It was our last 24 hours in Tanzania. Four weeks of hard work- now for an evening of fun followed by a day at the beach before 28+ hours of travel to get home. Nyama choma is like a national pastime in Tanzania. Friday nights after a long work week, you get together with friends for cold beers and grilled goat meat. Yum! I couldn’t wait! Jane and I met the crew at Jackie’s- a local nyama choma place in Dar. Our group slowly grew to include our project directors: Tim R, Abdou, and Tim O and local staff: Nara, Ssanyu, Josephine and Amina. Nara and the owner, Jackie, are good friends- so we got a really good portion of grilled nyama, fries, plantains, and tomato/onion salad. Rounds and rounds of Kili’s later (Kilimanjaro is a beer), we called it a night. Full tummies, tired eyes….10 hours later, Tim picked me & Jane up at the hotel for a day at Mbudja Island. Who doesn’t love finishing a work trip with a jaunt to a tropical island?
Windows down, sunscreen applied, bags packed with books & snacks, and sunglasses on! We were ready. Not ten minutes into the ride, the all too familiar sound of rubber thumping on the pavement came from the driver’s side rear wheel well. Uh oh! Puncture! Or in Swahili- Punctcha! We pulled over and not 15 seconds later, 4 guys came up to our car and offered to help. Way faster than AAA, shoot, I don’t think the pit crews at the Indy 500 could have been faster. These guys got our spare on in record time. Given that the spare looked pretty sorry (and needed air), we ask our pit crew (who we did pay 5,000 shillings to (about $4.00)) where the nearest fundi (mechanic) was to get the spare filled with air and get the flat tire fixed. They pointed across the street. Great! We piled into the little Suzuki and drove across the street to the fundi.
The fundi had set up shop under a tree in a strip mall of sorts. A pile of tires, a generator to power the air pump, and a big trough of water (his method for determining where the leaks were) made up his little “garage”. We pulled up, and Tim started to take off the spare (that our pit crew across the street just put on). Sure enough a man came around and said to Tim, “Oh you’re an old man, you shouldn’t be doing that.” Now this guy was probably just about the same age as Tim. But it made for a funny moment- this guy in a clean white shirt, nice slacks (a taxi driver presumably since we were near another taxi stand) got that tire off without breaking a sweat. Tim was a sweaty mess before he even had the nuts loosened! Spare came off, spare and flat went to the fundi, and about 15 minutes later the fundi had repaired the tube in the tire (yes, they still use tubes in tires in Tanzania- like a bike tire/tube). While Tim observed the process, Jane and I took stock of the strip mall offerings- this place was like Super Wal-mart. It had everything from a butcher and grocery store to an ear, nose & throat clinic and stationery store! The fundi put air in the spare and other tires, and then we were good to go. And, get this, the fundi only charged us 2,000 shillings- about $1.50! What a deal! So about an hour later after the first rumblings of the flat, we were off again!
We met up with our friend Amina at White Sands hotel. From the hotel you take a small boat out to Mbudja Island. It’s about a 15 minute boat ride, but to get to the boat you have to walk through some muck. If you go out in the morning, it’s usually low tide, so for about 75 yards or so, you walk through little crab holes, seaweed, and other muck before you get to the boat. Then it’s short ride to this little tropical paradise. We arrived to the white sandy beach and settled into a banda (a little palapa or thatch-roof hut), ordered our lunch (caught and cooked that morning), and got some good cold stoney-tangawizis (a very gingery soft drink)! Yum! After a few swims, mother nature decided to rain a bit which just provided us a great excuse to nap! In lieu of pillows, Jane elected to use her two mangos in a plastic bag as a pillow which was surprisingly comfortable! After lunch was devoured and the mango pillow was sacrificed for dessert, we packed up our things and got back on the little boat. It was the perfect ending to a very long trip- nyama, friends, tropical islands! When is the next trip?!?
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