Eight days here and going strong. In this entry: a brief-ish description of what’s happening at work, much more involved descriptions of adventures around town! Also, my first-ever blog with PICTURES.
Work has started picking up. I had tons of data entry to do, creating a digital record of all the women enrolled in a folic acid study. I started data entering on Thursday, but a lot of the day was disrupted because of insane, end-of-rainy-season storms! I know I thought the storm at the end of my time at TBI was intense, and it surely felt it because we basically lived outside and had no way to escape nature. This time when the storm came, I was sitting comfortably in an air-conditioned high-rise, watching the sky come crashing down from a vantage point of 80 feet and a half-panoramic view. After every storm surge I’d think, surely this is done, but then another grey cloud would roll over the city and it would pour like I’d never seen before. By the end of the day, all the streets were flooded, and – miracle of miracles – I did not sweat at all on my walk back from work! Quite a milestone.
Everything was back to sunny normal by yesterday. I also got some exciting news at work: for the next 1-2 weeks, I will be working in Ifakara, 600 km southeast of Dar. I was originally told I could expect to spend about five days there. But the timeframe kept increasing, as I learned when I met the Vitamin A study’s co-coordinator (a Tanzanian who, incidentally, lived in Jamaica Plain for 4 months when I was in high school and rode the 39 every day!). As usual here, no one really seems to know exactly what is going on or how long anything will take. Even as one of the least time-conscious Americans around, it’s still surprising. Altering expectations is definitely an ongoing process! Anyway, I’m leaving on Monday morning and can expect to be gone for quite a while. Adios, Dar, and adios, plans to go to Zanzibar with Jeanie next weekend. Flexibility is key!
Last night Jeanie and I didn’t run with Salum and Catherine, even though they usually go on Fridays – they were having car troubles. Salum and I did get to talk for a very long time, though, as we drove to and from a hospital in Temeke district where he had a meeting with his research assistants. This hospital was clear on the other side of town, which guaranteed at least an hour of bumper-to-bumper traffic in both directions. Along the way, we passed several glaring examples of urban reform gone wrong. For example, three large shopping centers originally intended to get poorer vendors off the street and into a sanctioned marketplace failed when wealthy developers who barely sell anything bought up the lots. So vendors still crowd the streets while three big buildings, paid from taxes, go to waste. Minutes later, we drove over two sets of train tracks: the first public transit trains in the city. There’s only one line, but it already has begun to cut down on some congestion in the places it runs through. Of course, in the 9th-fastest growing city in the world, it’s hard for any infrastructure to make a dent without a massive system overhaul. It was heartening, though, to see this incipient change.
Since Salum couldn’t take us running at the university, upon our return home I decided to run over to the fitness club five minutes away. This is the one I wrote about earlier: $95 a month with amazing facilities and an ocean view. They have a dirt path than runs the circumference of the club, including a section on the beach. I hoped no one would figure out I wasn’t a member, because even though the path is short, it’s probably the best place to run in the area. I tried the beach, and while it was beautiful, the tilted shoreline made it difficult to run along for any length of time. The health club’s path is secluded, unpolluted, and a great place to quietly think, if you can avoid crashing into other runners on the short track (or getting called out as an intruder). With the sun setting and the sea breezing, I ran lap after lap until my calves decided it was time to go home. I first ran to the produce stand right near our hostel and, in all my running-clothes glory, was proposed to by about five middle-aged men all hanging out/working there. Tomatoes, avocados and a husband, what more could you want?
Soon enough I was making the best dinner of them all, which I gleefully posted about on Facebook last night. For not a large sum of cash, you can buy fresh, local foods that would often be expensive in the U.S., right around the corner from anywhere you live. Mango + avocado + cucumber + tomatoes = $1.80. Rinse, repeat, and I’m good for dinner for the next few months.
Work has started picking up. I had tons of data entry to do, creating a digital record of all the women enrolled in a folic acid study. I started data entering on Thursday, but a lot of the day was disrupted because of insane, end-of-rainy-season storms! I know I thought the storm at the end of my time at TBI was intense, and it surely felt it because we basically lived outside and had no way to escape nature. This time when the storm came, I was sitting comfortably in an air-conditioned high-rise, watching the sky come crashing down from a vantage point of 80 feet and a half-panoramic view. After every storm surge I’d think, surely this is done, but then another grey cloud would roll over the city and it would pour like I’d never seen before. By the end of the day, all the streets were flooded, and – miracle of miracles – I did not sweat at all on my walk back from work! Quite a milestone.
