TAN: Out on the Town

Went with Maina over to the office at 9:30 a.m. The last of his Saturday classes met this morning. He had forgotten that he had told the students to be there at 9 a.m. They all gave him a hard time when we finally arrived at 10:00 a.m. I was at the office hoping to get a bunch of Internet activities completed. Luck would have it that today would be one of the worst days yet for the Internet connection. The connection was just dead most of the time. It would come on and start to pick up only to flat line a few minutes later. I imagined that everyone in Dar es Salaam was waiting patiently for the connection to come alive and as soon as it did, pouncing on it all at once. Needless to say, I was just as glad to leave the office to head over to the Q Bar to catch the tail end of the Rugby match between New Zealand and Australia.
Chantal and Sandrine had arrived at Q Bar at noon according to plan and were a little peeved at Maina when we showed up an hour late. I worked on my laptop amidst the howls and hoots of a sizeable chunk of the expatriate community in Dar es Salaam. To Maina’s disappointment, Australia won. A round of the usual Vegetable Fajitas (pronounced here with a hard “g” sound rather than the soft “j”) and a Hamburger for Maina took over an hour to be served.

Chantal trying her hand at SMS. We all thought she was typing out a huge novel.

Shafiq was kind enough to lend Maina a car for the weekend in order to locate a house. We headed over to Shafiq’s house near the office. He wasn’t there, but we got to spend a couple of hours catching up with his wife Arifa and their children. Arifa enjoyed most of the DVD.
We got underway again at 5 p.m. We met up with the agent by the roadside stall we have been getting produce from. The agent has several houses in the Micocheni area to show. The first on was more of a bunker than anything else, the ceilings were quite low and there was a decided absence of windows. En route to the next place, Maina got a call from the neighbor of the house right around the corner from Hanif’s that we all really liked. It turned out that the folks who were supposed to be taking it had showed up hours late to pay and were scheduled to come by at 7 p.m. If we came by at 6 p.m. with a receipt for Maina’s work permit, he would give the house to us. Maina had no such receipt, but we though it would be good to meet with the neighbor anyway. He was a really nice guy, educated in the former Soviet Union as a mechanical engineer, he is currently working as a trainer for a NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) developing the textile industry in Tanzania.
We spend a while trying to come up with a solution to us getting the house instead of the folks who were to come at 7 p.m. to pay. DTP would be the one signing the lease, thus avoiding the issue of Maina not quite yet having his work permit. Everything was going well until he made mention that the other folks were going to pay for a whole year. Maina was devastated and we had a quick huddle before assuring the neighbor that we would be back the next morning with everything in order to take the house. A quick trip back to confer with Shafiq found us at their house as they were breaking their fast. A huge feast was laid out on the floor with everyone gathered around. Arifa insisted that we join them. While we nourished ourselves, the situation with the house was presented to Shafiq who was amenable to having DTP be on the lease. He raised some questions about the integrity of the neighbor and concerns about the situation. We modified our plan slightly and decided we would proceed. Maina was still quite apprehensive about coming up with a years rent all at once.

Breaking the ramadan fast with the Abdulrasul family.

After all of the days excitement, we decided to head over to the only public cinema in Dar to watch Matrix Revolutions. Maina had miscalculated the times and we arrived half an hour late to a screening. We waited for the next screening at a local pub called the Rose Garden. Lema from IPP was there with a large group and another couple of people that Maina knew came by. Eventually we headed back to the theater, a swank new South African owned three screen complex. The pre-feature entertainment was a bunch of very suggestive condom and off-color soda ads along with a cell phone ad that played three times. The best of the bunch was an ad for a cable TV company about their extensive range of choices. It featured a man on a plane fiddling with a remote control as the in-flight meal service is brought around. As he presses the buttons on the remote, the steward announces different menu choices that along with changing outfits and gender become more absurd each time. None of us were overly impressed with the Matrix. The visual effects were much improved over the second film, but the majority of the dialog was wooded and too many serious scenes were completely laughable. We finally made it back around 1a.m.

Come on, everyone is going!