Lake Placid

After a quiet Friday night watching a movie on a laptop, while two Sudanese gentleman smoked hashish in the room from a hookah (cough), it was time for a change of scene. Franatee, a chum from Illinois who is working in Kenya and I jumped on a daladala (minibus) to take the ride into Arusha. The daladalas are an experience alright. Picture an ancient minibus colourfully adorned with random slogans packed to the gills with people carrying all manner of things and you are almost there. We got off in the centre of Arusha where I had a tantrum until Francoise agreed to go see a movie with me in the suburb of Nijiro. We jumped in a taxi, balked at the 80 000 shilling price the driver wanted, and pleaded it down to a more reasonable
20 000.

Nijiro was pretty ho hum, I was starting to feel a bit queasy, like some food poisoning was coming on. Or maybe it was seeing Sandra Bullock in the afternoon movie we saw: 'Blind Side.' No actually, twas good to relax and watch a rare flick in a pretty decent theatre. I was starting to feel more and more ill but we meet up with another mate for dinner and drinks at the Arusha Backpackers replete with '80's music and nice sunset views of Mount Meru. I was a bit too ill for clubbing that night so we taxied home to the sounds of the 80's aid song 'We are the World'.

Sunday, I still felt a bit tender. That arvo, I felt a bit better and a group of us piled into a van to do a wander around Lake Duluti.


The lake which is pretty close to downtown Arusha is a haven for hippo, lots of bird life, lizards and snakes. We didn't see hippo or green mambas but we did see some big swimming lizards, huge spider webs and a variety of bird life. And got bitten by a few siafu ie big mean driver ants (of the army ant family apparently). These ants are big, bite hard and are hard to squash...they are the terminators of the ant family...the fact they like to wander far up into clothing before attacking is also not appreciated.

After the walk we relaxed at the local pub by the water, drinking beers as the sun went down and petting (hopefully non-rabid) local dogs.


Drove home in the low light to the smells of cooking fires and a reggae beat. A good day.

In other news apparently there are to be mass strikes in Tanzania on May 5th as a measure of unhappiness with minimum wages...might be a good day to stay home with a good book.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/tanzania-union-want-meet-president-planned-nationwide-strike/gse sun went down