Dar es Salaam

July 17, 2009

Inside the feebly air conditioned Movenpick Hotel, Philipp and I sip our lattes and wonder how much it costs to stay in this marble-floored hotel where a club sandwich costs $18 for lunch. Lonely Planet, with the answers to life, the universe, and everything, tells us: $235 per night. We are not sure what it must be like to have that kind of money.

This place feels more western than I suspect East Africa should – the dark wood decorative lattice and upholstered, claw-foot chairs feel like a remnant of some colonial officer’s club. The staff bustles by in button down shirts or poufy chef-hats, flowing slacks and shiny dress shoes. Behind the bar, a woman lifts and lowers a pitcher of whole milk around a whistling steam wand that is thick with accumulated scalded milk. Behind us, a cell phone rings insistently and the scene feels unnervingly like home.

I desperately want to be back along the shore with the smiling women who cook ugali in big pots and deliver to us whole smoked fish with empty eyeballs and tiny tails. Phil and I were trapped there yesterday – by the “pot women” we call them, because they dance and sing and chant and laugh as they flit through buildings filled with giant cooking pots, dressed in white shirts and black skirts with rags tied around their heads. They all wear flip-flops or old keds with the backs of the shoes folded down beneath their heels. We have ordered smoked fish lunches and various sides; Phil gets a spoon with his rice, but they just laugh when I ask for one to go with my ugali.

Ugali is a Tanzanian staple – some sort of white cornmeal mush that is solid enough to eat with your hands. You tear off lumps and dip it into coconut milk sauce or lukewarm pinto beans. Being a heavily Muslim country (about 50/50 with Christianity), it is generally rude to eat with your left hand. So I fumbled through lunch with my lonely little right hand, twisting and contorting to rip off chunks of ugali and lumps of smoked fish. There are no such things as napkins, but because water is free, a girl comes by with a pitcher and some soap to pour over our hands when we are done.

The streets of Dar es Salaam are filled with bright colors and big smiles. Palm trees nod in the barely perceptible breeze. It is oppressively hot and humid and everyone wears a sheen of sweat. Women walk through the streets with big baskets of colorful fruit balanced atop their heads. I once asked my taxi driver – Mzee Alex, Old Alex – if he could do that too. Many men cannot do that, he laughed. I can a little, but I cannot go fast. The women, they can go very fast! They can run without spilling anything.

The people are a startling clash of western wear and the traditional colorful robes. Everywhere there is honking, yelling. Men make kissy noises, but it is not to me – it seems to be a way of getting attention as they hawk their wares. Women balance bushels of socks on their heads, men drape themselves in hanger after hanger of designer dress pants. Along the shore, they parade with a platter of finger-seafood – octopus arms and squid, shrimp, goodness knows what else. All I can see is a mess of tentacles and suckers and feelers piled around a mason jar of what looks like cocktail sauce.

But inside the Movenpick Hotel, there are no octopus arms for sale at 15 cents apiece. There is no eating with your hands, no peddlers draped in the random assortment of goods that they are trying to sell. Inside the Movenpick there is overpriced internet and a pair of scissors we can use to cut apart our half-dozen passport photos so that the next time we go into a permit office, we are better prepared. Mostly inside Movenpick is a chance to catch our breath – two days into the permitting process we are exhausted of cab rides and stone benches and scowling permit clerks. “Just sit and wait for a while,” they say, again and again and again. So we go next door to the Movenpick to wait in relative peace. Waiting anxiously, impatiently. We drink more coffee, get on internet, make obsessive copies of all our important paperwork, and drink coffee some more. We are acutely aware that we do not belong in a place like this, yet no one seems to notice.

1pm. Time to go back to immigration. We are waiting for our class C residence permit so that we can finalize our dozen other research permits. In the overcrowded office, the story is again the same. “Just sit and wait,” they say, “we will see.” The faux-marble floor is packed with tired-looking Tanzanians who are also waiting. A tall and frazzled looking German lady shuffles in overanxious laps around and around the office. I play peek-a-boo with two children who teach me how to say cheetah and leopard in Swahili. And we wait. Perhaps for dinner we will go back to the pot women with their flopping shoes and big smiles. Or perhaps we will trek back across town to the late-night street-side café we discovered the night before, grilled tandoori chicken and fried cassava root, manned by the portly Indian immigrant, Karim, who lost a leg and a knee to a fight with a bus. But for now we sight and wait. If all goes well, tomorrow we will leave for Arusha – my mind soars with optimism. Arusha, then Serengeti. We are almost there! A clanging gate brings me back – it is 2pm and they have closed the doors to get in, yet the office is full of people waiting still. And so we sit and we wait and we daydream about dinner and days to come. About smoked fish and cold beer, about sunsets in the Serengeti. And so we sit. And so we wait.