***************Work in Progress************************************************************

This account is a log of my adventure and search to live after college. I experienced things unbelievable to people who spent their lives only knowing only what is feed to them on television and a few other happenings in the local community. This journal is a story of my quest to venture out beyond the world of Basketball, Seinfeld, and the meaningless gossip that we have a tendency to fill our lives with. My volunteer work was much more open than a truly organized and well-funded organization. My project did turnout like it was described to me by a Tanzanian Priest, and my funding was pulled out from under me by Saint Johns Campus Ministry a month before leaving. I made a major decision and went anyway, and I got the adventure I was seeking. I would not do it again, but I do not definitely regret. You cannot live life through ABC, NBC, or the book of the month club. I do want people to follow what I did, but everyone needs their own adventure. I wanted to share my experience and encourage others to live life to its fullest. There is a world to discovered.

8-29-99

I am on a flight from Minneapolis to Chicago enroute to Dar es Salaam . I have not yet met my companion in my journey, Jeremy Fennell. I am slightly concerned in regards to my final destination. “Loose end” would be the best way to describe it. I do not know who what or where I am goint when I get to Dar es Salaam . My contacts are nuns and that is as much as I know. I hope the nuns will be expecting me. Labelling this journey as an adventure is a severe understatement, but I would not desire it to be any other way.

8-29-99

I slept for an hour on the flight from Chicago to London . Otherwise, I am partially sleep deprived. However, I did meet Jeremy in Chicago . We had separate flights from London to Abu Dabi, and his flight was cancelled. When I last spoke with him, he was scheduled to arrive in Dar es Salaam at 2:00 pm on Monday. I should arrive at 9:00 am Tanzania time. I am a bit concerned. I still do not know the name of the contact in Tanzania .

8-31-99

I had a separate leg of the flight then Jeremy as aforementioned, and his leg was cancelled. My leg was to Abu Dabi. After arriving in Abu Dabi,, I met Jake, a Canandian, and Beck, a Brit, Both were going to Nairobi . Jake's father worked as an investigator for the U.N., and Becky taught science in a remote region of Kenya . The flight was delayed eight hours, so the three of us got aquainted very well. Being delirious from lack of sleep, we told stories and laughed at each other quite a bit. Jake and I got a few extra laughs when Becky would give the airline company a “go” about our delay. After waiting eight hours without any information from the airline, we boarded as the sun was coming up. I was definitely not in western countries when our airplane flew over the schedule stop in Nairobi without notice. After the passengers who were planning to get off in Nairobi were creating commotion, the pilot said he would backtrack after Dar es Salaam .

I arrived to find my bags and obtained a visa easier than I was led to believe with trip preparation. Then, I was hounded by taxi drivers as a walked out of the baggage claim. I ended up arriving around noon . I waited for a while for Jeremy. I checked a aschedul and nothe planes from our airline, Gulf, were arriving. I waited longer. So, I figured Jeremy was delayed further. There was not good place to wait. I sat on my bags on the sidewalk. I had no contacts, and I was calculating how long I can stay on my funds if I do not ever meet my contacts. My trip may be cut short, but I had hope something would pan out. I took a cab to a hotel and terribly overpayed him. After a long time trying to figure out how the phone worked, I called the Diocese in Lindi. Apperantly, my contact was the “Palamia” house. The semi fluent hotel staff communicated that the U.S. embassy was close-by, but I could not get any other usable information from them.. I met two Israelis who were leaving Tanzania after a few months in Africa . They reccommended a safari and gave me H20 drinking tablets. These are tablets to kill parasites and bacteria in water. Meanwhile, Jeremy arrived with a truck full of nuns dressed in blue and light pink habits.

His luggage was lost. We decided to share the hotel since I paid for it. We ate and conversed with the Israelis again. The locals are less fluent in English than expected. I guess I should learn Swahili fast. Tomorrow, Jeremy are going to the Betania house to wait for Jeremy's luggage.

9-1-99

Yesterday, Jeremy and I registered at the U.S. Embassy. Then, we called the sisters to pick us up. Unfortunately, the sister that speaks English well has left to another region of Tanzania . Everything is fascinating in this new world. I say this as groups of large fruit bats take to the sky at dusk.