Everything was back to sunny normal by yesterday. I also got some exciting news at work: for the next 1-2 weeks, I will be working in Ifakara, 600 km southeast of Dar. I was originally told I could expect to spend about five days there. But the timeframe kept increasing, as I learned when I met the Vitamin A study’s co-coordinator (a Tanzanian who, incidentally, lived in Jamaica Plain for 4 months when I was in high school and rode the 39 every day!). As usual here, no one really seems to know exactly what is going on or how long anything will take. Even as one of the least time-conscious Americans around, it’s still surprising. Altering expectations is definitely an ongoing process! Anyway, I’m leaving on Monday morning and can expect to be gone for quite a while. Adios, Dar, and adios, plans to go to Zanzibar with Jeanie next weekend. Flexibility is key!
Last night Jeanie and I didn’t run with Salum and Catherine, even though they usually go on Fridays – they were having car troubles. Salum and I did get to talk for a very long time, though, as we drove to and from a hospital in Temeke district where he had a meeting with his research assistants. This hospital was clear on the other side of town, which guaranteed at least an hour of bumper-to-bumper traffic in both directions. Along the way, we passed several glaring examples of urban reform gone wrong. For example, three large shopping centers originally intended to get poorer vendors off the street and into a sanctioned marketplace failed when wealthy developers who barely sell anything bought up the lots. So vendors still crowd the streets while three big buildings, paid from taxes, go to waste. Minutes later, we drove over two sets of train tracks: the first public transit trains in the city. There’s only one line, but it already has begun to cut down on some congestion in the places it runs through. Of course, in the 9th-fastest growing city in the world, it’s hard for any infrastructure to make a dent without a massive system overhaul. It was heartening, though, to see this incipient change.
Since Salum couldn’t take us running at the university, upon our return home I decided to run over to the fitness club five minutes away. This is the one I wrote about earlier: $95 a month with amazing facilities and an ocean view. They have a dirt path than runs the circumference of the club, including a section on the beach. I hoped no one would figure out I wasn’t a member, because even though the path is short, it’s probably the best place to run in the area. I tried the beach, and while it was beautiful, the tilted shoreline made it difficult to run along for any length of time. The health club’s path is secluded, unpolluted, and a great place to quietly think, if you can avoid crashing into other runners on the short track (or getting called out as an intruder). With the sun setting and the sea breezing, I ran lap after lap until my calves decided it was time to go home. I first ran to the produce stand right near our hostel and, in all my running-clothes glory, was proposed to by about five middle-aged men all hanging out/working there. Tomatoes, avocados and a husband, what more could you want?
Soon enough I was making the best dinner of them all, which I gleefully posted about on Facebook last night. For not a large sum of cash, you can buy fresh, local foods that would often be expensive in the U.S., right around the corner from anywhere you live. Mango + avocado + cucumber + tomatoes = $1.80. Rinse, repeat, and I’m good for dinner for the next few months.
Moaning and groaning after extreme eating, Jeanie and I decided we were a bit too wiped out to go out to a nightclub with Salum and Catherine. Call me lame. Call me maybe. I read a download of Mindy Kaling’s book and passed out around 11. Good thing, though, because after this morning’s breakfast of endless banana-and-berry tarts (and a food coma nap), Jeanie and I were off to the races! Goat races, that is.
What are goat races? Where are goat races? Those were the questions I was asking myself as Jeanie dragged us out for a dubious adventure. I hand-drew a map of that section of the city and we got into the second bajaj we saw. We ditched the first one because he didn’t know where Kenyatta Drive was, the goat race location. Our second driver and his friend kind of seemed to. Well, not for long. With only my sketched map and our repetition of “Kenyatta Drive!…Goats?” we screeched through the city for the better part of an hour trying to locate the event. After several near-miss encounters with cars (we were driving in the wrong lane, of course), an excursion on a beachside road, and many 3-point turns in the middle of intersections, we finally made it.
And that was when we found out where all the white people were hiding.
The goat races were located in Oysterbay, the most upscale neighborhood in Dar, filled with ambassadorial residences and not filled with traffic. We walked through thick dry grass into the fairground, which was pounding pop music and filled – I say filled – with those of the pale-skinned persuasion. Americans and Brits for the most part, by the sound of accents, but also Australians and South Africans and anyone colonial enough to need SPF 50 on a day like this. There certainly were Tanzanians there: visibly wealthy families with young children, and then all the food-tent, goat-organizing and entertainment employees.
