Dar Es Salaam Part II: First Night

After arriving late in the afternoon to Dar es Salaam we were picked up by a friend of Halifa’s who took us to get some food. As we drove down the streets of Dar I saw a big WalMart-esque looking store, a movie cinema, and an advertisement for juicy McDonald’s style hamburgers. I don’t particularly care for any of those things, but I definitely got a twang of homesickness with these familiar sights. It was also shocking because I didn’t realize how much I’ve gotten used to my new lifestyle until I witnessed some of the more Western amenities in the big city.

After grabbing a bite to eat we headed to Halifa’s friend’s house. His oldest child, a girl in 1st grade, immediately made friends with me and started playing with styrofoamy letters and numbers switching between math problems and spelling. She, like my tutee, also goes to an English Medium school where she is taught entirely in English with the exception of her Kiswahili class.

This girl was very bright and I really enjoyed playing with her. She also had some awesome learning tricks, like for an addition problem like 4 + 6 she would say, “Six in my mind -- four on my fingers -- after six comes – seven, eight, nine, ten!” She took all of this very seriously and was quite funny to watch.

After about thirty minutes it was time for me to go check in at my hotel room and get ready for a big day at the American Embassy. I wanted to go through the website again and make sure everything was good to go given the high security measures and strict procedures that the website highlights. In any case, when we went to leave the little girl actually started crying and wouldn’t let me go.

I checked into the hotel and paid way too much money by Tanzanian standards (55,000) for a small room jammed with a king sized bed, mosquito net canopy and a television. I did such a good job checking in that when I came back to the front desk to ask about the free breakfast and checkout procedures for the next morning, the woman actually stopped me when I started speaking in English and told me that she would only answer my questions if I asked in Kiswahili. Good thing I forgot my English-Swahili dictionary in Tanga!