Dar es Salaam!

Hujambo! Ninakaa Dar es Salaam! And I can speak Swahili (of a sort).

Flew out of Dubai Sunday morning and got here around 9:30, had a mission to get the customs guys to find my visa exemption certificate and then no bag arrived for me. Apparently it's very common because if your connection in Kenya is short (50minutes) then they don't have time to get your bags. Signs of this fact: 1) the twenty other luggageless people on my flight and b) the 40 bags taken off our flight which belonged to people from the flights the day before! I remained quite zen about it, mostly due to the spare underwear in my bag and the fact that I was forewarned by Peggy: she had travelled too much to have not lost her bags, yet fate had never caught her out so it would probably aim for me next! By this logic I figure Terminal 5 at Heathrow should be fine!

I'll make this a long one because I don't really know when next I can email. I'm having trouble logging into my emails but I'll keep trying. Comments might be the easiest way to get a short message to me :)

So I got here, short of bags, and met three of my fellow volunteers. Lovely people, lots of fun et.c etc. and they were headed to the beach. So, following the rule of never say no (other than to the Tanzanian man who only knew how to say "I make love, yes?"), I borrowed shorts and a towel and sandals for a trip to the beach of Dar es Salaam. We headed to the touristy one and had a marvelous time! We swam for ages, ate a lovely lunch and played beach volleyball with some Arab men and whoever else felt like playing. And I think I have found my sport! I played briefly in high school, but I think lack of practice has improved me, I did ok! The beach was amazing, think more Fiji than Africa!

Today started our Swahili lessons and thanks to my four chapters of effort I am top of the class :) You all know how happy that makes me. Not that I'm not struggling too, there's heaps to learn and we're sort of thrown in the deep end, but I'm sturggling that little bit less than everyone else!

Now we're at the market in Dar es Salaam. It's colourful and beautiful and just a little scary. Lots of beggars and some people just walking up to us and asking for money. But the smells and the spices! Piles of cardomom and cinnamon all on sheets on the ground, very different to buying a packet at the supermarket. I've taken heaps of photos already but apparently its not very safe to flash stuff around, which makes sense since compared to everyone here we have so much. That's one thing that makes it difficult to say no to the beggers, the money is really quite little compared to NZ dollars and it could make such a difference. But we've been quite strictly told not to, with good explanations... But it's not easy.

The dollar value thing is kind of crazy. Beer is about $1, water is 50c. Because when we changed money we all got big notes we've been paying for eachother and agreeing to make it up later, but it gets quite silly when you realise that if you owe someone 3000 shillingi, that's about $4. Or less than two pounds for all the brits here.

Is this long enough? Have I missed anything? I'm really loving it so far, it takes getting used to but soon I'll be totally fluent! I better go, the others are finishing so we're going to head to a bar for a drink. Hope you're all happy and healthy! I'll try to post again soon, we're headed to Singida (on a ten hour bus ride), which is reasonably civilised so there may be an opportunity in the next few days.

And forgive any mistakes, I'm rushing and it's a strange computer!