Kevin here. I hope everyone is enjoying their 2011. I assume most new year's resolutions have been broken by now. My 2011 resolution was to be less pessimistic but obviously that hasn’t gone well.
I entitled this entry ‘Thank You!’ because I wanted to thank all those who have been reading over the past four and a bit months listening to us complain about Liberia and reading about how we lay on the floor all day to keep cool; I’m sure you were all just completely enthralled! But thank you for sticking it out this far and now for a bit of a reward. Our last week has been a bit more exciting and some parts read sort of like an amateur thriller novel.
I believe the last you heard from us, we had just gotten back from our safari with our friends Jason and Elizabeth from New York. Sadly, they left us to go to Nairobi on the 5th, but that was the day our excitement began. That night was our last in Arusha. We spent the day searching for an ATM that actually worked with our cards and finding a bus to take us to Dar Es Salaam. That night, as it was our last, we decided to eat in the hostel rooftop restaurant as we hadn’t had dinner there yet. The hostel is right in the city and the rooftop restaurant had a great view of the streets below. Earlier on in the day, as we were walking back to the hostel, we passed several pickup trucks full of police men in full body armour, gas masks and semi automatics. We wondered why there were so many but then we noticed thousands of people crammed into a small park listening to someone speak. We didn’t stop to watch and kept walking to the hostel. We got up to dinner around 6 and sat down with a cold beer. We noticed many people in the bar looking out into the city. We then noticed more and more police driving around below us and many of the people down on the street running away from the area just down the street from our hostel. Wondering what was going on but not really caring, we ordered dinner. That’s when we started to hear gun shots being fired into the air just down the street. We forgot about dinner and watch intently the commotion down on the street. It looked much like any sort of riot with people running away, women and children quickly ducking into shops etc and police all over. That’s when bombs started to go off. These bombs were tear gas bombs shot by the police to contain the protesters. There were several shot off around the city and being in an open air rooftop restaurant, we all began to feel the effects of the tear gas. We finished our dinner while trying to cover our faces with our napkins. We later found out that the whole thing started because one of the two political factions in Arusha was unhappy with the mayor and wanted their own candidate installed (or something like that). It was all very exciting and kind of ironic in that we had just spent four months in a much more ‘dangerous’ country with no incident. We then come to Arusha in Tanzania and have to deal with machine gun fire and tear gas!
The next morning we quickly hurried from our hostel to a taxi amid infidel fighting and crossfire (just kidding! Everything was calm by then). He took us to the bus station where we got onto a crappy bus with awful seating at 6:45 am. The bus was supposed to depart at 7:00 but didn’t leave the station until it was full to the brim at about 7:40am. We were severely overcharged which pissed us off and then had to pay more for baggage when we got there. The bus ride to Dar was supposed to take us 10 hours. It took over 14 hours! We got into the bus station at close to 9pm! For me, it might have been the worst day of my life. Tiffany had a chicken sitting next to her which kept pecking at her thigh, and I had a man behind me who didn’t want to pay for a seat for his 10 year old son so he just sat on his lap with his knees in my back the whole way, and his face crammed between our two heads hacking and chewing his food like a horse. This bus was supposed to be an express bus meaning that it doesn’t make stops along the way to pick people up. This ‘express’ bus didn’t play by anybody’s rules making stops every half hour or so when they saw someone on the side of the road who looked like they could use a ride. By the end of it all, people were lining the isle way and sitting at the front on the floor. However, we got into Dar and got to our hotel with no problem. Luckily for us, they had overbooked so they paid the difference for us to stay in a 3 star hotel that night!
We spent a few days in Dar walking around drinking tea and eating Subway sandwiches! We are now on Zanzibar, staying in Stone Town and we love it! Stone Town is kind of like a grubby, poor man’s Venice but with serious charm. All the buildings are tall and close together creating very narrow alleyways filled with curio shops and locals sitting and chatting. Stone Town has a very Arabic and Indian feel to it making it even more exotic. Tiffany and I have both realized that we very much enjoy Indian and Arabic culture which is very welcoming, exotic and fun. We have enjoyed haggling with shop owners over bracelets, clothing and other nick nacks. We also met a guy from Vancouver named Josh and he actually lives 5 blocks from our place in Kits! We had a great evening talking with him and another man named Andreas who is traveling by himself all across East Africa. The interesting thing about Andreas is that he is 85 years old! He told Tiffany that his wife also likes to travel but she likes to go with her girlfriends to more vacation type spots! She is 81.
Last night Tiffany and I went to the Forodhani Park for the night market dinner. Every night there and probably about 25 booths set up in the park that offer all types of fresh seafood like squid, lobster, crab, octopus, and several types of fish like marlin, tuna, mahi mahi, barracuda, king fish, etc. They also make excellent samosas and flat breads like chipatis, cane sugar juice and pizzas. It was all excellent and after dinner we stopped for spiced ginger tea in an alleyway which was being served out of an old tea pot with coals attached on the bottom to keep it warm. We sat and talked with a few guys for a while and by then it was about 9 so we wanted to get home. We started walking and suddenly as we turned a corner, a man bumped into me and dropped something he was holding in his hand. I could tell right away that he had bumped into me and dropped whatever he was holding on purpose. I wasn’t going to fall for his scam so we kept walking without saying anything. He started yelling after us so I turned and told him to bugger off. We kept walking and he started to follow us. He caught up and said that I had broken his ashtray. I told him I knew what he was doing and he wasn’t going to get anything from us. He persisted and both Tiffany and I told him he needed to leave right away. He wouldn’t leave and eventually he stopped me by putting his hand on my shoulder and told me I wasn’t going anywhere else until this was settled. This guy was obviously on some drugs or something and looked very shady. Tiffany and I were getting really quite nervous. Luckily there was a group of people who came around a corner right then and thinking quickly I called out to them and asked them to help us. There were three big guys in the group and I told them what this guy was trying to do. They understood and restrained the guy and told us to run. So Tiffany and I ran, not wanting this guy to know where we were staying and quickly made our way to our guest house. We told the guys at the reception what had happened and they knew exactly who the guy was. Apparently there are maybe 4 or 5 guys in Stone Town that try to pull this kind of stuff all the time. But we made it home safely and haven’t seen this guy since (he probably wouldn’t even recognize us cause he was messed up). Tonight we are going to an Indian restaurant that boasts the best Indian food in the city so we are very excited.
Stone Town and Zanzibar are really great. We have loved walking the alleyways, curio shops, tea shops, and markets. The markets are filled with exotic and fresh spices which smell fantastic. We have enjoyed sitting in the restaurants overlooking the ocean sipping on a beer or smoking some shisha. And for the most part, all the people are very friendly and very welcoming. Haggling and bargaining is exciting and all a part of the experience. If you haven’t been here before, you have to come.
Anyways, I hope that was a little more exciting for you than our posts from Liberia. Hopefully we will post some pictures soon on Tiffany’s Facebook account as we have wireless almost all day (stolen from the cafe outside our guest house!). I have also posted 2 pictures with this blog post so just scroll down for those. I know you will all want to start your Kevin and Tiffany’s Return! Countdown soon, as we return on March 1st. We miss you all, but not as much as when we were in Liberia!
P.S. The 1st photo posted is me at the night market last night. There was so much great seafood! The second is of Tiffy smoking shisha at the Sunset Bar at Hotel Africa.
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