Okay, so just under two weeks after arriving here what has happened and what are the first impressions? There is so much to get through I really don’t know where to start! As with most times I arrive in a new country, the first impression seems to be the weather- very British of me I know!
Unlike Cairo, the weather here has changed from day to day. People here tell me that this is because we’re just on the cusp of a change in season- from dry to the first rainy season. When we landed a week back, it was sunny, albeit slightly less harshly so than Cairo. Although the temperature was lower than Cairo at its worse- about low to mid thirties- it felt a good deal hotter. In part this was due to the significantly higher humidity, in part due to the slightly more basic air conditioning, meaning that we’re more exposed to temperatures here than before. Whatever the reason, for the first few days we all sweated like crazy and worked our way through gallons of water- it would have been more had we not used the swimming pool outside religiously every afternoon to cool off!
As regards humidity, the last few days have been a case of out of the frying pan into the fire- or out of the steam room into the monsoon! I was advised by a well meaning colleague that the rainy season was here. Seeing torrential rainfall outside (not quite as heavy as India last June but still quite a shock to the system after Cairo) I think I’d managed to figure that one out for myself! So, to summarise- it started off hot and humid and is now hot and torrentially wet! Soma is in paradise!
The first few days were all about getting up and running. I had forgotten just how disorienting a change of country is- the first day you really are starting from nothing. Upon waking up the first morning we had no way of telling the time (Soma’s watch broken and all mobiles handed in at Cairo), no way of calling anyone (the internal hotel phones are internal anyway since the billing system is broken) and no way of getting anywhere! From this unpromising point we really needed to get food (we are self catering here), get the boys into nursery, get ourselves mobile and start the search for a house.
Things got a bit easier once we got in touch with the world. We walked a few minutes down the road and got a mobile phone card- we could call people finally! This enabled us to procure a company car and driver- hurrah! Things got easier from then on. With a temporary arrangement for use of a driver, we achieved our first goals- food and nursery. Driving to Little Scholars was easy- leaving the kids considerably less so. Rohan was fairly easy- he saw the toys and scuttled off happily. Kieran, being more aware of his impending abandonment stuck to my leg like glue. I ended up taking the tearful little guy into his classroom and staying there for the first few minutes, only leaving when he was well and truly engrossed in something!
With the boys out of the way we went house hunting and, unbelievably, found a place on the first morning. I’m not going into too much detail for risk of tempting fate- needless to say we like it a lot and will describe it more when we move in!
The final big achievement was, at the end of last week, getting our Tanzanian driving licences. This sounds impressive but required minimal work on our part. Fortunately, being British, we’re at a huge advantage. We drive on the same side of the road (ie properly!) so are almost there from a Tanzanian perspective. After handing over a copy of our UK licences, two photos and about $4 each, we were in proud possession of our licences that same day- a bureaucratic triumph made all the sweeter by our two lovely Rav4 cars fresh from the car hire store! In four days we’d got the kids in nursery, found a house and got us some wheels. A great start!
Driving here is not too bad actually- I know driving in Africa sounds really exotic and cool but actually it’s a bit like Essex- rules of the road exist but nobody pays much attention to them. The locals bemoan the crazy driving that goes on, but frankly it all seems a bit tame after Cairo. Certainly people do some strange things here and the rules of the road are interpreted a bit flexibly (more like guidance notes than real rules) but in my few days of driving (both on the Peninsula and driving to and from work in Dar city centre) I’ve not been subject to crazy bolts out of the blue as frequently happened in Cairo. People cut in front of you just like in Cairo but here they indicate first! Traffic can be slow and, when you get congestion, obeying silly things like traffic lights is just going to result in getting home hours after everyone else. The secret here is to stay calm, keep moving forward, whatever colour the lights, be careful not to hit anyone/ thing (and if, like my boss you do, make sure it isn’t a police motorcyclist you send careering into the gutter- they get very upset and angry with you) and to make sure you stay awake- nothing too tough in that! Now that the rains are here, however, I’m very grateful for the cars we have. In Cairo we had a large Pajero, mainly in an effort to protect us from the suicidal taxi drivers who plough into the side of you. Here we need 4 by 4 cars to get anywhere off a main road! The main roads are okay, even in rain but the minor ones, such as that which leads to our hotel entrance, have craters which have now become minor lakes- getting over and through them is fun in a Rav4, less so in the Fiat we owned in the UK!
A week in, I think we’re getting settled. The boys like the place; I like drinking good wine and driving (not together of course!). Soma is starting to make some friends here- the people in our block are a very friendly bunch and a myriad of nationalities. It will be a while before this starts to feel like home- certainly not while we’re in a serviced apartment rather than our own place- but when I look back at where we were a week back I think we’ve done okay!
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