asubuhi nzuri (good morning)

Reporting live from the Movenpik hotel.

We have found that people really like the TV reality show Big Brother Africa. This is where people from all over the continent are selected to live in a house covered in cameras, with no outside contact. They must complete tasks (like building a stage and performing on it, on making a meal representing their country) every day and only after the task is completed, do they get food. There is 24/7 coverage, and you can tune whenever you want to a particular station. Anyways, I kind of feel like our lives have been a bit like that. Every day we have one big task, and then we are granted food. So much food.

Tuesday's task: navigating the streets of Dar on our own. After checking in, we made 3 excursions around town. We didn't really have a purpose...just wandered. And then after an hour, we would retreat to the hotel. We serendipitously found my father, just as we were about to give up on finding food (it is currently the month of ramadan and a lot of places are closed for lunch), and he helped us find a sandwich (see rewarded with food for trying! though on big brother, if you fail, you don't get food...). Then, to top off a whole morning of walking, we went on another long walk with Karim uncle along the seaside. It was peaceful and beautiful.

Wednesday's task: Visiting the marketplace with Bertha (Zahra's "godmother"). The marketplace is not like any other place in town we had yet visited. It was swimming in people (and supposedly it was emptier because of ramadan) and under a tented area, people had piles and piles of fresh fruit, vegetables, rice...There were even crates of fresh chickens that they would slaughter for you right then and there. We did not stay long enough to see someone get a chicken.

Thursday's task: Ordering food and picking up a taxi on our own. We went into town bright and early with Salim uncle. We walked to Karims/bapas and left, soon there after, with Karim for the medical university, where he works. He took us through a new part of town for us, western Upanga. The university was empty; classes do not start for another week. But Karim is off-loaded with work. We toured the campus, got an inside peak into the library, and ate at one of the cafeterias. While Karim ran some errands, we killed time by walking around the nearby hospital compound. Then, around 1, we left for home...but little did we know it would be a 3 hour execursion, back to the market and down many streets whose names I can not remember.

We left Karim in search of a taxi. We were practicing exactly what we were going to say to the taxi driver, and our meager attempts at haggling in swahili. But turns out we didn't really need to bargain. The taxi driver volunteered the price we were aiming for: easy kabisa!

Friday (today): Our task is to buy ferry tickets for Zanzibar...

Besides walking, we have been doing a lot of eating goat, strange fruits, spicy lasanga (we actually have eaten italian food twice) and drinking lots of Tusker beer.

Plus, we are constantly surprised by random sites on the street. The other day we saw a guy where a red sox champion t-shirt and a yankees hat....never would you see that in the US.

---While Zahra was writing what you see above, and I started talking to a guy in the computer room. He commented on my red sox shirt, and after a while he realized that his girlfriend is of one of the girls who we'll be staying with in Moshi. Crazy world! He says the place we're staying at in Moshi is really nice. So that's good.

Anyway, as you can tell all is well here and we can't wait to hear from you guys!

-Zahra and Max