Life has resumed its normal patterns since coming down from the mountain. Here are the goings-on about the mansion and town over the past few weeks.
A few nights after Jeanie and I moved into our lovely new home with Kalisha and Kristin, we hosted our group’s first (but not last!) dinner party. We invited everyone over and fed them with the bounty of our super-American pantry. Dinner included bean salad, spaghetti, mac & cheese, fruit salad, muffins (rapidly frosted into cupcakes), and even a pumpkin pie (from a can! I am becoming a ‘50s housewife). Everyone joined in the cooking and we put some great stuff together.
After that successful night we decided that dinner parties had to become a mainstay of the summer. We’ve had two more: a Chinese-Mexican night at Becca and Dave’s and a barbeque at Erfaan’s. We are all housesitting in the same area of the city and have great houses. Becca and Dave have two yappy little dogs, a pool, a zip-line, a trampoline, and a gigantic record collection, though their house is also suspiciously coated in dust and doesn’t have a very functional water filter. Erfaan has a friendly Golden Retriever named Meadow and a decorative safari-themed fence. And our house has our now-famous pantry, Wi-Fi, a flatscreen TV and movie collection to match, and THE BEST PEOPLE YOU WILL EVER MEET. We also have a slight cockroach problem and a big ant issue, but you can’t win at everything.
A few nights after Jeanie and I moved into our lovely new home with Kalisha and Kristin, we hosted our group’s first (but not last!) dinner party. We invited everyone over and fed them with the bounty of our super-American pantry. Dinner included bean salad, spaghetti, mac & cheese, fruit salad, muffins (rapidly frosted into cupcakes), and even a pumpkin pie (from a can! I am becoming a ‘50s housewife). Everyone joined in the cooking and we put some great stuff together.
After that successful night we decided that dinner parties had to become a mainstay of the summer. We’ve had two more: a Chinese-Mexican night at Becca and Dave’s and a barbeque at Erfaan’s. We are all housesitting in the same area of the city and have great houses. Becca and Dave have two yappy little dogs, a pool, a zip-line, a trampoline, and a gigantic record collection, though their house is also suspiciously coated in dust and doesn’t have a very functional water filter. Erfaan has a friendly Golden Retriever named Meadow and a decorative safari-themed fence. And our house has our now-famous pantry, Wi-Fi, a flatscreen TV and movie collection to match, and THE BEST PEOPLE YOU WILL EVER MEET. We also have a slight cockroach problem and a big ant issue, but you can’t win at everything.
Our first weekend back, I headed up north to Bagamoyo with Heather, Becca, and Lauren. Bagamoyo, a sleepy little seaside town, is about an hour and a half from Dar. Locals and tourists alike go there for the beaches and colonial German ruins (it was the capitol of German East Africa, in the pre-WWI days). Like anything fun in Tanzania, it came with its fare share of warnings, mainly concerning tourists getting mugged. I recognize that a lot of violence against tourists is completely out of their control, but I do want to slap people I see walking around with bulging Longchamp bags and the like. You can always reduce your risk by not looking like a target, and that’s exactly what we did. If you don’t carry a bag on you, you don’t have a bag to get stolen (or, in some of the more horrifying cases, get dragged along the road for miles when your bag is snatched and you get caught in the strap). But enough of the heavy! I’ve had a very safe, incident-free summer so far, luckily. Those are just my thoughts on safety.
We spent all of Saturday and Sunday in Bagamoyo. We arrived Saturday morning and spent the rest of the day exploring town. We visited an old church and graveyard, admired the century-old ruins, bought art at the tourist market, and had a delicious dinner, complete with a raucous game of Taboo, at a cute little restaurant called Poa Poa. Becca went scuba diving on Sunday while the rest of us spent the day relaxing on the beach, and we headed back mid-afternoon so Lauren could catch her flight home to Arusha. It was a beautiful, spontaneous mini-vacation. I’ll never get enough of the beaches here, and the great company didn’t hurt a bit.
We spent all of Saturday and Sunday in Bagamoyo. We arrived Saturday morning and spent the rest of the day exploring town. We visited an old church and graveyard, admired the century-old ruins, bought art at the tourist market, and had a delicious dinner, complete with a raucous game of Taboo, at a cute little restaurant called Poa Poa. Becca went scuba diving on Sunday while the rest of us spent the day relaxing on the beach, and we headed back mid-afternoon so Lauren could catch her flight home to Arusha. It was a beautiful, spontaneous mini-vacation. I’ll never get enough of the beaches here, and the great company didn’t hurt a bit.
The next weekend (a.k.a. last weekend), my three Bagamoyo companions were off on a 4-day Serengeti safari. Kristin also left to go back to America, so our somewhat diminished group – me, Jeanie, Kalisha, Dave, and Erfaan – headed to another local beach, Kipepeo. Jeanie, Kalisha and I had been out late the night before at a great restaurant, Cape Town Fish Market, along with Kristin, Courtni, and Karabani (a Tanzanian-American filmmaker Kalisha met a few weeks ago). We consequently had a late start to our beach day – we left the house at about 1 instead of the afore-planned 9 – but still got to the beach with plenty of sunlight. There we met up with Noelle, Lakshmi and (a different) Heather. Heather just graduated from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and is now working in South Africa, Malawi, and Tanzania. Noelle and Lakshmi are in their 2nd year at Mailman and are doing their practicum, a 6-month work experience that’s part of their degree. It was great (for me!) to meet other people here interested in global health, as most of my friends do policy and business work.
