Just Dar-ling

Jambo! I tried to blog yesterday and had a complete post done when the internet went down :( So- i will try to recreate it!

We reached Dar es Salaam safely! However, the airport lost our luggage. We have spent so much time and money trying to track it down- having to pay for Taxi's to and from the airport each day is costly and it is extremely frustrating to inquire about our luggage only to be redirected elsewhere all day long until we have been shuffled through the entire system, talking to about 15 people per day only to have it end in them giving us phone numbers to talk to different people- and then it turns out the phone numbers are phony (no pun intended :) But a look around the city gives me a reality check- lost luggage is really not a problem compared to what these people live through everyday. How can I except lost luggage to be taken seriously when most of this city does not have clean water? It is a real eye-opener and I look back on all the things I have taken for granted with remorse...knowing that I have been so fortunate. The cost of my ticket and the contents of my luggage alone probably cost more than the average income here of some. But despite their poverty- they are very happy, friendly people. I can truly say that there is no comparison to this expereince, what I have seen in the past five days cannot be read about in a book or taught in standard education, it is invaluable.

Despite the lost luggage, we have been very fortunate! We have met many people that have been immensely helpful. There is an Irish lad, Simon, who studied HIV/AIDS in W. Kenya for a year then came down here to finish writing his master's thesis and he has been living in Dar for quite sometime, staying at the same hotel we are at. His knowledge of HIV and the medical treatment of it is astounding and quite controversial [look up pre-exposure profilactics...worsens the post infection exponentially]. He knows the city inside and out and has taken us to eat, see the city, and meet new people! He has a similar sense of humor as Dan and I so we find ourselves walking around the city a lot- joking and having lots of fun! He also knows some of the locals and has helped us find reliable Taxi's, given us directions and opened our eyes to things we may not have taken note of! He is a vegetarian as well so he has been helpful in food choices :)

We were also fortunate to meet a French couple who have done much volunteer work and are now working with ACTED (a non-govt org) in the Congo on water resources, wells and different types of logistics. They had the same situation with lost luggage and so we shared taxi fares and many insightful conversations about volunteer work. Here's an interesting story; they were working on a well with the local people and they had read all of the instructions and had help from engineers and pipe-fitters but when the well was turned, the piping was leaking from the sides. Samuel said that he checked the instructions again and became so frustrated because he had done everything right and could not find the explanation for the leak. Finally, he consulted someone who told him that it was because the well had been created without the summoning of spirits or any sort of blessing ritual. So, he collected the money for the materials for the blessing and the local people then had their ceremony for the success of the well. He said that many UN documents on instruction for community projects have specific directions to ensure budgets are set to include these sorts of rituals or the projects will turn out to be failures. I thought that was interesting! Luckily- when we get to Tanga, the support of the local rotary, TAYODEA, and the city council will be supporting us so we will have the community involvement which is vital.

At night we went out to eat at Chef's Pride...it was pretty good! We met up with Doa, a friend of Simon's from Burundi who has studied Conflict Resolution and provided us with much information on the current situations in Rwanda and Burundi. He was extremely intelligent and talking with him was very entertaining as well! After dinner we went to a local bar where they had a small selection of drinks, the name of the bar was "Protein Pub" and when we walked by it earlier in the week I made special note to stop in later to find protein supplementation, little did I know it was a bar :)

My next post will be about our expereince in the market....wow!

I hope you all are well- thanks for reading my blog!