There should be a giraffe out my window...

I have arrived in my temporary new home on the grounds of the Muhimbili Hospital in Dar Es Salaam Tanzania. It was a surprisingly pleasant 24 hr journey across 3 continents. The home is nice – equipped with air conditioning, wi-fi and several pet lizards. Currently I am the only resident but there are 5 beds so I suspect that this will change at some point. There are idiosyncrasies that I will need to get used to, like when you turn on the sink taps, the shower will start. Today I killed a roach/beetle in order to have a shower – it took me 30 min to muster the courage. 

 
With no food in the house or minutes left on the mobile food that they provided, I decided to venture into the streets. It’s the start of the rainy season here in East Africa – I knew this coming over but figured with my recent years of living in Seattle, I should be fine. This is not Seattle rain – this is torrential downpour rain that strikes the ground so hard is splashes back a few inches in the air. The ground seems to instantly flood as the skies open up and warm bath water pours down.

It really took everything I had left not to break down in tears as I stood in ankle deep street water with my cheap Target umbrella all but useless trying to communicate in Swahili (the only words I actually know are hello, thank you, banana and lizard) to buy time for this ‘pay as you go’ phone. It took attempts at 5 different locations, including one in a butcher shop that also sold mobile minutes (I really wish I had taken a photo in there – a man in a nice suit was asleep on a plastic lawn chair while bits of dead meat were strewn about the floor) before someone was able to assist at all. Resolving to just be ripped off, I gave 20,000 shillings and my phone to a woman, and was honestly just grateful when a dial tone appeared. It was short lived joy as the phone just enabled me to be rejected by the suggested English speaking drivers who were unavailable.

Soaked and hungry I gave up and took a local taxi to a nearby supermarket – not the supermarket that I wanted that had a ton of selection, but rather a small shop that sold giant bags of rice for villages and a disturbing amount of ice cream bars. I was able to pick up some recognizable provisions although the volume of instant (read: what Amy Leah knows how to cook) products was staggeringly low. With not a Lean Cuisine in site, I was forced to select a protein source between the breast of a bird or the liver of an animal. Drenched already, I waded home through the streets with my purchases past a few coffin vendors who had respectfully decorated the caskets for sale for Easter.

There was a brief pause in the rains long enough to wander around my house but an encounter with a mongoose (they eat cobras) startled me enough that I have retreated behind my deadbolts and bars for the evening. So in for the night, I am going to try and FaceTime my mom back home so she can talk me through cooking what I am choosing to believe is chicken.

The rains do bring a vibrant lushness to the area and the view out my window is of lush foliage and fruit filled trees – I would think ideal for a giraffe. And while, logically I know that there won’t be a giraffe here in the middle of a city of 3.5 million people, I continue to check...just in case.

Usiku mwema (good night)

Apologies for the poor "African Wildlife" photos - I promise better in the future...the one is a mongoose jumping (I think) and the other is a a large centipede that I found in my living room.