Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Tanzania 2011, Day 10

I'm writing this from Zurich airport, where I have a 7 hour layover. But they do not even publish the flight gates until 90 minutes before takeoff times so we are left to wander around in the rather large shopping are. Once you have browsed the endless expensive duty-free shops, there's not much else to do. At least it gives me the time & the impetus to write.

Yesterday (was it only yesterday?) was indeed a long day. We left Arusha by 7 & started driving for Dar es Salaam. Kanuth predicted about 8 hours for the trip & most of that was mercifully uneventful. We drove for a while alongside the base of Kilamanjaro -- or at least we were assured that the mountain truly was there even though camouflaged deeply in cloud. We drove east for an hour or so & then turned south, through country more lush than we had grown accustomed to in Dodoma or on the Maasai steppe. We drove through many communities, large & small, past thousands of schoolchildren, women carrying water on their heads, stalls of potato sellers, chickens, cows, goats, & sisal plantations. We stopped for gas (10 minutes), for a very quick lunch at a roadside place that caters to travellers, bus passengers etc. with a Tanzanian equivalent of take-out food (kuku choma & chips), & one more 10 minute stop to buy cashews. Other than that, all we did was drive. I think fatigue must have been catching up with me because I drifted in & out of sleep for most of the trip & my memory of people & places & landmarks is all mixed up with snippets of dreams.

Kanuth's travel time estimate would have been more or less correct if you count only the amount of time it takes to get to Dar's city limits. But once inside Dar, still 10 or 20 km (hard to tell exactly) from the city core, we slowed to a painful crawl. True, we were arriving at a bad time of day (3:30 or so, people starting to leave work) but Dar is always like this. There are very few traffic lights & movement seems to be maintained largely by roundabouts & very brave traffic cops who stand in the centre of the busiest intersections & control the flow. It is so much hotter in Dar, & very humid on top of that, so it was a real endurance test to sit, dripping sweat, breathing thick exhaust fumes, listening to horns honking, after a full day of getting there.

Eventually we got to the Southern Sun hotel & dropped Doug off. Then I hopped back into the car with Kanuth for the last stretch to the airport. Fortunately my flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 9:15 pm so it seemed we had lots of time. After all, it's only a couple of kilometers from the Southern Sun to the airport & we had made the trip in 15 minutes when we arrived last week. Sigh. Have you already heard enough about the reality of traffic in Dar??? Then I won't drag you through the excruciating details of the 2 hours that followed. By the time I entered the airport they were already doing the passport control for my flight. Wow, I reflected; Kanuth was wise to leave Arusha so early. Eight hours to travel the 600 or so km from Arusha to Dar: 4 hours to navigate 2 stops within the city itself. The mind boggles.

The rest was pretty uneventful, with one minor blip: just as we were all through security, waiting to board our flight, the power went out all across the airport. I suppose it was part of the country's electricity rationing program because it didn't seem entirely unexpected. Anyway, the entire airport went black for a minute or so & then the generators kicked in & we once more had (reduced) light. It delayed our flight by 25 minutes or so but otherwise, it was routine.

So here I sit in Zurich, far too tired & dopey to reflect much on the trip as a whole. We were in Tanzania for only 10 days with a work stint that seemed much too short. Maybe next time?

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Tanzania 2011, Day 9

I'm sitting in a very fancy hotel (well... 'fancy' relative to our previous accommodation) in Arusha, struggling with the internet connection. It seems to let me post blogs without an argument but when I try to check my personal email, it gives me the run-around: 'loading...' 'still loading...' & then finally 'there appears to be a problem with your internet connection. Please try loading the page again.' Nasty. So I shall work on my blog post & try email a little later. We honestly don't realize how fortunate we are with internet connectivity in North America.

Even if Tanzania is not blessed with easy access to technology, it is certainly blessed with natural wonders. This was our day to visit Ngorogoro crater. Our driver Kanuth picked us up at the hotel & we drove for perhaps half an hour to the conservation area gate. Ngorogoro is a hot spot for tourists & the government attempts to control access quite carefully. So it took 15 minutes or so to do the paperwork, another 15 minutes or so of climbing along a bumpy & dusty road, and then quite abruptly Kanuth pulled off to the side of the road, said 'Karibu (welcome) to Ngorogoro' & invited us to get out & look.

