The last week has been a bit of a blur and I am starting to lose track of the time already. Having only been in Tanzania for 12 days I am realising that, this losing track of time, may be another one of those nasty diseases that you hear so much about before you embark on a trip to a country that has tropical delights on offer like malaria and ebola. However these diseases have never really upset my psyche too much.
What does upset my psyche is having to wait for a bus that comes four and a half hours later than it should or somebody turning up to meet you 3 hours after they were meant to! The unhurried attitude everybody seems to adopt out here could drive you crazy. However, I had an epiphany today, saw the light, and during the 9th hour of what should have been a 5 hour bus journey, towards the back end of beyond, I relaxed and enjoyed the view.
The worrying thing is, I rather enjoyed it, and fear that after a couple of months I will return home with an infection! Will I be turning up to catch trains half an hour after they were meant to leave and be indignant that they left without me? Will I never be able to get another job because I will only be able to get to interviews hours after they were meant to start?
I was having lunch in down town Arusha on Saturday (recvering from a hangover and another dreadful public transport experience I will spare you the details of) with a German friend, who has traveled far more widely in Africa than I have, reflecting on this concept of time keeping when our attention was drawn to a clock on the wall. At first glance it appeared normal but under closer scrutiny you could see all the numbers were in the wrong places and in the centre of the clock was written "African Time". I think that about sums it up!
I am now back up in the mountains but through the marvels of modern technolgy (and some German technical advice) I am still in touch with the outside world, which is more than can be said for 99 percent of the people living in this remote outpost. I am still confounded when it comes to uploading images of any kind onto this blog and the best connection I can get will be back in Arusha, which will be Friday at the earliest, so I apologise if you were expecting any intersting graphics, all you have got is my tedious prose.
Arusha is not the biggest city in Africa by any means, and Lonely Planets, 'Tanzania', merits it with the vaguest of mentions, (less than 2 pages in the entire book according to my learned friend) so you may think nothing of any consequence happens there? You would be wrong. There are a few international events of interest, kicking off, in and around Arusha.
As a novice blogger I would appreciate any feed back or comments you would like to leave good or bad *(I will, of course, strike you of my Xmas card list if it's a bad comment). I am still getting to grips with the functionality of the software but, I hope I have now enabled the comments section after some hassle/feedback from readers. If you have specific questions or are interested in Arushas' international events please let me know and I will ignore you/respond accordingly.....
Jioni njema.
*If I had an Xmas card list.
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Hey Damian, by now I would have expected you to be involved in some or other coup, but it's good to know you're sticking to the mission and haven't gone dark (well, no darker than usual). You didn't tell me about this blog, but now that I've found it I must say it's really rather good. If you had only put this much effort into school you could have been somewhere with hot water and electricity by now. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteLook after yourself.
GK