I guess more out of habit that real need I woke up early today. I had quite a few things to organise today and was very grateful for Esther to offer me a driver for the day. It turned out these guys do not exclusively work for her but you can basically rent them by the hour and they get you anywhere you need to go. Since Dar is such a big city, it would have been quite impossible for me to get around without a vehicle. Something that didn’t change since I set foot on this continent, however, was the African attitude towards time: Esther had asked me to be ready at 9 am because that was the time she was supposed to get to work – and we finally ended up leaving around 10:30. Luckily, I was not in a hurry.

The first place I had to go was an American Express office because I wanted to buy more traveller cheques and according to AMEX information, this was the only place between Nairobi and Johannesburg where I could do that. Well, the trouble began when the lady behind the counter very nicely told me that my card was limited to a ridiculously low amount and that I may wish to call American Express in Germany for more information. I remember I had trouble with my AMEX card in Ethiopia and had asked my father to call them and check on it but they didn’t want to give him any information since it was strictly personal. Now that I depended on this card, my next mission was to find a telephone to call Germany for an affordable price. To make a (very) long story short, I ended up using my German mobile phone to call a German service hotline from Tanzania – and paid a fortune for this call: “Dear Worshiped Customer, if you would like to ask a stupid question, please press 1... if your question can be classified as brainless – such as why a cat should not be dried in a microwave, please press 2... if your request is related to extraterrestrial life and the vastness of the universe, please press 3... and if you would like to complain about our pitiful service or if none of these options are applicable in your case, please hang up the phone and call again... Ops, we are sorry but all our agents are busy right now, please hold the line... you might eventually be served sometime between now and eternity...”

No kidding, this call took 15 minutes, each and every minute charged at 5 Euro on my next phone bill. And when I finally had an Amex lady on the line, she explained me that my card had been cancelled by my previous employer because it used to be a corporate credit card and I was no longer working for them. Oh, really? Hm, how come that you Amex guys had told me before that I could keep this card until my new personal one would be available??? Obviously, my ex-employer had cancelled the card but it has always run via my personal bank account and when I contacted Amex in April, they had assured me that this would cause no problem at all. I couldn’t believe it, here I was somewhere lost in Africa, with my main money source dried out before I could even start to use it! Worst of all, the woman on the phone was very good in explaining me what the problem was but she had no idea how we could solve it, except that I needed to sign a new order form and mail it to American Express in Germany, after which I would have to wait 6-8 weeks to receive a new card that would, of course, have to be sent to my German post address. Very useful in my case. To crown this wonderful experience of helpless client being at customer service’s mercy, the telephone line got cut in the middle of our conversation without any solution found. I just couldn’t bring up the courage to call again and decided to postpone my despair to later.
The next thing to sort out today was my visa for Zambia where I intended to go after Zanzibar. So I asked the driver to get me to the Zambian Embassy and luckily I had no problems here. As usual I had to leave my passport and would have to come back tomorrow to pick it up. After a quick visit at a local supermarket to fill up my female hygiene supply (not easy in Africa!), I had to buy two more tickets: one for the Tazara Train to Zambia next week and one for the ferry to Zanzibar where I planned to go the next day. Getting the train ticket was like a walk in the park: I didn’t even have to queue but just wait until the man behind the counter got off the phone from what seemed to be a rather private conversation. I had to choose whether I wanted to go first class (4 people in sleeping compartment), second class (6 people in sleeping compartment) or economy (crowded no bed coach). When I asked whether the second class would have enough room for big luggage, the man only smiled at me as if he was thinking ‘oh, you stupid little tourist girl...’ In the end, I went for first class which turned out to be the right choice. I would have to stay roughly 42 hours on this train and that was definitely worth the 42 Euro for a first class ticket – which by the way was hand-written and looked like a ticket from grandma’s times.
Getting the ferry ticket to Zanzibar instead, turned out to be a nightmare. In the end, I decided not even to buy a ticket but only to ask for when the boat was leaving tomorrow. Remember when I was hassled in Arusha to sign up for a safari? Well, that one was nothing compared to the harbour of Dar Es Salaam! As soon as you step out of the car and are half-way identifiable as a tourist, you are fair game cleared to get shot. I can’t even say how many street touts came running towards me, trying to sell me a ticket for the different ferries going to Zanzibar and none of them seems to understand if you tell them that you only came for information. Anyway, you need to be careful with whatever they tell you about prices and time schedules because mostly it’s not even correct. The only reliable source of information are the ticket counters of the different shipping companies. Anyone else out here only wants your money – one way or the other. And when you don’t pay attention to them, they get aggressive. To be honest, I almost got a little scared when I kept ignoring a guy and firmly walked towards the other side of the pier to get to a ticket counter over there and he shouted behind me: “Don’t go over there, or you might get robbed!” – I didn’t know whether that was supposed to be a warning or a threat. In the end, nothing happened but as soon as I got what I wanted to know, I left the harbour instantly.
After this very annoying experience, I had completed my tasks of the day and the driver drove me to Esther’s workplace. She still had to attend a meeting but I was happy to wait for her. Actually, I thought it might be worthwhile to have a look at the SOS Children’s Villages organisation because I have been supporting them for quite a few years in Germany. The more I was disappointed – not to say shocked – to find three people sharing their office not only with Esther but also with three (I repeat THREE) television sets, each of them showing a different channel. I was brought into a room next door where the wall was actually some kind of dark glass. I was waiting there for Esther for about an hour and during all this time, I swear the people next door did nothing else but watching TV!! If this is where my money goes, well then I really need to ask myself some questions about supporting charity...
It was around 3 pm when Esther was done with her meeting and we left her office to go to a place known as ‘Slipway’. It is a kind of tourist retail complex at a certain section of the harbour of Dar Es Salaam. There are lots of souvenir shops with local arts and craft, restaurants, an open air market, etc.. Esther met with some friends for a drink and I took the occasion to eat my first pizza since Egypt and to suck up the atmosphere. Compared to the rest of Dar, this place was much more laid back and peaceful. Most people you would see here were white which led to my assumption that they were either tourists or expatriates. I don’t know if it was their colour of skin or the fact that this area was much cleaner and seemed safer than the rest of the city, but I felt really good here. There were no street sellers to annoy me, instead the shops and people were nice and unobtrusive. I especially fell in love with some handbags in a local arts shop (yes, handbags – ME!) and had a hard time forcing myself to get out of a bookstore with English literature. By this time, I was so hungry for anything familiar that it almost hurt to finally find it.

We got home around 7 pm and I spent the rest of the evening on the internet and writing my diary on Esther’s computer before I finally dropped to bed around 11 pm.