Beanland Diary - Interlude in Africa

Dear Beanland Readers,

A hearty hello from your faithful correspondent! I have been woefully out-of-touch with many of you since my last adventure, for which I apologize. Since leaving Bishkek, my travel shoes have mainly stayed tucked in my closet, next to a borrowed but yet unused tennis racket. My passport has suffered through a brutal dry spell. My walking stick has laid unstroked for…well, you get the idea. Not much globe-trotting to report on.

Yesterday, however, the world caught up with a vengeance. Your correspondent now finds himself at a collision of cultures that would make Manu Chao or Tom Friedman’s head spin. At present I am writing from a hotel staffed by Swahili-speaking East Africans, adorned (to an absurd extreme) with the art and architecture of the Roman Empire, owned by expatriate Indians, serving exclusively Italian food, in a city given an Arabic name by an island Sultan.

Where am I, then? If you guessed Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, wow - you’re right! Congratulations, you win a free lifetime subscription to the Beanland Diaries and related publications. What I’m doing here is another matter, and still somewhat unclear even to me. I arrived yesterday to find that not a single one of my week’s supposed meetings had yet been scheduled by my local counterparts. I had been warned by my fiancée (see below!) that “things in Africa don’t work the way you plan them.” Indeed. Perhaps having no plan whatsoever from the start is seen a way to avoid having a plan fall apart later.

In any case, this no-plan-having allowed me to spend my first day in the cradle of humanity doing two things, familiar to regular readers, which I enjoy immensely while traveling: jogging the streets and playing with a new language. As you well know, these have become the twin lenses with which your correspondent tries to process all foreign environs.

With the help of Rattu, my breakfast waiter, I picked up a few essential phrases while eating my omelet. Swahili is a bold, bouncy language, easy to parse and fun to pronounce. Rattu patiently laid out the basic phrases like, Hello (Jambo), Thank you (Asante), and the indispensable, Where is the bathroom? (Cho kiko wapi). He also taught me to say, Mambo vipi, muzungu? which translates roughly as, What’s up, honky? The appropriate response: Poa.

In contrast to other cities in the developing world, Dar es Salaam is a surprisingly agreeable place for a jog. I plotted a course up the coastal road and found the desirable combination of dirt sidewalk (easy on the legs) and paved roadway (easy on the lungs). Not a rabid dog in sight. Cars drove by with Bob Marley wafting out the open windows. Deep breaths of warm sea air. Other than a brief brush with a cactus, it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and now ranks #6 on my all-time list of best runs.

For now, this is all I have to report on from Tanzania. Hopefully the next week will generate some interesting tidbits for your reading pleasure. If you don’t hear from me again, it means nothing happened.

But, allow me to close by sharing some exciting news, not of an international sort but domestic rather. Your faithful correspondent is getting marred in May of this year - to a wonderful woman named Lou who many of you know. Roasting her in full Beanland style just doesn’t seem like a good idea, for me. So I’ll only say that she hails from a land known equally for its highly-developed philosophy and cheese-making, and she is happy to explain the finer points of both. She loves travel, cold beer, Russian bathhouses, walking tours, and Johnny Cash. She tolerates my mediocre guitar playing as long as I clean the dishes.

Atentamente,

Your correspondent, 78 Haile Selassie Road, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania