Todd Thille Blog

Was up at 6 a.m. and worked on the computer until it was time to head to the office around 9:30 a.m. We found Maina at the office and the Internet connection up and creeping along. Got some emailing taken care of and headed out for lunch. The Royal Chef, our favorite out of the restaurants in the immediate vicinity is still closed. Supposedly they will reopen on Monday. The management used the month of Ramadan to renovate the premises.

Shooting up in Dar es Salaam. With most people making $1 or less a day, I wonder how the average person could afford to maintain a drug habit.

Right after lunch we headed downtown so Chantal could drop a letter off with DHL. I took the opportunity to visit the music store right next door to the DHL office. Picked up a couple of Bongo Flava CD’s. They seemed a little pricey at $10 a pop for CDRs. Sandrine got a VCD of some music videos. The videos were interesting but the disc itself was poorly put together. It would be interesting to see if Maina would get better prices for not being a mzungu.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the office listening to and watching our new purchases. I posted some more photos of the Foxes train for Bruce. He has been hot for some high-res pictures since the World Travel Market show ended. When we went out on the train, the focus for us was on getting footage for the DVD, not taking still images.

We split up in the early evening. Sandrine and I headed for Shoppers Plaza to get stocked up for our impending trip to the Maasai Steppe. Chantal went to help Mwanga shoot an awards dinner for a Vodacom (a local cell phone provider) sponsored Football (Soccer) league.

The checkout lady had beautiful mehndi all over both hands and forearms.

What Mwanga had told us would be a 45-minute event turned out to be over three hours in duration. I was a little worried that the two hours it took for Sandrine and I to get the groceries and head back downtown would leave Chantal sitting idle for quite a while. I needn’t have worried as the event was still going strong when we finally showed up. We enjoyed the really nice buffet they had set up. Right after the food, they launched into the awards. The teams were given different amounts of money depending on how they placed.

  
The #1 Simba Sports Club team, walked away with a a check for $25,000 and a couple of trophies. We enjoyed the live band while things wrapped up.

Mwanga reneged on his promise to let us use his functional PD150. He told us that he needed it to shoot an interview with the president of Vodacom in the morning and that he could only lend us his other PD150 for our trip to the Maasai Steppe. We explored a number of possible solutions to this dilemma when we returned home. Sandrine eventually called someone she knew at France 3 to see if they could convert NTSC footage. The verdict was positive, so we could use Chantal’s camera. This came as a great relief, as none of the other possible solutions were particularly appealing.

The end of Ramadan is upon us at last. There are two days of national holiday to celebrate the end of the observance of the month long Muslim fasting.

There were tremendous downpours in the early morning. At times, the corrugated metal roof sounded as if were being beaten in. In my semi-slumber I expected to find the roof caved in just halfway across the room. The others were amazed to find almost no evidence of the rainfall on the ground a couple of hours later.

The power went out almost right after I got up at 6 a.m. and would remain off until just before we left the house at 11:30 a.m. I spent the morning getting seven days of blog prepped and ready to upload at the office. We headed off to rendezvous with Maina at the office. We found the space open, so phoned Maina to tell him he didn’t need to come and that he should enjoy the national holiday instead of worrying about us.

I began the long process of uploading my blog entries. The others checked their email and Arnaud and Lilia headed off to change some currency just as Rafael arrived. We had a nice chat with him. Still couldn’t get everything nailed down, but it looks like we will be leaving on Saturday to spend four or five days out in his village, northwest of Handeni. We will either have Rafael or some of his colleagues as our guides and liaisons with the community.

Arnaud and Lilia eventually returned after trying to find us on the wrong floor of the building and we headed out to find an exchange office that was still open. It was a national holiday and Dar was practically a ghost town. Close to 99% of the business establishments were closed. We headed for a big hotel downtown to be turned away because their exchange was only for guests. Ended up at the Pita Kepap on Samora Ave for a late lunch. It was nice to sit in the shade and spend a while conversing.

SMS has caught on in a big way here.

Headed over to the port to check on ferry schedules for Arnaud and Lilia. They are planning to head for Zanzibar in the morning. We wandered by one last exchange place to find it closed for the day as well. The others headed back to Micocheni to get out of the heat. I headed for the office to finish my uploading and get some other work done. The uploading was painfully slow and further hampered by connection timeouts. I finally finished up a bit after 11 p.m. Got to the ground floor of the building to find myself locked in. It took a good 20 minutes to raise the night watchman through yelling and banging on the door. Made it back to Micocheni to find my French colleagues engrossed in a game of Tarot. Chantal was on her usual roll and wiped the floor with the others.

Had a screening of the DVD for Arnaud and Lilia who were very impressed and were ready to head out on safari right then and there. Finally made it to bed around 2 a.m.

