Wild Ride in Dar

Just had to tell you about my ride this morning before we get on the plane to Kigoma (it is just now starting to rain, so this will be a fun travel day...).

I got a taxi from the hotel and told the valet that I needed to go to the ATM to get 200,000 Tanzanian shillings (about $160), then off to the store called Game that sells appliances and electronics. We're running out of space on our hard drives, what with all of the footage we're taking. I also needed to get some rechargeable batteries because once we give the Flip video cameras to the kids to take home, they use the batteries up in one night, probably not sleeping just to keep using them.

So, we got to the bank, no problem. Because it is Sunday morning, the streets are teaming with people making purchases from the stalls and ramshackle huts lining the torn up streets. You can buy fruit, meat, textiles, phones, vegetables, you name it. The colors are bright and vivid. There were many Masai in traditional dress and ladies dressed-to-the-nines in huge hats, multi-colored dresses, and high heels as they made their way along the dirt paths to church. I saw many maimed men (land mines, I'm sure) begging in the road. Little children run everywhere and a few asked me for candy (wish I had some).

Red lights and lanes don't mean a thing, so as you swerve past huge buses with men hanging out the window to change their shirts (the buses are so crowded you have to lean out to get any personal business done), you hold on tight as huge lories pull right in front of you.

My driver ended up turning into a winding dirt road just wide enough for the car to get through. Good, I thought, he's taking a shortcut. We passed women in their doorways combing children's hair, plucking chickens, and doing laundry. This was more like it! The place was teaming with life, and I loved every second of it. We finally came to an abrupt stop and the driver announced "Game!" I looked over to a stall where a man was carving wooden checkers pieces. Ah, game...not Game. I was fairly certain that this guy smoking cigarettes on the stoop of his shack didn't have a 160gig hard drive to sell me. I explained, and the driver finally finally understood.

When we finally got to Game, I asked the assistant for the most powerful hard drive he had. Aha! He had JUST the thing. He took me to the computer section and proudly showed me a 2gig flash drive. Hmmm. Not so much. I bought one four-pack of rechargeable batteries ($65) and drove back to the hotel.

Pretty fun morning. I'm now very much looking forward to dragging all of our luggage and equipment through the rain to the airport! It's quite an adventure.

Again, more later.

E