The look we got was worth the price of admission; was worth the cost of the whole weekend safari. We looked over the edge of the steep hill we were on down into the crater. It is easy to find out that it is 20 km across more or less with a floor area of 240 sq. km. But it is another thing entirely to SEE that, all in one gaze, from the rim. You see it just as it is: the collapsed floor of a huge dead volcano. The floor is really quite flat. From the rim it looks dry & dusty, even barren, but with a few broad alkaline lakes & some small treed patches.

Then we began our descent into the crater itself. The 'descending road' is a series of steep switchbacks & with every switch you can see a bit more. From about halfway down, we could make out groups of tiny black dots: herds of moving animals. A little further down we could make out single-pixel red dots as well: Maasai herders in their bright shukas, following their cattle. Maasai are the only tribe allowed to live at one end of the crater because (being eaters almost exclusively of milk & beef) they are the only ones who could be trusted not to kill the wildlife.

Once on the floor we followed the rough dirt roads back & forth across the crater. After our wildlife-rich day yesterday, I really didn't expect to see anything new but we did anyway: we saw a number of new types of deer/antelopes, lots of ostriches, hyenas, jackals, an entire pride of lions (one of them was even sleeping on the road right in front of us, close enough to pat if we had been crazy). There were a few elephants hanging out in the treed area & a large family of hippos in the lake, putting on a show for us when we stopped for lunch. We stopped at one point in the midst of a 'mini-migration' of gnus & zebras, thousands of animals surrounding us, moving.

It was, as they say, spectacular, & I just find it so exciting to know that there are places like this in the world.

Tomorrow we must be up early; before 6 even, if we are to reach Dar es Salaam with a bit of a cushion of time before I catch my flight. So off to bed.

Tanzania 2011, Day 8

I woke to animal noises, lots of them, outside my canvas cabin & when I looked out of the mosquito screen I could see the sun rising, tangerine behind the dust & cooking fires on the Masai steppe. An exciting way to start the day! After breakfast at the lodge we loaded into the safari car & headed for Tanangire National Park, about a half hour's drive.

Tanangire is an amazing place! The brochure states that it covers 2840 sq. km, which makes it the 5th largest park in Tanzania. It also informs that this park 'is home to more African elephants per square kilometer than anywhere else in the world'. There certainly were a LOT of elephants: elephants in groups, elephants alone, old ones, young ones, nursing babies, groups of females, groups of young bachelors. But we also saw impalas, baboons & other monkeys, gnu (lots of them), zebras, buffalo, ostriches, giraffes, warthogs, dik-diks, even a few lions, & a number of other species whose identity escapes me at the moment. The place was alive, crawling, fluid with wildlife. It was incredible.

Our guide had brought along a boxed lunch for each of us & I pondered, as I nibbled at a bun, just WHY it is so amazing to see African wildlife? Why, exactly, is this such a 'once in a lifetime' sort of experience? Partly, I'm thinking, it's because stories about these animals have spellbound us from childhood; picture books of lions & zebras have held for us the very quintessence of the exotic. Another reason may be related to the sheer volume of mammals you can see. In a place like Tanangire you see hundreds of animals altogether, a herd of gnu intermixed with a herd of zebra, down at the river with giraffes, baboons running alongside, elephants in the water bathing. We do seem to feel an affinity for other mammals & in the animalscapes of Tanangire, there is a lot of affinity to feel.

The only way the day could have been more marvellous is if we were feeling up to it. Both Doug & I were hit with some sort of intestinal bug (the usual thing) which made the travel uneasy, weakened our appetites, & sapped our energies. Doug has a cold on top of that.

