Dar es Salaam Thursday 5/28

The flight to Ethiopia was great! 

Dinner on the plane was good (chicken and potatoes) and I watched a random movie on the entertainment system called The Housemaid. It turned out to have a very unexpected twist! I had an entire row to myself so I got to lay down and sleep! 

Once I arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we had to go through security again which was very odd to me. At first I thought I was being led out of the airport, but fortunately it was simply going through the very unregulated airport security. They didn’t seem to care that I had a water bottle completely full of water! After walking an insane distance to get to my gate, I met up with Henry (25), Michael (21), and Miraclin (21). 

Henry is from New Jersey a graduate of Colgate University earning a bachelor's degree in physics and international affairs. Michael is from Texas and is a student at an obscure university (Laturno University?) in Texas studying mechanical engineering. He is also taking a couple summer classes which I hope doesn’t turn out to be miserable for him. Miraclin is from India and she graduated with a degree in computer science and mathematics. I turned out to be the youngest one in the group! 

When it comes to their projects in Tanzania: Henry will be there for 1-2 years teaching classes, Michael will be working on servicing diesel trucks for the summer, and Miraclin will be creating custom educational content with Canva (making posters, flyers, ect.) for the summer as well. We played cards waiting for our plane and got to know each other better. The card game was an interesting twist on crazy 8s that played like Uno. I ended up winning four times in a row! It turned out to be a very great surprise to meet Henry and Miraclin as their flight was supposed to leave around 12am and get to Dar Es Salaam at 3am. Due to overbooking complications, they got booted off of their original flight, turning their couple hour layover to over 12 hours to be on my flight. Michael turned out to be on the same flight as me from Germany! Regardless, it was nice to finally see from friendly faces. Eventually it was time for our flight! 

Once boarded, we were served a hot breakfast which was a great surprise to me considering it was just under a three hour flight. I had a pancake which was definitely not a pancake! I tried to sleep most of the way as the jet lag was finally hitting me hard (the warm plane knocked me out almost immediately). I woke up to eat briefly and by the time I woke up, my tray had disappeared! 

Once we arrived at Dar Es Salaam, we taxied a long time before getting off the plane onto the tarmac and shuttled back to the airport via buses. We got our visas through a very painless process. All I had to do was answer a few simple questions and pay $100 with a crisp $100 bill. The airport was small so the baggage claim was right there! I had to wait for what felt like forever. It got to the point that I thought my bag had to have been lost on the 10,000+ mile it’s taken. Thankfully it finally came out and we all headed on our way. 

When we walked outside, we were greeted by Andrew and Gregory (our driver, we never saw him again after this) with a sign of all our names! 

Dar Es Salaam was extremely hot and humid. I was both glad I was wearing my shorts still and embarrassed that I was wearing them. In Tanzania, shorts are seen as a very odd thing (less protection and less modest) and something only ignorant tourists wear. I made sure to change as soon as I got the chance. 

We packed into a van and started driving to our hotel. Traffic in Dar Es Salaam is INSANE. There are tons of vehicles on the small road including motorcycles that are weaving in and out of every spot they can. I’m sure I would crash immediately if I drove here. The city was packed with people and in general it was very fun to watch the whole trip. 

We got to our hotel safely, dropped our bags off, and dropped off our valuables. This is the Google Maps listing of the hotel: KB Hotel. Due to security concerns, we were asked to bring items to the receptionist that we would not want to lose. 

We were all very hungry and walked to a local restaurant inside of a hotel. This is the Google Maps listing of the hotel: Silver Paradise Hotel Manzese. The menu was massive and in Swahili, but I could see prices for most items ranged from 10,000 Tsh (Tanzanian shilling) and 30,000 Tsh. 1 USD is around 2600 Tsh for perspective! Seeing I wanted to have something more authentic to Tanzania, I ordered a simple dish of chicken, rice, and greens and ate with my hands! That is not to say that every meal we eat here will be with our hands as Andrew told us spoons are used for most meals. 

The meal was very delicious and we all talked more about our lives. We were all served bottles of water which reminded me that the entire time I’m here I must drink from bottled water or filtered water from VSI! Andrew ended up leaving to go pick up Eli, a fellow Harvey scholar from Mines, which led to us waiting for almost three hours (turns out to be a pretty funny story)! Before this trip, I had only met Eli briefly at a few Harvey events. Eli (21) is a senior mechanical engineer at Mines and will be working on developing fun and easy to conduct science experiments for the village schools. 

While Andrew was gone, we had no contact with him and no idea where he was. Thankfully he finally showed up with Eli! What ended up happening was when Andrew was at the airport to pick us up, he figured that it would be extremely hard to get back to the airport when Eli landed due to Dar Es Salaam’s horrible traffic. Due to this revelation, he made friends with a taxi driver and left a random driver with the sign with Eli’s name on it. Turns out Andrew’s backup plan came to fruition and Eli was in the taxi with a random driver that only met Andrew a few moments before we arrived. Meanwhile Andrew is stuck in traffic and at one point trying to coordinate running across the busy road to hop in Eli’s taxi. Nevertheless, Eli got here safely. We had a great laugh hearing this story while  we essentially watched Eli eat lunch. When Eli was finished we headed back to the hotel for a quick rest before having dinner (it was very important to Andrew that we ate even though we would still be full from lunch). 

After a short 2 hour nap, we were off to eat more food! This time I had beef and ugale which is a sticky corn dough that you use as your “tool” with your hands to eat the beef. Imagine taking a small ball of play-dough, balling it up with your hand, and making a small scoop to pick up another type of food. It’s fun and I enjoyed it! The meal was quick as everyone was exhausted from travelling. Henry didn’t even wake up to join us! We went back to the hotel to fall asleep and wake up at 3:00am to catch a bus for our 14 hour trip to Madisi. The bed was extremely hard, but I still slept well!