I'm alive...and Dar Es Salaam

Apologies for not posting for a while. Tom and I have been in Tanzania for a while, and the internet access there is patchy at best. Plus we've just finished a 7 day safari - definitely no internet out in the Serengeti! We have made our way up to Cairo now, and things seem to be better already, so hopefully can be more consistent from here.

Dar Es Salaam - June 19-21, 2008

Tom and I arrived in the early evening in Dar, the largest city in Tanzania. We were feeling a bit nervous about arriving in Tanzania, as it's one of the poorest countries in the world, so after the second world comforts of South Africa, we knew that things in the third world were about to hit us pretty quickly. And at the start, we were definitely overwhelmed.

Stepping outside the baggage area of the airport, you are thrust into a barrage of helpful "friends" willing to provide you with everything you could imagine. They were pushy, but our strong declines of their offers kept them away pretty well. We changed money at a forex counter that had an uncomfortable lack of privacy from the prying eyes all around, and then went to the taxi stand in hops of not getting ripped off too bad.

Arriving at our hotel (after only getting moderately ripped off), we met Jignesh, the Indian manager who seemed out of place to us in this most African of cities. His assurances that our room was "first class all the way" became our motto for East Africa, as it was most definitely not first class in any way.

The room itself was the closest thing to prison that either of us had experienced. The concrete walls, dramatic with the complete lack of any attempt at decoration, was combined with a stark bathroom that looked like an occasional splash from the watering can in the corner was the only attempt to clean it.

One thing it did have, though, was a small balcony. From our third floor vantage point, we heard the call to prayer from the largest mosque in the city - our first of many that I'm expecting to hear as we continue to visit Muslim dominated countries. Looking out over the two streets within our view, we started to get a sense of the flow of the city, and built up a bit of courage to wander out for dinner.

Immediately upon leaving our hotel, we came across a local guy who seems to have duplicates in many parts of of Tanzania, and I'm sure the world. He basically just hangs around a street and strolls up to tourists. Initially, it's all friendly - where are you from? what brings you to Dar Es Salaam? etc. But quickly he is making his pitch to take you to some restaurant, bar, strip club, you name it. I assume he gets a small commission from the place for each tourist he brings in. If we wanted anything, he claimed to be the man to get it. Usually, the whisper of light drugs makes its way into the conversation somewhere....marijuana, hash, skank...all first class of course. But what really surprised me, was that when we left our restaurant, he was still there waiting for us and ran over, "Hey Americans, how was dinner?" This repeated four more times the next day! He certainly gets points for persistence, but we kept our cash tucked away safely in our money belts.

The man who did get our money, however, was in an entirely different category. Ali Baba is the owner of the Chef's Pride restaurant and a few others in Dar, and is a classic local hero. He made his way to every table, conversing with people in as many as six languages. Clearly, this guy who probably didn't even have a high school education was someone who knew what was what in Dar Es Salaam. We chatted with him for a while, about everything ranging from life in London to pretty American girls who come and volunteer, to the local "roaches" of the type I described above. He offered us three suggestions, all of which we took and made our experience significantly better.

First, he said we should switch out of the hotel we were in and go to the Starlight instead, where a bit of negotiation and the mention of Ali Baba scored us 10% off our 'fixed price' bill. This room was much less of a prison, but certainly not a palace. It was our first time we had a 'shower as whole bathroom experience' - which Tom, not yet acquainted to the third world, shied away from.

Ali Baba also described for us the Zanzibar situation. As I mentioned before, we'd been debating going there because the power had been out for 6 weeks. Can you imagine that? It would be like saying Oahu, Hawaii was without power, and the thousands of visitors who had trips planned would either just show up to a dark paradise island, or would simply cancel their trip (as many had - a major blow to an economy that could not afford it). But life still goes on and, lucky for us, the power was restored the day before we arrived by a combined Swedish and South African team. So, with very little effort, we took Ali Baba's second suggestion, and booked two nights in Stone Town on Zanzibar at the Pyramid Hotel, also one of his.

Finally, and most endearingly, he offered us a third suggestion for dinner that night. We thought this was fantastic because we were already standing in his restaurant chatting with him, and he was telling us about a local Lebanese place down the road rather than pushing us to stay there. A rare thing in a place like that. The hummus was cheap and the smooth I'd tasted, and the green apple tobacco sheesha was great after a long day of fighting life in the city.

Earlier that day, we were touring around Dar's National Museum (little more than some dusty, cobwebbed artifacts and photos) and the city's markets, and I stopped into a Vodacom store in the small business district. For less than 30 US cents, I bought my first "local SIM" card, something I'm expecting to do in several countries along the way. Of course, each minute costs a bit, but it worked straight away - one thing I think will actually be better outside of the first world, as even the poorest farmers here have cell phones.

An the next morning, feeling comfortable that our two days in Dar exposed us to much of what the city had to offer, we fought the 'friends' at the ferry port and got on the 2 hour ferry to Zanzibar, the exotic spice island that would soon capture our hearts.