Trip to Dar from Mtwara

As briefly mentioned in the last post, we thought that we were leaving for Dar on Wed. So we had gotten into the cab early in the morning and were all set to go, when the cab turned the corner, and ran out of gas! Apparently in southern Tanzania, cabs do not fill up with gas - they pick up the passenger with only enough gas to get around the corner, the car runs out of gas, a fellow worker bicycles over the gas, and then you can get to your destination.

So, we had all gotten into the two cabs that Joe had called for, and the car ran out of gas(!), we got the gas - we got to the airport, we got through security and Joseph was informed that our tickets were for the next day. That was why we had the A+ day. Thank God.

So on Thursday Ray, Joe and I got up early and went for a swim in the Indian ocean past the Southern Cross. It would have been beautiful, but the large amounts of jellyfish ruined the beauty. Joe and I made a bee-line for the shore, Ray kept insisting that it was fine. I HATE Jellyfish -and so did Joe.

That morning, we got the cab, the cab ran out of gas, the bicycle came with the plastic jug of gas, we got to the airport and we flew to Dar. Joseph had spoken to his promising student the day before and we brought about 10 lbs of review books for this kid to take the SAT. He was the only student from Ndanda that Joe thought had a chance at a US university, but he did not know how to get him into the process. When we landed at Dar we went straight to the Southern Sun Hotel. Then we went to a Main Street near the Post Office to find his students' sister (the student was out of town so the sister came into town from the slow bus from nowhere - it took forever!) We had alot of time to observe the street scene in Dar. After the books were given to the sister, Joseph had us clamor into a cab and drive to the Indian section of Dar where he knew there was a great bakery (see Easter above - the boy loved his sweets). Joe had us buy all sorts of pastries and sweets for him. After that we went to an outdoor market where we wanted to buy some Obama ktangas. The vendors descended on us, and at the end we bought 6 Obama ktangas for the price of five because of the overzealous competitiveness of the vendors. We were literally fending off the vendors, luckily Joseph spoke fluent Swahili!