to the room above your home theatre from a path other than through the ceiling above, noise reaching an adjacent room by a route other than through the wall etc.

Noise from above is usually coming through uninsulated floors and ceilings in properties that were built or converted before the present-day strict rules for sound control through floors and walls were introduced.  Any noise coming from above should be undertaken from above, and usually can only be accomplished with the co-operation of your neighbor.

Window noise insulation is a little more tricky, as when these can be opened and they invariably can, they normally can’t really be sealed. Windows are especially vulnerable and the route to least noise resistance for noise entering or leaving your home and the most sound seeping are those with single glass pains and wooden window frames.

Electrical boxes i.e. AC outlets, wall plates and heating ducts as well as air ventes and so on should also be taken into consideration in the soundproofing process. Electrical boxes and wall plates for example can be sealed with a non-hardening silicone caulk and can prove invaluable.

There are a lot of ways to soundproofing rooms in your home so you can get some peace and quiet or at the very least give your neighbours the same courtesy. If you’d like to learn more about soundproofing, search online or read this book on soundproofing rooms to gain more diy home improvement knowledge.

With the exception of an established British-owned bookstore called A Novel Idea and its string of accompanying stores scattered all over Dar-es-Salaam, many of the older Tanzanian bookshops in this ancient harbour city, are still reputed to be poky and daunting haunts where a stern, po-faced bookseller is inclined to keep strange hours, willing a customer desperately out of his shop while ringing his old-fashioned till with annoying haste come lunchtime.

Yet, a visit to Dar is still propelled with the masochistic tradition that I slink into one of these historic shops selling quirky academic items; with clockwork regularity and with the clumsy attitude of a bashful schoolgirl, ready to be caught out for a misdemeanor.

If the truth be known, it is nostalgia that beckons for once upon-a-time many moons ago when I was still little, bookshops in the small town of Klang, Malaysia where I was raised, too were honed by no-nonsense and bespectacled Chinese booksellers. These little shophouses contained the same dark mood that in contrast, held varied displays of fascinating Enid Blyton collections.

A month ago, I picked up Endless Toil, a print-on-demand affair, written and published by well-respected and widely-travelled Tanzanian journalist, Attilio Tagalile.

The novel whose plot hinged largely on controversial political and social statements, lay at the back of a big dusty bookshop, situated in a busy corner, just off noisy Azikwe Street. I had gathered other titles too, plays and poetry. I discovered that Tanzanians were clearly prolific about the Arts, but stayed quiet in their achievements.

I summed up that the country’s writers were humble and often unassuming in their goodwill gesture for a reader’s approval. In retrospect having curled up with it all of yesterday in my quiet Dublin apartment, I found Endless Toil a riveting masculine read in the way that I am attracted to tougher novelistic prose these days; simply from my brush with adventure purporting to the Tanzanian wildlife. Endless Toil painted a story of East African peasantry in the old days just before and after the onset of colonial power while discussing engagingly if not a little hotly, about a culture I have recently absorbed myself in and so I held the plot to be equally befitting of my passions.

Village women who fetched water from a communal pump, those who carried children on their backs and baskets on their heads and who all lived in small huts but who were involved with hopes, dreams and materialistic attitudes lived out ambitiously through their strong-willed children; that defined their very womanhood tugged at my heartstrings.

I was reminded of the affectionate Chagga tribe in the Kilimanjaro-Moshi region that I still desire to win over. The story is built around many many colourful characters but headed by a longtime worker of the railways Swela who brings up his family amidst a controversial East Africa policy where colonial power often interfered with the region’s independence and which later saw Uganda, Kenya & Tanzania dissolve in unity and where Kenya was seen to thrive over Tanzania by the novel’s envious fictitious characters.Goverment corruption subtly laid out in all quarters would result in dashed dreams for many of the simple folk and pensioners.

The story starts and ends with Swela’s life but in between branches out rather gracefully to many of the clan comprising aunts, uncles, cousins, wives, sons, daughters, neighbours and so forth. Had there been no bridges linking one self-sufficient character’s story with another, this could well have been a short story collection. Tagalile manages this art beautifully, very Dickension in a way with some fine rambling and meandering except that he would still manouvere his sub-plots like a tight rein.

The result is a bunch of characters that sit on each other like tall building blocks which fail to topple. There are also several comparisons through captivating episodes, matched by heated quarrels and rebellion that set modernity against tradition with regards to medicine, education and social upbringing. All are told in a witty manner through well-fleshed out stories.

This is my first real foray into Tanzanian fiction but am amazed at how I am so easily able to identify the real life workings of Dar today, with all I read in the book with regards to similiar plots that may have gone on before.

Title: Endless Toil 250pp,

Novelist: Attilio Tagalile,

ISBN No. 998 908314.

The fabulous illustration was designed by Sammi “Jo’une’ Mwamkinga.

The author’s address is listed as P.O. Box 5761, Dar es Salaam,Tanzania.

Courtesy Susan Abraham