Day Eleven

I slept in a bit this morning before heading to the National Centre. Dr. Sabet left for Botswana yesterday, which seems to depress the rest of the family a little bit. He’s going to be gone for less than a week but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the way they’re acting! Only Mrs. Sabet and I were eating at the table this morning before sunrise, and we did so in complete silence.

As per My Fat Aunt's request, I took some more pictures on my way to the National Centre and of the Centre itself, which you can see on my Flickr account. I would have more, but it started to rain so I had to put the camera up. The weather today was unusually cool, made even more so by the rain, and that was a welcome relief. I didn’t mind at all walking to the daladala in the rain. Well, when I say cool, I mean it’s in the upper 80’s with an even higher humidity, but compared to what we’re normally experiencing it seems like an arctic front.

I had an interesting experience with a gaggle of taxi drivers on the way to work this morning. They were all gathered up in one of the alleys between the main road and the Centre, which is an odd place to be. There’s not really all that much foot traffic going through there, especially not people who would be taking a taxi. So here I come walking along and of course as soon as they spotted me they all jumped to their feet, like at any moment I was going to come rushing over and ask for a cab. One of the bad things about being a mzungu is that people think you’re rich and that for some reason you always want a taxi. I get honked at by every single taxi driver that passes by me.

Anyway, a few of the taxi drivers were bold enough to edge over toward me. One of them asked, “How are you?” I’m not going to just ignore him if he’s making an effort to communicate in English, so I told him I was fine and asked him how he was. To which he replied, “How are you?” I gave him an odd look and began wondering if he’d understood me when all the other taxi drivers burst into laughter. One of them came over and said, “My friend that is all the English he knows!” Pretty soon, the whole alley is laughing. Whether they were laughing at me or the driver I don’t know but it was good to see some people laughing. I get tired of walking down the road and smiling at people only to get this dull look in return.

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This evening, Mrs. Sabet wanted to drive to the ocean, roll down the windows, and listen to the waves and smell the sea. So, May and I went with her. May spent a good amount of her time complaining about how someone was going to come rob us or something, and she was nearing hysterics, so we moved down the seafront away from the beach and toward the cliffs of Sea Cliff, an area for tourists. We parked, went down to the cliffs, and sat down to watch the surf roll in. There were a lot of bats flying from under the cliffs to eat the bugs gathering by the lights of the hotel. The waves were wonderful, although the moon was unfortunately obscured by the clouds. You could see the lights of maybe 20 ships out on the horizon. They seem almost ever-present in Dar es Salaam, which is a major port city. The air smelled nice and wonderful until it shifted and brought in the smell rubbish and raw sewage, a very strong reminder that we hadn’t drifted away from all the poverty and destitution right down the road after all.