More Dar
Trip Start
Jul 18, 2007
1
2
11
Trip End
Ongoing
Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
And now for Dar. Dar es Salaam is an amazing city. It is huge, dirty, tons of stuff going on and I love it. Traffic here is the most insane thing I have ever seen. No traffic lights, just speed bumps. Minimal traffic signs in general. Too many people stuffed into the backs of pickups. And oh lord the daladalas. Daladalas are minibuses that go all around the city and you only have to pay 250 Tsh (less than 25 cents) per ride. It's a great way to get around but there is no limit to the number of people in a daladala, so you have about maybe twelve to fourteen people sitting in actual seats but then you add five to ten (maybe I'm slightly exaggerating but not by much) more people standing or sitting on your lap if it's a friend. And mind you most of these people have not showered in recent memory. Its so great! It takes a while to figure out the system but once you do you can get pretty much anywhere. We had only been here a couple of days when Tyler, Eva, Jessica, and I decided to walk to Shoprite(which is like an American grocery store and we usually try to avoid going to it because we don't feel we're getting the real African experience. Besides markets are way cheaper and way more exciting) to get a cake for Brice and Brian's birthdays. Andy told us that when we got to the main road we should turn right and shoprite wouldn't be very far from there. However, Andy was wrong. We definitely walked for about a half an hour in the wrong direction, stopping twice to ask people that didn't speak English (and our Swahili is very limited) if we were going the right way. Both times the people told us we were wrong but we foolishly trusted Andy and kept walking. Finally we decide that Andy was wrong but we don't want to walk all the way back. There happened to be a line of several daladalas. We walk up to the first one and the driver says "Mwenge" and Jess goes "Shoprite? OK!" so we hop in this random daladala and amazingly enough make it to shoprite. And somehow we managed to catch the right daladala back to campus. Needless to say we were pretty proud of ourselves, especially since we were carrying a cake for the ride back. Oh man was that a good time. I don't know what else to tell you about Dar. The markets are crazy. I'm getting way better at haggling (Caroline will tell you that's a lie but I know how to haggle now so I say that's an improvement.) The beaches are gorgeous. We went to Mikade(I think that's how its spelled) on Sunday and there was white sand, a full bar, and the very lovely and warm Indian ocean. I could definitely get used to that. I got a little burned but surprisingly not nearly as much as I thought I was going to. Tomorrow is Nane Nane which is a celebration for farmers and a national holiday so we don't have Kiswahili class. Most of our group is going to the beach, but Brian, Eva and I are going to our teacher assistant's house because she invited us and we felt that it would be rude to say screw that I'm going to the beach. I think we're going afterwards though. And probably this weekend. Oooooo Beach.....
