Pole Samaki Pole

On Friday morning 10 of us piled into a dala dala that we rented, ready for what we were told would be a nice 5 hour drive. We stopped in Arusha and picked up a previous volunteer and her Tanzanian husband who were coming with us. A little cramped, but excited for the beach, we were off.

At around hour four of the trip, we started asking how much farther, to be told we were about an hour out of Tanga, the city before the beach. Three hours later we were actually in Tanga. Then we had to get to the resort. We drove through the city that smelt like daaga fish and onto a dirt road. Thirty or so minutes into the dirt road we came across a python that had killed a goat. We all convinced ourselves that pythons only lived in this area of Tanzania and there is absolutely no possibility that we will see them in Arusha. Another hour or so on that nasty dirt road (going an aggravating 30km an hour) we had finally made it to our resort! It was sweltering hot and we were all grouchy, but the fact we made it to the Indian Ocean was more than relieving. Five of us dropped our stuff in one hut, and six others in a separate hut. We threw on our suits and ran to the beach.

A little disappointed by the low tide and not so white sand, the sun and palm trees as well as the deserted beach made up for it all. The ocean was like bath water and not too salty at all, but yes dad this ocean did have salt too. We had a quick swim and went for dinner. It was soooo nice to not have more white carbs; most of us ordered salads and burgers. Exhausted after a long day of traveling we went to bed pretty early.

Anxious to hit the beach we had an early but delicious Saturday morning breakfast of fresh fruit salad and ran to the sunshine. Two hours in and it started to rain. And rained. And rained. And rained some more. It was still hot, but raining. Cliff, the Tanzanian that came with us, taught us the 'poor us' song.. It goes pole samaki pole, which translates literally into poor fishy poor. White people are also known as 'samaki', not just mzungu. We played cards and drank Konyagi out of plastic bags.. That's the fad here, drink your alcohol out of baggies. Strange, but does the trick. As the night progressed, there were more and more versions of the samaki song sung, including a 'remix' going pole little fishy pole, mixing Swahili and English. Pretty clever. Cassie and I split a FRESH crab for dinner, bashing our way through the crabs trying to get all of the meat out. One of our group had his birthday on the trip, so we had ordered a cake and we all had it for dessert. We all had too much Konyagi, learned dirty Swahili words, and went to bed early. Scared that the cockroaches from the bathroom would end up in our beds, we did not sleep easy this night.

Sunday morning we packed up and hit the beach for a few last hours of sunshine. We skimped on the sunscreen and soaked up the heat, not realizing how different the African sun is than anything else we'd experienced. After a quick lunch we begrudgingly got back onto the dala dala and headed home. Lucky for me, the true extent of my sunburn didn't rear it's fully nastiness until around two hours before we got back. Starving, exhausted, stinky and grouchy, we finally made it home. Two of us came right back to the house, and the rest went to McMoody's (African McDonald's) for some greatly appreciated western food. The two of us at the house whipped up some cereal and had a magnificent cold shower. I took some Benedryl for my millions of bug bites and went to bed, dreading the pain that the next morning would bring.

Currently I look like a tomato, with bows on my hips where my bikini strings were and a white strip across my face where my sunglasses were. I look like a goon basically. The coast was beautiful and so very different from Arusha. I'm glad I don't have that relentless heat to face everyday. A beautiful weekend escape none the less.