9-2-99

After the sisters pick us up in a Toyota Landcruiser, we ate homemade bread and tea. We met another man from Tanzania who is stay with the sisters at the Betania House. We works in Germany as an economist. He took us for a walk to visit one of his friends. The friend lived in a modest apartment by our standards. It had two bedrooms and no air conditioning of course. The rent is 120 USD a month. He took us the Jolly Club where he treated us to Safari brand beer in old German style beer bottles. Traces of German's colonization lurk about. Many beautiful native women were there, and they were assertive and eager to meet Americans and any foriegners. Most of them were prostitutes. A couple of other foriegners were lurking there since foriegners are one of the few who can to spend any amounts of money. A couple of older white men were with young African women. A Philipino sailor singled me out because of my short army-style haircut and asked for a consult on his bill. He was being gouged with his exchange rate. Bernard's friend was very savy and mediated the situation. One accosted Jeremy as he went to the lavatory, and as we were leaving, she interrogated Jeremy in broken English with a hint of intoxication. “I like you. Where you go? I come with you.” She said. She detained him for a few minutes before his was able to slip away.

Then, the next day, yesterday, I woke up early from the night out at the Jolly Club because of jetlag. I have not been sleeping well. Jeremy, Bernard (Tanzanian Economist), and I went to downtown Dar es Salaam on foot. The streets were dusty and the fumes from the cars were nauseous. According to Bernard, the city was very beautiful before the stint with socialism. There are reminatns of very nice buildings, but they are in disrepair. Beggers are abundant on the busy walkways. The beggers are mainly cripples who cannot work.. One had six toes. That afternoon, I slept. The evening, Jeremy and I watched traffic. The roads are dirt and bumpy. However, the poor condition of the roads do serve a decent purpose. They prevent most drivers from going at high speeds. An old Peugot passed three times that the bumps did slow down. The car came flying by in a cloud of dirt bounding up and down from the bumps in the road. We joked whether he was long lost relative of the fearless Evil Kneivel. If I would only know that events I would witness later would make this driver appear as tame as a kitten.

There are no curbs on the roads—only fences to mark the edge of the road. Most fences are made of stone and plaster. The tops are lined with broken glass. While, we were standing, a guy from the apartment we were standing came out to speak with us. The people are curious and very friendly. We were to speake with him again today at 3:00 pm . Jeremy and I ate. The nuns served rice with stewed chunks of meat, spinach and potatoes usually. The meal is accompanied with a variety of bananas and oranges. They have miniature bananas that are very sweet.

Later, Bernard took us to a club where we drank Kilamonjaro and Tusker beer. The appetizer was Koko and Mbuzi (Swahili for chicken and goat). People were very kind. However, the only non-African we saw that night was not very friendly. He looked Eastern European and quite drunk, and his Eastern European apperance was confirmed by his belligerent statement. He circled our table in a drunken stagger staring at us. He was mumbling something unintelligible but did blurt something intelligible out about Kosovo being bullshit. He then disappeared. Later, we walked home.

Bernard told us never to exchange money and informed us that the shops will increase prices for us. People would approach us to exchange money, but they usually left us alone if they saw we were accompanied by a native. Otherwise, people are very welcoming. They greet us with “Karibu” which means welcome and come again. Excuse me if I jump around with the topics. I am simply trying to log what occurred and not tell an eloquent story.

The rooms at the Betania House are nice. The beds are soft and clean, but there is no air conditioning or hot water, but somehow, the lack of conviences can be enjoyable. Their life has an essence of purity and simplistity. Their lives are contaminated with a lot of our junk. Life may be uncontimated in some ways, but it is diseased in the literal sense. The life expectancy is in its forties. The people are riddled with HIV. The people are not violent like in many poor areas in large American cities. People seem to care for each other, or so it seems to me so far. Then of course, our embassy was bombed here last year, but it was linked to the Bin Laden and the Sudanese.

9-3-99

I did not call home. I visited the beach with Bernard and Jeremy. I also saw a golf course. Supposedly, it is the only golf course in Tanzania . The greens were made of black sand. I do not know the history, but it looked a left over from early colonial days. Bernard knows a few people who are doing very well. He has a rich friend who trying to learn golf as a status symbol. A large modern hotel sat on the edge of the golf couse. The hotel is a modern, western hotel. Bernard was not happy that they took some of the golf course to build it. He complained of corruption that insiders can manipulate the system without much oversight. On the far side of the golf course, near the ocean, is an old, but wealthier part of town. The president's house is in this area. There is also a fish market in that area. The fish market was also a sight not to forget easily. Fish were laying out, and people cleaning and scaling fish everywhere. Waste juices from the fish formed puddles on the muddy walkway. Fish were being auctioned off in the middle of the noisy crowd. The smell of rotten fish mixed with the smell of fresh fish guts would make the most fervent fish lover run at the sight of fish for the next week. Another old friend of Bernard had her driver take us to the city center. The area is called Karikoo. The word may sound exotic, but it gots during British occupation. The United Kingdoms 's Carrier Corp stayed there, and Karikoo is how the locals pronounce Carrier Corp. The area had the congestion of Dan Patch Avenue at the Minnesota State Fair. People were selling everything everywhere. Makeshift stands similar to the booth at fairs were selling all types of foods and used clothing. People were also walking around selling. Some people even laid clothe out on the street and displayed their produce. No prices were set, and a shopper would have to argue every time to receive a reasonable price.

