Tumefika Tanzania (We've arrived in Tanzania)!

14 March 2007

After a lot of stress and work, and worry we’ve finally arrived in Dar es Salaam. We’ve now been here just over 3 weeks and are slowly getting settled into our house and into a routine.

Here’s a little information about where we are living. We are living in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This is a coastal city in East Africa located on the Indian Ocean. We are 7 degrees south of the equator. We live slightly outside the city of Dar es Salaam on the Msasani peninsula. It is a relatively well to do area, a lot of ambassadors live on the peninsula (though not so near us). The houses here generally all are on fenced compounds—some are very large and others (like ours) are more modest.

Our house is a one story ranch with 4 bedrooms. It has two bathrooms—though unlike the US, the toilet and shower are in their own separate room. The house also has a living room, dining room and screened porch. The kitchen has all the amenities of the US (minus a dishwasher). We have an oven, microwave, and refrigerator. Our house came furnished which is nice though it is rather bland (everything is white—couch, chair, curtains, walls, even the floors).
Here is a picture of our living room:

All the rooms have ceiling fans and air conditioners. The AC units here are different from the US. Each room has its own unit but instead of being in a window, they are attached to the wall—up near the ceiling. So each room has a little remote for working the AC—the challenge is that not all the units work all that well. The one in Josh and Ben’s room dripped water all over Ben’s bed one day. Thankfully we got that fixed right away. The best part of our house is the yard. It isn’t gigantic but it is really pretty. We have several coconut trees and lots of flowering bushes and trees. It’s funny to see what are houseplants in the US, growing in the back yard! We set up the soccer goals so that the kids can play soccer, though truthfully it has been a bit too hot to play.

Life on the equator is a bit of an adjustment. The sun rises and sets at the same time every day (6:30). While it is nice having the sun come up early (especially in February), I keep equating hot weather with summer so when it’s dark at 7:00 PM you somehow end up feeling like you missed something. Having the sun set so early also takes some planning. There are no street lights here so when the sun goes down it gets DARK. One of the first days we were here we went out to dinner and by the time we finished it was completely dark. Needless to say we got totally lost because the majority of the streets are unnamed dirt roads. So even though as the crow flies we were less than half a kilometer from our house we finally ended up driving the only way we knew for sure to get home which was something around 10 KM and entailed driving about as far out of our way as we could just to circle back and get home. One of those “in retrospect, it’s funny” moments.