Round Two - Dar Es Salaam

Round Two officially began upon our arrival at Dar Es Salaam, when the airplane door opened to admit a friendly blast of African heat into the cabin.  Luke, Colleen and I had been in the air for a solid 21 hours since Portland; our trip, including the layovers in Amsterdam-Schipol and Kilimanjaro International, rounded out to a full day altogether.  This plane to Dar was, magnificently, our last. 

After baggage claim (everything accounted for, thank God) and a longish screening process (Yes, we’re here as “tourists”) we received our visas.  Good for 90 days of legal residence, we noted appreciatively that they’re also significantly cooler looking than regular passport stamps.  High-fives all around. Out to the terminal: open-air and approximately 104 Fahrenheit.  We met Hamadi - driver, translator, Carpe Diem confidante – and then, without further ado, we were off.

Hamadi whisked us through the dusty streets of Dar to the gates of the hostel where we were to stay the night.  The drive (which, surprisingly for me, was on the left side of the road) brought us rumbling back into the third world, reintroducing the roadside shanties, bustling marketplaces, barefoot peddlers, and terrifying traffic that we’d all seen so often in the Fall.  Even by night, it was abundantly clear that we were nowhere near Kansas anymore.

                                          

The sensation of genuine cultural immersion is one of many things I’ll for which I’ll forever be grateful to Carpe Diem.  Our recent semesters with Carpe (mine in South America, Luke and Colleen’s in India) had effectively warmed us to this kind of living.  In a way, we’d come to miss the vagabond lifestyle - the discomfort, the unknown, the flagrant unfamiliarity of everything.  It felt oddly refreshing to change pace and add half a day to our watches, to pay an innkeep who spoke no English and fall asleep jet-lagged under a mosquito net again.                                                           

The three of us are here in sunny East Africa on the second semester of Carpe Diem Education’s Latitudes Year program.  The Year is comprised of a group semester (usually in the fall; mine was in South America, Luke and Colleen’s in India) and a Focused Volunteer Placement (FVP) the following term.

This FVP is dropping us into a terrifically new part of the world, giving us ultimate freedom to discover its culture, language, people, and way of life, and it is put-a-stamp-on-it guaranteed to rock our perspectives to the core. Without a doubt it’ll be difficult, weird, and beautiful by turns, and that’s exactly what we’re looking for.  There’s nothing like it.  I don’t know exactly what’s ahead, and I don’t know when or where I’m gonna be able to upload this, but for now I know we’re all incredibly happy to be here.

From the balcony