A group of Germans are staying the night at the Betania House on their way home. Also, the nuns had a celebration for the Arch Bishop. He has been a Priest for 25 years. Ironically, one of his nuns is at the College of St Benedicts in Minnesota . The nuns are becoming less friendly. Or maybe, we are just becoming familiar and our novelty is wearing off. Jeremy and I are planning to fly to Mtwara in southern Tanzania on Saturday morning. I guess we have to pay for our tickets. The nuns do not speak English, and I will have to inquire about that when we get to Lindi. We were lead to believe that the tickets would be covered. Yesterday, Jeremy's bags arrived, so the nun that drives drove us to the airport. Traffic get backed up frequently on major roads and we were pinned in traffic on a railroad track when a train rounded the corner and headed our way. The train honked, and it looked it was on an adjacent track. However, as it finally got around the bend, I could see it coming right at us. The omnipresent street vendors were frantically motioning the traffic to squeese ahead so we could get off the tracks. The train blew its horn again. The traffic could not move and the train was bearing down on us. People were yelling, jumping, and pointing at us. The train was only seconds away, and I had no choice but to dive out. I had my door open with my foot positioned to dive when the nun gunned it as a small space opened up. We sat in the silence of shock for the rest of the ride to the airport. I have tempted death before, actually far too often, but, when death is in your face, a person has to take time to think. I had my life flash before my eyes on a simple ride to the airport. I realize tragic death is not so uncommon here, and I simply have to watch myself or I will die.

9-6-99

Jeremy and I arrived in Lindi today. We flew to Mtwara via Air Tanzania . Our flight was rescheduled twice. Flights are cancelled frequently here. The radio would broadcast any changes in the flights, so one of the nuns would listen and have to communicate to us the change. The flight was moved ahead two hours, so it was lucky that the nuns were listening. Otherwise, we would have missed the flight. When we checked our baggage, it was double the allowed limit. The rate is 980 Tanzania shillings per kilogram. We were 4 7 kilograms over. We had 27,000 TSH between us. The airline workers reduced the price by 18,000 TSH when they found out we did not sufficient funds. However, we were still short by 900 TSH. I winked at Jeremy and told him to borrow money from the nuns thinking he would go around the corner and cash a travellers check. We did not say we had them. Otherwise the Air Tazania would charge full price for our baggage. Jeremy went, but he actually borrowed all the money the nun had, which was 400 TSH. He were still short, but they let us board anyway. Apperantly, bartering occurs with the airlines in some instances. The plane was full. I had to help the woman next to be buckle her seatbelt. They did not have reserve seating, and we had to find seats. She apperantly had never, or at least extremely infrequently, worn a seat belt. This obvious was not Kansas anymore. The airport in Mtwara was a tin barn. We picked up our luggage as the laid it out on the runway.

The roads near Lindi are atrocious. Everyone stares as our Toyota Landcruiser speeds over the rocky road. We are treated like royality. Food and drinks served at our wishes.

9-12-99

I travelled to Nangao yesterday and returned today. We stopped at what could be called an outpost in hilly, lush countryside. There was not much around but spectatuclar views. They had a couple of buildings that looked English, and they had a bell on a small tower. I assume the bell was for calling people to church service. I did not see a building that was a designated church, but I got the feeling the guy we met was a priest. He shot a boar a few days ago, and we ate stewed boar. We also stopped at a couple of parish churches. The roads were very passable for our four-wheel drive truck. At one village, a lion killed a person and injured two the previous night. So, the men over the age of 18 were gathering with spears, machetes, homemade bows and arrows, and a couple of antiquated guns. Twenty-or-so men had gathered with their weapons. They were dressed in what clothes that they had. One guy wore a small girls dress as part of his outfit. They were going to kill the lion. We got stuck ascending the Makonde Plateau in a sandy part. The Toyata Landcruiser overheated twice from spinning wheels. Two hours passed to travel only a hundred yards. People traveling on foot dug the sand away and pushed the vehicle. In exchange we gave them a lift. Nine people were crammed in the back storage compartment of the Toyato. Late afternoon arrived, so they were anxious to get out of there. The sand was a nightly playground for the lions. We slept with the lizards in Nangao, and we saw a fat, slow, but very poisonous snake. The priest traveling with us said, “If it bites you here (pointing to his ankle), we cut off here (pointing to the knee) right away or you die.” In the morning, we toured a local hospital and saw the tuberculious ward. On our return to Lindi, we stopped at a Sisal plantation and visited a convent. The sisal plantation was all but deserted. On Tanzanian independence, the owners were ran out, and the thriving plantation died. The convent was ingeniously powered by methane waste from cows. An 86 year old German priest was building a bridge with his own funds at the convent. He was the one that set up the methane generator. He has also built 17 large buildings in southern Tanzania including nearly all of the churches. Tonight, the nuns and the Bishop played canasta. The bishop is usually in an unpleasant mood, but tonight he was nice. I believe his unpleasant mood comes from not knowing what to do with us. He is having difficulty with the immigration office. They do not want to allow us to volunteer.

