Dar es Salaam: Haven of Peace

I'm not sure exactly why, but I have always found African city names to be evocative. Maybe it's because they sound so different from anything I'm used to. Or maybe it's that I know little to nothing about any of them so I can let my imagination run wild. Mombassa, Harare, Kigali, Entebbe, Nairobi. Exotic places somewhere far away where strange, adventurous and fascinating things are hapening. So when our plans for this adventure started taking shape and Colleen took a fancy to Tanzania, my thoughts went immediately to Dar es Salaam, the king of evocative African place names. It means Haven of Peace in Arabic, but my thoughts were of a sultry city teeming with street markets by day and lively music and dancing by night. A busy port city with seedy characters on every corner up to no good. A quaint colonial town centre surrounded by ramshackle buildings with peeling paint, and the odd grand hotel way past it's prime with expats sipping gin and tonic reminiscing about the good old days. The reality of Dar es Salaam is far more pedestrian

Dar es Salaam Skyline

We arrived in Dar es Salaam on Thursday via a 2 hour ferry from Zanzibar. It was raining when we arrived and we were greeted by the usual big city port hustle. Since it was raining, we decided to take a taxi to the area where there were a few hotels we could look into. I was excited. Here we were, in Dar es Salaam! My first big African city. Bring on the adventure. It was raining, so I couldn't get a great look from the taxi, but from what I could see, everything looked kind of normal, like any big city. Must just be the street we were on I thought, the exotic part must be right around the corner. The taxi let us off near the hotels, still not that exotic, but ok let's find a place to sleep. We decided on the Econolodge, sure, not exotic, but it's just a place to sleep. We dropped off our bags and started off on our errands. We needed to buy train tickets, get Indian and Zambian visas, get Zambian currency, and get my single entry Tanzanian visa changed to a multiple entry visa. Our errands would take us all over the city and would over the span of the next day and a half thoroughly dispel any ideas of an exotic city. Traffic is traffic, and a high rise building is the same in Philadelphia as it is in Dar es Salaam. Aside from the fact that Colleen and I were usually the only white people on the streets, we might as well have been in Winnepeg. I was crestfallen. Our train didn't leave until Tuesday. What were we going to do for 4 days?

Streetside BBQ

Then a funny thing happened. We relaxed. The room at the hotel was big and had a nice balcony with a pretty good view of the city. Colleen could sleep in while I read. We had time for long walks through the city, and it was much more interesting when you looked at it closer. Interspersed with the modern high rise buildings were some more interesting older buildings (the architecture was a wierd mix of art deco, colonial and communist style appartment blocks) and loads of churches, mosques and hindu temples. The food was pretty good too. A significant portion of Dar es Salaam's population is Indian, so it was easy to find a nice curry, and nondescript streetcorners by day would turn into open air restaurants by night serving an assortment of delicious grilled meats barbequed on the spot in massive kettle barell grills. We even found a great Ethiopian restaurant in the suburbs (you haven't had coffee until you've had Ethiopian coffee), so we took advantage and had a date night. We found a cool bar on the roof of one of the fancy hotels with a stunning sunset view of the city and the harbour. Also, surprise surprise, we managed to find a local watering hole (it was called Florida's - the owner's wife had a sister in Clearwater) where we became regulars for a few days.

A lot has happened in the last few weeks (the past few months for that matter), and it was nice to have nothing to do for a few days, to just let things sink in and realize just how lucky we are. So it turns out Dar es Salaam kind of grew on us. It is neither sultry or exotic, just pleasant, a haven of peace.

We leave today for Livingstone (Zambia) and victoria falls. 2 days on a train to Kapiri Mposhi, then 3 hour by bus to Lusaka then 8 hours to Livingstone. It should be an adventure.


Michael
Holiday Inn (I'm not even kidding, I'm really at a Holiday Inn)
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania