Homeless no more!

Rejoice! We have found a house and after a few minor repairs it will be just lovely!

Everything about it is wonderful, our neighbours work for German Aid, our landlay is a priest, we can walk to work and... it has an extra bedroom! So you should all start booking your tickets now to come vist me. Now it does not have consistent power or water, and because it was sitting empty for so long before we came the ants and giant spiders took over in places, but that will all change soon. It has to - the ants bite. We have declared war and despite ample supplies of DOOM bug killer and many large brooms so far the ants are winning. The spiders however, seem to have clued in that they are no longer welcome. Which is good because I googled poisonous spiders of Africa and suddenly wished I hadn't.

Now because we lack certain ammenities such as electricity we decided to invest in a gas cooker so we could at least make dinner in the dark. Last night we decided it was time to start eating in, so we bought the cooker, bought groceries and went home. Turns out that in Tanzania you really get what you paid for - our bottom of the line gas cooker is just that. Our gas cooker adventure started when we tried to put the thing together. It seemed simple enough, step 1: put gas in cooker, step 2, attached support ring to bottom of cooker to keep gas in place, step 3 screw on burner, piercing gas canister, step 4 cook. We never made it to step 4. At step 3 gas started coming out of every orfice in the cooker at high pressure. We thought, oh maybe it's just excess that needs to leak off, it keeps going, and going, and going, and we get light headed and then we run outside with the gas cooker, which is now excruciatingly cold due to the kerosene leaking out all over everything. Anyways, we sat on our deck and watchew the gas leak out and kill ants (bonus!) for the next 20 minutes or so. We had sandwiches for dinner.

House Hunting Vignettes

The Mansion: The 'short-cut' to avoid the rush hour traffic takes us twice as long as it would have if we had stuck to the paved road. It also means hitting our heads on the roof of the car every 30 seconds. It is a fortress, with 12 foot walls, and barbed wire at the tops. There are servants quarters in the back and a living room we could hold full balls in with ample room for 40 plus guests. The bedrooms are massive, the kitchen is brand new. It is also the cheapest place we have visited so far. This seems too good to be true. On the way back we take the route we would be walking. It is almost impassable in a Land Cruiser. The mansion will remain empty.

The Brothel: It is furnished fully, with a flat screen in the living room. There is internet and cable TV. Each of the five bedrooms has an ensuite bathroom. It is luxurious and close-by the road. It is the nicest place we have seen so far - we want to talk to the landlord. There are three security guards included in the price, as is the house girl and breakfast, but wait, there is something in the doors! There are keys to each bedroom that say Ikitari Lodge - is this a hotel? The landlord arrives:
You can have three of the five rooms for that price. I will continue to rent out the other two. But, you will be the only ones using the kitchen and living room.

- But, they are open to everyone, how would he ensure that?

He does not need to ensure it, his regular clientele don't stay more than one night, and leave very early in the mornings..... No wonder all the beds are so big.

Homeless in Dar

So, I'm in Dar, and homeless. Thankfully, so are Rebecca and Flora my two soon to be roommates should we ever find a place. We arrived in Dar at 10:30pm last Tuesday. Our first week has been quite eventful. We started our house search bright and early Wednesday morning, and have been searching ever since. We are extremely lucky because right now the three of us are staying a friend of Rebecca's, who is in Canada on leave. Rebecca is the other MEDA intern and has visited Tanzania before so she knows some swahili and her way around, which has been invaluable in our hunt.

Perhaps the best way to explain how one find's a house in Dar is to describe one of our many adventures. First of all, it doesn't matter if you go to a registered agent or a guy on the street, inevitably you end up as we did last night, in the back of a tiny hatchback with one legal agent, several illegal ones and a spare tire because your agent was in a car accident on the way over and needs to give the tire to some garage which will be fixing the other automobile. This ammounts to 6 or 7 people in a 4 person car with no seatbelts. Anyways then you get taken to several houses that are waaaay out of your price range, or not what asked for at all. The problem is, the ones that they say are in your price range turn out to be twice that when you talk to the landlord. Oh, and they only want to rent for one year, no less. We're here for six months, and it's unfurnished. This despite the fact that you have explicitly said over and over again that you need a furnished place for 6 months for x a month. It's all part of the experience, and you can't help but laugh because there's nothing else you can do, but we really need a house and fast. I've started dreaming about house hunting, and that's just not a good sign.

Dar is beautiful and dirty at the same time. They burn their garbage here, and the waste water channels are open troughs on the sides of the road, so it can smell. Everything is dusty, and the traffic is ridiculous. It is also on a giant bay of the Indian ocean, with blue water, white sand beaches and lush tropical trees and flowers. There is an electricity and water crisis right now, so keeping cool or storing groceries is hard, thankfully eating out is cheap and at the office lunch is delivered!

Work is great, the people are wonderful, the office is lovely, and my project is really interesting. I have been reading and summarizing reports for the last two days to help me get aquainted with the work. I'm really looking forward to next week when, in theory, I will be doing some site visits to see how things actually work in the field.