Date does not matter.

Many things happened, but I do not care to speak of them. Instead, I wish to tell my desire to write a book. I am digressing from earlier entries, but I do as I wish in my journal. Being in a religious setting (and a dysfunctional one), I want to address the larger questions in life. Religions never seem to adequately investigate the big questions. The tell what to believe, but it is usually vague and speculative answers pawned off as the unquestionable truth. Christianity has avoided the sufficiently answer the questions it was deseigned to answer. What is life? What is God? Why does not churches give answers? Why do they pretend to know everything? Why are people so permissive to the church? Why has the church become anti-progress in the last century? Where is the fulfillment and enlightenment in the modern soporific church services? Where is the fact-finding and discussion of the history of the church? Most believe the Bible simply fell from sky for instance. The Bible is instrumental, but the construction of

Bible has never been mentioned in a church service that I have attended. Why does the church acquire defensive posture to questioning? Should not the church lead instead of reluctantly follow the progress of its congregation? And, people wonder why I only go to church services on holidays out of tradition.

10-30-99

As I feel only to write at transition periods, I must log another change. I have been in Lindi for a considerable amount of time. Meanwhile, I have been to Mtemba beach and swam in the ocean. On one walk to the beach (45 minutes walk to the beach from the bishop's house), a land-rover started honking as cars often do do to move the myriad of goats and people on the roads. The landrover kept honking even after I stepped off the dirt road. I was thinking what the heck. I moved off the road. The car had five wzungus (European dencendents). All the whites guys living within a days travel was in this vehicle. Three English (two VSO and an NGO) and two Americans (a 10 year ex-patriot conducting forest research and a Peace Corp) heading for the beach. Jeremy and I were the 3 rd and 4 th caucasions in Lindi, a town reportedly of 30,000 denizens, so this vehicle was an extraordianry sight. The group was going to the beach to party. Two of the guys live deep in the bush and do not get out often, so they throw a party when they come. They do not get meat in the bush, so they are going to grill on an open fire, swim, and the obligatory consumption of beer. The night was an absolute riot. Dan, Peace Corp, was from Michigan and was a “lab rat” for some years. I will summarize the events in a choppy fashion as I remember them. Dan and the other guy from the bush made a women out of sand. Andy, VSO, soaked his camera. Dan said he was glad that I had a beer. Apperantly, he was waiting to see if I drank. He said everyone once and a while Jehoveh Witness come through trying to convert people, and he was not sure if I was one of them until I drank. I will have to add that Dan is slightly eccentric which could be surmmized since he lived in the African bush. With his stoned drawl, he kept saying “Say shikimoo not shikiboo. Shikiboo would not be good.” Shikimoo is a term of respect for elders that means I hold your feet. Shikiboo ment I hold your gentials. Andy, with his English sense of humor, told Jeremy and I to say shikiboo. Later, when we went to a bar, Andy was up to his antics again. Jeremy has not bothering to learn any Swahili, so when Jeremy asked Andy which “shit-hole” was the mens, Andy of course instructed him to go into the womens. Anyway, back at the beach, Tim, VSO, climbed a tree and we all through coconut shells at him while he drank his beer high in the acacia tree. People do interesting things without television or radio for entertainment. Nick, ex-patriot, and Eon, VSO, wrestled for an hour. We built a fire and picked up more beer and Jeremy. Nick and Tim ran up and down the beach with flaming palm frahms. Then, Dan lost his glasses when he sat them on the beach while he swam. We all went looking for them. Darkness came, and Andy had an idea that would have had us arrested in the US , but it seemed like genius after a few Tanzanian beers. Andy drove the landrover out on the beach to search for the glasses with the headlights. The chances of him seeing the tiny wire-rimmed glasses driving at 20 miles per hour probably was exactly even if his version was not blurred. He came roaring by us and stopped to ask Tim and I if we found anything. We had not, and we climbed on top of the landrover and sat in the luggage rack. Jeremy ran over and jumped on the bonnet (hood)to help search. until Andy gave up driving around looking for the glasses and started chasing Dan around on the beach with the landrover. Dan got the notion that he was a matador and the landrover a bull. Dan mooned us, and Andy started making “shitties.” Dan jumped on the small ladder on the back, and Andy took off full-speed down the beach swerving around debris and toward the legions of crabs roaming the beach—very dangerous but exhilerating. The beer flung from hands when Andy attempted an embankment. The following morning I found bruises from being from the luggage rack of which I clung. The glasses were never found. They are probably crushed by the landrover and pushed into the sand. Dan might able to get them replaced in Dar es Salaam —a hellish two to three day trip if things go well. The locals must have been shaking their heads at that stunt. Earlier in the day, 15 or so locals gathered and watch the wzungus(European descendents. plural) from afar. They were probably quite surprised by seeing 7 wzungus. For the last sixty year, the volunteer wzungus in the area have gathered at this beach. The locals do seem to be interested in taking advantage of the beach. A hotel once stood on the beach during English colonization, but after inderpendence, the propertiers were run out and the hotel died. The African-communism era came, the building collapsed as did the economy. Not a trace of any civilization is left there except for two rusted ruminants of small trucks back in the trees.

