Things to do in Dar when you’re dead bored.

Two of the three main stages in acquiring the car have been achieved, i.e. we have chosen the car and sent the money to pay for it. Unfortunately the money has not yet arrived, so (understandably enough) the vendor isn’t keen for me to take it away. So now I sit and wait in the lobbies of hotels or in friends’ spare rooms, whiling away the time. Suze has had to go back to Mtwara to get on with work, whereas my work, or the little that I have, is flexible enough to be done from anywhere with an internet connection.

We managed a trip to a water park called "Wet ‘n’ Wild" on Saturday, which was fun and/or funny, partly by virtue of the fact that we never thought we’d do something like that. I have always felt a certain amount of (I’ll admit it) snobbery about theme parks. Whenever colleagues or neighbours have announced they are flying all the way to Florida to visit Disneyworld I can’t help thinking that’s odd. I would travel for hours to avoid such a place, the idea of travelling all night and spending a thousand pounds so that your kids can get wet/sunburnt in a queue that is essentially indistinguishable from the queues at Alton Towers is somewhat perplexing. However, it seemed like it could pass an afternoon, not usually the way I like to choose leisure activities, but we needed to wait for the banks to reopen. So off we went.

The attraction of a water park is certainly increased in 30C heat, and from a training point of view it had a fantastic benefit in the shape of a huge hoop-shaped pool that must have been almost 200m in circumference. This was a great chance to practise a few of the things that I’ve been trying in drills or in a small pool, and compare times over about 3 minutes of continual swimming. The park, it must be said, would not have been allowed in Britain, for reasons quite apart from being named after a local brand of prophylactic. Pointy things were to be found in too many places, the water was dirty and the floor uneven, but I guess these things serve to give another perspective on the balance of safety/responsibility/nanny state (delete according to when you last read the Daily Mail) which we have currently in GB. But the flumes were pretty well maintained and the water provided welcome cooling. I think there was also a dancing competition, which involved numerous bikini-clad teenage girls gyrating provocatively in an open-plan shower, but with hindsight I wonder if that was just the Larium affecting my head??
I have also been to the local gym, where day membership is a bargain and the equipment is almost spanking new, and have read cover-to-cover a relatively recent copy of the Guardian. This sort of thing becomes a great luxury after months away. As do cheese, bacon and good coffee. And incidentally, if this post is starting to become boring, that’s partly intentional, as I am bored. Fingers crossed for some good financial news today...

[A few days pass while the internet connection is fairly rubbish]

I have returned to Mtwara, and in accordance with Murphy’s Law, received a call about 24 hours after I arrived here to say the money has cleared, when do I want to pick up the motor? Fortunately I have another trip to Dar already arranged through some work I’m doing for the African Palliative Care Association, so can collect in about 3 days’ time.

To balance this, a small piece of good luck. We have been learning to take on the local fish market (soko samaki). It’s not far from our house and the fish (and vegetables) on sale are fairly cheap, but it is noisy/busy to the point of being mildly frightening and the stench of fish guts drying on a hot beach is quite unforgettable. You take a deep breath as you walk in, both literally and metaphorically. The way it seems to work is that the fishermen come in, and auction off their catch to local women (We have never even tried to take part in this). The women then give them a quick clean and, depending on which way the wind is blowing, either sell them on fish by fish at a small mark up, or refuse to sell them for any price. I think.
The best fish that we’ve found so far is the "kori kori"; it’s tasty, has big (ie easily found) bones and is big enough to feed two. It is the opposite in all these ways of the "changu" (small, spiky bones, floury, not good). So when a woman turned up at my door today with a bucket of lovely fresh kori kori (or Corrie Corrie?) and offered to sell them for 500 TSH less than I usually pay, there didn’t seem any point bargaining for a lower price, even if I did have to gut them myself.
Finally hats off to our clever friend Jillian who has pointed out (re: the previous post) that the Escudo was itself a nearly-worthless coin in circulation in Portugal, before the arrival of the (currently far-from-worthless) Euro. If only my general knowledge had stretched this far I could probably have tied the last post up with a witty play on the word Escudo, if only.