So here we are at the end of the day, staying at the Bougainvillea Safari Lodge just outside the gates of Ngorogoro National park. At 1800 m altitude, it is very cool when the sun goes down & even with my fleece vest on, I'm shivering a little. No heater in the room of course but I do see an extra blanket as an option. The Bougainvillia lodge is ok, all basic needs are met, but nothing like the wonder of our place last night. Supper is included & it's ready now but I'm not sure I'm hungry enough to check it out. It's awfully early but the bed sure looks good...

Tanzania 2011, Day 7

I'm sitting here in a structure & I'm not quite sure what to call it. It's about the size of a generous garage, the walls are made of some sort of heavy canvas, but the structure is supported by timbers, floored in concrete, & all in all it has a cabin-like feel to it. I suppose if I had to define it I'd call it a canvas cabin -- but that in no way conveys the sheer opulence of the accommodation. For one thing, it is clean; squeeky squeeky clean, not even a stain on anything. The main room contains 3 double-sized beds made up with European-style generous white linens. The bathroom has plush towels & the room is fitted with thoughtful additions like flashlights, kleenex, & an area magazine. It's not until you notice the mosquito netting & the can of heavy-duty bug spray that you realize you're not in North America anymore.

The guest book here on my desk says that the 'Tarangire Lodge is set in Acacia woodland & looks out on a seasonal floodplain with the Tarangire National Park on the southern boundary.' Sure enough, but if I read that ahead of time in the brochure I truly would not know what to expect. What, for example, is a 'canvas lodge'? We drove through some pretty rough bush & past a lot of very primitive Masai mud houses to get here & our expectations sunk lower as we drove along. But this place is probably the most luxurious we've experienced on our trip so far. Not even the Southern Sun in Dar can match this!

After 3 & 1/2 days of very intense work in Dodoma, this feels like a wonderful reward. We started our day like the others, breakfast at the New Dodoma hotel then off to MRI to start the workshops around 9:30. But our delivery was hampered by a very slow internet connection (might as well have been down altogether) & it was a challenge to keep the class going when it was taking more than 5 minutes between clicks from one webpage to another. Eventually we wrapped it up & presented each student with his/her certificate. There followed the inevitable picture-taking session, each student with the certificate, then pictures of the whole class together. Of course, pictures of the 'whole class' had to be taken & re-taken because people who had drifted out of the classroom (this *is* the last day before their semester starts, they really are busy) were drifting back in & wanted of course to have a photo that included them too. So it took a while.

Finally, after many good byes, hugs & handshakes, we left MRI & headed back to the hotel to begin the next stage of our adventure. I think I mentioned that Doug had arranged a 2-day safari to the Arusha-Ngorogoro area & our driver/organizer had arranged to meet us back at the New Dodoma by 11:30 or so. He wanted to get an early get-away because he really didn't want to be driving in the dark (totally understandable, given Tanzanian highways). Everything went as planned except for one thing: we needed gas. Did I mention that Tanzania is facing a serious fuel shortage right now? There have even been some riots in Dar requiring police action. It wasn't quite like that in Dodoma but even there, gas stations were short of fuel (the BP stations had all closed) & line ups for gas were long. We have grown accustomed to Tanzanians being very easy-going & laid back but NOT, it appears, when they are threatened with no fuel. Short tempers, armed & helmeted police, angry drivers, people attempting to jump the queue... Our driver, Kanuth, tried 4 different gas stations before finally returning to the first to wait for gas.

It's a bit of a worry, actually. If the country runs out of gas or the riots get out of hand, how will we return to Dar on Monday? I don't want to miss my flight...

But the worry can wait. Tonight I am staying at a most wonderful 'lodge', a clean bed in a canvas room, after a meal of very good food & cold beer. An added bonus: wildlife. When we signed in here, the reception fellow told us not to be too worried if we heard strange noises; that our Masai security guys would warn us if an elephant wandered too near. Right, I thought to myself; & a full-grown moose could theoretically wander into my back yard in Cranbrook. Tourist hype & it's just not all that likely. So I was genuinely surprised when I heard a strange noise nearby while drinking a beer by the campfire outside the dining tent, & turned around to see a family of elephants move past, shadowy figures barely 50 meters away. And even as I type this I can hear unfamiliar animals just at the edge of the bush outside my cabin. And the moon is full over the Masai steppe just outside the door & the whole thing really is the once-in-a-lifetime experience we had hoped (but not quite expected) it would be.

