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Contact Jim: jim@dollarhide.net 5/26/06. May 26th. Quito, Ecuador. 23 Hour Day - June 3rd, From Santo Domingo to Indianola, Miss June 14th. Kyrgs, Yurts and The Eye of the Goat. June 20th. On the Swahili Coast. Lions, Tigers and Elephants. Just because you don’t see them, does not mean they are not there, I’m told. Today we are on the road to Korogwe, a small village in Tanzania. Two nights ago we landed in Dar Es Salaam on the East Coast of Africa – referred to as the Swahili Coast - after a 10 hour flight from Amsterdam. What a contrast, from the modern and and yet old city center of commerce and tourism in Holland – to the African coastal plains, rolling hills and now in mountainous foothills. We are in the land of Swahili. It is the language and the culture. Kenya to the North. Uganda to the Northwest. Rwanda to the West. Zambia and Mozambique to the South (I think).
Yesterday we had the day off. The weather was bad – it rained all day. But we went out anyway. We hired a driver and a car and went up the coast and had a nice lunch at a place called the Seacliff Inn. Aptly named, the restaurant was literally hanging on the cliff of the Indian Ocean. After lunch we went to a local market called the Mwenge. Acres and acres of stalls and vendors selling art, wood carving, clothing, bolts of cloth, coffins, building materials, just about anything you could imagine. Everything was priced for American Tourists.
Susan in the market. The t-shirt says Mzungu -- "White Man" A typical item might start at $300 USD and after a bit of haggling, you could get it for $30 USD. From stall to stall, we would attract a line of vendors following us from previous stalls, trying to get in their bid on the item. The more vendors we visited, the more the price would fall. It was fun, but after abit, it became sensory overload. No one speaks English, and they are all talking and yelling at you all the time in Swahili. Unlike Kyrgyzstan, here in Tanzania, we have ben taking our meals, so far, in the hotel only, as a precaution. We still have weeks to go and don’t want to risk illness. But what lies ahead, we don’t really know. We are leaving the safe-haven of the Holiday Inn in Dar Es Salaam (which is more like a Hyatt than a Holiday Inn). Where we are heading, I’m told we will sleep under mosquito nets and there will be no air-conditioning. This morning, we are driving cross-country to the Tanga region to film at two villages where there is much activity on the part of Habitat. We don’t stop much to take photos, our time is pretty much mapped out in advance. So most of our photos are taken from moving vehicles. And our vehicles are moving down the wrong side of the road !
We were running low on cash, so we had American Express wire us $7000 USD to a local bank this morning. Once at the bank, they informed us that they could only pay out the wire transfer in shillings. At an exchange rate of 1 US dollar to 1,250 shillings, we wound up with a stack of shilling bills (10,000 shillings each) about 14 inches tall. Needless to say, it would not fit in my wallet. It was quite a funny scene in the wire-transfer office when the lady asked us if we wanted to count it. 8,750,000 shillings. That is 8.7 MILLION shillings. We have two land rovers, each with a driver, two Habitat representatives, three local crew members and the three of us. Plus our 11 cases of gear and personal baggage. Quite a sardine can in the vehicle. I was given a Tiger claw by a local driver for good luck and courage. (I am not sure yet what I need courage for, but I am hoping that it will not be a whole lot of whatever it is). As we have moved out of Dar Es Salaam, and into the countryside, things have thinned out. And now there are not many people and only a scattered home here or there. Mostly mud huts with thatched walls and tops of bamboo. We pass through a village every now and then with a few buildings centered around the roadside. They don't really have stores, they have markets. With lots of vendors. It is sort of odd, one vendor might sell, say, motor oil and watermellons. Another might sell cloth and pvc pipe.
It is cool here, the end of the rainy season. The opposite of the US, we are in the “winter” here. The temps have been in the 70s, without the sun. When the clouds leave us, I’m sure it will heat up somewhat. It is very green in the countryside. Not parched and brown like you see in so many photos of Africa. There is a lot of corn growing. Mango, banana, and palm trees. Not much else that I recognize. Johnson Grass. Sunflowers. Even some St Augustine grass. But there must be more that I have not seen yet. The roadside markets are full of fresh fruit and vegetables. We have been driving about four or five hours now. I think this is the epitome of being “way out in the middle of nowhere” – at least for me. There are a few people walking along the roadside. Mostly women in very colorful native dress, called Kangas, carrying sacks and buckets on their heads in a graceful balancing act. We stopped at the local version of a truck stop. A huge open air building with a tall thatched roof. It was buffet style and the food was great. A heavy thunderstorm moved in and we finished up lunch and headed for a tech scout of a location at a smaller village named Mumbwi. I was in the front seat absorbed in my iTunes and was startled to look up and realize we had turned down a long red dirt road that had water flowing through deep ruts.
A group of local teenagers were running along side us egging us on. Go for it. Thumbs Up. In a matter of seconds our vehicles were stuck. Very stuck. It was about 4pm and I envisioned us walking out in the darkness. No wrecker service here.
The group of kids turned out to be our new best friends. They rocked the trucks out of the mud and we were on our way within the hour.
The rain storm will turn out to be a constant affair. When driving, it rains every twenty or thirty miles. You pass through it within a couple of miles. Staying in one place, you can expect it to rain for 30 minutes at a time, about 8 or 10 times through the night and day. Our hotel was a big surprise. Called The White House, it was a multi-building complex. All the beds do have canopies with mosquito nets hung from above. We were advised to use them. And we did. It turned out to be quite nice. We all went to a central building where we watched one of the soccer games and the women cooked us chicken and rice. Butchered the chicken right in front of us. Umm. Up at 5 am and we are out at a Habitat build site now, waiting on the sun. I brought a bag of Starbucks from home and one of the homeowners boiled water on a wood-burning stove and brewed us coffee. And it started to rain. Eventually, the sun came out and it became a drill. Setup the shot. Rehearse it. Then wait for the sun and we might only have 20 seconds -- or a couple of minutes to get the shot. Then move and setup another and repeat. This is Gloria. She is rehearsing herself. She became quite good at helping us direct others. Somewhat of a firecraker, her humor was undeniable, even in Swahili. In all locations, we filmed actual Habitat homeowners. People who helped build their own homes and now live in them. My favorite in Tanzania was Gloria. I'm show here in a Kanga, styled the way men wear them -- a gift from Gloria. (She's the one who made our coffee.
Behind us is the mud hut that Gloria lived in before she got her Habitat home. She cooked us breakfast each morning. Egg sandwiches on freshly baked home-made bread cooked in a stone oven. And I can't close out in Africa without a parting-shot of (at) Sam. There was a lack of clean t-shirts for workers to wear, so our crew had to strip to the waist a few times to let the locals wear our t-shirts.
Sam shows them what a white boy can do. We are off to Nairobi, and then on to Bombay for the next leg in our trip.
No power. No TV. No cel phone. No internet. Starbucks coffee in the African wilderness . . . Priceless.
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