Mambo Jambo

M and I arrived in Dar es Salaam after a hellish trip which took us to the airport in Khartoum at around 2 am, and then to Nairobi International at 5 am, before our early morning arrival at our destination. The plane was late and then, when we got to the visa purchasing counter ($100 per American, US dollars only) I discovered that one of my hundred dollar bills was unacceptable - it was dated 1996 which is, apparently, too old. The only solution was to take out Tanzania shillings from the ATM and convert them into acceptably recent dollars to get us both into the country.

Somewhere in this time, we discovered that M's bag had not made the entire trip with us. Better news was that the driver from our hotel had waited about an hour for us, patiently holding up a sign with M's name on it. He continued to wait until we had sorted ourselves a bit, and then repeatedly made sour faces in the next few days because he never happened to be around when we needed a taxi. Plenty of other drivers were always around.

The missing bag arrived later that afternoon and we made a return trip to the airport to retrieve it, followed later by a visit to the Kenya Airway offices to complain and be reimbursed for round trip taxi ride - this final feat was surprisingly easy, once we managed to find the office.

Dar es Salaam isn't particularly laden with tourist sights, and so we mainly walked around, periodically returning greetings ("Jambo" is more formal; the hip greeting is "mambo" to which one is meant to respond "poa"). One of us got a fabulous sunburn in exchange for wearing a tank top outside for the first time in almost a year (it was worth it), and we had tasty Indian food. It's the people that are the most interesting in Dar: there is a sizeable Indian population, and a large-ish Muslim minority.

After two nights in the city, we took the ferry to Zanzibar.

We should have taken motion sickness medicine.


Zanzibar is lovely, as most islands tend to be. The beaches are appropriately pristine, the old "stone town" satisfactorily old looking, the street food delightful.



We took a spice tour of Zanzibar during which we were treated to a walk in the fields and got to smell and handle various spices just plucked from ground and trees. Then we were taken to yet another beach, where we met a troop of Zanzibari school children. Hello, how are you, and so on.


After two nights in Zanzibar town, we took a bumpy bus ride to the northern beach town of Nungwe (if that is how it is spelled). More sandy beaches and and aquarium at which tourists can feed sea turtles and hold giant pythons, should they so desire. M desired.



People in Tanzania wear very amusing tee-shirts whose meaning they must not always understand. Perhaps this gentleman is the world's youngest grandfather?


And then take this fellow, whose "Vote for Pedro" shirt was so entertaining to me that I asked his permission to take a picture. I believe the expression on his face reads "crazy muzungu."*

After I took this photo, another Zanzibari youth flagged me down. He wanted to know why Americans find that particular tee-shirt so amusing. He said that he has one too but had no idea what it meant and was confounded when another tourist had a big reaction to it. We dubbed this guy VoteForPedro and he was a useful asset on several occasions when we were lost, especially the time when we were looking for a restaurant whose name we had forgotten and we knew only that it was called whatever it was called for a famous singer. The answer? Bi Kidude. I will not forget again.

Then there was a guy on our last day in Dar who I noticed several times because of his UCSD pep squad tee-shirt. He later stuck his hand in M's purse in an unsuccessful attempt to extract something (unless his goal was to make her yell at him, in which case mission accomplished) and that was the last time I saw him.

*"Muzungu" is Swahili for "white person," although one person told us that it is applied to Indians as well. Kids wave enthusiastically and shout "Hello! Muzungu!" and also "Byeeeeeeeee!" when we are leaving. After about a week we discovered that an appropriate response is "Jambo mwafrica!" which I take to mean, "Hiya African!" The results of this conversation are satisfying to all.