For post #250, I decided to do away with the confetti and
balloons and simply write about a typical day in Dar, minus the ocean, the nice
weather, the friendly people, and the boats.
A couple of days ago, I received a letter suggesting that
this must be the good life, that this is the gravy train with mashed potatoes
feeding the engine and the caboose trailing behind loaded with pumpkin pie.
While there are certainly perks living in this town, I am the first person to
tell you that the gravy train won't make an appearance any sooner than Disneyland ever will.
A typical day in Dar: I need to reach the Embassy, so I am out the door, and the first thing I need to do is hunt down a bajaj to take me there. Usually, I need to walk a couple of blocks until I get lucky, on other days maybe more. Today, I need to sidestep the puddles (more like entire lakes) created by the most recent downpour during the rainy season. Sidewalks in my area are scarce, so I need to walk on grass and unpaved paths, which means mud, lots of mud that I delicately need to navigate through.
I need to walk against the traffic, especially if I am carrying a backpack. Why is this? People love to go fishing in this country, but not all of the fish have scales. People use a pole with a hook to snatch the backpack off the pedestrian's back as they drive by. A Greek doctor died that way not too long ago, as her backpack was hooked along with its carrier and dragged for a good distance. Tourist beware.
I see a rat that has just been run over by a car, and the crows immediately swoop in to partake in a nutritious brunch. The cars will scatter the crows each time they rush by. One of them runs over the rat again for good measure, but once the coast is clear, the crows are right back at it, hungrily picking at the rat's carcass. What doesn't help in this town are the numerous potholes that pop up at the most inopportune places. Fill those up with water until it's virtually impossible to see the potholes, and you have an enormous potential for disaster, especially if any of the vehicles don't have the proper clearance. It makes for long and tedious traffic jams…and costly repairs.
Eventually, I do flag down a bajaj and we're on our way, pole pole, or slowly but surely, as they say in Swahili. I see a homeless man sleeping only a few meters from the road, and I'm hoping the traffic doesn't create an extra lane where the man's makeshift bed is. There's a barber shop with rusty metal doors, dilapidated wooden frames to hold in what could pass for windows, and the sign Abuu proclaiming just who the owner of the place may be. Within one run down building that measures no more than ten meters in length, there is a pharmacy, a hardware store, and a butcher shop that just went out of business. Do the math, and you'll see that this is not your average strip mall that you would find back in the States. It's obvious that these people are one unpaid bill away from being evicted.
Further down the road, there's a shop selling fish and chips. There's a meter or two of dirt separating the store from the street, and there are no more than two old wooden tables and four old plastic chairs suggesting that this is a dining establishment. The women walk past you on their way to work, their colorful dresses fluttering in the wind. A lot of the men walking around here wear contraband jerseys from European football clubs: Manchester United, Real Madrid, Arsenal, Chelsea, Barcelona, Bayern Munich. This is not necessarily the guys' affiliation with any football club, but it's the fashion of choice owing to convenience. The muggy hot weather has people scrambling for convenient clothing, and you can't do any worse that football jerseys. I see a middle-aged man walking with a pink top and matching pink shorts. Not the choice of most westerners, I'm sure, but it's whatever is in your closet (pun not intended).
Cars from the 1960's and 1970's would fetch a good buck in the west, but here people drive these old cars simply because that's what they've been doing for the last twenty years or so. On Old Bagamoyo Road, there are mud huts with kids playing dangerously close to the road. In the west, you would have parents screeching in horror if their kids were allowed to play anywhere near such a busy street, let alone unsupervised. There are clothes billowing on makeshift lines in the warm air, no dryer or washing machine needed here. Inside one of the houses, I see an old guy watching a boxy TV set that you would probably need a crane to lift. The picture is fuzzy, and the guy must adjust the aerial on top before he is able to receive a decent picture. Ain't that Africa, baby. Little pink mud huts for you and me.
Not too far from the mud hut is a guy selling tombstones, right there by the side of the road. One pedestrian wanders too close to one of the rain filled potholes and is drenched with muck by an SUV passing him. The man shakes his shirt in the wind a little, and eyes the departing SUV suspiciously before continuing on his itinerary. There are all sorts of trash items that have accumulated—non-degradable, of course. When the plastic bottles and wooden planks and rusted cast iron pipes will disappear is anybody's guess.
Another merchant holds a board with dozens of pairs of cheap sunglasses high above his head, his head alertly trying to steer himself through traffic. Every ten or twenty meters, there are street vendors hoping to make a buck by selling cigarettes, bags of nuts, or coconut milk. Anything it takes to scrape out a living.
