Keith and Christine would love to hear from you with questions, comments, personal news and any news at all from Australia or wherever you are. We will reply to all emails! Please write to either windlechristine@gmail.com or windle.keith@gmail.com Eventually it was morning and we boarded the first leg of our flight; a plane to Zurich. We were on our way to Tanzania.
Once we were in the plane, our sense of time was only kept somewhat normal by the arrival of meals such as morning tea and lunch. For us it was sleep time, after our night at the airport and we dozed between eating. At Zurich we were astonished to see smoking areas like large phone boxes, but with no roofs so that the smoke just went out into the airport anyway. What a surprise - they seemed to have been sponsored by cigarette companies, a kind of advertising that I imagine would not be OK in Australia.
At last we were on a plane to Dar es Salaam, and on our way to Africa. Keith was feeling a bit apprehensive, since it was such a big unknown for us, and we would be having a very different experience from the rest of our travels, staying in a remote village for a couple of weeks with people we had never met. I felt quite differently, having thought through and got over lots of issues beforehand, such as possible illnesses and how we would fit things in. I was really looking forward to meeting Ticha’s family, and I was excited to be on the way there. I was feeling quite serene and peaceful, although perhaps that was partly the sleep deprivation kicking in.
Passengers for Nairobi were told to disembark, and those for Dar es Salaam were asked to stay on board at Nairobi Airport. Two passengers got off who shouldn’t have, so there was a bit of a kafuffle until they were found, and boy, were we all glad to see them back on board, meaning that our plane could continue as scheduled and not be held up while their luggage was tossed off. All that ticket checking really is for a purpose.
The plane must have lurched in the air when the pilot told us all that we could view the top of Mt Kilimanjaro above the clouds and there was a stampede to the right side windows. Like a dark cone above powder puff clouds, it was only just visible as night was falling. Finally we landed in Dar es Salaam, and experienced a visa system that was incredibly inefficient and took ages but was simply a matter of filling in a form and paying US$50 each. Outside we asked a taxi driver the price to our hotel, and it was considerably higher than Rosie, our niece, had thought we would have to pay. We bargained a bit, with a reduction from 25000 Shillings to 20000 Shillings. There seemed to be a consortium of taxi drivers and they all stood behind the price so there was no bargaining power on our side as there would have been had the drivers been in competition. It was hot – stickily, unpleasantly hot. It was getting later, so we agreed and were on our way. The driver showed us the bus station we wanted for the next day, but recommended a different bus line that would require a taxi drive to reach it. We said that we would stick with the one Rosie had recommended.
Dropped off at the guest house, which was a multi-storeyed building with what seemed to be a large, roofed cage in front of it, in which people sat eating and writing their diaries, we reported to reception. Even though Keith said that we had a reservation, and they said that they knew, the room that they said was ours was to be US$72 – way out of our price range and not the 30,000 Shillings that Rosie had emailed us about. They were sticking with it, so we said that we had a reservation and could we see the record of it. Books were shuffled and a computer consulted. Eventually Keith said that we would go somewhere else, and then suddenly a different reservation book was remembered and someone went off to have a look in that. Wonder of wonders, there was the reservation that Rosie had made for us for a $30 room. Later Rosie commented that they were a bit cheeky, but it was a cheekiness that was not endearing and gave us the bad feeling that we were going to be tourist ‘game’ here.
The guest house had an internet café and a restaurant downstairs, and since we had to eat with our malaria tablets, we ordered vegetable fried rice, typed the blog and had what we assumed might be our last email contacts for some time. There were so many staff members standing around doing nothing, and many more people in the street outside just lazing about in groups, with taxi drivers lounging against their vehicles that looked as if they were just the family car being used for business. The road was not made, and luckily no-one came or went to stir up the dust. A band of drummers and singers from somewhere nearby created an African atmosphere that told us that we had really arrived.
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