Note: I used the dollar sign instead of the pound sign because this is an American keyboard so it doesn't have it- all currency expressed that is not in Tanzanian shillings is in pounds.
So we're just arrived in Lindi after spending the past two days in Dar sightseeing and braving the local transport system. On Thursday morning Emily H. and Ali headed to the Simry Buses office with Stella, the Dar Es Salaam taxi driver that READ had befriended at some point before we arrived, to buy tickets for the bus journey. They were 18,000 Tanzanian shillings (or $9 approximately) which seemed reasonably cheap.
On the journey down we realised why.
Although Stella had reserved 11 tickets on the bus when she was booking for another group so all five of us an the six girls from Warwick could go together on the bus the next day, by the time Ali and Emily arrived to buy them, there were only 9 left. Stella had to argue with the bus company to allow us to buy two last minute tickets at the bus station the next morning.
After the initial crisis with the bus was over, we had the rest of the day to do tourist things in Dar. We went to the Museum of Tanzania first where we saw all sorts of different exhibits ranging from historical and to archaeological to cultural and scientific.
We saw a collection of documents and artefacts from the early modern and modern periods; around the time of the Portuguese superseding the Arabic traders along the Indian Ocean coastline through to the 19th century German conquest of Tanganyika (as mainland Tanzania was then called), the first world war, British rule and then independence in 1961 under Julius Nyerere as President and their union with Zanzibar in 1964.
Afterward we went to an archaeological exhibit about the footprints in northern Tanzania that are supposed to be the oldest example of human ancestors walking upright and how they are now threatened by erosion and the ugliest animal on this earth (google a picture of a mole rat if you don't believe me).
We also had a look at some wildlife displays about the game reserves here and despite the fact that I have always found taxidermy incredibly creepy (there was a stuffed lion on display that had been given to Julius Nyerere as a gift which really gave me the shivers) but I enjoyed it because it was so much more diverse than in Europe. Then we saw some cultural and social displays of what tribal life in Tanzania is like.
We then had a look around the grounds and found the first ATM in Tanzania on display in an alcove of a beautiful Arabesque building which was a little peculiar but still interesting. We were at the museum for about an hour and then we went to get lunch at an incredibly Western pizza restaurant where I had the strangest salad (who would normally put courgettes in a salad) and the others had pizza which they said was delicious.
In the afternoon, we went up to a market selling all sorts of souvenirs to Westerners and Africans. Everywhere we went, the traders kept calling us over (naturally relishing the opportunity to rip off ). We decided to wait to buy things till after we got back from Lindi but I bought a bag and a beaded elephant named Tembo (Swahili for elephant, as I had learnt earlier that day at the museum). Although I only spent about $7.50 I think I paid all more than a local would pay.
Oh well, its not like I can't afford it. I am also very happy that I got the lady selling Tembo down from 10,000 to 5,000 shillings.
Though I then did feel quite bad about paying with a 10,000 note.
We had got to the market by taxi but on the way back we braved a dalla-dalla or a city bus which was 250 shillings (which is about 12p). It was interesting experience and quite daunting at first, partly because it is always scary riding a public bus in an unknown, busy city but also because the concept of a bus being 'full' is clearly alien to the bus conductors. It was like a cross between a regular bus and the Tube at rush hour. We had luckily got seats because we were the first ones on but afterward the bus we start to fill up as the bus conductor would randomly open the doors whenever it stopped and shout the bus' direction to the people on the curb and invite them to hop on.
I had a woman sitting on my shoulder for about ten minutes.
When we got back, we went out to dinner with the people from the other groups in the evening to a Western style restaurant called City Garden. Everyone was amazed we dared to go on the dalla-dalla but they had least had the sense to go to the supermarket for supplies for the bus whilst we were being tourists. By the time we got back to the shop in the YMCA it was closed and we were leaving for Lindi at 5.00am the next day.
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