Well, we were there to enjoy ourselves, not to ask about self-segregation, and enjoy ourselves we did. We watched dance performances that put any aspiring twerker to shame, marveled at amazing contortionists, drank overpriced hard cider (Savannah Dry, my long-lost Ghanaian love!), and split a massive plate of goat and fries (goat for Jeanie, fries for guess who). Jeanie got gelato, I got a suntan, and the outhouses flushed (?!?!?!).
What are goat races? Where are goat races? Those were the questions I was asking myself as Jeanie dragged us out for a dubious adventure. I hand-drew a map of that section of the city and we got into the second bajaj we saw. We ditched the first one because he didn’t know where Kenyatta Drive was, the goat race location. Our second driver and his friend kind of seemed to. Well, not for long. With only my sketched map and our repetition of “Kenyatta Drive!…Goats?” we screeched through the city for the better part of an hour trying to locate the event. After several near-miss encounters with cars (we were driving in the wrong lane, of course), an excursion on a beachside road, and many 3-point turns in the middle of intersections, we finally made it.
And that was when we found out where all the white people were hiding.
The goat races were located in Oysterbay, the most upscale neighborhood in Dar, filled with ambassadorial residences and not filled with traffic. We walked through thick dry grass into the fairground, which was pounding pop music and filled – I say filled – with those of the pale-skinned persuasion. Americans and Brits for the most part, by the sound of accents, but also Australians and South Africans and anyone colonial enough to need SPF 50 on a day like this. There certainly were Tanzanians there: visibly wealthy families with young children, and then all the food-tent, goat-organizing and entertainment employees.
Well, we were there to enjoy ourselves, not to ask about self-segregation, and enjoy ourselves we did. We watched dance performances that put any aspiring twerker to shame, marveled at amazing contortionists, drank overpriced hard cider (Savannah Dry, my long-lost Ghanaian love!), and split a massive plate of goat and fries (goat for Jeanie, fries for guess who). Jeanie got gelato, I got a suntan, and the outhouses flushed (?!?!?!).
Nothing compared, of course, to the goat races. I was under the impression that maybe the goats had been trained to race. I mean, they were offering about $500 for the sponsor of the winning goat in each race. It turns out the entertainment value of these races is precisely the opposite: the goats do not know how to race and will in fact do anything not to run. Their track was tiny, maybe 50 meters around, but they had to be pushed by a thick blue cushion that men were running behind them to keep them moving in the same direction. “And they’ve stopped to huddle! One’s trying to run through the enclosure – you won’t make it there, mate!” ran the typical commentary, delivered by questionably sober announcers sporting gauche mermaid-and-sailor gear and umbrella hats. Something’s in the expats’ water.
After watching two goat races and exploring the fair, we left to see the Msasani Peninsula, a few miles north but in the same general upscale part of the city. By luck, we met a really nice, completely English-fluent bajaj driver, David, who took us to the tip of the peninsula and gave us his number for future bajaj rides in the area. “I’m pretty popular,” he boasted, and we didn’t really get it until he got whoops of hello from fellow drivers everywhere. Once there, we explored all the fancier stuff that Dar had to offer: supermarkets with American-brand Greek yogurt (at $3 a pop, I didn’t get any, but never say never!), cinnamon buns (yup, one in the bag), and sunburned American tweens everywhere.
We walked down the peninsula and quickly realized my map didn’t delineate where the posh section started or ended. Pretty soon we were back in what seemed like a slightly more normal section of town – at least, the streets weren’t lined with expensive stores or hotels. Yet there were still big houses behind tall fences. Maybe it was just the residential area. We walked for a long time and ended up, where else, getting souvenirs. I picked up a pair of comfy printed capris and Jeanie got two pairs of earrings. I also had an unexpectedly in-depth conversation with the earring vendor about American politics. People here love Obama, but this guy put them all to shame. “He is a Maasai warrior!” the guy proclaimed. Questionable. “A son of East Africa! That is why we all love him. What is it like in America, with a warrior for a president?” I professed my forever-Obama love, but said I’d originally been a Hillary supporter and would love her to run in 2016. This launched us into a whole conversation about whether the Democrats in America would support someone who’d already tried to run and lost. And then we got onto female politicians in general. The vendor had pretty eclectic/undecided political opinions – he was also a Thatcherite through and through. He hoped Obama might stay at the Hilton right down the street from his booth when he visits in a few weeks. “It wasn’t built when (Bill) Clinton came,” he said mournfully. Hillary always knew what she was getting into with Bill, he said knowingly, and that’s why they didn’t divorce after Lewinsky. And all really smart men are guaranteed womanizers. Of course, this guy was also a major JFK fan – “The only president greater than Obama!” I’m going on and on here, but it was a pretty unique conversation.
