Last Day

Valentine’s day. Negotiated with Ismail (Tsz 40,000) a nice Uber driver to take me on a drive around Dar-es-salaam for 3 to 4 hrs. The objective being to get a better view of the city, the good and the bad. It drizzled that morning. Our drive around started shortly after 10:00am, passed beside Uhuru monuments, went down town to where the city started from, viewing old Arab buildings, we also visited the Nyerere International Conference centre, the old parliament building, the Askari monuments, stopped at coco beach for a photoshoot, stopped over at airtel head quarters to enquire about One-Network voucher for recharging foreign airtel lines, was told this has been discontinued instead I should call for the voucher to be sent from the home country. Finally, we drove to the University of Dar-es-salaam, which is an old university established in the 60’s. University ground is very large with colleges far apart. On the way back to drop me off I suggested we have lunch in a traditional restaurant which turned out to be at Chef’s pride where I ordered Ughali with vegetable and beef in tomato source. This was the closest I had to naija swallow and was a welcome meal.

After lunch I dispatched the Uber driver and walked 15mins to Kariakoo market to buy a traditional dress for Mama, after walking round for about an hour and not being able to locate anything unique to Tanzania, I gave up and walked to the supermarket at City Mall to buy Tanzanian candies, after which I walked back to the hotel.

Had a quiet valentine’s dinner by the pool in the hotel, then went down to the reception to settle any outstanding bill (there was none) and reconfirm my airport drop off for 2 am the following morning.Read more