A few pics from the last 4 days

In Dar, I made a very random Swedish friend (Sanna) at the National Museum; we spent the rest of the day together, during which she served as my foreign guide to TZ since she was finishing a two-month stint there. We met up with a friend of hers (a Tanzanian guy, Geofrey) and a friend of his (an American girl, Tina). A highlight of the day was visiting Geofrey's family, including his 2-year-old sister or niece (their relationship was not exactly obvious), who hugged me for about 3 minutes before letting me move beyond the front door of the house. It was quite enchanting to feel loved-at-first-sight by a child, but we decided that her adoration of me stemmed from my resemblance of Geofrey's white-skinned, brown-haired, smiley girlfriend. It made my first moments with little Gloria no less precious, though.

The four of us ended up at an Ethiopian restaurant called Addis in Dar. Above is a picture of our vegetarian spread before the waiter dumped all the dishes of food onto the injeera below. This is, indeed, one of many cuisines eaten with hands only. The bread below is torn, and then used to grab a bite of food. The bread just gets tastier and tastier throughout the meal as the sauces soak in. The waiter laughed at us for ordering as little as we did (it would have been the perfect stereotypical haughty French waiter scene if it weren't for the complete African-ness of it all), but we were all stuffed by the end.

The next day I visited a museum where 18 or so huts had been built to represent a variety of traditional Tanzanian villages. I enjoyed a great tour by a volunteer tour guide/musician/preservationist, and then a few dances by a traditional-style dance group:

I left Dar on a 7am flight the day after visiting the village museum, and got to work pretty quickly in Zanzibar. Places to live have basically been found for me (one friend knows of an apartment across the hall from her own that will be available in July, and one of her friends needed a house-sitter until then anyway), so situating myself has been much less of a hassle than it could have been. I moved into the house which I am sitting last night, and woke up to dogs singing "Happy Birthday". Well, it may not sound like "Happy Birthday" to most of you, but when we celebrate birthdays at my dad's house, his singing makes an impromptu choir of the dogs. It was a pretty unreal experience to hear my dad's vocal doppelganger calling all good Muslims to prayer this morning at 5-something AM, and then have that answered by the obligatory chorus of howling below. The dogs, by the way, are my security dogs. I haven't actually met them yet, but I hear that the universal language of dog treats is well understood by them. Pictures are, of course, forthcoming.

I tried to attach a few more pictures taken from the hotel I stayed in my first night in Zanzibar (which will give you a better sense of the awe-inspiring architecture and history around here), as well as the graceful exoticness of simple things such as mosquito nets and fishing boats. Oh! Good! They uploaded just in time. Here they are (out of order, of course).