I left this Americaphile after a hearty goodbye and Jeanie and I walked on to another market right on the water. After an expensive day at the fair, we had just enough money to get home and buy our groceries on the way, so we couldn’t get anything at this market – but I sure would have! Printed dresses all around, can’t resist. This whole area, called the Slipway, was clearly a tourist trap and we couldn’t tell how much cheaper the same goods would be at a larger, less touristy market. We’re going to check one out when I get back from Ifakara. “I heard it’s gigantic and full of pickpockets!” Jeanie said enthusiastically. Well, I seriously doubted her about the goat races and had a great time, so I guess I will follow her decisions in more things. At the very least, we got lots of inflated price quotes and found good seaside restaurants for eating and sunset-viewing in future excursions.
With the sun setting on another day, we called up trusty David and bajajed it back to Mikocheni. We loaded up on two days’ worth of dinner-produce, sat down to another delicious dinner on the hostel’s rooftop, and returned to home sweet home.
We walked down the peninsula and quickly realized my map didn’t delineate where the posh section started or ended. Pretty soon we were back in what seemed like a slightly more normal section of town – at least, the streets weren’t lined with expensive stores or hotels. Yet there were still big houses behind tall fences. Maybe it was just the residential area. We walked for a long time and ended up, where else, getting souvenirs. I picked up a pair of comfy printed capris and Jeanie got two pairs of earrings. I also had an unexpectedly in-depth conversation with the earring vendor about American politics. People here love Obama, but this guy put them all to shame. “He is a Maasai warrior!” the guy proclaimed. Questionable. “A son of East Africa! That is why we all love him. What is it like in America, with a warrior for a president?” I professed my forever-Obama love, but said I’d originally been a Hillary supporter and would love her to run in 2016. This launched us into a whole conversation about whether the Democrats in America would support someone who’d already tried to run and lost. And then we got onto female politicians in general. The vendor had pretty eclectic/undecided political opinions – he was also a Thatcherite through and through. He hoped Obama might stay at the Hilton right down the street from his booth when he visits in a few weeks. “It wasn’t built when (Bill) Clinton came,” he said mournfully. Hillary always knew what she was getting into with Bill, he said knowingly, and that’s why they didn’t divorce after Lewinsky. And all really smart men are guaranteed womanizers. Of course, this guy was also a major JFK fan – “The only president greater than Obama!” I’m going on and on here, but it was a pretty unique conversation.
I left this Americaphile after a hearty goodbye and Jeanie and I walked on to another market right on the water. After an expensive day at the fair, we had just enough money to get home and buy our groceries on the way, so we couldn’t get anything at this market – but I sure would have! Printed dresses all around, can’t resist. This whole area, called the Slipway, was clearly a tourist trap and we couldn’t tell how much cheaper the same goods would be at a larger, less touristy market. We’re going to check one out when I get back from Ifakara. “I heard it’s gigantic and full of pickpockets!” Jeanie said enthusiastically. Well, I seriously doubted her about the goat races and had a great time, so I guess I will follow her decisions in more things. At the very least, we got lots of inflated price quotes and found good seaside restaurants for eating and sunset-viewing in future excursions.
With the sun setting on another day, we called up trusty David and bajajed it back to Mikocheni. We loaded up on two days’ worth of dinner-produce, sat down to another delicious dinner on the hostel’s rooftop, and returned to home sweet home.
I just snuck into the laundry room under cover of darkness to covertly washing my clothes in the machine. Apparently they want us to pay to have all our clothing washed and ironed by the staff, but it’s really expensive. Language barriers have made it unclear whether we can just use the machine ourselves. Let’s hope the answer’s yes, or I’ll be spending the summer either broke or smelly.
For now, clean clothes or not, it’s my last entry from Dar for a good bit of time. Next week in Ifakara! I hear my Swiss-run hostel has a swimming pool and that I’ll be driving through the Selous Game Reserve on my way there (a.k.a. safari central). Get at me, lions. I’ll be the pink-faced one in the Tevas.
** Wupdates from the front: I have successfully done my laundry but the running clothes I put out on the communal clothesline yesterday are now gone. Le sigh.
For now, clean clothes or not, it’s my last entry from Dar for a good bit of time. Next week in Ifakara! I hear my Swiss-run hostel has a swimming pool and that I’ll be driving through the Selous Game Reserve on my way there (a.k.a. safari central). Get at me, lions. I’ll be the pink-faced one in the Tevas.
** Wupdates from the front: I have successfully done my laundry but the running clothes I put out on the communal clothesline yesterday are now gone. Le sigh.