(last saunter in Moshi)
Friday March 11th was our last full day in Tanzania. We spent it uploading Uganda photos to Facebook (well okay, I did that while my increasingly annoyed wife said we had more important things to do), farewell lunches, buying last minute trinkets and re-packing our bags. The wife took some last photos of the evil toy dogs that lived at our (now) former rental house.
(so long you noisey furry b@st@rds)
We had a motley collection of carry on/check in luggage to take home consisting of kettles, wooden giraffes, flutes, Nintendo games etc etc. All the odd shapes were going to be a nightmare for x-ray scans in airport security.
Increasingly, the fact this would be my last day wandering dusty, brown foot trails, dodging chickens and goats and exchanging greetings with smiling locals while Mount Kili sat in the distance. Sigh. Farewell texts and calls from kiwi volunteers made me a bit more morose. As well as the fact that we just saw an email from the NZ volunteer agency saying the Africa programme was going to be wound up...maybe they read my blog? um..just glad I did it while I had the chance.
We went to Doctor Bob’s house for goodbye margaritas and had a touching goodbye from his live in gardener that we had know for a while. We kept drinking, listened to music, watched the high brow comedy ‘Step Brothers’ before heading out at 10pm for food at ‘Pub Alberto’ before paying the ridiculous cover charges and dancing until 2am at Moshi’s biggest night club-Club La Liga. Laser lighting, Tanzanians gyrating to deafening local music and friendly hookers dancing with my wife seemed like an appropriate send off.
Daniel is leaving tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
Elton John (duh)
Nursing headaches the next day, we had brunch at the Union Café (another touching farewell from a waiter there..guess we have been in this town for a while!) before packing up our bags in Dr Bob’s car for the ride to KIA airport. We met our volunteer handler there and said goodbye. I hope our handler will be okay with the whole end of the Africa programme thing. There will still be kiwi volunteers in Tanzania at least till the end of this year.
After an amusing incident with Aviation Security making us pull out the wife's flute case (guess it did look a bit like a disassembled sniper rifle on x-ray)Wwe flew to Dar Es Salaam with Emirates, rang Chunga our guide and friend from our Kili climb to say goodbye at the Dar airport, then did the 5 hour flight to Dubai. This weird little lit up city in the desert night. We had an 11 hour wait there, we should have slept but instead we trawled surprisingly dull mall shops, argued about trivia,I pleaded for games/DVDs, stuffed ourselves with complimentary Emirates food etc etc. The time there dragged. I wanted to jump on a flight to Beirut that was at its 'final stage', I was that tired/bored. Finally we where on the Emirates plane again for the 12 hour flight to Melbourne. Sat next to a nice guy called 'Aussie James'. Watched Wall Street 1 and 2. Couldn't sleep. Drank lots of coffee. Watched 'Born Free'-a mistake, it made me sad for Africa. Had too few bathroom breaks. So bored. Finally we got into Melbourne, feeling wasted.
The 3 hour flight to Auckland dragged but finally we were in. Customs/MAF were pretty chill about all the wooden, bamboo, trinkets etc we were bringing in. Good to see my ma. Surreal seeing pavement, groomed lawns, no Africans in rural Waiuku. We passed out like dead people at 8pm. Slept 12 hours or so.
Tuesday, tried a brief jog, my lungs hurt with all the pollen. Stupid asthma in stupid NZ. So weird to have no one noticing us as we jogged IM NOT SPECIAL ANYMORE sob. Nice to see some NZ sheep though and chill out at my ma's house.
Um....(looks at watch) sure I got a few more blog entries in me before I shut this down...
Manfred the nondescript average NZer
No comments:
Post a Comment