We ate beef and swordfish cooked over the fire and headed for a bar where the aforementioned incident with Jeremy occurred. I was concerned since the long day of drinking and the driver could not figure out how to turn off the wipers despite our incessant complaining. Eon assured me that everything would be fine. Nick and Tim were very fluent in Swahili and could get us out of any trouble. Besides, no mzungu has gone to jail in these parts in the history of Africa accorinding Nick. With no tourism, the police would be easy to bribe. At the bar, we listened to a local man swear in English to our delight, and Nick tried to pull the table cloth without knocking over the vase on it. He attempt was futile of course. Nick, Eon, and Dan showed off their African dancing skills as they jumped about.

The next few weeks Jeremy and I ventured through the town and I bought ebony Makonde carvings. We have been given the run around from the bishop, and our placement at a volunteer site is unclear. So, we went on a vacation. We rode in Nick's pickup over the arguably the worse road on the planet. We made a count of vehicles over a 200 km stretch of road that took us five hours at reckless speeds. We counted 12 fresh breakdown with people trying to fix their vehicle versus 24 vehicles working. When the weather turns bad, people have been stranded in remote in areas and starved to death on this road. Our vehicle was a Toyota pick-up. Jeremy and I switched sitting-in the back with some locals that paid to sit in the back. A girl sitting in the back started puking from the bouncing, rapid acceralation and deceleration. I also saw a man standing outside a newly broken down bus vomiting. The conditions that the locals endure are incredible. One man slept despite all the bouncing. His head whip-lashed and hit my knee, and he did not wake up. We stopped and ate chip mayai.--chunks of potato cooked in an omelette. Nick said he secretly eats when he travels alone. Thieves are known to slip a poison in a travelers food and rob him or her while they are unconscious. We needed to make it to Rufiji river before dark. A ferry will take us across the river, and the ferry quits running at dark. We made it to Dar es Salaam in only a little over 16 hours. Buses and larger trucks take 24 hours to drive the 600 kilometers. I did not sleep well that night. My neck was tense and painful from trying to stabilize my head on the trip. I had a deep bruise on my back.

Next day, we boarded a boat for Zanzibar . Charles, a local guy, was planning to come with us. However, he thought we were going to pay for everything. Charles spoke English but apperantly there was still a language barrier. He regretfully had to turn back when he realized we could not afford to pay his way. As it turns out, he could not afford it on his own, and I wish I had enough money to treat him with a chance t to see Zanzibar . He lived with his sister twenty something sister. His sister is married to a much older but well off government financeer. His brother in-law gives him only a small allowance equivelant to 20 dollars a year. Charles was even prepared to skip college examinations to see Zanzibar . The taxi drivers and other street salesmen were vicious at the port. Piranahas at a feeding frenzy when they saw Wzungus. The thick crowds and everybody was trying to get your attention. The only chaos I have seen similar is on documentaries on the stock exchanges. But here, Jeremy and I were in the middle of a large sell-off, and we had to push our way through as people tugged and our bags. On the boat, we met two Germans and a Greek. The Greek, Estrados, the Germans, Jan and Dietmar, were approximately our age and in a foreign land, so we had much in common compared to the the any other people we have met. Estrados showed a piece of his personality when he looked at the German's map and said in barely understandable English, “Where the fuck are the drugs and the chicks? They should have a sign that says chicks here and drugs here. What kind of fucking map is this?” After more formal introductions, the group of us went up on the open deck, but Estrados got sick and ran into a wall. The water was spectacularly blue and the flying fish cruising next to the boat were an exotic treat. The boat landed, and the immigration check was a farce. They simply looked us and waved us by as they stamped our passports in a confusing crowd. Locals swarmed us and asked where we wanted to go. We decided on a hotel called the Malindi. We negiotated a a price and picked up a 30 year old English woman who has been traveling for six months. The six us took three doubles. The hotel had air condition, hot water in community bathrooms, and breakfast for 10 dollars. However, once you were in the shower, you could touch the shower knobs without getting a moderate to strong shock. You would have to use a towel to insulate you hand when turning the water on or off.

