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.

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