See You On the Dark Side of the Moon…

 Dar es Salaam, Friday, December 22, 2006, 2:19pm

In Zanzibar yesterday I stopped by a travel agent and said I wanted to stay at a hotel in Dar in the $50 range so they set me up at the $70 a night Peacock Hotel, overlooking the Mnazi Mmoja Grounds, a pitch of green in the middle of a stucco and concrete jungle. Either Africans don’t follow directions very well, there is a communication breakdown more often than not, or they are doing their own thing to serve their own needs, which is most likely the case as I’m sure this man got a commission for sending me to this hotel.

As you can probably tell, I am a bit jaded now and not as rosy and positive about all aspects of Africa. I think it is just one of the many phases a mazungu living in Africa goes through. There is a big difference between the time you spend in small towns and villages in Africa versus spending time in African cities. The African city makes the white traveler weary, weathered, and wise; granted this comes about as a result of getting ripped off or literally “taken for a ride” on more than one occasion. Sometimes however, when you are on your own, faced with a language barrier, and disoriented in a strange land, you have to suck up your pride, open up your wallet, and trust that the rip-off artist behind the wheel will get you to where you need to go. On a positive note however, it does not take long to distinguish between the face and tonal intonations of a hustler and the face and voice of an honest man.

Spending time in Dar, I can understand Bob Marley’s song “Concrete Jungle” better than ever. Although he was not talking about Dar, I’m sure it could be replaced with any poor African city where people are hustling, struggling, and fighting for not a piece of the pie, but rather a few crumbs of it, and inevitably in this struggle you find crime, disease, and poverty. Dar is no exception.

When I opened the curtains of my room at the Peacock Hotel this morning in Dar es Salaam (Slum), the multi-national billboard advertisements of Sony, Coca-Cola, Hitachi, and more, were silhouetted against a gray Seattle-sky. A light rain was falling but the Africans below my window were not dressed in typical Northwest Northface raingear, but rather kangas, football jerseys, burkas, work attire, and other colorful African garb.

The Peacock could pass for any American Hotel, and I will go so far as to say it is worth the $70 a night for peace of mind, air condition, and a room where I don’t need to sleep beneath a mosquito net. They are in the process of placing a fancy reflective glass on the outside of the hotel to make it look like a slice of Las Vegas in Dar, however, they are just covering up the shitty, dirty, weather-worn crumbling, façade; a clever play and a small investment to pay to charge more for their rooms and make them seem more international and glamorous. This morning I asked to see if the price was negotiable if I were to spend another night and they were quick to point out I was already getting a deal as the regular going price is $72. I did not have the energy today to argue, bargain, or find another place to stay.

I had a leisurely morning, like so many others in Africa, but awoke later than I had planned around 9:30. I had plans of getting up earlier and finding another hotel but my alarm did not go off, so I had a typically shitty breakfast of runny eggs, beans, and chopped up hot-dog which they call sausage, and then walked around for several hours. If I saw three white people in that time it was a lot. It was darkest Africa at its most theatrical and liveliest, and I was in the thick of it.

I strolled through the Kisutu Market which is around the corner from the Peacock Hotel and then made my way to the Kariakoo Market, which was one massive mass of African buyers and sellers for blocks and blocks. The actual market, which was a large, open-air structure housed by a wooden and tin-roof, contained everything from small fish to fruits, vegetables, herbs, and much, much more. The outlying blocks surrounding this enclosed open-air market were made up of store front after store front of the same shit under a different name. It appeared as if I was walking through the shoe district, followed by the car brakes district, the bra district, the electronics district, and more as entire blocks would be selling the same thing. In some storefronts, the front would be crowded seven people deep fighting over God-knows what. It was a sea of black movement with one white dot carrying a back-pack, meandering aimlessly, trying to move throughout it in the rhythm of the African, while trying to look confident, like I had purpose, and like I knew where I was going. I followed the African lead whether it was the pace at which I was walked or when to cross the street. This is also a good policy to follow as sometimes you are lost in your own mind and forget that traffic moves in the opposite direction you are used to.

The streets were muddy from the previous night’s rain and dirty, and people yelled of deals and bargains and of the latest goods on megaphones, storefronts cranked music with heavy bass, men on street corners had sheets thrown out on the ground with displays of shoes and clothes, people laughed and people yelled, cripples lay on the ground in crumbled masses begging for money, people laid in doorways, on cars, and sights, sounds, and scents swirled around me, threatening to overtake my senses. The scents of garbage and food filled the air and occasionally I would catch a whiff walking past a woman in a Kanga and think, she could probably use a “maintenance wipe.” This was true of the woman serving me at breakfast this morning as well. She would come over and ask me if I needed anything while I was trying to put a fork-full of runny eggs in my mouth, and I would catch this scent and want to throw up. I thought to myself, there is a good chance she has made Ugali in her shorts. I’m not a critic, just an observer, and I am more than sympathetic to these issues as I had a rather comical incident in the Serengeti that I failed to report. Perhaps I will get to that one later.

