Our neighborhood.......

No sidewalks, no street lights, no speed limits for motor vehicles.....but it's home....

 Other parts of our neighborhood on the way to grocery stores and cafe....

 There is random development in the area as one plot has a large complex then an Embassy then an old house that needs attention.  Above is taken from the top of our street looking to the Indian Ocean.  Warm seas that we are recommended to swim in.

Above is the ending of a house they took down with basically a lot of man power and sledgehammers.



 I stopped one day to talk with ladies cooking here for all the construction workers.  It was a lot of smiling as they did not speak English and I exhausted my Swahili quickly. They work long days as I see them around  8 am and one night we drove by at 7:30 pm and they were just finishing their work. This is a hard way of doing a food van but the rice and meat looked good. I may stop for pictures in the future when I learned a bit more Swahili and I have some more money on me.

These pictures are of a road by a nice hotel, the Sea Cliff.  It is always flooded when it rains and let's just say it doesn't smell pretty. 

My discount supermarket ......

Not so bad as I get imported cheese from Holland here . 


Inside of the "posh" supermarket...

We can get everthing we need if we want to pay more than we do at home.  It actually has a great mix of things that are better than home because they cater to a wide variety of expats so I can get Scandinavian breads and museli, Indian foods and it has a decent fruit and nuts section. 
Plus a really nice feather pillow.......

 Kahawa cafe above market......

Good food, nice staff, reasonable prices and free WiFi. I have turned into a coffee house squatter a few days a week. 

 Main road to supermarkets...if you can see the pothole where it is wet is now huge and will probably never get fixed in the time I am here. At least it slows people down.  The posh market is on the right and it also has a pharmacy, dry cleaners and Subway. 

The heat.....

I am in my second outfit of the day. I was only out from 8:30 am until 10:00 am today.  I learned my lesson as last week I left the apartment to go to the other side of the peninsula to Silpway shopping center and the Doubletree hotel.  I started at 11am and I was to stubborn to take a tuk tuk or cab because I wanted the exercise.  Big mistake.

 http://www.slipway.net/

 I was so tired and frazzled from the heat that I walked around briefly and then I walked into the nicely air conditioned Doubletree Hotel.  It's a nice hotel but what I hate about the chain hotels is they make everything so difficult and billable. I asked about lunch and internet connection.  I cannot use WiFi if I am not a overnight guest and the staff wasn't making any exceptions.  If you saw the area where the hotel was in I think you would agree that abuse of WiFi was not going to be their biggest issue.  Plus I needed lunch as l spent two hours midday out in the sun as I had got myself lost and I had to back track a bit. It took us less than ten minutes by car in some traffic a few days ago. Many places we go around here for lunch or dinner boosts on their door front offering free WiFi because apartments like ours does not have the capability unless maybe if you get TV. 

 The disheveled, sweaty mess that I was worked when I went into our shoppers plaza on the way home. The checkout lady asked me if I had a loyalty card.  I have been in there a handful of times before and no one asked me for a discount card. Andrew would have been proud.  I signed up and I then ventured outside to take a tuk tuk home.  I was told to barter down if the driver asked for more than 2000 shillings to the apartment.  No need as he took one look at heat induced me and offered the low price right away. It was so hot the suncream was running down my legs.


 I haven't been badly burnt yet but I have been using factor 50 everyday.  We are just a few hundred miles south of the equator. Andrew told me that the ozone layer is thicker here so I will not get burned as bad......a Firefox search did not give any proof to that theory of his so I am staying safe.  I wonder where he heard that fact.







This is pretty much the average this time of year...... Andrew pumps the air at night oso I have to still use the sheet to keep warm.I am going to hide the air remote control! :)

 These are the clothes I brought that I will never put on.....I wear light weight scarves a lot over the my shoulders to keep the sun at bay, fend off the mosquitos, warm up from the air conditioning and to be a bit modest as most ladies either have a long skirt and tank or shorter skirt and more coverage on top.  I see a lot of scarves....hmmm may need to pick some more up.
Never gets below mid-seventies at the moment at night.  I love it most of the time.