All six of us wandered around town. Estrados managed to buy marijuana. A local Indian showed us around, but he then took us to an overpriced Indian restaurant. We left, and we did not regret it since we later found out it was a ruse where the local man gets a sizable kick back. Other people offered to take us to the very same restaurant later in our wanderings. Zanzibar town's maze of streets has a dream like quality. The streets in the heart of the city are too narrow for cars. The buildings are balconied three story white buildings. The doors are wood and brass with aggressive points pertruding. Woman are often seen lurking about immersed in black hoods. Only their eyes are left uncovered. These women possess an exotic air of mystery, but the traditional belief that woman are property of their husband with no voice overrides any romantic beauty in the traditional customs. The town seems lost in time or another world. Nobody knows who he is here, but Freddie Mercury was born here. I cannot believe a person so familiar to America rock culture came from a place so foreign. Frankly, I cannot image anyone growing up here. Although, his origins in Zanzibar might explain some of his eccentricities. We made our way to the terrace at the Africa House. Another guy who was showing us around was not allowed to enter. Locals apperantly were not allowed. The place was full of a hundred Caucasions. I did not see that many Caucasions in the last two months. The sunset was esquisite, and the people dispersed, but it was nice to be among people in like situations. I am not sure if there were any other Americans there, but I felt more relaxed and almost a tacit bond between everyone there. We ate at the nightly food market on the shore in front of the old Portuguese fort. The food was delicous, and they prepared it right in front of you. Fresh lobster and fried potatoes set a person back a meager $1.20. In any other place in the world, a person could not get a single bite of lobster. Later that night, we went to the Garage Club. Jo despite being older wanted to come, but she sustained a sprain ankle in Mozambique and decide to rest it. The Garage Club was a very strange place. The music was American and ten years old. The place was occupied by Wzungus and prostitutes brought in from the mainland. Bizarre events entailed. Prostitutes were swarming around. I left early and walked back to the hotel. A prostitute accompanied me on my walk. Her pimp and two friends showed up to negiotate. I was thinking that it was safer to be accompanied by them, and they would at least watch out for a costumer. This assumption might not have been right. I negiotated a little but was unwilling to compromise to what they were asking. The hotel manager tried to stop her, but the she argued with him and said that I wanted her to come up. Sometimes extra rules apply to foreigners here if they want a bribe. Other times, we are allowed to break rules-like bringing a prostitute back to the room. This woman was gorgeous. Her English was broken to non-existant. She paced around the room. She smelled some lotions looked at a lot of things. Then, she picked up a roll of film and indicated this would be good enough for payment. She was gorgeous. Amazing gorgeous, and all she wanted was a roll of film, but I am was not going to just engage in a random fling—and especially not with a prostitute—and especially not with a prostitute in a country where a third of the people have HIV. It is playing Russian roulette with the gun fully loaded.

The five of us guys were going together to the east coast the following day, and Jo was going on a tour of the area spice plantations and onto Pemba . Two private car for hire drivers were literally brought to fisticuffs in the hotel entrance over who was going to take us. The scuffle was broke up, and we decide to take the car from the guy who sold Estrados the drugs. Drug dealers pull all sorts of scams, and when he did not scam Estrados, we thought he could be trusted. A common scam for drug dealers is to sell drugs and then collude with law enforcement to extort money from the buyer to keep out of a Tanzanian jail. The people are desperate and they will try anything they think will work.

The east beach was like nothing I have ever seen- so white, so fine, so deserted, and the water was such turquoise blue that I have only seen on postcards – absolutely breathe-taking. We stayed at a nice but cheap guesthouse for 8 USD a day with breakfast. A dinner with the daily catch from the local fisherman mending their nets out front. There is only one bathroom. I cut myself on the rusty latch on the shower door. The food is prepared by local help just outside the bathroom. The dinners were plentiful and good.

