Friends & Houses

It’s hard to believe that a year ago I was leaving Tanzania not sure when I would be returning. After three months working as a volunteer here in Dar es Salaam I had forged many friendships and did not feel ready to return home. Now, exactly a year later I am back working as an intern at MEDA – what a wonderful privilege to have returned!

It’s been just over a week since I arrived with two other interns from Canada after a long and tiring 20 hour flight from Toronto. Kindly, a friend I met last year picked us up at the airport and helped cram all of our oversized bags (we are here for six months after all!) into his car and drove us to another friend’s house who offered her place to us while she is away.

Our focus since arriving has been to achieve three objectives:

1) Buy cell phones (in Dar this is the only way to communicate!)
2) Locate our offices (addresses and street names are less common here in Dar and landmarks are more commonly used to describe a location).
3) Find a place to live!

Our first two objectives were achieved our first day here and we felt quite optimistic about the third…however over the course of the last week we have met a few challenges to say the least!

Invariably, when looking for a place to live you must go through an agent or a tout – and there seems to be some sort of network in which these agents operate – from fancy estate agents to a bunch of fellows who seem to hang out on a corner and share information about which houses are empty. Sometimes these folks work together and many times we have found ourselves in a car with one agent picking up another to direct us to the right house…this makes things a bit tricky when you get to the negotiating stage and there are 4 agents between you and the landlord all telling you a different price!!

This process has been frustrating because most often we are taken to places we can’t afford (I like to call this the “Mzungu effect”) or that are unfurnished or to houses that can only be rented for one year (we are here six months!).

Oh, and this is after waiting for an hour on a street corner to meet an agent who then has to deliver a tire before showing you the house and by this time it is late and you are tired and hungry (as we are also working now) and then you talk to the landlord’s brother’s friend who thinks the rent is X when in fact it turns out to be Y which is beyond your budget and you go home defeated and exhausted – can you sense our frustration?!

Anyhow, aside from the wild goose chase that has been our house hunt everything else has been going quite well. Aside from my computer crashing on my second day at the office, work has been great so far and the folks at the MEDA office warm and welcoming.

I also appreciate what a difference speaking the little Kiswahili I know has made along the way in arranging meetings with agents and touts and my friends here have been truly amazing doing all they can to help. In fact this past week has made me appreciate how important friends are and what a difference they make in our lives and how important a home is in whatever form it takes. This is true for my fellow interns as well – being able to share in this house hunting experience and laugh over it the next day over a glass of wine has allowed us to get to know each other quite well, quite quickly!

In fact we are cautiously optimistic about a house we negotiated a price on yesterday. We are arranging a visit tonight to see that all the appliances work (there is power rationing here in Dar so all power is cut from 7 am to 7 pm 5 days a week) and then we plan to sign our contract tomorrow if all goes well. I shall keep you posted….