Friday
Back to Real Tanzania
Africa has given a new meaning to the expression "traffic jam." Upon my arrival in Dar after my escape from reality in Zanzibar, I rediscovered the concept of pole-pole fast enough when I spent 3.5 hours in a "queue" to get onto the Kigamboni Ferry to cross the Dar es Salaam harbour.I use the term queue loosely. Several times, the intersections we attempted to cross were jam-packed with cars facing every which way, with no understandable logic behind their positioning. It was a veritable gridlock, with many instances of at least 10-15 minutes of moving forward about a cm at a time. It was probably nothing a few traffic lights couldn't solve.
Once I got to my destination 3-4 hours late, I put off the warm (but salty) shower I was so looking forward to because the showers were far from my banda on the beach, and it was dark, with electricity coming on and off randomly. Instead, I sat in the recreation area of the establishment and had my first and only meal of the day, with a cold beer to reward myself for my successful arrival. Worse things could have happened today, I thought. I even said something of the sort to a Dutch gentleman sitting nearby.
That's when the rain started to pour.
In general, rain in itself is harmless and not really worth writing about. But this time, it was only a few minutes before the recreation area was fully flooded. Soon after, the lights went out... for good. The owner of the place was devastated, saying the place had never flooded that badly in the last 3 years that she owned the place. She began (rather hopelessly) scooping water out of key areas, and though I knew her attempt was feeble, I decided to join in because it was better than sitting on my high chair and watching her. We must have looked ridiculous, with water up to our ankles, scooping water out with small containers, at a rate much slower than it was flooding in. But we were driven by the need to be of use, so we kept going.
At this point, the Dutch gentleman pulled out a camera and started taking pictures of me. He was bewildered at my good humour despite everything (all my luggage was soaked through because the bandas aren't fully water-proof) and didn't understand the pleasure I was taking in the whole ordeal. I was just happy to be back in contact with something resembling real life. It felt good to be on level ground with locals; being pampered as I had in the last few days had stripped me of my ability to express my resourcefulness and had made me feel really useless. The Dutch gentleman didn't know this. He didn't know this moment fed my desire to experience something genuine here.
I am thus very pleased with this return to real-life Dar es Salaam. Had it been any less eventful, I may even have been a little disappointed.
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Dear Kathleen,
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year and congratulations with your passion for water and Africa. Maybe it is interesting for you to know about the FairWater Foundation Kilimanjaro Project as well.
FairWater Projects are about replacing the thousands of broken down handpumps in Tanzania with a more reliable handpump, the FairWater BluePump.
Imagine, first a village has no water, finally a donor comes along and provides a handpump, so everybody is happy, but after a while, it becomes clear that the pump is too fragile, breaks down all the time and repairs become too costly, so finally the people had no other option as to go back to the river far away. This was not the initial intention, but in Africa 1 out of 3 handpumps is not functional anymore due to this.
Unfortunately, until recent, the NGOs and UNICEF had no other option but to donate such rather fragile handpumps, because there was no alternative: a simple, strong and reliable handpump didn’t exist. Fortunately, there is now the BluePump, and organizations as UNDP already have chosen this pump as the preferred option for the communities in Africa.
There is a tremendous task to do, by changing all these fragile and broken pumps now for a more durable pump. Otherwise within 10 years there will be no more handpumps working in Africa. Have a look at our website www.fairwater.org and join our movement!
Regards
FairWater
Paul & Sureyya