The world really is awesome.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Tanzania 2011, Day 6

Another long & very busy day & I'm tired from the teaching. We have a wonderful little group, although they are extremely busy because this is the week right before classes start for them. We understand the situation completely; it's the same for us just before the semester begins. So we are sympathetic when they have to rush out of class for something or other or when they seem to come & go in & out of the classroom.

We were able to log them into our library databases today, to access our academic journals that are available in digital formats. Their excitement at being able to do this was hard to miss. They fully understand the value of good, up-to-date professional resources and so once they saw how the search functions worked it was hard to tear them away or to move on to the next topic. Our consultancy this year is so short & it's frustrating not to be able to delve more deeply into topics of interest. All we can do is to show them what's available, talk about the potential for educational online resources, & then leave them with sufficient links & ideas to get them started. Perhaps that's the preferable way to do development work anyway.

Outside of work, much of our day was spent struggling with money. I know I wrote about this in my blog last year but it's worth mentioning again; you just can't BELIEVE how complicated it is to work between North American & Tanzanian money systems! The problem (if you can frame it that way) is that we have signed up for a 2-day safari of the Ngorogoro crater. One of our overseas intern students is stationed in Dar es Salaam & she recommended a fellow named Kanuth who does these safari trips on a casual basis. The trip, including all transportation, accommodations, meals, park fees, guide, etc. etc. would cost us each a little over $1000 calculated in US funds. I know it's a lot of money but really, when would I ever get this chance again? And besides, our transportation back to Dar, our hotel fees & meals would come fairly close to that for the 3 days in total that we will be travelling. So we agreed.

So that part is fairly straightforward, but this is where the complications begin. Kanuth wanted half of the money deposited into his bank account ahead of time, & the rest of it to be paid in cash when he arrived. All in Tanzanian funds, of course. This is a bit challenging because the exchange rates between Canadian, American, & Tanzanian currencies vary from day to day so calculating what we owed him was a moving target. It would have been fairly convenient if we had been able to transfer funds into his account but (as we found out) this is not so easy if you don't have a Tanzanian bank account. A further complication -- & this is the main one -- is that the largest bill in the Tanzanian currency system is a 10,000 shilling note. Sounds like a lot of money but it's barely worth $7 in Canadian funds. Bank machines will not let you withdraw more than 400,000 TSH (about $250 CDN) at any one time. So you have to withdraw a batch of 400,000 & then another & another. But if you try to make several large withdrawals in quick succession, your bank card provider computer gets suspicious & freezes your account for a time. Why not just pay with Visa, you ask? Ha! Very, very few places accept credit cards or even debit cards for that matter. It's pretty much a cash-only society & it's designed for people who usually deal in very small amounts.

We did manage to each withdraw more than one million shillings & it was a heady feeling to be a millionaire, if only in Tanzanian currency. My purse, stuffed fat with Tanzanian bills, bulged out suspiciously & was noticeably heavier to carry. Anyway, we had to each max out our cards for several 24 hour periods & will have to go out early again tomorrow to get some more.

So tomorrow, assuming we are able to secure a wheelbarrow-load of Tanzanian money, we will head out on a trip to Ngorogoro & then the town of Arusha. It sounds like our accommodations will be somewhat primitive for the next couple of days so I don't expect I'll be able to get online to post. But I'll keep notes & post as soon as I can.

It's almost midnight; more work tomorrow, so I'm heading for bed.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Tanzania 2011, Day 5

We just got back from supper, another memorable experience at Chako ni Chako. To be honest, the evening didn't quite start out on the right foot. This afternoon while we were working our host (The Principal) advised us to be at Chako ni Chako around 7:30 tonight for dinner. He asked if we would be comfortable walking to the cafe or would we prefer to be picked up? But this time we knew (sort of) where to find Chako ni Chako & we knew it wasn't more than a kilomoter from the hotel. And because we're both walking addicts, we agreed to meet everybody there rather than accept a ride.