For the most part I did not get bothered this morning but rather received only a few strange looks running the gamut from; what is that muzungu doing in these parts, to – that mother-fucker probably sold my descendants into slavery. There was one or two woman that if looks could kill, I would certainly be laying on the sidewalk right now, my insides splayed opened for all of Africa to see what happens to the descendants of slave traders. That thought would not have entered my mind if it were not for an incident in Zanzibar; more on that later.

When I left the girls yesterday in front of the Flamenco Guest House in Stone Town, Zanzibar, I drove away feeling rather sad, and by the end of the night, when I was sitting in my hotel room alone watching the Discovery Channel, I felt as if I had a broken heart. I did not even realize it but we were traveling together for nine days and became fast friends. By day 2 or 3 we had all dropped our shyness and were comfortable enough to be talking explicitly about sex and bowel movements. These two polite and dainty Dutch girls had quickly shed their soft and womanly skins, turning into foul-mouth sailors with the minds of men. Let me tell you; when you are traveling on your own to an archipelago, these fine soulful natures are just the type of traveling companions you need. In the nine day stretch I spent with these girls I probably laughed more than any other period of my two months in Africa.

You get to know people very fast when a foreigner traveling in third-world countries and the topic of bowel movements become as common of topics as what is for dinner and local African politics. In a place where food hygiene is questionable at best, it brings bowel movements to the forefront. It was also nice being able to discuss these topics with medical students so they could prescribe the proper medicines when needed.

So many people come in and out of your life when you are traveling, and even with the best intentions, when you get home, time, distance, and routine can make those relationships crumble and fade like so many of the weathered facades of Stone Town, Zanzibar. I have a feeling with my two Dutch “ho’s,” as I affectionately referred to them, we will be friends for life, at least I hope so. I have plans to go visit them in Amsterdam and them to Seattle. Susan may even do a residency in Seattle or Vancouver, which would be ideal because I fell in love with Vancouver this fall and it would be great to have a friend there.

Last night I ate dinner in the restaurant of the hotel which was a rather depressing scene. There were just a few of us scattered about a large room which was clad in Christmas decorations of red, green, and tinsel, but there was just something off about it. It felt more like a Chinese restaurant that lacks any specific décor, and yet they try their best to be seasonal, especially around Christmas, perhaps by placing some tinsel on a gong or the patron taking orders wearing a Santa Claus hat. There is also something especially depressing and lonely about Christmas music in a foreign country. Although I can do without Christmas music in general, it can be very comforting when in the confines of your family home, but hearing “Silent Night” in a restaurant in the middle of Dar es Salaam, not so comforting; more like comically depressing.

I did overhear a young girl say something about Seattle so I introduced myself and we had dinner together. She had been in Africa a month and climbed Kilimanjaro and in Seattle, worked as a nanny. She mentioned how she had taken the ferry that day and what a nightmare the scene was. It wound up costing her $60 and it took her two and a half hours and I paid the same to fly and made it from Zanzibar to Dar in 14 minutes in a Piper airplane. Incidentally, 75% of the people on board were from Seattle, but this was no great incident considering the Piper only sat four people, but the couple who was on the plane lives only a few blocks away from me in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle.

Towards the end of dinner, another girl overheard us talking and she had grown up in Seattle but now lived in Brooklyn. She was over here on business, working for an NGO. She talked me into a nightcap of Johnny Walker Red Label at the rooftop bar, even though I just wanted to climb into bed. I am generally not one to turn down a drink, however, and I did not want to break my track-record on account of exhausted apathy.

I wish I had written more in Zanzibar because now, in my mind, the nine days seem to have melded into three days; one in Stone Town, one in Kendwa, and another in Stone Town. In reality, it was two, two-day stints in Stone Town book-ending five days in Kendwa. The days in Kendwa seem to melt in mind into beach time, beers, bikinis, playing guitar at the beach at sunset, reading in hammocks beneath palm trees, white sands, and the cool, refreshing turqoise and coral-blue waters of the Indian Ocean.

I suppose the first distinguishable thing that comes to mind is a beach party on Saturday night. People came from all over for the Kendwa Rocks beach party. The place was filled with tourists and locals, and some tourists with their eyes on locals. Apparently these African beach boys get laid quite a lot by women coming to the island for sex from a real, live, African boy. There are sex trades and tours all over; why not African boys? Many of these women are stupid enough to not even wear condoms which the beach boys will casually tell you, and the beach boys will also tell you what nationalities they like to fuck most (Scandinavians), which ones they like the least (Germans and British), and what type of sex each nationality prefers. I watched an older, somewhat attractive if not haggard Italian woman pick up a different beach boy almost every night. It became a game actually as each of us placed a bet on which one she would leave with that night. I suppose this sort of sexual play is a distant cousin, or an African variation on the fun and always exciting game called Russian Roulette.