In closing, I am getting used to sweating all the time just by walking outside, my skin feels good at times with high humidity, twice a day showers are OK if you put the air on before getting in or don't bother taking one and I am getting used to my new found body perfume.

Zanzibar and ferry ride

During the easter weekend we took the ferry over to a resort on Zanzibar for three nights.  Andrew planned ahead and he went down to the port earlier in the week for our ferry tickets.  It is a crazy scene as everyone is trying to offer you help for some quick cash and the signage is poor or nonexistent.  We got to the port an hour and a half before the 10am ferry and we were hanging around with our luggage upstairs in the ticket office.  I don't know what made us go outside but we are glad we investigated the gate on the side as people were passing through for our ferry.  We were able to get 1st class tickets for the trip out but only economy on the way back.  First class expense is well worth the extra $5 return.   All the workers try to grab your bag to help you.  We kept on insisting to carry our own bags as this is a scam to get an unnecessarily large tip......they will tell you how much for their service after they carry them.  The ride over was uneventful and air conditioned.  Because of the busy holiday weekend we left the port an hour and half late for the two hour journey.

 One of the encounters we witnessed in line at the port in Dar was a bit comical and disturbing at the same time.  Europeans are in the minority here and the port was no exception.  There was an Australian couple in front of us (not from Europe directly but pasty white all the same and a different couple than the next story).  Now, I have only ever felt welcomed here and everyone has been friendly but am aware I am a visitor in this country.  A local heavier set woman cut in front of the man in front of us.  Instead of smiling and going with the flow of normal pushing and shoving.......no he had to engage with her and not let her in.  We stepped back and the couple behind us stepped back. Luckily, she just stared him down with evil looks.  It could have gotten nasty.  I had to look away as the passive aggressive face she gave him was a bit funny (like in a skit) and it reminds me of airline counters during holidays.


 Once in Zanzibar you have to go through customs and it was a bit disorganized as a worker basically profiles people as they are walking out to stop the tourists.  Some loud Aussies were giving the guard a hard time so of course they were pushed to the front just to get rid of them.  There are procedures for the people working but the sheer volume of people pushing through the gates is hard to control.

This picture is not mine and imagine about ten times more people trying to get aboard the ferry at once.....total mayhem but locals are used to it so you go with the flow.


 Once in Zanzibar, we had prearranged for a tour company to pick us up ( Andrew went through a travel agent in town to book the tax and the hotel).  This is a great idea as the agent knew which hotels were best for tourists and she gave him some pointers about getting around.  Our tour taxi was Turik from Madeira Travel (I think) and he was great.  He picked us up at a scheduled time on Monday and dropped us off in Stone Town before we left as well as keeping our luggage and picking us up to drop us off at the ferry port.  Definitely worth the tips.    The hotel we stayed at was all inclusive at the Royal Zanzibar Beach Resort.  It was nice and their seemed to be a selection of resorts by us.  We had a larger beach than most of the other resorts.  It took about an hour to get there and Turik had to stop and make a grocery run of diapers to his wife and child who were visiting in a village along the way.
 http://www.royalzanzibar.com

 

On our way out there were some churches along the road.  One was the New Apostalic Church.  I hear about the missionaries going to far reaching places but now I have seen one.  A statistic about Zanzibar is that the island is 97-99% Muslim. Main land Tanzania is approximately 35% Muslim and 30 % Christian.

Turik was telling us a bit about his history and he was able to travel a bit for different jobs.  Something we remembered is that he said he wanted to go into the army at one time and he was not able to as he was a mix breed (his words).  I didn't ask but I believe he maybe part African, part Indian or/and part Arab.  There was an uprising at one stage in 1964 and many Arabs  and Indians were slaughtered.  He looked like he was in his late twenties.  He mentioned that many of the resorts hire outsiders (not from Zanzibar) verses some of the many young to middle age people along side of the road bored and without work that we noticed along the drive.  There were some police road blocks going both ways we encountered but they spoke briefly and Turik mentioned that it gave people jobs and also for the police to show that they can stop you.  He did say that there are some unauthorized tourist operators so I think this may be a way to weed them out as Zanzibar relies on tourism ( agriculture is the other big industry) and it has been weak recently.                      Food at the resort was average at best but there was plenty of selection and the staff was
extremely friendly and helpful.  Poor Andrew was sick all weekend so I had to enjoy the four pools and ocean by myself.  Our first all-inclusive resort plan and he couldn't enjoy it.


