Travelling Hopefully - Manic Street Vendors and a Mall

We woke early for the long haul from the cool, wet mountains to the hot damp lowlands of Dar es Salaam.  The journey promised to be long particularly as we had been promised a mall.  It was truly sad how much excitement this promoted in our supposedly intrepid band of Africa trekkers.  A little startled at the reaction he had provoked Elisha, our tour leader, hastened to repair the damage by limited the amount of time we could spend there to half an hour.  It was too late, the damage was done.  The trip was immediately divided into pre and post mall components and the sense of anticipation as we left the hotel neared lions on the Serengeti levels.

It would be unfair to describe the mall as a disappointment.  It had everything one might expect of a mall in Australia except air conditioning and bad piped in music.  I just don't particularly like malls.  I and a couple of guys lingered in a coffee shop while the remainder of the tour group roamed the mall in packs striking terror into the hearts of what were probably some of the wealthiest people in Tanzania.  The mall even had a KFC which in deference to my voyage of cultural discovery I proudly ignored.  This noble stance lasted until I discovered that our Irish honeymoon couple had succumbed and were now happily munching on chicken.  I looked so pathetic that they offered me a piece.  I almost screamed in ecstasy as it hit my tongue.

The capital city of Tanzania is Dodona.  However most of the functions of government still take place in Dar es Salaam.  This is because upon being informed that they were being transferred to a dusty caravan city in the centre of the country the entire civil service dug their heels in and refused to move.  The president has managed to drag the politicians to Dodona for legislative sessions but the bureaucracy is made of sterner stuff.

We hit Dar es Salaam in the early afternoon.  Dar es Salaam hit us back, several times.  Then it kicked us, and walked away before running back and kicking us again.  We struggled gasping through the traffic for several hours breathing an atmosphere comprising equal parts lead, carbon monoxide and dust.  We weren't actually going very far which was convenient as going very far was impossible.  It took several hours to go not very far at all.  Along the sides of the roads an endless parade of street vendors hawked their wares.  They weren't hawking them at us in particular, they were hawking in a more general and all encompassing sense.

One stall had chickens crawling all over it which I thought was worth a photo.  In taking it I almost created a breach in Australian-Tanzanian relations when a lady at the next stall thought I was taking a photo of her.  She didn't get mad but she caught my eye and made firm ticking off motions through the truck window.  We fled as quickly as we could which given the conditions of Dar es Salaam traffic meant about four kilometres an hour.

We lurched, stopped, started, crawled a few metres and stopped again in the process probably burning more fuel than on the entire trip down from the mountains but eventually we arrived at our destination.  The destination made up for a lot.  It made up for the entire trip through Dar es Salaam and left change.  A magnificent white powdered beach fronting an Indian Ocean of such translucent beauty that not even the presence of a large cargo ship in the middle of it could spoil the view.  One glance was enough to explain the civil service's reluctance to leave the city. 

We "camped" in the grounds of another hotel.  The use of inverted commas should alert you to the fact that the preceding sentence was a lie.  We had done with camping and with the exception of one hardy soul we all upgraded to accommodation with a roof.  I stayed in a one room beach bungalow so close to the ocean I could hear the waves as I drifted off to sleep.

Dar es Salaam was also where we said goodbye to David and Wilson, our driver and cook respectively.  For the record the driving and the cooking were excellent as was the patience of both men with the pack of pampered first worlders they had been saddled with for their sins.