I started my night on Saturday with a few Rum drinks which I parlayed into many Kilimanjaro, Tusker, and Safari beers, occasionally mixing up the segue of beers with Sambuca shots, compliments of the Kiwi I met on the ferry and whom I had shared a Shisha with in Stone Town. Even by just spotting him on the ferry, I knew he was a drinker.

The night found me drunk enough to be giving it my all on the dance floor, which is a very rare occasion, found only at a few bars and parties throughout Seattle per year. Our four-some turned to a two-some as Susan and the Kiwi disappeared to hook up somewhere. There were plenty of other people we were hanging with however, including a great crew of Swedish people I had met who had been doing volunteer work throughout Uganda.

Having had my fill of dancing and the meat market, I asked Judith if she wanted to smoke a joint down on the beach with me and I would play guitar. We smoked a joint, which turned into another, however there was not much guitar playing done in-between the uncontrollable boughts of laughter. Judith does not smoke very much and did not think it was doing much; granted, she is from Amsterdam and the weed I got from Rasta-Roger at the Scuba Shop was more like seedy Mexican dirt weed than what can be found throughout the cafes of Amsterdam – not to mention the world-renown “B.C. bud” that flows from the north into the United States. She did not think it was working; that is until she left the beach to get us some more beers whereby it hit her like a ton of African mud-bricks.

While we were on the beach, people would stop by and talk for a minute, and maybe I played a little guitar, but then they would move on. At one point some African came up to me and ripped me a new asshole. The situation is hazy, but I think he asked me where I was from, and with that he came at me out of left field about how I enslaved his people. He was probably mid-twenties, drunk, and angry as all hell. I was drunk enough to take it lightly and said, “Wait, rafiki (friend), let’s talk about this!” and I laughed it off in the spirit of drunken camaraderie. He was having none of it, however.

“Ahhh fuck you!” he said in his African accent, and stormed off. Is that discrimination? Reverse-discrimination? Whatever the fuck it was, it was the first taste of it that I had received in Africa. As I have said, I have received a few less than friendly looks, but this was the first open diatribe I had been on the receiving end of.

The next day was a waste as I was incredibly hung-over; at least I thought I was. Judith and I were both hurting something fierce as we had drank for several hours after Susan and the Kiwi disappeared. I made a few appearances that day at the beach, but slept for most of it in the hot, humid, still-air of my palm-thatched banda.

I made a strong enough recovery that night to have a few drinks and play some guitar with a few people as the sun set, but I went to bed around mid-night that night and woke up at probably 2am to cold sweats. I was shivering and shaking and put on a fleece, wool socks, and a wool hat – and it was probably 85 degrees in my room. I had a high temperature that night as something was trying to work its way through my body. Judith was equally sick so perhaps we drank something not too good or that angry African put something in our drinks. Several other people were sick as well with various symptoms, so perhaps it was just food from the beach BBQ that night. I was up almost the entire night however and was almost sure I had come down with malaria. Sometimes the symptoms come and go, but I didn’t have a severe headache so I just have to be mindful of the symptoms state-side.

Every day and every night I ate at one of several beach restaurants, each consisting of pretty similar food at similar prices. Mostly I ate with Susan and Judith, but towards the end we also met a 29-year-old Portuguese fellow who at one time had worked in human resources for a large consulting firm managing international projects, and now was a Safari tour operator for Spanish and Portuguese clients. When he talked, he had this Al Pacino/Scarface thing going on between his lip and nose and there was a quiet cynicism about him. I think this can work for or against a person, but for Ricardo, it worked for him and I found it quiet funny.

After the night of the temperature, Ricardo and Jessica, a Canadian girl living in Arusha, busted my Konyagi cherry. Konyagi is a local drink that you mix with Sprite or bitter-lemon. It was just the buzz I needed to pull me out of a day spent in a feverish haze.

I believe it was that night that a group of British young ”adults” showed up at Kendwa Rocks. This was Sunday night because they arrived around 10pm on Saturday night and thought every night went off like the once-a-month Kendwa Rocks beach party. The truth of the matter is that Kendwa Rocks is generally a pretty mellow, rasta-run establishment.

Youth is wasted on the youth. So on Sunday night these British girls and their troglodyte boyfriends showed up dressed to the nines, as they say, ready to party. Everyone was hungover and they hit the bar running and hard. They ordered several bottles of Konyagi not knowing what it was, and one of the larger meat-heads who was a parody of himself, cracked open the bottle and began to chug it. Konyagi straight up is something awful and he nearly spit it out and threw it up. Then there was a big commotion about them returning the bottles, not knowing you had to mix them, etc. Later, they somehow procured a giant bag of some liquor that they were all passing around.