And that's what Dar looks like on a typical day outside of the Yacht Club. Eternal bliss? Hardly. Different, for sure.
A typical day in Dar: I need to reach the Embassy, so I am out the door, and the first thing I need to do is hunt down a bajaj to take me there. Usually, I need to walk a couple of blocks until I get lucky, on other days maybe more. Today, I need to sidestep the puddles (more like entire lakes) created by the most recent downpour during the rainy season. Sidewalks in my area are scarce, so I need to walk on grass and unpaved paths, which means mud, lots of mud that I delicately need to navigate through.
I need to walk against the traffic, especially if I am carrying a backpack. Why is this? People love to go fishing in this country, but not all of the fish have scales. People use a pole with a hook to snatch the backpack off the pedestrian's back as they drive by. A Greek doctor died that way not too long ago, as her backpack was hooked along with its carrier and dragged for a good distance. Tourist beware.
I see a rat that has just been run over by a car, and the crows immediately swoop in to partake in a nutritious brunch. The cars will scatter the crows each time they rush by. One of them runs over the rat again for good measure, but once the coast is clear, the crows are right back at it, hungrily picking at the rat's carcass. What doesn't help in this town are the numerous potholes that pop up at the most inopportune places. Fill those up with water until it's virtually impossible to see the potholes, and you have an enormous potential for disaster, especially if any of the vehicles don't have the proper clearance. It makes for long and tedious traffic jams…and costly repairs.
Eventually, I do flag down a bajaj and we're on our way, pole pole, or slowly but surely, as they say in Swahili. I see a homeless man sleeping only a few meters from the road, and I'm hoping the traffic doesn't create an extra lane where the man's makeshift bed is. There's a barber shop with rusty metal doors, dilapidated wooden frames to hold in what could pass for windows, and the sign Abuu proclaiming just who the owner of the place may be. Within one run down building that measures no more than ten meters in length, there is a pharmacy, a hardware store, and a butcher shop that just went out of business. Do the math, and you'll see that this is not your average strip mall that you would find back in the States. It's obvious that these people are one unpaid bill away from being evicted.
Further down the road, there's a shop selling fish and chips. There's a meter or two of dirt separating the store from the street, and there are no more than two old wooden tables and four old plastic chairs suggesting that this is a dining establishment. The women walk past you on their way to work, their colorful dresses fluttering in the wind. A lot of the men walking around here wear contraband jerseys from European football clubs: Manchester United, Real Madrid, Arsenal, Chelsea, Barcelona, Bayern Munich. This is not necessarily the guys' affiliation with any football club, but it's the fashion of choice owing to convenience. The muggy hot weather has people scrambling for convenient clothing, and you can't do any worse that football jerseys. I see a middle-aged man walking with a pink top and matching pink shorts. Not the choice of most westerners, I'm sure, but it's whatever is in your closet (pun not intended).
Cars from the 1960's and 1970's would fetch a good buck in the west, but here people drive these old cars simply because that's what they've been doing for the last twenty years or so. On Old Bagamoyo Road, there are mud huts with kids playing dangerously close to the road. In the west, you would have parents screeching in horror if their kids were allowed to play anywhere near such a busy street, let alone unsupervised. There are clothes billowing on makeshift lines in the warm air, no dryer or washing machine needed here. Inside one of the houses, I see an old guy watching a boxy TV set that you would probably need a crane to lift. The picture is fuzzy, and the guy must adjust the aerial on top before he is able to receive a decent picture. Ain't that Africa, baby. Little pink mud huts for you and me.
Not too far from the mud hut is a guy selling tombstones, right there by the side of the road. One pedestrian wanders too close to one of the rain filled potholes and is drenched with muck by an SUV passing him. The man shakes his shirt in the wind a little, and eyes the departing SUV suspiciously before continuing on his itinerary. There are all sorts of trash items that have accumulated—non-degradable, of course. When the plastic bottles and wooden planks and rusted cast iron pipes will disappear is anybody's guess.
Another merchant holds a board with dozens of pairs of cheap sunglasses high above his head, his head alertly trying to steer himself through traffic. Every ten or twenty meters, there are street vendors hoping to make a buck by selling cigarettes, bags of nuts, or coconut milk. Anything it takes to scrape out a living.
And that's what Dar looks like on a typical day outside of the Yacht Club. Eternal bliss? Hardly. Different, for sure.
