TAN: Civilization, Who Needs It?

Everyone was up for the sunrise boat race, but most of the boats had dropped out and we were left on the shore to watch the waves and clouds. Arnaud, Lilia and Sandrine went back to sleep. I worked on photos until breakfast. Everything was in short supply this morning. There were no eggs for breakfast, leaving everyone with a plate of beans and half a cooked tomato. We all found the presentation quite interesting. The area where the eggs would normally be on the plate was left suspiciously blank, as if they might magically arrive at some point while we were eating. We were also without water in all of the faucets. For some unknow reason, someone appeared to have gone around to all the toilets and flushed them, leaving no water for their use.

Following breakfast I went snorkelling. I didn’t come across anything new or startling, but had a good time exploring none the less. Arnaud, Lilia and Sandrine went for a hike around the island. The trip turned unpleasant when the sun emerged and started beating down on the explorers. A couple and a large group of travel agents arrived to interrupt our solitude. The only good thing about large groups being on the island is that meals are served buffet style with lots more dishes to choose from.

Fishermen bringing in their net and some merpeople, Arnaud, Chantal and Lilia
After luncheon, I put on a presentation of the DVD for the travel agents who were all for various parts of the USA. They were all very impressed. Chantal and I questioned them afterwards and they just gushed over the DVD. One of the ladies was going to have a booth at a big travel show in New York early in January that she was trying to get us singed up to rent part of. An NTSC coversion of the DVD is going to involve a fair amount of work that I am not anxious to undertake just yet.

A group of travel agents from the US enjoying the DVD.
We enjoyed a quiet afternoon after the travel agents left. Towards 4 p.m. we started to gather our belongings in anticipation of heading back to the mainland. The arrangement of a car seemed to take forever. When everything was finally organized I started to get my camera stowed and realized I had come up short of a lens cap. I raced back to my banda to find it locked. Enquiries of the staff lead to more staff being located and by the time they found someone with the key I was already on the boat and headed back to the mainland. Fortunately, the boat we were towing came loose and we had to swing back around. The staff we on the shore shouting and we all thought they had been able to locate the lens cap. As we got back to shore, it turned out that they didn’t have the cap, so we took off after the other boat. After the boat was secured and we were underway again, Julius came paddling out of the twilight in the kayak with the lens cap in hand. Absolutely amazing. The boat ride was slowed by the water boat we were towing, but the night was beautiful with a new moon, a huge fire on the mainland and flashes of lightning from a big storm out to sea.
We bid goodbye to Vlad and hopped into a cab for the trip back to Dar es Salaam. Vlad’s parting words to John, our driver, were “pole, pole” meaning slowly or cautiously. John took this to heart in a big way and it tooks us over half an hour to get to the main road. On the main road, our forward progress was a little better but still quite slow. Close to Dar there was a little fender bender that caused a huge backup. A pickup truck and a dala dala (minibus) had scraped and were parked on a bridge. Not content to wait their place in line, a great many drivers will jump into the oncoming lane or the shoulder in an attempt to get ahead. This causes further slowing in both directions as traffic is blocked. Some two hours after our departure we got into Dar proper. Unfortunately, John didn’t know where Old Bagamoyo road was and we detoured all the way down toward the US Embassy before we could reliably get back on track. We finally got in just before 10 p.m. to find a blackout in the neighborhood.
By the time we had gotten settled and thought about going out to get some food, all the produce stands nearby had closed. Pasta was suggested as an alternative. Unfortunately, I was not on the ball enough to recall that the stove would not be working without power. We had a delicious supper of bread, chocolate and avocados. The power finally came on again after midnight.