 If there was a fire we could have jumped into one of the four large pools.....preferably the one with the swim up to bar pool.

There wasn't many people in town when we walked around.  It was disappointing that all the tourist stores sold exactly the same thing.  Even the artists painted the same pictures and style. The buildings are old and dilapidated.  Surprising, the outside doesn't look like much and then you walk inside to a nice hotel.  Many of the hotels looked like they had rooftop restaurants as we looked out from lunch across bits of the city.

 I really tried not to stick out or talk loud enough to sound like a bad American when we are abroad (I actually save that boldness for the English supermarkets).  We were walking and some guys hanging around the port asked Andrew where we were from and he told them the UK.  He looked at my shoes and said "Oh, because she is wearing American style shoes".  I think he heard me talking but Andrew insists the guy picked up on the certain characteristic. I was wearing Chaco shoes +chacos from Colorado.  He was pretty astute.

Chaco

The last part of the adventure was the horrid ferry ride.  We had economy tickets so we were pushed into a large covered area and we waited and we waited.  Everyone was trying to leave on Monday to get back to Dar and it was crazy. Karibu means welcome in Swahili....
There is no intercom system so it is just a guy shouting out the ferry name. Everyone started pushing to get closer to the ramp and it was a total mess.  Once on the boat we were handed sick bags which we were not given on the way out and I later learned that the way back is usually always rough.  About half way across all you could hear and see is people getting sick. It was terrible.  The sickies were not sent outside.  We should have flown across like our Canadian General Manager from the resort recommended to us too late as the returntickets were already purchased.  It's about 20-30% more but it would have saved on the stress.  Once we docked the shoving started before the worker even had the gates and ramp placed down.  The taxi drivers are after your fare and try to help with bags. Andrew had prearranged his work taxi driver to pick us up so it was a relief to see him.


 I would like to go back sometime as there were a few tours to go on such as the spice tour or Stone Town tour. You could swim with dolphins as well.

My first trip out of the apartment complex

March 27th
 Ater sleeping in from the exhausting flight I thought I would check out the local shopping center.  I was afraid of showering and washing properly because of the water and the stories that you hear about getting sick.  I still brush my teeth with bottled water but I have relaxed about the showering and I get ice cubes in my gin and tonic.  The locals Andrew works with drink from tap and it does look clear but I don't want to risk it.

Andrew was kind enough to print out a map for me and give me 50,000 shillings in pocket money to get me started for the day (£20 or $31).  I left our "luxury" apartment building and walked about ten minutes in the blazing heat (about 92 degrees).  Andrew thought I would be disappointed in the supermarket here but it turns out to be OK  as it has everything anyone would need and they try to carry  many brands like home.  Unfortunately it also has UK prices attached to them as this is where many expats shop.  My first purchases when I arrived........

 Now, the water bottle did not bother him but I am now into the second week of his friends and coworkers teasing me about the pillow purchase.  Andrew kept telling me that he got the last pillow in the market. Well yes he did of the cheapest ones.  This was the cheapest pillow the store had and it was a down pillow for 42500(approximately $26 or £17).  He said I had to fit it in my luggage when I leave Dar. I told him I was going to get ten more as I hadn't had a good night sleep due to the new rock hard mattress we are sleeping on.  This is what he would have preferred for me to sleep
on....

I am not a princess but really? The sheets are from the same place. I had to ask an English woman in the store if the prices included tax because I didn't know at the time (the price marked is all inclusive). The US must be the one of the only countries to add tax on top of the price at the end as I have not seen it anywhere else we have traveled to recently.  I now know why all those International guests in Vail have an issue with the additional 10+% added to their invoices.

