December 11th, 2008
The Prime Minister of Tanzania was on my flight from Amsterdam to Dar Es Salaam. Pretty exciting and finally, someone to practice my Swahili with….He and his entourage pulled up to the plane in a black limo and many diplomats boarded the plane to say their goodbyes. He and his entourage were enjoying champagne during the flight to Dar. Once I arrived in Dar, I was pretty out of it, considering I had been traveling for close to 40 hours. When I went to the taxi to get in the driver kept saying something, but I just hopped in the front seat and realized I had gotten into the driver’s seat. He was looking at me like I was crazy, but laughing. Then on the way to the hotel he ran a red light and we almost had a wreck. I screamed and he said, “Hakuna matata, it’s ok to run red lights here, not like the states.”
Xie He met me that night. She is one of the volunteers and she’s from China. She is going by “Emma” b/c no one can pronounce her Chinese name correctly. Emma scared me half to death in the middle of the night b/c she started screaming out in Chinese. The next morning we went to the museum (safi sana!) and to the bank to exchange money and things are definitely different here-not efficient at all. They told us to wait in one line to find out what we needed. That took an hour, then we went to another line and it ended up that was for travelers checks…Anyway, during the hours of waiting in various lines, Emma met a young Chinese man that she told me she had a crush on and that he could get us a better exchange rate elsewhere, so we left with him. When we got to his car, it had a car boot and the police wouldn’t unlock it until he gave them a ridiculous amount of money. Today, I have learned more Chinese than Swahili. :)
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