TZ2 update

    Monday, our first day of work in the Geology Department at the University of Dar es Salaam was wonderful.  A view of our walk to work is in the picture below. As the day finished we had a sense of accomplishment and a great feeling of having  started our days in Dar on the right foot.  One never knows where it will go, so our hopes are high and expectations are set for African-mode. 

    Saturday night was a tough one with no real air conditioning and high heat and humidity.  We woke on Sunday to a tropical thunderstorm with sheets of rain occasionally clearing the morning skies.  Later in morning hours the rain eased and was followed by a enjoyable sunny afternoon and a cool evening.  The rapidly changing weather conditions also set the mood and tempo of the day.  Some of our morning was spent watching frogs have a romp in the rain, and later, when it cleared, we gazed at the sub-infinite number of insects that came alive in the grass as the steamy air developed. 

    Later on Sunday afternoon we walk to our nearby shops, which are not even 10 minutes away. It was a welcome relief from being inside most of the day; we had been focusing too much on our normal day-to-day work stuff.  The expedition was our first to these shops, which are more typical of local East African shopping.  [Shukrani had taken us on Friday (day-one) to the more gentrified shopping area, perhaps as a way of easing us into Tanzania.] The shelves at our local store were simple and packed with usual daily necessities. (It was great fun seeing the Omo brand soap still doing well after >35 years!  Our local shop is 3 aisles wide, with the aisles set back to back with enough room for one person to walk through. The shelves were about 20 feet long and very tightly packed; I'm sure there was some logic in mind for the juxtaposition of items. The store had everything you needed and if it wasn't there, clearly, you didnn't need it. Our shopping goal was to get some more food for Sunday night's dinner.  We were successful with food gathering and were lucky to find a sponge for scrubbing dishes.

   Because Saturday night's sleep was so bad, Roberta was bound and determined to not have another night spent sweating and constantly brushing up against the mosquito netting.   By early Sunday evening Roberta declared victory and we finally got the the air conditioner to pump out cooled air, instead of just noisy air!  Happily, Sunday night was a truly a comfortable night's sleep and a great preparation for our first day of work.

    The thrill of a good night sleep and the anticipation of the first day of work must have driven our 7 AM wake up and preparation for going in.  We finished our breakfast by 8 and were ready to head off to the department after finishing some more e-mails in our flat.  We are definitely enjoying the two new modem sticks that we got on Friday for our laptops.  These modems make a world of difference for accessing the internet and working in our flat. 

    Sometime after lunch we met up with Makenya Maboko, an old friend from PhD days at ANU.  Makenya is now the Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University.  Roberta and I are occupying his office in the Department while he runs the university; Makenya rarely uses the office anymore.  Our discussions with Makenya and Shukrani about the findings of Adam, Madalyn and Jeremy went well, but only scratched the surface.  We made plans for further discussions and talked about a field trip to look at eastern and western granulites.  We also talked about teaching classes this semester in the department.  The new semester also started today on campus.  Shukrani hoped we would take over both of his courses this semester (mineralogy and geochemistry).  However, we really didn't want to take away all the joys of his semester... ;-)

    The end of the first day came as sunset approached. [Shukrani is concerned that we walk home in the light of the day, albeit even a setting sun.]  The late afternoon was super with 80 degree temperatures and a constant 2-5 mph breeze. As we were getting ready to leave the office I noticed out our office window a troop of monkeys in tree abutting the building.  One monkey was 10 feet from our window and at least a dozen vervet monkeys enjoyed a good meal in our tree.  These guys were happily munching away some 20 to 30 feet up in the tree tops.  It seemed that the entire troop was comfortable with people and were not distributed by our watching them.  They all pretty much went about their business as Roberta took their picture, although this one remained curious for a few tens of seconds.

    Monday night also meant that I needed to leave for the airport and a flight to Berkeley, CA.  Shukrani's car arrived at our flat, with his wife and two boys, just as Roberta and I were coming down to meet the waiting taxi.  Although Shukrani suggested an 8 or 8:30 taxi pickup earlier in the day, Roberta and I concluded that 9PM pick up would be reasonable for an 00:45 AM departure, given the airport was only 20 minutes away by car.  Earlier in the day Shukrani related a story about just making it to the airport one day for a flight to Japan. We rationalized it as a one-off event. Clearly, we later learned that we threw care to the wind with our 9 PM departure time.

    Ah, living in Africa...  Fortunately I survived the not-to-be-fathomed traffic jam and caught my flight north in time.  Much of the traffic jam could be directly related to "dala-dala chaos".  [For those with a Kenyan experience, think matatu.]  Dala-dalas (spelling?) are people-closest-packed (pcp) taxis, most being a volkswagen mini-bus, however other variety include rough and ready buses with about 10 rows of dual bench-seats.

    My dala-dala chaos event was not to be desired. .... So the taxi leaves the research flats doing fine.  It travels 2 km down to the intersection with the main east-west going road and here begins the traffic jam and airport anxiety.  At this intersection we were looking at solid bumper to bumper traffic for a far as the eye could see.  Oh, did I mentioned that because of our approach to the intersection we had to cross the east going traffic; this traffic was relatively problem-free.  Key word is "relatively".  I was in one of those vehicles crossing and wanting to go west, the sum of which completely controlled the intersection.  My driver was by no means a wimp; he knew the car's dimension to within an inch or two.  We traversed the intersection in under 5 minutes crossing between at least 5 lanes of traffic to do so.  Pause.., note there is only 2 lanes in either direction, but the average Tanzanian driver has never really adopted a conventional response to first world's standard concepts of roads.  By the time we got to the area near the dala-dala bus terminal (the real source of traffic jam), some 3-4 km down the road, it was 9:50!  I'm in panic mode sending e-mails to Roberta from my laptop in the taxi (note the bragging about my new USB modem).  [BTW, regarding "the dala-dala bus terminal" - think, an open, dirt-covered area about the size of two football fields, and the field is completely filled with people and buses in a chaotic flux.]  Happily, I get to the airport by 10:45PM with plenty of time to spare. ;-)        okay, it was a fairly long 20 minutes to the airport.

    As my taxi driver explained to me at the first traffic choke point, the police go home at night and leave the roads to be self-sorted.  Presumably these traffic jams are nightly occurrences.  Ugh, hopefully not.  The scene along the east-west road was nothing shy of pure pandemonium with not a policeman in sight.  Shukrani had noted some level of road-chaos on the ride from our first-night's hotel to the university flats.  During that trip Roberta naively wondered about the rules that govern the direction of the third (middle) lane of traffic on a normally two lane road.  Shukrani smiled and said "oh, you just drive." It sounded pretty simple to me.

    We promise further installments of the continuing ventures of Bert and Bill...