We headed back late from the beach. The sun set as our ferry crossed the water and we got a splendid nighttime view of Dar. After lots of confusion and wandering, we squeezed into a taxi and headed back to the peninsula (a.k.a. Masaki, our neighborhood) for the night.
We headed back late from the beach. The sun set as our ferry crossed the water and we got a splendid nighttime view of Dar. After lots of confusion and wandering, we squeezed into a taxi and headed back to the peninsula (a.k.a. Masaki, our neighborhood) for the night.
…just kidding! I would have to put my party pants on. Despite being resolutely passed out on the couch after watching Gone with the Wind and reading a full issue of National Geographic, I had to fulfill my social duties, or at least not act like a 90-year-old trapped in a 20-year-old’s body. Parties start late and end late in Dar, so we didn’t head out the door until 1 a.m. We spent the night at Club Mediterraneo’s full moon party. Remembering the disastrous aftermath of the full moon party on Zanzibar, I took the night easy and mainly socialized with some study abroad students we’d met before, as well as Noelle, Lakshmi, and an unnervingly Russell Brand-esque bartender. Kalisha, Karabani and I headed back home at the reasonable hour of 4 a.m., while rumor has it that Jeanie and Erfaan got home around 6:30. Needless to say, Sunday was a lazy day leading up to the barbeque at Erf’s house.
Between all these beaches and late-night restaurants and clubs, you might think I am not working. Don’t worry, parents and Harvard grant committees, I am! But I’m still working from home, on my own schedule, and am consequently afforded the greatest lazy luxuries. I go to bed whenever I want (1-3) and wake up whenever I want (9-11). I make myself a nice breakfast: loaded omelets and tropical smoothies for days! From about 1-6, I sit in my PJs or similar slothful gear at my desk entering data. This might sound yawningly boring, but I luckily have all of the Harry Potter audiobooks in my iTunes and have been alternately listening to the series while I work and reading the books during my downtime. All I can say is…I started this method of staving off boredom 11 workdays ago, and I am now on Order of the Phoenix. Judge away. It is amazing. I leave the house at 6 to go on a sunset run. Up and down the peaceful pavement of the peninsula, along the ocean roads, under the dusk sky – it’s my favorite time of day and also the only time I leave the house, unless we go out for dinner or the movies that night!
Besides diligently entering data every day, I’ve also been playing host to a rotating crew of workmen coming to fix all the problems in our house. First Kalisha’s bedroom AC broke and then our drier broke (as I was conveniently doing a load of laundry). We were in the clear for a week until our circuit breaker freaked out and a repairman determined our water filter was malfunctioning. In our panic we turned off every single switch in the house except for necessary lighting. When we called the workmen back a few days later to figure out why we had no hot water, we realized that we’d turned off all the water heater switches in our haste to save the circuits. And so the helpless American show went on. I did manage to solve one problem on my own: I discovered the source of a disgusting rotting fish smell in our TV room. It was not termites, and it was certainly not my imagination. It was Kalisha’s leftover dinner from Cape Town Fish Market, stewing in a plastic bag for 5 days. There are…well, there are words, but I wish there were not.
Plans for the future: Pacific Rim tomorrow night, a good-bye dinner and night out with the whole Dar crew on Friday, and possibly another Zanzibar trip this weekend with Lauren and Joyce. Tomorrow, I turn 21! Watch out, America. The next time this girl gets Thai food, she might order. some. wine.
Birthday girl out. Don’t you steal my thunder, Royal Baby.
Between all these beaches and late-night restaurants and clubs, you might think I am not working. Don’t worry, parents and Harvard grant committees, I am! But I’m still working from home, on my own schedule, and am consequently afforded the greatest lazy luxuries. I go to bed whenever I want (1-3) and wake up whenever I want (9-11). I make myself a nice breakfast: loaded omelets and tropical smoothies for days! From about 1-6, I sit in my PJs or similar slothful gear at my desk entering data. This might sound yawningly boring, but I luckily have all of the Harry Potter audiobooks in my iTunes and have been alternately listening to the series while I work and reading the books during my downtime. All I can say is…I started this method of staving off boredom 11 workdays ago, and I am now on Order of the Phoenix. Judge away. It is amazing. I leave the house at 6 to go on a sunset run. Up and down the peaceful pavement of the peninsula, along the ocean roads, under the dusk sky – it’s my favorite time of day and also the only time I leave the house, unless we go out for dinner or the movies that night!
Besides diligently entering data every day, I’ve also been playing host to a rotating crew of workmen coming to fix all the problems in our house. First Kalisha’s bedroom AC broke and then our drier broke (as I was conveniently doing a load of laundry). We were in the clear for a week until our circuit breaker freaked out and a repairman determined our water filter was malfunctioning. In our panic we turned off every single switch in the house except for necessary lighting. When we called the workmen back a few days later to figure out why we had no hot water, we realized that we’d turned off all the water heater switches in our haste to save the circuits. And so the helpless American show went on. I did manage to solve one problem on my own: I discovered the source of a disgusting rotting fish smell in our TV room. It was not termites, and it was certainly not my imagination. It was Kalisha’s leftover dinner from Cape Town Fish Market, stewing in a plastic bag for 5 days. There are…well, there are words, but I wish there were not.
Plans for the future: Pacific Rim tomorrow night, a good-bye dinner and night out with the whole Dar crew on Friday, and possibly another Zanzibar trip this weekend with Lauren and Joyce. Tomorrow, I turn 21! Watch out, America. The next time this girl gets Thai food, she might order. some. wine.
Birthday girl out. Don’t you steal my thunder, Royal Baby.