kwa remi – barabara kwenda nyumbani yangu

i thought rainy saison in dar es salaam is a myth. last year there was almost no rain at all.   but here we go.  and it does not stop. pot holes growing everyday.

50°C

that is the actual difference in temperature between leipzig and dar es salaam.  and yes it is hot here and yes  i am sad about every single snow board, ice skating – in general each winter-sport-outdoor-day i miss with you!!

the spitting canadian – foleni II

and here we go. that’s whats happening to people get stuck in dar es salaam traffic. it doesn’t surprise me at all: canadian embassy had to recall an official who recently spat on a policeman and a journalist

who buys all the apples – foleni No I

traffic is harsh in dar es salaam. and almost everybody is complaining once in a while about getting stuck in traffic jams (some rather frequently). from wazungu you can hear sometimes weird theories about the reasons of these jams. one of my favorite is to blame it all on the daladala drivers (minibuses): ‘ they don’t give a shit, stop in the middle of everything to let passengers enter and get off and blocking the road. and they drive like maniacs. pushing after every stop back into traffic no mater what´s going on around them, driving to fast and reckless and causing accidents.’ yes i do agree with most of it. but most of all i feel sorry for the passengers, because it’s fucking hot in there, you are squeezed between lots of sweating people, the busses are old, uncomfortable, only when your are lucky you get a seat and on top of all that the conductor might insult you for not having the 250 schilingi ready. but ok, he is doing a 14 hours shift in 32 degrees.

i am really thankful that i am not dependant anymore on public transport and i know lots of the expats around have never used it – i think that should be obligatory, just to know what it’s all about. but still i keep hearing the story about the bad drivers causing the traffic jams – till now i never asked, what do you think would happen of all this people could afford buying a car and would contribute to the daily chaos. i didn’t because i thought that’s too obvious. they must have thought about it. there are just so many cars  and actually everybody can be glad, that the overwhelming majority is just too poor to buy a car. otherwise traffic would entirely collapse and the lucky car owners would have to walk the 10 km from mbezi beach to the city center or better camp over the week in their office.

i got a little bit of  track because this is about traffic jams. hata mimi – i  think they are very annoying and i wonder, why there aren’t more people loosing patience, run riot or just leave their car where it is. personally i decided that a motorbike is the best mean to move in this city – even though a little dangerous, it is terrific. i really do love biking in dar but sometimes for work i can’t avoid using my duty car, even in the unpleasant rush hour and get stuck in traffic. at some stage i got tempted to buy something. you can buy anything on the road.  i always wondered who is buying all the stuff offered but there has to be a market, otherways the crowds trying to sell things would not make sense. specially apples! there are far too many apple-sellers and i never saw anybody buying one.

first thing i bought was a mosquito racket. i really wanted and needed one. than a long time nothing. than plastic containers. i had seen them at a friend’s place and wanted them as well.

but one afternoon when i got stuck badly i bought a yellow plastic elephant with a little plastic elephant on top and above all an umbrella. if you pull the string at the bum of the elephant he runs and the umbrella with the green plastic things turns.

that didn’t make any sense and it was the first step towards getting addicted. the elephant was followed by cups, a machete … and finally also apples. the last think a bought was a little plastic combat helicopter, hanging in my car now. if you push it on a table the rotor blades would turn.  i wonder whats coming next. i heard that there are also aquariums with living goldfish sold on the street. and i seriously hope that i will never be tempted and will have to withstand that seduction.

the lake

twice as big as the netherlands, everybody seems to think of darwins nightmare if lake victoria is metioned.
as expected, mwanza got a lot more to offer:

soda for the people, intelligent solutions, research on ignorance, a beautiful scenery …

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47042946@N0/sets/72157623311378106/

new appearance

coming back from a three days duty trip to tanga my colleagues decided: ‘we need new curtains, the old slat blinds are not appropriate anymore’. very carefully i tried to remark that these might give the impression of being in a bedroom rather than an office. but they think ‘this is much more beautiful and representative if we have ‘honorable guests‘. so i guess i will get used to it.

schrott peter

i didn’t meet him, but being in his shop felt a little bit like – HOME. a total mess, piles of fridges, motorbikes, espresso machines, handbags, furniture, teapots, engines … peter gets frequently containers from görmany with … everything! i would have never guessed that there is a place like that in tanzania. i need to talk to this man. what brings someone to east africa and start such a business? or did he just come for holidays, then made up is mind to stay and needed to make a living, but who is buying the hundreds of tv’s? i guess i have to come back and do some investigations. for me it made my day and tanga becomes increasingly the place to be!

africa is not a country

it is not. i know. but still particularly in my first weeks here i heard myself talking about me, being in africa. i can’t explain why. i don’t do that when i am in any country in middle east and i never did, also not in the beginning. is it because:

• i have the impression people don’t know where tanzania is?
• i connect something more exiting and interesting with the term africa?
• it leaves more space for imagination to anyone, whatever he associates and i liked this?
• i knew so little about this country myself when i arrived here?

i don’t do that anymore. now it is tanzania and definitely even though i haven’t travelled to other countries south of the sahara yet,  except uganda a couple of years ago, it does make such a big difference. living here,  reading the news from neighboring countries, listen to people who have been working in west africa, it is hard to imagine how live might be there. but i am quite sure it will not be the last place to go in this region and the continent since i start wanting to know what it is about.

invasion

uagh – cockroaches, hundreds, really big, living in my wastewater system! i didn’t know about my flatmates before the  exterminators from the health office forced them out. i don’t care what kind of toxin they used. in this case i prefer ignorance. it was a long struggle for survival and it recalls a column by rafik shami that concludes: ‘after the nuclear disaster there are only two species to survive. the cockroaches because of their heavy chitin shell and the bureaucrats to administrate them.’ but these will rest in peace!

today’s lesson

kim’s beach – always beautiful and till now it doesn’t get boring to go there at least twice a month. sunday we bought lobster from the local fishermen and prepared them on the spot. i am afraid that might be a skill i won’t need so much once back in Europe.