Still Deescalating From

Woke up in the Harbor View hotel a bit later than we’d expected.  I’d been up in the middle of the night with a pounding headache but the proxen pill I had seemed to do the trick and now there was no more throbbing to speak of.  One window I pulled back the shades to see my first view of Dar Es Salaam, (“The Place of Peace.”) It looked a bit like a tier three southern Chinese city, where there were numerous large, half completed structures of compromised quality, to form an aspirational skyline.  But there was no “harbor.”  I returned to my bedroom and threw back the curtains there.  The view was pinned in by another building.  Where’s the Harbor? Before I could call the front desk and ask we were on our way to the breakfast place and there, indeed out to the other direction was a harbor.   A cargo vessel lay idly in the middle of the channel.  I looked down on an old colonial building and considered the colors of the Tanzanian flag for the first time, while actually standing on Tanzanian soil.  Green, Gold, Blue and Black.  Certainly the blue must represent the Indian Ocean. 

The two girls returned from the breakfast with diarrhoea.  “Well then.  Are you sure you don’t want to check out the city for a few hours before we head to the airport?”  “NO.” On the first floor, I found a proper pharmacy and bought a bit of generic Imodium from the pleasant Indian woman, behind the counter.  After properly concretizing the children's bowels, I was free to take on the town with my cousin’s nephew and two students from her school who'd came to join us. 

Impulsively I suggested we head out to the National museum first.  Then I considered the young ladies joining us.  They had come out, no doubt, to meet with my girls.  And they were in no shape to talk to anyone.  All they had as conversation for the day’s journey was a fifty-year-old man.  I considered that this might all be a bit boring for them.  “You girls don’t like ice cream, do you?”  Nailed it.  We entered a warehouse cum ice cream shop as our first stop and I asked the ladies what their favorite flavors were.  Yes, hello good man, give these ladies four scoops of ice cream each.  They promptly took over in Swahili instructing the man precisely which scoops to add and in which order.  

Heading up the stairs at the museum, passing the collection of Julius Nyerere’s many fancy state vehicles we were blocked from entry near the big stuffed lion by a stern looking woman.  “No ice cream in the exhibit room.”  I suggested they gobble their ice cream up but they opted to cover and carry it with them.  This seemed a high-risk strategy, to me.

Like the national museum in Addis we start this journey with the earliest of human remains as the starting point in the Tanzanian story, considering the Leakey’s discoveries from the Olduvai Gorge and convincing portraits of early man strolling about beneath volcanoes along side the animals we know are still part of modern Tanzania.  Soon we were considering Arab port cities that were strung down along the coast, like the one at Zanzibar and the larger one, which I was not familiar with, in Kilwa.   My nephew who lives one such town, Bagamoyo, confirmed that each of these cities still has extant architecture from the Portuguese periods.  “I must go” thought I, predictably. 

Julius Nyerere cut a rather remarkable figure. Handsome, schoolteacher, national unifier, resisted some of the more virulent extremes of his alumnae of postcolonial African leaders. (Idi Amin Dada and Mengistu Haile Mariam, two name two in his immediate neighborhood.) With what appears to have been remarkable durability he incorporated the independent Zanzibar into the country, navigated nonalignment, increased literacy and healthcare and toppled Idi Amin.   The country has had a stable democracy since his departure, when he turned over power to his handpicked successor, and people generally seemed to venerate him.  But economically, Ujamaa Socialism, not unlike socialism with Chinese characteristics as envisioned by Mao left both nations united in grinding poverty. 

There was a fish market.  Didn’t see one of those yet on this trip.  First time we’re by the sea.  And there were churches, mostly nineteenth century vintage rather than anything older to consider, but I had to hurry back after a morning in Dar, as we all needed to get to the airport.  We got there, said our good byes, snapped our photos and headed in passed security saying "e-tickets, e-tickets."  And after standing in line for a while it became clear that we had talked our way into the wrong airport.

Right.  Well, we’ll probably miss this flight.  I barged out of the wrong airport, argued aggressively with the cabs for the fair I wanted to the right airport, as I’d been told just how far it was.  Soon we were on our way, about one kilometer over to the other terminal.  The first terminal had been small.  This was really small.  I darted into the “Sky Link” never-hoid-of-em airline company and was told not to worry.  I was still deescalating from a rather intensely worried state and Sky Link’s decidedly chill vibe was disconcerting.  “Don’t worry.  We were waiting for you.”  I hadn’t expected that.  “Your flight will leave in ninety minutes.”

Everyone was exhausted.  Everyone was grumpy.  No one wanted to be here.  Shopping.  That’s the tonic.  I bought each of them a heavily overpriced book.  Placing “The Cuisine of Zanzibar” on my wife’s lap, took a broom to the bad mood crouched up there on her shoulders.  “Here girls, here are the books for each of the parks we’ll visit.  Pringles?  Sure.  What do you want to drink?”  I sat down with the sweetest beer I think I’d ever had before I read the bottle and realised I’d gotten a cider. 

We had the seats up front on the propeller plane and I presume everyone was thinking the same things staring down at the ground: so that’s where all the animals are.  Landing in Arusha we stepped out beneath the remarkable Meru Volcano and looked around, bedazzled.

Friday, 06/30/17