A wooden dhow (old sailboat) took us out to go snorkelling. Estrados sharpened a stick in case any sharks are in the area. A 40 year-old English woman and an Italian couple came out with us. Jan (Pronounce “yawn”) swam for four hours out to the breaking waves. I never swam so much prevously. I was never as red as I was the next day from the blazing African sun. The fish were beautiful, but unfortunately, the coral was mostly the same sterile white as the sand on the beaches. Estrados did find a nice piece of red coral and of course took it. The English lady was outraged. And rightfully so. The last piece of colored coral was poached. His reckless ways was amusing, but this was the dark side of it. His reckless brought destruction to things around him. As we were in considering what in fact a horrible thing that he has done, he decides he not want it and tosses it back to the ocean where it came. Estrados might have a heart after hall. However, what happened next abhorred us all worse. I could only shake my head and laugh. What he did was open his mouth again. He said that he did not want any coral. He collected enough when he was in Egypt . Everyone starred at him. No one new what would come out of his mouth next. He said he brought a huge bag of coral home from Egypt . The coral there was in big beautiful reefs. He could not simply pick coral up there. He needed a hammer. The second time that he went snorkelling. He brought his hammer. He dove down and hammered away. He said he procured beautiful specimens, and he said that everyone was starring at him. For a man that usually has people starring at him for one antic or anthoer, I can imagine that they were glaring at him very intensely for him to make not of the starring. He made all the home with his contraband coral. His ignorance is not inherited from his parents apperently. He said they were sorely upset with him and his harvesting of coral from endangered reefs. He said that he did not know and shrugged it off. Yet he did it again. We ended up parting ways with Estrados at a fancy hotel in Zanzibar town. As we left him alone, he was still setting down his bag and walking away from it. It is a matter of time before it is stolen. I wonder what he will do then. He was blissful in our separation. He had plans. Big plans. He wanted a nice hotel so he could have “rich sex” with two hookers that he eyed before at the Garage club. Good luck in the rich sex. I am in awe that he has lived this long with his current constition. Estrados is an example of a very interesting human people. His existances actually is quite confounding. If I would not have met him first hand, I would be skeptical of the existance of such a person. Truth is much stranger than fiction.

Anyway, we left Paje and went to Dar es Salaam on the night ferry. We boarded the ferry in the night, and it left early in the morning. We boarded and slept. All the mzungos slept in a separate room. Jeremy and I had a residence permit, so we got a cheaper price. I do not think we were suppose to sleep in the mzungo room then. The officers did not check nor would probably make us sleep in the other room if it was discovered. Jeremy and I slept on the padded floor. There was an older belgium couple next to us. Jan and Dietmer slept on a bench that wrapped the room. I woke up in the night. The mzungos room was filled. Some pretty girls were asleep just above me on the bench. The next morning I discovered that the girls were French given the French that they spoke. Everyone was crammed so tight. There was a bond forged in the intimate nature of the co-existance. One of the girls smiled at me. I smile back. I am too shy and did not know what to say to a French girl. Oppurtunity lossed. Jeremy woke in the night to a local man picking up his shoes. When the man saw that Jeremy awoke, he scurried away into the room with the other native Africans. Life is not the same here as back in the United States . We were reminded of this every ten minutes.

We got of f the boat. We split up with Deitmar and Jan. We said as prolonged and heart-felt good byes that 20-something men from the socially cold regions of the Midwestern USA and Germany could. We took the long dusty walk back to the Bahtania house. Salesman from the port were preying on the travellers getting off. One man followed us for an half hour as we weaved through the streets.

The could showers at the Betania house actually felt really good this time. He got our things back together and took off again. We walked to the bus stop to catch a bus to Arusha. Arusha has promises of animal parks on serengetti. We were exhausted and thrill from our sojourn in Zanizibar, but optomistic for another exciting adventure in Arusha. The bus stop was chaos. By standards of live back in the US , all of Tanzania was chaos, but the bus stop was a swirling mess of chaos amidst the rest of the chaos. We were trying to get on luxury bus. The only describtion that could come close to the choas is that we were on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and we hand the the hot stock to sell. We were mobbed with half-fluent boys and young men putting tickets in our faces. They were shouting the little English that they knew. Notable difference between us being stock brokers on the stock exchange floor is that we were had a considerable amount of luggage on our backs, and these salesman were not overseen by any regulative body. I argued with a few different guys until I was satifisfied that we were in fact on a luxury bus and that we had a reasonable price. We paid 7000 Tsh for our tickets to Arusha. The bus was crowded. We were smashed in like sardines. I could not sit up completely straight because the space alotted for us was not as wide as our shoulders. The leg room was so tight that Jeremy's knees rubbed on the seat in front of him. His knees were red and raw by the end of the trip. The trip was long. The bus made frequent stops. The bus was full of native Africans. At one stop, a white girl got on the bus. She was way up front, and we were in the back. She got off at a remote stop after riding for a couple of hours. She was on the only other European person on the bus. I do not recall seeing another European at all that day on the bus. However, I probably saw one in car at some point. I would have like to ask her what she was doing. I would have especially would have asked her if she thought she was safe. The culture did have a great deal of respect for women as human beings. She was young – in her twenties—and fair looking. Being white attracts a great amount of attention here. She would have to been a favorite target of theives and unwanted advances of men. I watched her get on the bus, and I watched her get off. She had the harden look of a person who has been here for awhile. She did not smile. She did not greet anyone. She was a person who was wary of her situation. I got a feeling from some other people who appeared to be in similar situations. They appear to be alone. They are suffereing here alone. No one to relate to. They are here for a mission. They want to serve that purpose, but they do not like the people that they are helping. However, they are here suffering for those people. They must see some hope somewhere in these people. She disappeared in the country alone.