Had the best snorkeling yet after breakfast. I was out early enough to find the water clear before the tide started to come back in. The highlight of my poking around was seeing a cuttlefish. When I first spotted it, it was a mottled color with a electric blue band down it’s length. It darted away to grab something and then caught sight of me. Immediately it changed color to blend in with the surroundings. As it moved over different areas, it’s coloration subtly changed to match. I spent a good ten minutes watching before it finally moved away. I also caught sigh of two eels, one was particularly good sized.

Late for the races.

After lunch we were off to the mainland to visit the town of Bagamoyo. Seven of us crammed into a little four-door Toyota. Josa, our driver, was blasting a Sean Paul tape as we bounced over the dirt back road into town. After it finished, we switched over to some Tanzanian grown “Bongo Flava” in the for of the soundtrack to a movie called Girlfriend. Despite the cramped quarters and heat, we all enjoyed the ride immensely. Our first stop was at the Bagamoyo Sculpture School. We poked around for a bit enjoying the jam sessions from the associated music school. I ended up with a nice carving that the others joked looked like a portrait. Stopped for some refreshment at a local cafe while we waited for our driver to return with an additional car. The other car never materialized, so we crammed back into the Toyota.

  
A hand operated bow-drill. Sandrine playing checkers with some of the locals.

  
Palm juice is collected to make into wine. This seaweed is collected and rendered down for colorants and fiber for cloth.

These three music students provided an interesting counter-point to the electrified ensemble that was jamming in the building behind them.

We headed over to the Slavery Museum that was established by Christian Missionaries. The museum was closed but the attendant recognized Vlad and opened it up again, even going so far as to give us a detailed explanation of a freed slave named Siwema who had gone on to nurse back to health the Arab slave trader that had killed her mother. Josa rolled up as we were waiting outside and a group of kids that had gathered joined Chantal in an impromptu disco, dancing to the Bongo Flava.

The story of Siwema, the slave girl.

  
Feeling the Bongo Flava. Saying goodbye to the young who had gathered around us.

It was getting pretty late in the afternoon, so we headed into town proper to look for some kangas (a yardage of fabric that is used to fashion an almost infinite variety of coverings from.) The first shop we went to was just closing up. Unfortunately, it was the last night of Ramadan, so things were still closing early. The second shop was still open and had a more interesting variety. Sandrine was the only one that found something she couldn’t live without. She had misunderstood the pricing and was trying to bargain the price higher than the asking price. We poked around the town a bit more before it became dark. We headed back to Lazy Lagoon on the main road, which was a little better on all of us.

Remember not to go too fast.

Had a late dinner that we happily interrupted a couple of times to watch a bush baby that was in the dining area. Headed to bed around 11 p.m.

The bush babies make a blood-curdling shrieking noise throughout the night.

Had a bit of a sleep in passed my normal 6 a.m. wake-up. Enjoyed a hike around the tide pools at the end of the island. Saw loads more marine life than either of the previous visits to the area. There was a bounty of starfish in all shapes and colors as well as some sea slugs. The biggest excitement of the morning was finding a stonefish. Not something to tangle with, as contact with one is almost always fatal within a matter of hours. Glad I have a healthy respect for nature and didn’t feel a need to poke at it.

The stonefish that became the topic of a number of conversations.

  
Starfish in a amazing variety of colors.

After a bite of breakfast, all of us went back out in search of crabs and starfish. Sandrine slipped and fell early on in our search and went away nursing a scuffed elbow. She re-emerged as we were setting up a photo shoot with some starfish on the sand.

Star Shoes.

Our morning’s work done, I went back to my banda to work on the computer, read and get some relaxing in. Went a little overboard with the relaxing and ended up a little late for dinner. While I was dead to the world, a family with six kids had arrived. One of the children was particularly trying and unpleasant. Did some more work after lunch and emerged in the late afternoon to take some more photos. There was a trickle of messages from Maina the whole afternoon. Each of the messages pushed the arrival time for he and his friends back further and further. Eventually we got what appeared to be one that meant something, mentioning an arrival time of 6:30 p.m. The time came and went and a bit later we got a frantic call that they seemed to have taken a wrong turn somewhere. Chantal’s directions had been a little sketchy but the situation was corrected and they found the Fish Camp all right. A quick boat ride in the dark brought Maina, Tessa, Catherine and Josephine to the island.

  
Vlad with a piece of palm driftwood that looked like some sort of musical instrument. The sun sets on another beautiful day in paradise.

After the new guests were settled and had imbibed a round of drinks, dinner was served on the beach. The conversation was interrupted by incessant calls from Maina’s girlfriend Anne Marie who had to work and could not make it. Dinner was an interesting affair, starting off with a delicious peanut soup that Vlad’s girlfriend Prudence made. There was not enough soup to go around so a couple of other starters were circulated. The main course also caused some confusion with not enough steak being available for the carnivores. The veggie entrée was a bed of cauliflower smothered in cheese. I enjoyed the rice and carrots that were served with it. Maina went off with the Kenyan ladies and the rest of us headed for bed.

  
Chantal relaxing with Tiger, her new feline friend. Maina by lamplight.