Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Welcome to Dar Es Salaam


Tanzania
April 17th, 2009

We arrived in good time into the city of Dar. Or so we thought. It was late morning, around 11am on Friday so we presumed we would be able to navigate the city with relative ease. A lesson my friend, presume nothing when in Africa. It took over an hour of maneuvering before reaching our destination- the Sudanese embassy in hopes of acquiring some much sought after information. After parking the car on the pavement we headed inside, following a security guard. We were delivered to what we assumed was a waiting room- a room with lovely burgundy sofas and two other gentlemen sitting down. So we sat. It turns out we weren’t in the waiting room but rather in the company of the officials themselves. We chatted with the gentlemen and discovered what we needed to know.

Glancing at our watches and feeling our stomachs rolling the next stop had to be lunch. We stopped at a busy local cafĂ© and ate brilliantly while politely declining the offers of watches, sunglasses, pirated DVDs and other bargains. Once finished we jumped back into the car and headed towards Mikadi Beach, our camping spot for the night. Driving along in busy traffic once more, we stopped at a light. Waiting in traffic a young man, a street child grown up, walked past our car. We thought nothing of it. Suddenly he ran back and with tremendous speed and technique he ripped our left side mirror completely off. It took less than thirty seconds. WTF!!! I know. We were completely stunned. I jumped out of the car first but couldn’t see the guy, then Karel jumped out. It was complete reaction no thought process at all. Luckily we were fine and so was the car, besides the mirror.

Deciding we needed to pit stop at Toyota to find a replacement mirror was our next move. No luck. It would take six weeks to order. The manager kindly told us this sort of crime happens all the time. He also said he would try to call around the black market and see if he could get our mirror back for us. No luck. Unfortunately for us, we need the side mirror as we don’t have a rear view mirror due to the steel plate in the car. Driving towards the campsite we decided we would deal with everything once we got back from Zanzibar.

April 24th, 2009

Armed with directions from ex-pats (behind Shoprite there’s a place, look for Shama’s), our point-it picture book and our Swahili phrasebook we set off. We found the place with relative ease. Karel parked and jumped out beginning the search. Finding it difficult due to language barriers we changed our strategy and took a picture of the missing mirror (got to love the digital age). Quickly thereafter we found a place that could help. They said they had another mirror at a different shop and would get it for us. Only fifteen minutes they said. In reality it took about half an hour, but they did return with a mirror that fit. It wasn’t exactly the frost free heated luxury mirror of former, but it did the trick. Whether it was a stolen to order we’ll never know. What we do have now is a strategy- the mirrors have our license number in tip-ex/white-out on them, are double cable tied and in every major town we go through I ensure that I have the Tabbard bug spray handy so if anyone loiters around the car they’ll be sprayed. Watch out F@%$ers!

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