We stopped a few times. Children of age 6 to 10 crowded around the bus to sell small vegetable or meat filled pastries that they called mermosa. I ate some with meat in it. They were often offering the vegetable ones to me. They expected to me to prefer the vegetable ones, but I did not. Thinking back about the risk of eating the meat, I wish I would have ate the vegetable ones. Who knows were that meat came from or it was safe. Was it filled with parasites? Buying anything is a risk in the African countryside, but buying some unknown meat from kids at the side of a road is a risk that probably was not the smartest. It was always intereting how the prices would start to fall as we got on the bus. Prices would be cut in half. We were being gouged, but what could we do. One of the stops was at what appeared to be an old gas station. It looked like a normal gas station in America would have been about 50 years ago. A difference being that the construction was done mainly out of concrete. It was no longer a gas station. It was probably left over from the English. It is not deserted. There were people hanging around it, and the kids were selling food to us. It seemed like an site of archeaological significance. A set of buildings lefts over from an earlier civilization that has long since disappeared. There were even a set of concrete out houses in the back. Like everything there, it was left over from a different time for different people. It was disregarded. No one used that toilet. Instead, people appeared to have been using a ridge adjacent to one of the buildings. I got an uneasy feeling snooping around and headed back to the bus.

The bus was delayed, and we got into Arusha late. I have heard that this bus stop was not the safest place despite some police being in the area. It was dark, and we did not know exactly where we were going. We obviously stuck out. These situations are the ones that one would like to avoid. The bus station is nothing more that a dirt parking lot. A crowd gathered around the bus. It was more chaos. The crowded bus was struggling to empty out. The storage doors were opened under the bus, and people started going through it looking for their stuff. We had some luggage put in the storage area under the bus. I decided to stay in the bus and watch the luggage door where our luggage was located. I wanted to watched to make sure no one took our stuff while Jeremy attempt to fight through the crowd to get our stuff out of the bus storage. My head was hanging out of the window, and I was watching. My light skin must have been like a neon light advertising to come rob me. A 13 year old boy yelled up to me in heavily broken English, “Why do not you go out?.” It seemed strange at the time, and it seemed strange why we asked. Soon it would become all to clear. It was taking Jeremy a while. I am not sure what was going on, but I knew something was not right. Jeremy did not come right away to the storage area. Then, I could see him making his way through the crowd. He looked a little more dazed and in a little shock. He got the bags, and I made my way off the bus. I got to him, and we got away from the crowd as quickly as possible. I asked what happened. He responded that he someone got into his backpack. And things were missing. Vital things. The moment he stepped off the bus. He felt something strange and turned to see his sunglasses falling to the ground in the middle of the crowd. Then, in an instant, the sunglasses were gone. He had other things in his bag. Things that should have been that accessible like traveller's checks, immunization information, intenerary plans, and his passport. His PASSPORT!!!!. It should have been in his bag – not in this crowd. It was in his bag, but not any more nor was his travellers checks nor his glasses nor some other papers. Stunned in our situation, we did not know what to do. We did know that we could not hang out there. We were vulnerable targets in the hot African night. Dirt was under our feet. A few lights glowed in the hazy night at the edge of the station. We were dirty, tired, and vulnerable, and everyone knew it. We would have to look the lion in the mouth and not flinch in order to get out of here. We certainly had to look like we knew where we were going and what we were doing. A car is a much safer place than standing in the open. A few beat up cars were at the edge of the station. They were taxis – cars for hire. We got in one. They were happy to get business. They guys operate on an independent basis. Business mean money in their pockets. Once we got in. We talked about were we need to go. They said they could get us there. Then, we told them Jeremy had some important things taken, and we what could we do. The taxi consisted of a driver and his boss. They rode together and negoitated terms of the ride together. I felt a little safer in the Taxi. I did not want to trust these guys, but they seemed upright individuals. His passport was taken