We didn't feel nearly so adventurous when 7:20 came & it was dark (REALLY dark) outside & we were tired to begin with. But a deal is a deal so we headed out. It's surprising to experience just how much we have come to expect streetlights in Canada: when they're not there, the world is surprisingly dark & a bit intimidating. We walked along the railroad street, expecting that when we reached the main drag things would be brighter. They weren't: there are no streetlights there either. So we hugged the side of the road, moved pretty quickly, & attempted to dodge the throngs of other people who were either hanging out on the main street or attempting to get somewhere. Shadowy figures seemed to appear out of nowhere, giving very few options about where to walk. Basically you walk along the side of the road, squeezed between the full sidewalk of semi-visible other people and the street of maniacal drivers swooshing past.

But we made it to the Chako ni Chako bar by 7:45 & started looking around for our colleagues. There didn't seem to be anybody there so we hesitated at a corner of the outside cafe, wondering if perhaps we had misunderstood the date or time, when suddenly we heard a voice call out to us & saw one of the MRI guys sitting at a table on the other side of the street. There followed an interesting conversation: "Is this Chako ni Chako?" "Yes." "But it looks like the Chako ni Chako cafe is situated on the other side of the street." "Well, actually this whole area is called "Chako ni Chako" now, not just the cafe." "What is this place called?" "It's Saturday." "I thought it was Wednesday today." "No, Saturday is the name of this bar." Sort of a classic sitcom set up & the humour was definitely not wasted on our Tanzanian colleagues..

Anyway, evenutally we had a half-dozen or so of the MRI group with us, all happily eating kuku nyoma (extremely barbecued chicken) & some sort of barbecued or roasted plantains. And drinking wonderful Tanzanian beer (for the Christians) or soda pop (for the Muslims). Because this was after sundown, our Muslim colleagues were able to join us in the meal. It is an indescribable pleasure to sit outside under night skies with unfamiliar constellations, eating & drinking with comrades, watching the people go by & talking about a wide variety of things. I get a sense -- I don't feel it all that often -- that there is nowhere I'd rather be & nothing else I'd rather be doing.

The day was much better work-wise, too. I took Doug's advice & used a consciously slower pace, purposefully NOT getting all worked up when the internet loaded at a painfully slow rate or (even worse) crashed all together. We looked at digtial library sources & I can't help communicating my excitement at the potenial for fully-open educational resources to change the world.

I'm falling asleep; time to post this (even in draft format) & head for bed.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Tanzania 2011, Day 4

I am writing this while desperately trying NOT to scratch my poor itchy legs. Yesterday afternoon sometime (probably while wandering the market) something was biting my legs & I didn't notice until later when the damage was done. I think it's fleas. So now I have 30+ bites on each leg & am plastered with bug dope to prevent any more. But honestly, I think it's a losing battle.

It was a long & frustrating day. We have been invited back to the Mineral Resources Institute, this time to help them learn about 4 topics:

* digital library: how feasible is this?
* setting up a computer lab
* locating IT training & resources, increasing capacity in this area
* e-learning: how to get started?

Anyway, every one of the topics deals specifically with locating & using internet resources so of course we need access to the internet to teach these topics. We were assured before we arrived that the teachers we're working with would have internet access & technically this was true. When we arrived at the Institute this morning they did indeed have a little room nicely set up with 9 or 10 laptops, all plugged in & hooked up to an internet connection via an amazing spiderweb of cables & cords. It was a bit challenging -- although kind of fun -- to navigate around the room without getting snarled in the cables running every which way. Trying to navigate the internet was not nearly so fun. We only had a little bandwidth to begin with & when split 10 ways it made for a very slow connection indeed. The frustration of trying to demonstrate things while having to wait a full minute between clicks just about drove me crazy. Nevertheless, we got through the day & during our debriefing walk afterwards, Doug pointed out that my frustration really was out of place since a slow, slow connection was the daily reality for our teacher-students, they were used to it, & anything they learned from us would have to be adapted to work within that parameter. Made sense. So tomorrow we will try a slower pace, let the teachers work through things at whatever pace is realisitic, & relax.

