Karibu Sana

Tues 5^th Feb – Day 1

Long flights and tired bodies deposited at Julius Nyere Airport, Dar Es Salaam.  It would be graceless and useless to agitate for our visas but it is hard to imagine how the bureaucracy could have been more long winded or less efficient and disinterested. Still all remained good humoured and our visas thankfully issued in the end.

Sweaty wads of livid Tanzanian shillings in hand we arrive at a clean hotel.  Whilst I have a cold beer and a nice man in a filthy boiler suit fixes our AC  Taran gamely calculates the volume of the swimming pool, 27625 litres approx..  Which, I suppose,  is the official start of the home schooling “link back” program.  The pool is small and cool and a delight to splash in after negotiating a climate change of 40 odd degrees C and a big bump in humidity.

Good enough to go out on the town.  A taxi takes us to BBQ chicken and veg fried rice on the street at plastic tables which is really delicious and with dim lighting and stalls selling coconuts and cold drinks and sugar cane rather romantically foreign.  Jo and I remember what travel is like and as a couple of young men with urgent smiles and desperate eyes try to flog us daubs of elephants: elephants at sunset, elephants in full charge, elephants with villages - we escape to the taxi and back to the hotel.  A brief foray.  Taran says he liked the elephant picture.  “Which one?” I asked.  “The brightly coloured one” he said.  “It would have looked good in my room”.  “There will be time” I replied “Its only the first day” but I know exactly the elephant he meant.