Moving about...

28th January 2010

It has come to my attention that I seem to have neglected the blog somewhat in the past week or so. So as a consolation, I will try to fill you in on all of the interesting events from these past few days.

However, I feel as though I should pick up where I left off. Let me tell you all about Esra. Esra is a 29 year old waiter at Picolo Beach Hotel. He randomly came up to me one evening when I was eating and we started chatting. He was suggesting that he wanted to go to England to work, and maybe to find a mature wife, who doesn’t drink much, and who can hold a conversation. Initially I thought that conversation seemed like I was working for a dating agency and I should have been taking notes on what this guy was looking for. He told me that he wanted to go to either Liverpool or Chelsea – I am fairly sure he meant London in general; otherwise he definitely looked into the geography of London and made an informed decision! It is hard to describe what it is about Esra that makes him so approachable. Like most of the staff he seemed friendly enough, but there was something about him that made him stand out. We had many conversations regarding life in England, and the truth came out that he was a qualified mechanic, but I have no idea why he is not making use of such skills over here. It would serve him much better than the pay he is receiving as a waiter. There is an exceptional likeable quality to this man; he seems to ooze the characteristic of a 100% Genuine Guarantee. Luckily I am not weakened by the nicety of people, as one day he asked me if he could have the shirt that I was wearing. As it happens, it was my University badminton shirt which has Portsmouth spread across the back, I am assuming he thought that it was a Portsmouth F.C. shirt, and he seemed less inclined to want it after I explained it was the only one of that shirt that I had, and that it was from uni rather than a football jersey. I have since been thinking about my many encounters with Esra during my stay in the hotel. I am fairly sure that he may actually be Jesus, only in a new body. I’ve given him my contact details so that when he comes to England (or rather if he comes to England – the best laid plans in Tanzania seldom come to fruition) he’ll be able to catch up with me. I like to think that I could be getting into heaven by being this chaps friend!

So I had another couple of nights at the hotel since I had last updated you with my humbling mumbling. As it turns out I was invited to sample some traditional food and to attend a bizarre wedding ceremony. In actual fact, the invitation was the most bizarre thing; the ceremony was fine, although, ceremony is the wrong word. A couple had married in Bukoba about 2 months ago, and they were holding a celebration for their friends who live in Dar who weren’t able to get up country for the actual day. 50 or so people were scattered around tables at the poolside end of the hotel. A buffet serving traditional Haya food was laid out (Haya is the tribal name for people from the Bukoba region). I had experienced this food whilst I was in Bukoba so it wasn’t a massive surprise to me, but I had to pretend that it was because I was invited there to try a different traditional taste of Tanzania. I thought it would be rude to tell them that I have been eating the same type of food for the previous three weeks. I was seated next to Remo, the Italian chef who doesn’t have a word of English but does have fluent Swahili. This strikes me as odd, although it really shouldn’t. I think I may be one of these people who thinks that everywhere in the world should speak English! I hope I’m not though. We were at the second table, i.e. the table that is to the right hand side of the bride, groom, best man, and maid of honour. A table normally reserved for the bits of the immediate family that don’t warrant the top table! So after meeting some people on the table, and chatting about what I am doing, and finding out about these people, I had to begin lying again! A guy called Mr Bruno, who was sitting on the other side of me, was from Mwanza. I had just told him that I had travelled down to Mwanza in order to get to Dar, and I was just about to say how I thought it was not a very nice town at all when he said how much he likes it there. Once again, I didn’t want to be rude so I told him I agreed, and said that I would like to spend longer there. Luckily, I am friends with Ezra so my lies will be forgiven and I’ll still be going to heaven!

So after a random evening at the wedding, where the bride and groom thanked me for coming along even though I wasn’t invited, and a few days relaxing by the pool and in my air conditioned room, I was eventually told that my apartment was ready...nearly. My apartment is based on the grounds of the Eastern and Southern African Universities Research Programme (ESAURP). I have a 10 second walk away from the office that I am meant to work at if I get sick of the apartment. In that 10 seconds, the opening and closing of doors is also taken into consideration. The offices are still 10-15 km from the city centre, but they are much closer to the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM). Where Picolo Beach Hotel had the luxury of the sea breeze cooling the locality down a bit, there is no such joy on University Road (that’s the name of the road, or barabara in Swahili, that I am living on).

