Rainy season? you betcha..

Since my arrival in Dar es Salaam, I kept on hearing about the rainy season.  Except for the occasional downpour, i hadn’t really seen any of it.  Fact is, most days have been sunny or partly cloudy (partly cloudy vs partly sunny… discuss!) with temps in the mid 80s.

Well, maybe its a mild rainy season… nope.  Last week, from Thursday on through at least this morning, its been gray. Dull. Wet. Very, very wet.  Know what happens when it rains for days straight, and i mean rain as in downpours and the many roads aren’t paved (or were once paved 30 years ago)… it means that if you drive a regular sedan or a motorcycle, you will get wet or more likely not able to pass.  Even with the Rav4 i’m driving, there are no guarantees. Some of the holes are so deep, that when overflowing with water, your headlights will be momentarily submerged, water will seep in to the driver’s floor mats through the pedals.

And of course.. there is mud. Mud everywhere. Deep, rich, sucking mud.  And even with the right words in Swahili, there is no convincing the local guys in the compound not to wash my car. Every day it doesn’t rain they wash the car.  It isn’t the money you end up giving them, heck at the current exchange rate and their expectation of 1000 or 2000 shillings.. its not an issue.. but they continue to fail to grasp that because of that mud out on the ‘roads’… the car is only clean as long as it stays inside the gate– once i hit the road, i’m assured splatter, streaks, waves of mud up and down the side, front and windows.  And yet, i’ve a clean car when i walk out of the house every day.  Its sort of nice.

One of my ex-pat friends was always asking why don’t they fix the roads… well, they do. Kind off.  Throughout the last month or so, trucks full of construction debris, dirt, cement chunks, rocks, etc; would dump their loads on the road, next to the holes.  And the mound would sit. And sit. Eventually, on the way home, you’d have one to three local guys, using picks, shovels or whatever passes for such tools, trying to use some of the debris to fill in the holes. And of course, as you pass by, they flag you down.. ask for a bit of help, for water. And of course you give.. sure that they aren’t getting paid to do this, and even if they are it really isn’t going to be much.  And the holes get filled. Sometimes. At the speed they work, i wonder how often they sit around (lot of sitting around goes on here) until they hear a car turning the corner, coming down the road.  Yeah, the holes get filled, and those that don’t seem the much deeper when the rains come.

Just a few days more.. then off to the US to see the family.  Different set of rules to live by back there.  Have to remember to drive on the right side as opposed to the left (don’t even think about it anymore,) will be good to understand everyone around me again.  But only for a short bit. Working Dar hours while home and then back to the chaos that passes for daily life here. It is fun, but it isn’t easy and it definitely isn’t for everyone.

Safe travels everyone.

Life

Never know where its going to take you. On the one hand, you could be sitting where i was this morning. At my apartment, getting ready to go to work. As i contemplated the view out of my window, it occurred to me that the little canvas patchwork tent i see out there every day, all day, the one at the foot of the 400 year old baobab tree isn’t anything but someone’s house. Their place. Day in and day out. They are out there. They use the ocean as their shower, their bathroom, their dumping ground. They light their cooking fires, and buy bottled water from any of the shops within walking distance.They sit and watch the daily football matches, they endure as the ball invariably bounces through their tent several times a day. On Sunny days, they sit in the shade of the tree, and on rainy days as it so often is these days (the rainy season after all), they huddle inside their tent, around their fire. Watch live go by. Roll of the dice? Luck. God’s will? Call what you will. Regardless, how do you enact change? How do you get buy in for change if your whole outlook in live is sit on your beach, live off the fish you pull out of the ocean, no need for electricity, running water. sanitation. How do you go on seeing change and progress around you limited to those who came to your land? Getting a bit disjointed here.

The good, the bad… the beach

So i live on the beach. Literally. There are positive and negatives. Mostly positive.

Fact is, during the Tsunami watch two weeks ago, although nothing thankfully cam our way, rains did… and raised water lines. The high tide mark, usually 30yards off the wall (live in an 8-house complex, i’m on the corner closes to the water) was lapping at the wall that night. I’m not sure what would have happened if it had been a real alert for us. Traffic was at a standstill, and high ground? There is no high ground in Dar.  That’s a negative, but one that at least statistically speaking, shouldn’t be of significant concern.

On a positive note, there is living on the beach, watching wonderfully colorful sunsets, and of course, the sounds of the beach.. no, not just the surf, but the people.  How to describe the simple cacophony of noise of a Sunday afternoon, beautiful day, slight breeze, not too hot, whereas hundreds of people have decided to hit Msasani beach for the afternoon. Three football (soccer) games going on simultaneously, kids swimming, running around, ice cream vendors, groups of young men doing calisthenics, karate and even shadow boxing, bongo music, fishermen working on their crafts, and a jet ski.

I stood at my window, looking down at the sight, smelling the cooking food of the various grills and fires spread through the sand.  Listening to the laughter and the ever present call to prayer from the two mosques nearby reminded of just how far from loved ones i truly am as i admired the skill of the players on the sandy, uneven pitch, as families gathered at the top of the water line, to watch the sun descend into the land.  As the light went out (and it does so very quickly in these parts, dusk seemingly lasting just seconds), the noise died down. Clumps of people walked off towards their sunday nights, while i ventured into my kitchen to forage for a light dinner.  Big positive living on the beach.