I made it to Dar es Salaam

Friday, march 26, I think

Well, two days later and many visits to bathrooms between boston, seattle and seattle, london and then london, dar es salaam. I felt like the bathroom moniter on my flights, the flight attendants were even sympathetically filling my water bottle and grimacing for me as they watched me race to the bathroom (can we call those things bathrooms) time and time again. Traveling with UTI makes life, oh so very interesting.

Aside from the growing panic and concern that I could get a kidney infection and that I was about to fly so very far away, I really missed my coffees at each airport, I missed the chocolate croissants that I give in to and look forward to at least one airport per trip. Since I have flown back and forth in the USA before taking the two 9 hour flights across the atlantic to get to Africa, this amounts to a 'lot of missing.'

As soon as I hit the ground here in dar es salaam, I knew what a good choice this had been. Sorry all of you citizens of USA, but we are just not as friendly or as open as people in these, so called, 'third world countries. Sure you have to be careful, sure not everyone offering to help is honest, but at least there are offers and plenty of them. I spent close to two hours waiting for my ride outside of the airport here in Dar, and it was a pretty good time. I was relaxed, people of all shapes and sizes, and in many different languages inquired as to my needs.

It was warm, ok, hot, and everything was so new and different. Well, not everything, the human warmth that I have missed while living in and about seattle, boston and newark was immediately evident as an integral part of life. I think now that I am more accustomed to traveling, now that I can relax, I am more capable of recognizing and appreciating this novel side of humanity. I love it.

Once I felt I had waited long enough, and this friendly nature I am describing, began to feel intrusive I decided to make my own way to my destination. Two taxis later I made it to the international school where I am staying. Why write clear directions when the driver assigned to pick you up already knows the way, YES, this is a rhetorical question and the answer is obvious, JUST IN CASE. Just in case the driver does not show up. As in my case, resulting in my first stop being the high school when I needed the elementary school. Alas, with plenty of help, some super smiles and a ride from a young man that spoke only a couple of words in english, I made here to IST, the elementary version. All has been smooth sailing since then. I had a quick shower, rinsed my clothes and collapsed on the couch for an hour with a pillow over my head.

I am staying with Tamara Peterson a teacher and world traveler, originally from colorado. We connected via 'couch surfers.' It is pretty amazing to be here on a couch with a fan, in a gated community with plans for the beach in the morning. Relaxed I am. Tamara is high energy and very positive. We have already gone to a local beach bar, a simple and more than adequate thai restaurant and mostly planned an around the world bicycle trip that will support the work of RLP and be really quite astonishing.

Not bad after so many days of traveling. Oh, yes, I managed to get in an afternoon of gardening in lovely seattle in between flights. The first flight resulting in a visit with Mollie in sunny, springtime Boston and a couple of days with my sister kris and niece joci, visits with brother jack, sister lauren and kids, emma and riley. Squeezed it was, but well worth the effort.

wow, it took me so long to find this blog, I am out of energy. Mostly I want to share that all is good, even great! And to reiterate, visitors welcome AND here we are on the same continent as the summer soccer world cup. TEMPTING......hmmmmmmm