The Tide is Out

Really?  He used to play guitar in a band?  My cousin’s father in law, with whom I discussed politics yesterday, was also a guitarist?  Well then.  I consider how we might be able to get an electric guitar on short order.  I’d love to hear him play, to play with him.  I have I’ve a Youtube list of 1970’s Tanzanian gems I’ve been listening to now for the last ten days or so, ever since we arrived. I found it the first night we arrived at the Ngorongoro Crater.  “Please ask your father in law if he is familiar with any of the following:”

·      Morogoro Jazz Band - Wacheni waseme, Vijana Sikilizeni, Suniasa Unipoze Moyo

·      Super Volcano - Mtaa Wa Saba

·      Western Jazz Band - Baba, Veronica, Masiki, Rosa  

·      Dar Es Salaam Jazz - Dada Roda

·      Urafiki Jazz - Dunia Fedja

·      Vijana Jazz - Shangazi

·      Tabora Jazz - Lucie Umeniacha, Visa Ya Welesi, Sofia Mpenzi, Dada Lemmy, unknown track, Mariam Mpenzi

·      Simba Wanyika - Yamebaki Mazoea

But connectivity being what it is, we never quite get to play him the tracks.  I heard later, much later that he could name each tune within a few notes.  

This beach house is quite remarkable.  Two stories up with an uninterrupted view of the remarkable turquoise water. I think the color is the way it is because the water is so shallow out there. There are dusty old carpets on the floor.  The earthen patterns are mesmerizing and I ask now with a sudden new earnestness that only comes on a last day:  where it one can buy such a rug?   In the bathroom there is an enormous portrait of Saddam Hussein. 

We have big piles of beans and potatoes and a dish with octopus.  There are no walls and the breeze blows through the place cooling everything, naturally.  Half the lunch party is asleep on the bed, over to the side, beneath a mosquito net. 

Out on the beach I go looking for my family.  The tide is out.  Only the tide is really quite far out.  In fact it is so far out that I have an instinctive nervousness.  It looks just like those pictures of Thailand from ten years back when the water was pulled further and further out only to be washed ashore in a terrible, tidal surge.  Could it be?  Most people are walking around without any sign of concern.  I’m thinking of the second floor of the beach house that isn’t too far back from here. 

My family is walking in from the vast dried shelf.  My cousin mentions that it looks like the scene in the “Five Chinese Brothers” where the one brother swallows the sea, and she’s right.  That is also, just what it looks like.

Sunday, 07/09/17