The apartment itself is nothing more than a studio apartment. As you walk in there is a ‘kitchen’ (a fridge, a cooker, a sink, and a sideboard which acts as a kitchen cupboards), an ‘office’ (two desks placed along the window and the corner of the wall, and a ‘bedroom’ (a wardrobe on the same wall as one of the desks, and a double bed, equipped with a handy mosquito net). The one internal door leads to my bathroom, which is really a toilet, a sink, and a shower that trickles cold water on you. The slope of the bathroom floor was not great to start with, any time that I had a shower there would be a nice little flood that would eventually trickle into the ‘bedroom/office/kitchen’. The room is permanently stifling, the air conditioner doesn’t work at the moment (this was only dealt with today...it turns out that there is nothing powering the cooling unit, and only the fan is working). When I first arrived at the apartment I was a bit shocked. I had become accustomed to the luxuries in life having stayed in my rotunda in Bukoba and in the hotel for the past month or so. Now that I have been here a while it does feel a bit more homely. There is work going on outside every day as they are putting an additional floor onto the building. At the moment I am on the ground floor so this is not a major issue for me, but the plan is to move me up a floor once the building has been done.

The water in the apartment has been problematic, but as far as I can make it out is just about sorted now. For the first day and a half there was no water pressure at all, all I had was a trickle coming out from the taps. Since then they have put in a water tank on the roof of the adjacent building so I am getting supplied from that which is much needed! The small flood that occurs when you shower has also been fixed. The builders have adjusted the slant of the floor in the bathroom and there is a little ledge now that stops the water from overflowing into the main room now. As I am typing the air conditioning unit is being considered, and so soon I should have a nice cool apartment to relax in and work from. Once the roof has been put on the top floor, internet access will be installed so I will be able to waste my time more effectively. The only other job that needs doing is to put the mosquito gauze up around the windows to stop unwanted guests from venturing in. This I hope will be done sometime in the next week or so.

As you leave the ESAURP plot, and turn right up the road, there is a shopping centre with a variety of clothes shops, electrical shops, supermarkets and pharmacies. It is quite western in appearance, and is a safe haven for the mzungu’s around here apparently. I met a group of volunteers in there when I was getting some water, one of them was from Canada, one from Derby, another from Somerset, and a guy from Essex who is disappearing to Zanzibar to volunteer at a school for a month. They all seemed nice enough, and after an exchange of numbers, we parted ways. I am hoping to meet up with them at some point. It would be nice to flex my vocabulary a bit. You pass a couple of local shops on the way to the supermarket, and you pay dramatically less for your fruit from the stalls on the way!

If you head left from the ESAURP offices, you eventually get to a winding road which runs through the university campus. The campus itself is obscenely huge, it’s between 4 and 6 sq km and has ample amounts of grass space and trees. Approximately 20,000 students are registered to UDSM, which is a similar number to Portsmouth. The facilities here are less stretched, and you don’t need to walk through an area that resembles Somerstown. I have started to go running up to the computing offices (which are about 2-2.5 km away from the apartment) every other day. I am quite familiar with the route up there and people have begun to recognise me as the guy from Portsmouth who runs around in the ridiculous heat! Running is hard, not only because there are hills around, but also because it is so hot that you struggle to get the necessary oxygen into your body. After running the other day I had a shower, but my body was still so hot that once I had dried myself off, I was sweating again, and this is not the English version of sweating with a slightly misty brow, no no. This sweating is like emerging fresh from a bath of perspiration. It’s horrific, but also pleasing to know that your body can actually do something to help cool you down!

Yesterday the Professor and I went into the centre of Dar. The city centre is more familiar to me than the outside areas. Dar itself is spread out across a huge distance, but when you get to the small area that is considered the centre you begin to see something that resembles a city. Buildings are taller, streets are narrower, there are thousands of people, and you are washed in colour. I wasn’t able to stay and have a long look around the centre, but when I do I will have to give you all a proper description. I’ll even try to take some photographs of the place and the people.

In the evening yesterday I took my first trip in a dalla dalla. These are the Toyota Hiace’s where thousands of people are packed into a tiny space. They are very cheap to get around in (about 250/ - so maybe 10-12 pence), and they are less scary than they seem. They shouldn’t be used if you want to get to any place in a hurry. You can stop for anything from 30 seconds to nearly 10 minutes whilst the bloke who operates the sliding door and who collects the money shouts at passersby in case they need a lift, and they can’t see the brightly coloured human meat wagon in front of them. The dalla dalla that I took home from UDSM yesterday had 16 people in it at one point, but there was room for 4 more. If these things existed in the U.K. then health and safety advocates would have something immense to be screaming about. I have also taken a rickshaw around the city a little bit. These three wheeled menaces play havoc with your spinal cord as the crazy drivers fly around exceptionally bumpy streets. They are much more fun than a taxi, more expensive than a dalla dalla and can take nice shortcuts through tiny spaces in traffic. In short they are altogether great fun.

I am beginning to settle into the rhythm of Dar now, and I am growing in confidence with getting around, and butchering the language to ask for a mango. It certainly takes time to get used to the Tanzanian way of life but I think I am getting there. I am certainly on the right track at least! As for now I should be working on reading about the political history of Tanzania so I will be leaving you. I’ll keep you posted on my future movements. I am not sure if I’ll post anything new in the meantime, so the next thing you may be reading could be about my trip to Dodoma (the political capital of the country) with Kagasheki. Cheerio for now!