What else? It really was great to be back at MRI, reconnecting with people we hadn't seen in a year. MRI is a small place so we had come to recognize every secretary, every teacher, & they all remembered us with lots of hugs & handshaking. At noon, the Institute principal took us all out to another outdoor cafe which offered a generous lunch, buffet-style. We sat on the plastic chairs under the trees & talked with a very interesting teacher who has just returned from a year's study in northern Sweden. I ate ugali (the East African maize paste which I have come to like), well-roasted tilapia pieces, & some kind of stewed okra & cabbage. A very thin cat, calico coloured, waited patiently under my chair until I dropped some fish skin onto the sand beside her. She ate the fish, delicately avoiding the lumps of sand, & when she was done looked up with a silent mew before heading for the next table.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Tanzania 2011, Day 3

It was another day of travel, this time all on land, from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma. Without any stops or major delays the trip can be as short as 6 hours & our trip today wasn't much over that. In some ways the drive was almost leisurely! Partly this was because today is some sort of national holiday in Tanzania so the traffic was unusually light. And partly because our driver, Vincent, has some sort of professional driving designation and even when hitting speeds of 150 kph on the straight stretches we didn't feel the same adrenalin overload. Then too, we're just more accustomed to Tanzanian road life this time & less likely to panic when passing a long transport truck on a hill while narrowly squeezing back into our lane between an oncoming bus & an old man pedalling a bicycle loaded with sticks.

So we arrived safely in Dodoma around 3:30 pm, & are glad to be back. After the sticky damp heat of Dar, Dodoma feels cool & dry. The day temperature should be around 23 all week & tonight it's even a bit on the cool side. Mercifully, the air is dry enough to actually DRY things, unlike Dar where no matter how early you hang up your freshly laundered undies, they are still a bit damp by morning.

We had been booked into the St. Gaspar convention centre, a rather nice place outside of town. However, we were able to get our reservations switched to the New Dodoma hotel, the same place we stayed for most of our visit last year. The New Dodoma is not terribly fancy but it's strategically located across from the railway station & pretty much right downtown so we have somewhere to walk after work without feeling too isolated from what's going on. So the first thing we did after dumping our suitcases was to find our way to the market & wander around for an hour or so, getting pleasantly lost until a friendly young lady led us back to the main street.

One very pleasant addition to the hotel facilities this year is wifi! For only 5000 Tanzanian shillings per day (about $3 Canadian) we can have internet access anywhere in the hotel area all day. It should let me connect more easily, as long as the work schedule permits.

Speaking of work, I still have materials to prepare for tomorrow. This will be challenging because I am feeling sleepy & I am only an armlength away from my bed, ready with the mosquito net pulled down & looking very enticing.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Tanzania 2011, Day 2

A day in Dar. We needed this; a little more time to recover from jet lag & the general wear-&-tear of travelling. We spent the day as productively as we could given our journey fatigue & limpness from the heat. First we did some housekeeping chores like getting the mobile phone working (& it *does* work!) & obtaining some Tanzanian currency. We needed a good wad of money because our driver tomorrow will expect to be paid in cash, to the equivalent of $500 US. This is a bit challenging because the largest Tanzanian bill is barely worth $7 so it takes a lot of them to make such a substantial sum. The bank machine made so much noise dispensing all the bills that at first I thought it must be broken. But no, eventually we got the money we needed & the next challenge was hiding the massive wad in wallet or pocket or purse such that it could be transported discretely back to the hotel safe.

We spent most of the rest of the day just trying to stay awake. We walked around the block & along the waterfront, we mapped out the work ahead, we reacquainted ourselves with Tanzanian beer. By 7:30 we'd had enough; we gave up the pretense of alertness & retired to our rooms. So here I am tapping out a short blog post just because I am in the habit & it does help me focus on the moment.

