We took off from Calgary last Thursday evening and flew all night to Amsterdam. We were a little groggy on Friday but I think at the best of times when you are really on your game, you come very close to getting clipped by a bicycle in Amsterdam. Did I use singular there? I meant a clot or mob of bicycles. They have their own lanes and traffic signals. The order of operations seems to be bikes, pedestrians, cars. We stayed in the Filosoof Hotel which has rooms devoted to different philosophers. We got Confucius. We strolled and strolled and drank beers and complimented the Dutch (to each other) on how organized and smart everything was (the public buses are *new* Mercedes Benzs). We didn't venture out of town but I think the next time we will. It really would be a great place to go on a bicycle tour. We flew out on Monday morning -- the bus driver to the airport refused to let anyone pay as he was a 1/2 hour late (leaving this intrepid user of the Ottawa transit system a little awestruck - they must be still working to rule there...)
We arrived in Tanzania at 10:30pm. The people are shorter here. We are staying with the parents of a friend of a friend. They have a beautiful compound in the city. The evening of the first full day we were here we had a dinner with the neighbours. The neighbours actually live in an apartment in the compound (they are moving out at the end of the month and we will likely move in). There was beer at dinner and I was offered one but I declined (I had near beer like our host, who is an expat who has converted to Islam). His wife is joseyposey's Tanzanian mama and has really taken us under her wing). We have neighbours. J is Irish and P is Brazillian. J is a malaria entymologist who specializes in recruiting the spouses of other entymologists to come and work in East Africa. We heard many tales of hunting and safari and death by lions. Every five minutes or so someone would say, 'welcome to Africa!'
We have breakfast on the patio and it's quite lovely. The first couple of days the housekeeper put out breakfast for us but now we are no longer guests and are fending for ourselves. We're managing. It took us a few days to get what we needed for the googles but we have somewhat interrupted service through the cell system now.The traffic is amazingly chaotic. The order of operations seems to be cars, pedestrians ........... bikes. I sprinted across an intersection because I had no idea when the traffic cop would allow the next heat of death race 2000 to begin. We made it home ok. josey is thankfully familiar with the neighbourhoods and ins and outs of downtown or I would be completely lost. Even saying hello is complicated but folks light up when they realize josey can speak Swahili. I've been doing a lot of reading as suddenly my history degree with an emphasis on the British Empire seems a little irrelevant. Also, not for the first time when I told someone that I've been to Egypt I've heard that Egypt is not really Africa. Fair enough.
Salaam
2 comments:
It's wonderful that you have people to stay with, and (hopefully, eventually) your own apartment within a neighbourhood. It sounds like it's really helping you to become as comfortable as you can in that totally new environment. Staying in a hotel or something would certainly keep you more at arm's length from the city and the experiences it offers, no?
Definitely. So many of the things that we've experienced so far are a result of the few people in our lives right here. Without that, there would be the inertia of staying in the apartment and watching tv. Which feels like a waste when you do it at home, even more so when you've got things to see that you can't see at home.
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