 I told Andrew about my shopping experience and how there was a guard with a riffle in the parking lot.  He quickly corrected me by pointing out that he thought it was a shotgun. Not sure I know the difference but it was surprising how quickly he got used to seeing these guards.  I had no issues walking to the store and everyone along the way was friendly and said Mambo (informal greeting that means things and you respond poa - cool). People are much friendlier here than in the UK were many British are not so outgoing.

We have elected to not get cable for the new TV in our place.  Andrew purchased a Samsung mini (or something like that) so we can tether our tablets to the data plan on the phone.  It works pretty well as electricity and WiFi are sporatic at times.  We have a generator here that they will switch to when the power goes off (only about three times last month as we get a bill for diesel usage).

 Our apartment complex is billed as luxury but it is a bit dated and costly.  We pay $1400 a month plus electricity.  We had to ask for a larger housing allowance to make the living expenses work out.  There is competition for a small amount of supply.  Everywhere you look there are buildings going up in the area so hopefully in a year or two the market will even out. It's like New York rates for a one bedroom that stated that it was furnished.  It has furniture, microwave,stove and fridge.  We have purchased two plates, two glasses, two forks, two spoons and one sharp steak knife.  I brought two picnic stemmed wine glasses with me.  No toaster, no pans,ext.  We eat out every night.

 Andrew had to sign a lease that said we were responsible for all repairs.  In fairness the sofa, chairs and mattress seem new and I think this is what your money gets here.  It needs some repair to walls and some painting to common areas but overall it is clean and staff are great.  I had to call the maintenance man to fix the showerhead that  was broken and he replaced it.  I also told him about the broken plastic toilet seat.  He told me a price and where I can buy one from so I guess it will remain cracked for the time being.  I will spare you of the picture.
 The pool....

Arrival in Dar 3:30AM

I love the feeling of the warm air rushing on to my face when I land in a warm climate. It doesn't happen enough to me. I had to keep in mind that this was in the middle of the night and it was extremely warm (about 80 degrees). I was waiting in line for my travel visa with my money ($100 for an American tourist visa for 90 days) and I met a man from Libya who works on the oil rigs for 28 days on and 28 days off. He just had his third girl and he was showing me pictures of his newborn. I was also stopped by a family from the Middle East looking for help with their visa forms. They did not speak English so I found someone who could help them. I knew this would be a very diverse city but I was surprised by how friendly people were and I had not left the airport yet. Andrew picked me up by cab by the reliable driver he uses to get to work each morning (Antony). We drove through town and it was quiet on the streets for such a large city.

We are staying on the Msasani peninsula just north of Oyster Bay.   Many of  the Embassies are located in this area and it has an abundant of expats.  Our apartment building has people from all over the world.  One of our neighbors is an Ethiopian working for the World Bank, one is from Yugoslovia and he is setting up an airline here.  Our friend Deepak is from India and is located here for a few months working in IT management.  It's a great experience for someone who knew everyone in school from kindergarden through graduation.

Dar Es Salaam prefix...

We were suppose to start this adventure together! The timing was a bit off for us. Andrew and I rushed to send my application to remain in the UK before my current visa expired on December 31st, 2012. We submitted the information on the 24th once we chased up our marriage licence, birth certificates and bank statements. We were not allowed to submit the application before 30 days of my expiration date. The Border Agency states that a turn around time for approving my visa is within 6 months. Andrew was offered his job two weeks later. He received his passport back after calls to his local MP (elected official). Andrew left without me in mid February. He started sending me pictures of the Indian Ocean and the pool at our apartment complex. I had to let him know that I was happy for him but we still have snow and mud in the UK so please stop! Fast forward to March 15th and my passport arrived so booked my flight right away. Before we made our trip we had to spend over 650 pounds on shots and malaria tablets from a travel cost. It was a huge expense but worth a sense of security.