Probably the most interesting part of the day was our dawdle on the beach. We went out late in the afternoon for a second visit to the bank machine because the machine's withdrawal limit wouldn't allow us to take out enough to cover our costs at one time. So we headed back for the machine, a short block from the hotel, & since it felt so nice to be outside with a bit of a breeze we decided to just keep on walking for a little while. We found ourselves back on the beach & because we were feeling so dopey we decided to just sit for a while & enjoy the cool.

We were by no means the only ones to find the beach such a marvellous place to hang out. The beach is huge & it slopes very gradually so at low tide it forms a massive tide flat. Low-lying parts create saucers of warm water, wonderful areas for young children to play & for women to wade. (The women seem never to go swimming.) Older women walk stooped over along the high tide mark, picking shells & adding them carefully to a gunny sack to sort through & sell later. Many men sit on the sea-wall, no doubt watching the women go by, but we also saw several young men doing amazing calesthics or gymnastics in the sand. I watched one young guy do a full backflip off the seawall onto the beach below. Two entire wedding parties were on the beach to our left, having photos taken, while the flower girls & bridesmaids worked energetically to keep the bride's train out of the sand. From a distance we heard a band approaching & it turned out to be some sort of religious group, with one man preaching loudly & the others responding with the occassional enthusiastic 'hallelujah!' & 'amen!' Vendors moved slowly up & down the beach, balancing plastic basins on their heads filled with cold drinks or hot corn-on-the-cob or beach balls. A vendor on bicycle sold ice cream. A muslim couple chatted quietly on the wall beside us while their children played in the sand, no doubt trying to stave off hunger pains in that long last hour before sunset (this is Ramadan after all).All in all it was a very pleasant hour for us, too, watching the activity, listening to the waves, enjoying the relative cool of the ocean breeze. But we knew for safety's sake we'd have to get the money before dark so we dragged ourselves back onto the road & continued on our way.

Tomorrow we must be up relatively early because our driver will be meeting us at 8:30 to take us to Dodoma. It would be nice if we could doze in the car on the way but given the adrenalin involved in Tanzanian road travel, I expect that's unlikely.

Tanzania 2011, Day 1

I'm sitting here in my room at the Southern Sun Hotel and although Dar es Salaam sits at sea level not far south of the equator, I can't help shivering a little. The shivering is no doubt a result of sitting 9+ hours on an overly air conditioned airplane followed by a 20 minute ride in an overly air conditioned taxi, followed by an aggressively air conditioned hotel room. Perhaps the tiredness doesn't help either. So just as soon as the bellhop left I found the air conditioning controls, turned the temperature dial up & the fan down and waited for things to warm up a bit. When they didn't, of course I started looking for the heater. No heater, no heater whatsoever anywhere in the room...

Ah. Of course, with a location like this, who (besides me) needs a heater?

So instead I have made myself a cup of tea & wrapped a big bath towel around my shoulders & gradually I am warming up a little.

This is my second time in Tanzania & because I was here just a year ago, things don't seem nearly so strange nor exotic this time. The the city scent, the right-hand drive, the traffic congestion, the swahili signs, music out on the sidewalk outside my window, even the bellhops at the hotel all seem vaguely familiar. Our work, however, will be different this time: last year we were conducting some fairly straightforward workshops related to competency-based training & curriculum development, while this year's assignment is related to the establishment of digital libraries, computer labs, and distance learning. At this point it's still rather vague so we must plan without a plan & feel our way around until we understand the specifics.

But not tonight; after 20 hours of solid flying we are TIRED. I had hoped to get on the internet tonight to simply check email & post this entry before heading for bed but I don't think that's going to work. The wifi indicator shows a strong signal but the laptop can't do anything beyond telling me that there's 'little or no connectivity'. I should have guessed when the hotel staff gave me the internet access information & I noticed that the wifi password is "Pole" (swahili word for 'slow').

So I will have a quick shower (a HOT one), pull up all the covers & climb into bed.