TIA

Mambo!

Now that I’m in Tanzania for 3 weeks I’m starting to find out what is meant with the abbreviation TIA. I’m still in Dar, although I should now have been in the bus to Mtwara in southern Tanzania. Why; TIA. I’ll come back to that later.
By the way; thanks for all the mails and messages. I won’t be able to answer all of them since I have only limited access to internet and it is darn slow, but I do appreciate and read them.
In the mean time I have been enjoying myself at Bagamoyo; a comfortable beach to the North of Dar. After having enjoyed a tremendous lunch, which consisted of a huge fresh crab, we went to where the palm forests meet the beach. What a sight! Palm trees dominating the coastline whereas old fishing boats were floating to the right and an extended mangrove forest resided at the left. Since the climate, and even more, the traffic impedes to go for a run in Dar (and somehow I felt this tremendous urge) I decided to have a run at the beach at the heat of the day. Naturally I needed to check out the mangrove forest where I spotted numerous birds (such as zilverreigers, ibissen [you’re right; that’s Dutch]), fishes and crabs. Maybe running in the heat of the day was not such a good idea after all; despite the sun screen with factor 50 the sweating made that I got sunburnt anyway. Furthermore, the Indian ocean is not really suitable for a refreshing dive; it’s simply too warm to be refreshing;)
Of course we needed to have a party in the night again. We went with two of our neighbours, both Tanzanian students, who invited us to a party. We had a great party, but the drawback is that everyone expected them to be prostitutes as they were dancing with Europeans! In the end a girl angrily walked upon me; she, obviously a prostitute, was angry with me because I ignored her but was willing to dance with our friends;) I know for sure that I will take into account your advice not to drink Safari Lager, Luitzen ! The day after, of course, we went again to another beach. Life’s not that hard.
Last weekend we went to Bamba beach for an AIESEC conference. In fact there was no specific reason for us to go there, but we decided that it was nice to meet new people from abroad; party-crashing always is nice (nietwaar Blkbk?). For AIESEC it was interesting as well as most of the (local) employees are found through AIESEC. We even gave a small presentation about the Foundation’s activities. The plan was to stay over to sleep on the beach, but then some stomach issues arose (probably due to a somewhat spicy Indian dinner the night before). The sacrifice was not that large as the cocktail-party turned out to be a lemonade-party.
Although it appears that we are only having dinner outdoors and party, we do work a lot during the week. In fact, we work from, say, 9 to 19. The thing is that the conditions impede working efficiently (even a simple thing as printing at the print shop nearby takes at least twice as long as would expect it; TIA) and free time and work are inter-mingled. Contacts from work also are friends, so having a drink has a double purpose. Work is fun; the assignments are very diverse. I have now been producing marketing templates and a presentation that I will use coming weeks for the training of solar sales agents in Mtwara, which is close to the border of Mozambique. Today I was supposed to travel there, but the bus left at another time than we expected. So now I’ll leave tonight. For my first marketing-run up-country Ronald will join me. In the weekend we will check out the beach there and look for some coral. Furthermore, our team is strengthened by a new Tanzanian employee, Sharifa, who started working with us last week. That’s interesting as she is Muslim, Deo is Christian, and Ronald and I are atheist. Ronald likes to question a lot, especially when it comes to religion, so we have had several interesting and open-minded discussions. The other day I even had a discussion with Deo and a Muslim Indian dealer. To that extent Tanzania is quite tolerant.
As promised, I will now come back to TIA (which stands for ‘this is Africa’); it is a term which can be used on all occasions and helps to have a laugh about matters that would otherwise be awkward or frustrating. I made a selection of some nice examples of TIA moments during last days:

- people urinating in the street, but instead of turning away, choosing the direction in which everyone can see them
- the grid failing three times within half an hour. We had two days in a row that we had to cease or work as our laptops batteries needed to be charged
- going to a really luxurious hotel to make use of the gym, swimming pool, and sauna, finding a sign on the door to the showers ‘please do not urinate or defecate in the showers’. It almost brings you to ideas;)
- guys five feet away, in the middle of the day and without any shame or hesitation, literally throwing someone, obviously passed out, in a ditch because he is drunk
- Tanzanian men approaching women in a discotheque in a both hilarious (for us to observe) and (for the women hunted for) repulsive way
- Tanzanian men wanting to be your friend and for a change, not because of money, but in order to use you as a ‘bridge’ to approach women
- having to wait for an hour for your basic lunch to be served while there is no customer around and 5 employees appear to only sit and do nothing
- a waiter walking several times up and down to inform us that they do not have the dish we ordered, instead of asking the chef what they have and what they don’t have right away
- a police officer giving us a hard time about some license that we apparently lacked and suddenly changing his attitude into a childishly enthusiastic mode after having asked whether we were able to speak French. He had learned some words of French and was very much willing to share them with us. Hard times were over instantly
- going 20 times to one Ministry to arrange a certain document, being sent to another Ministry to find out that they lost a key document. Coming back, finding out that they want something different. Again, and again (Ronald already started in December)
- finding out that you have diarrhoea on a toilet without running water, toilet paper or towel while 30 mosquitoes are hunting for you from all angles. A sock was sacrificed

In fact, these examples show the way how I experience life here; you simply need to be relaxed and have a laugh, being frustrated or having high expectations doesn’t bring you anywhere.
From now onwards I will be going up-country for a week, then I’ll be back in Dar for a week, then I’ll be up-country again for 3,5 weeks travelling to many towns and eventually Mwanza at lake Victoria, to be back again for a week, followed by 2,5 week going up-country etcetera. So probably next time I can write a bit about life beyond Dar.

Kwa heri!

Peter