Arrival to Africa

I have now been in Africa for almost a week and have decided I'm going to try and run this blog in two ways. One of the updates will be just on day to day type of stuff talking about what I have been doing. The other type of posts will be more reflections on how the things that I am doing are impacting my life. This will just be an update about what I have been doing.

I flew into the city of Dar es Salaam on Friday morning last week. I have been staying here in Dar for the past week at a guest house that is run by the monks of Hanga Abbey. They are very nice and everyone is very welcoming. Since arriving we have taken trips to the ocean, the main city, one of the first catholic churches in Tanzania, and to a few local bars and pubs. Since I have been here I will touch on some of the main things that I have seen.

ROADS: The roads here are bumpy. There is a lot of construction that goes on and many of the roads are just dirt, with lots of pot holes. Top that with some pretty sketchy cars and driving gets to be a little interesting. Along with the road conditions there are ALWAYS people on both sides of the roads, and lots of them. Walking, biking, carrying pales of water on their heads, biking with crates of eggs or big baskets of fruit on the back. Many people walk 10-15 miles a day to buy or sell items.

FOOD: The food in the guest house is pretty good, but there is not much selection. For breakfast every morning we have bread, eggs, and tea or coffee. For lunch we have rice, some sort of meat in some kind of sauce, some green type of vegetable, and maybe some potatoes. Dinner is pretty much the exact same as lunch except we might get some beans and then we have papaya or bananas as well. In the city you see vendors selling all kind of food. Seafood, corn, beef sticks, chicken, all that good stuff. I have eaten outside of the guest house once and the food was pretty good, but I was joined by about 50 flies.

TRASH: There are no public trash cans. I think I must have spent about 4 or 5 hours walking downtown Dar and passed 2. People throw their garbage everywhere on the side of the road. ALong with people all you see is garbage or fires. The garbage is collected into piles and set on fire. When flying in I thought it must be really foggy in some parts of the city, only to learn that that was simply smoke from the garbage that is being set on fire.

ANIMALS: No, I havent seen any real "wild animals." I have had 2 cockroaches, and a gieko living in my room and lots of mosiqutoes. There are hens and roosters everywhere. They really do crow early in the morning and they wake me up everyday. Other than that, all I have seen are birds.

HOUSING: Here at the guest house we have decent housing. I have a room to myself. I sleep in a bed that is too short for me so I sleep in a ball or like a question mark when I want to stretch out my legs. The bed is surrounded by a mosquito net, which makes me feel like I am sleeping in a fort, which makes me feel pretty cool. The shower has no stall so when I shower my toliet is covered in water, and the water is cold. I have only showered a few times since I have been here. I think I might smell a little bit.

LANGUAGE: The national language of Tanzania is swahili. I have been practicing and trying to learn more of the language since I've been here and it is coming along bit by bit. Hopefully as I continue to spend time with people who speak the language I will continue to improve.

I am now running out of minutes so I have to wrap up this session. If you are wondering about anything else, leave me a comment and I will try and answer when I have time. I would like to figure out a way to get pictures on here for people to see, but in the meantime if you have facebook I have posted pictures on there. Tomorrow Lew and I leave Dar for Hanga. IT will be a 13 hour bus ride. Very long, bbut I hear we get to drive through a national park and see elephants and other animals.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Derek