XIII
Daily Life
Whether you live in Michigan or Florida or Tanzania, life has a tendency to take on a routine. Days begin in the morning and continue until night and are followed by another, and then another; in succession. Occasionally events interject themselves to add an emotional break from the routine, but mostly one day is pretty much the same as the others.
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| Food and Craft fair at Oyster Bay Shopping Center |
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| Locally grown and produced items for sale |
Mine begins with a drive to work. Monday through Friday from early morning until 10:00 or so, then again starting at around 2:30 in the afternoon until 6:00 or so in the evening, is rush-hour in Dar es Salaam. The skyscrapers in the City Center are filled with people who mostly drive in from the surrounding area. There is bus service in small city busses called Dolla-dollas (from the term dollar dollar, having to do with the fare at some point in local history), but they crowd the streets along with cars, taxis, boda bodas (or picky pickys (motorcycles)), and bajais (three wheel motorcycle taxis), with pedestrians walking on the pavement, and push carts, bicycles, etc. From where we live it is a ten-minute drive without traffic and a half hour to an hour in the mornings and afternoons. The exotic nature of the drive has long ago disappeared; only the fear remains, tempered by the fact that the vehicles move so slowly that serious injury is usually not likely.
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| Preparations for a wedding at Sea Cliff Hotel |
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| Dhows sail through the mooring field at the yacht club |
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| Part of the yacht club's yard |
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| The Commodores from 1933 to present |
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Yacht Club beach.
The club has nearly a quarter mile of shoreline on the peninsula |
As we sit waiting for the traffic police to move us along, I sometimes look at my surroundings and remember how exotic the Masaai looked walking along the streets, when I first arrived, as well as the coconut sellers and street vendors, and the women dressed in colorful dresses carrying their loads on their heads, and the traffic police themselves dressed in white uniforms. Once a routine is established, the exotic tends to become a part of it.
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| The morning commute. Signs for the Syrian Exhibition |
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| Seems life goes on everywhere |
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Russian Embassy across Bagamoyo Road
at the junction of Kenyata Drive |
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| Traffic policeman |
So on the ride into work I watch the ships anchored in the Indian Ocean waiting to enter the port at Dar es Salaaam; sometimes counting to see if more have come or if some have indeed been able to off-load their cargo and move on to the next port. The fishermen begin their routine early and are already working as I eat my breakfast at home. They live on the beach in front of my house. The little beach village has its own routine that includes the same rituals we all abide and of course tending the dhows, the workboats providing their livelihood. On the drive, I watch them sailing in their dhows or paddling their dugouts, or laying nets. At low tide I see the flamingos scooping the sea life from the pools of water in the creek as we cross the Salander Bridge. Then note whether the coconut sellers are out along Ocean Road – now Barack Obama Road, or if the school children are getting exercise playing soccer on Aga Khan Beach.
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| School children having gym class on the beach |
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| Woman and her wares |
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Masaai walking on the street.
Their sandals are often made from old tires |
I can’t necessarily say that our routine is the same as the average Tanzanian, but neither is our routine the same as every other person’s routine at home. Our lives adjust to our circumstances wherever we find ourselves. Here, we live in an area populated by expats from many different places, mostly developed countries in North American and Europe and of course many South Africans. Expatriates in most countries, particularly developing countries, tend to live in an area in close proximity to each other, and tend to surround themselves with things familiar to their culture, such as schools, restaurants, supermarkets carrying “Western” items, meat markets and delicatessens all catering to the “expat” community. The International School of Tanzania (IST) is here on the peninsula. Nearby is a medical clinic staffed by European doctors.
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| City Bus or Dolla Dolla |
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| Dolla Dolla stop near the ferry terminal in City Center |
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Boda Bodas with passengers also called picky picky
Boda bodas take the space between lanes and avoid the jam |
The hotels are modern and well equipped. The apartments and houses are designed to give those people who work for companies or governments from Europe and North America the comforts of home. Nearly all of the ambassadors from nearly every country in the world live on the Msasani Peninsula, in Oyster Bay or Masaki. It is a bubble – an expensive but tolerable bubble in an otherwise very poor country.
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Shoppers Supermarket.
Everything we need - when they have it |
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| Cape Town Fish Market Restaurant near our home |
With any such similar circumstance – wealth amongst poverty, crime gravitates toward the wealth. So we are mindful and vigilant. The modus-operandi among thieves here is for innocuous looking cars of silver or white with dark windows to drive by and grab bags, purses or backpacks from Westerners (Mzungus – white people) who dare walk the along the roads of the peninsula carrying such items. There are other methods of robbery that we are made aware through a variety of mechanisms. All in all, it is the typical rich-poor, have-have not, scenario. But here, among the ”haves” it is more than preservation of wealth, it is in a very real sense preservation of life. Those without means are seemingly neither personally affected by the injury or death they often inflict, or are they in any meaningful way fearful of being apprehended by the authorities. But there are not other options. We are very much relegated to living in the bubble and relegated to defending ourselves against those who suffer and whom we are trying, in many cases, to help. It is just part of the contrasts of Tanzania.
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| Light Sunday lunch at the Cape Town Fish Market Restaurant |
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| Looking across the bay from the restaurant to our house |
But expat communities the world over, and especially in developing countries, try to create a bit of “home” in otherwise unfamiliar surroundings. So, in Bangladesh the various clubs were created to accommodate the expat community; the American Club, The Australian Club, the British Club, the Canadian Club, the International Club. And in Kyrgyzstan the Russians long ago, when they began to “colonize” the Central Asian Republics, brought with them the opera, the symphony, puppet theatre, ballet, parks with fountains, and so on. It is no different here in Tanzania. The yacht club, of which we are now members, is eighty years old this year. The annual formal ball acknowledged the event. The club is something that the British created to make life for their expatriated citizens more tolerable in what was then even more of a hostile environment.
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| 80 years for the yacht club of Dar es Salaam |
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Because of the heat,
For the men, red tie and cumberbun are considered formal,
or kilts - and there were many |
Here, as in all countries where we have lived, the women of the workingmen (mostly, but we can say spouses now) have their own clubs to keep themselves occupied in strange surroundings. In Kosovo and Kyrgyzstan it was the International Women’s Club. Here it is the Corona Club, but the purpose and function is the same; activities for spouses who have accompanied their mates to a strange land. There is bridge, mahjong, beach days, shopping, lunches and the like. These are great social groups that help the spouses, but also the working partners, meet other people in like circumstances. But mostly it gives spouses activities; and with regular activities, routines develop. So in our situation, I have my routine and Sharon has hers.
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| ...and on the beach, life in the fishing village also goes on... |
We live in a compound; fenced in, guarded, but otherwise comfortable. My driver takes me to work every day. Then he takes Sharon where she needs to go. The housekeeper tends to things like cleaning and laundry. Our lives go on the same one-day to the next. And beyond the wall on the beach, the fishermen have routines of their own; building a fire to cook a meal, hanging freshly laundered clothes on a line strung between a scrub tree and a pole stuck into the sand, and of course tending to the boats, and going fishing. They play soccer. They lift weights made from concrete poured into abandoned cans. They visit with each other. They sleep on the sand, head propped on a driftwood log. They work day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, and year-to-year. In a way, a very real way, they are no different than we are.
Until Next Connection,
Dan
