Almost Ready!

Mambo!

We’ve been in Dar es Salaam for a couple days now, making preparations for Saadani and getting acclimated. We have decided to leave Dar for Saadani on Thursday the 24th.
When we first got here, we were extremely tired and extremely jet-lagged, but now, we’re staying awake past 8 pm, which is an accomplishment. The first couple days we hung out with the host family, visited the university and walked around the neighborhood area getting situated.

Here, in Dar, EVERYONE has been watching the World Cup. Naturally, we have been too and got quite into it. One of the days, we were taking a dala dala (public transport – minibus) from campus to somewhere else and we met another mzungu (foreigner). We started talking, and she invited us to watch the football (or soccer) game with her and some of her friends of the US vs Slovenia at a bar. We watched the game, and were bummed to see the US down by two, but then came back! We scored three goals, but on of the ref’s didn’t count the last goal, some bogus foul or something. The ref never explained it and the US didn’t win. However, that ref was let go of from reff-ing more games.

We’ve also been doing some touring around the area on our own savings:

On Saturday, we went to a museum and the city center of Dar. We visited the fish market and walked around. We had an INSANE lunch too. We went to one of the little restaurants that don’t actually have menus, and while we couldn’t fully understand the waitresses (half of whom appeared to be drunk – we saw them drinking beer and stumbling around, so this is not an unfounded claim), we knew that they were arguing over how much to charge the wazungos (foreigners).

On Sunday, we went to Makumbusho, or the Village Museum, for a world music festival. We were a bit disappointed by the first bands, but they got infinitely better as the night went on, and we even got up to dance during the reggae band.

On Monday, we made an attempt to go to an island off the coast that is north of the city, but we got a bit of a late start on the day, and we ended up staying on the beach at the White Sands hotel.

Today and tomorrow, we will be finishing our preparations for the village, and tonight we are going to watch the France vs South Africa game. Tomorrow the US will be playing Algeria, and on Thursday, we will finally make the trek to the village. We are excited to get the project going, and they are anticipating our arrival in the village.

Later, we’ll post some photos of our adventures around Dar from the last few days. Thanks for reading!