6/10: Mambo-Poa (Last Day

Our last few days in Dar were spent exploring the last few bits of the city, preparing for our internship, and escaping the heat by watching TV in our room.

We did go explore the “Asian District” (I put Asian in quotes because I didn’t see too much of an Asian influence, nor many Asians). It was much more peaceful than our rough neighborhood, definitely less people around. The one cool thing we visited there were Hindu temples: huge ornate white washed compounds that smelled of incense and had the soft lullaby of bells being struck in the background. It felt like being in another county.

On Thursday afternoon, a shrimpy looking 18 year old knocked on the door. He said “Kristina” and in broken English asked us how we were doing and what we were doing. Having no idea who he was, I was a little vague in answering his questions. After about five minutes of talking, he mentioned Dr. Godfrey and we finally figured out that he was some sort of relative. It turns out he is the brother of Dr. Godfrey’s daughter-in-law in Kigoma. He became our very zealous friend during the next few days, knocking on our door or calling us every few hours either to see what we were doing or to let us know that he was leaving the hotel and coming back later (very informative). He lives in Zanzibar and his name is Abui, and he has 11 siblings (don’t worry, his mother didn’t have all those children, his father has four wives). His brother-from-another-mother, Ifraq, was also in Dar on business (he buys cars in Dubai and Japan and sells them in Tanzania). He, thankfully, is 25 and speaks better English. They took us out Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights which was really sweet.

My ATM troubles were not over: the ATM near our hotel stopped working after the first day (first it was broken, then under routine maintenance, and then the power was out the whole last day we were in Dar)

On Friday we went to Q Bar, and the description from my guidebook is pretty accurate: popular with locals, expats, tourists, and well dressed prostitutes. That explained why the crowd was about a third white (when we hadn’t seen any other white people since arriving) and the surprising presence of a bunch of ho’ed out women (most women dress very modestly here, and these ladies were showing off a lot of skin and some interesting outfits). After playing pool for a few hours, they wanted to show us the hot new club, Maisha. It would be a really cool venue – a circular dance floor in the middle with a second floor that wraps around it so you can see everything below (kind of like a mini Medjool’s) – except it was pitch black save a few black lights in the corners and one small spotlight that shone straight down on the center of the dance floor. You could barely see anything. We had fun making Abui dance, and were a little surprised to see that guys dance with each other, and kind of close. It was a fun night and a neat insight into the nightlife in Dar.