Karibu!

On Sunday I was still breathing in the fresh Norwegian mountain air. Today I am inhaling diesel fumes in Dar Es-Salaam. I’ve arrived early this morning after an exhausting overnight flight. I seem to have picked up a touch of insomnia lately and my body is protesting in all sorts of ways against the less than 2 hours of sleep it has been getting in the last 48 hours. Especially since I already started working within hours after stepping off the plane. My interview techniques were definitely a bit blunted today by sleep deprivation so it is a good thing I will have all weekend to recover and prepare.

First impressions of Tanzania then… Not as hot as I was expecting at all. In fact, it has been raining down quite spectacularly for part of today. Day temperatures are pleasantly below 30 degrees. I may not have seen quite enough of the town to fully warrant this judgment but so far Dar Es-Salaam strikes me as a bit more modernised than Accra. Buildings look newer and cleaner, traffic is still chaotic but somewhat less suicidal, and poverty is not as blatantly in your face. Then again, according to the Economist’s latest figures for the Human Development Index Tanzania is worse off than Ghana so probably my comparison applies to the respective capitals only. Also, I may just have seen the better parts of town so far.

I have already glimpsed the ocean but have not really seen a beach. For that you need to get a little bit further out of town. I might try to drag myself over there this weekend. I haven’t read my guidebook well enough yet to map out exactly how I want to spend my free time. For next weekend though I am considering making the crossing to Zanzibar. It is not that far and it sounds like it is definitely worth the trip. I really wish I had time to go further land inwards where the big game reserves and national parks are as well. My guidebook has mouth watering pictures of all there is to see and do there and it’s a crying shame I will not be able to do any of that as I need to be back in London before the end of the month. Perhaps next time my boss ships me off to Tanzania (a by no means hypothetical scenario in fact!) I will be able to get in a few days to roam wild. But before I visit any other countries I am dying to visit that most exotic of places: Dreamland.