The Dutch girls and I were saying how this group was sharing one large, mutated brain cell and clearly not enough oxygen was getting to all parts of the system. It was only maybe 8:30pm when the first girl fell flat on her face. Just as when you pass a bad car wreck, it became almost impossible to look away and I would change my seat to either side of the table depending on where they moved throughout the bar. At one point, one of the girls was on the bar dancing and, as I’ve said, this is a pretty mellow place. They became a spectacle for the entire bar to watch, free entertainment. I felt sorry for the largest meat-head because I am almost sure he will never find someone to love in his life as much as himself. Mixed in with that compassion was also surprise at the fact that nature and evolution had not yet stamped out this young boyish-man from the face of the planet. I guess you don’t necessarily need brains when you have brawn, and most likely daddy’s money.

Imagine to yourself how you would picture this big meat-head who thought he was God’s gift to women, in his muscle shirt and kanga (the kanga would keep falling to reveal his black, tight underwear which he was enjoying and seemed to think was fashionable) dancing across the bar floor, and that is EXACTLY what he was doing. He even sat down at a table of uninterested girls to try to flirt. His blonde and buxom girlfriend became jealous and sat down at a table of two other large men, who she did not realize were gay. It was probably crushing to her young and fragile ego, especially since her hulking boyfriend was hitting on someone else.  Meanwhile, she did not take her eye off the boyfriend. I was tempted to walk up and say, was that your boyfriend kissing that girl over there? There was money on the table if I did it, but I was pretty sure I would get a good beat-down from the large brainless Brit.

There was lots of dancing and girls hugging and falling all over the place, and the couples making out in the bar. They were everything that is wrong in mindless men and women, and even still, I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were just young and stupid. I told the Dutch girls, that these British girls are what we call, “young, dumb, and full of cum.” Judith and Susan liked this and made me promise to make a list of all the expressions that I had taught them. “I love the English language,” Judith said. “It is so to the point.”

I almost went snorkeling that last day but bailed out at the last second, leaving Judith with a group of British folks. Instead, Susan and I went for a long walk down the beach since in five days we had barely left our beach front. I felt somewhat guilty about that since when I travel to places I like to explore, but sometimes you have to say what the fuck, and call it a day. Incidentally, when we returned from our trip, we saw the British group getting off a boat, suburned as hell and the leader of the troglodytes was puking over the side

On the final night, Ricardo, Judith, Susan and I went to the Sunset Bar for dinner where Ricardo, the Portuguese tour operator, asked the waiter what the fresh fish was.

“The fish that is fresh today. Not the fish that is in the freezer,” he said as the waiter was slow to react. “Never mind,” he followed up. “I will go ask the kitchen myself.” Ricardo has obviously been in Tanzania longer than a year and knows that to get things done in a remotely timely fashion, they must be done yourself. He returned to tell us the Kingfish was the catch of the day.

When I was 23 or 24, I was in Italy finishing school and at one point we traveled to the beach town of Rimini. We missed the bus that night and had to rent a car to get us back to Sienna. I was in the car with four other girls driving through winding mountain roads and the girl who was driving was driving like she was on the New York Thru-way. I had asked her to slow down a few times but to no avail so I put on my walkman and listened to Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” while looking up at an Italian canvas of fresco stars, trying to come to peace with the fact that we were soon to plunge over the side of a cliff.

After the Sunset Bar, we were back at the Kendwa Rocks bar and “Dark Side of the Moon” was playing in its entirety. I’m not sure the Dutch girls were digging it that much but it was a perfect ending for me. The next time I hear it, I will not think of mountain roads in Italy, but my last night in Zanzibar.

The four of us sat at a table, talking, and laughing, our energy somewhat low but in good spirits after five days at the beach. Ricardo brought out his computer to show us a picture of a five-legged elephant which turned out to be an elephant taking a piss, but it might as well have been another leg.

Off in the distance lightning flashed, momentarily illuminating distant islands of the archipelago, and a slight but steady breeze rocked the light hanging above our table. Outside the open-air, thatch-roofed bar, a few Africans pounded their drums and sang local songs around a bon-fire.

And all of this occurred beneath a blanket of stars somewhere below the heavens of the southern hemisphere. We were a bunch weary travelers; two Dutch medical students, a Portuguese Safari tour operator, and an American writer – all new friends, all temporarily displaced people, all finding their way through their own maze of life, bringing but a small piece of the journey inside the journey to an end, and the soundtrack was “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Eclipse, from Darkside of the Moon
(Waters) 2:04All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel.
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All you save.
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy,
beg, borrow or steal.
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say.
All that you eat
And everyone you meet
All that you slight
And everyone you fight.
All that is now
All that is gone
All that’s to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.