Hakuna Matata

We’ve only been in Tanzania for a few days, but it already feels like weeks have passed – it’s not that we’re not enjoying it (quite the contrary), but that our days have been packed. If it’s true that things move slower in Africa, then we’ll probably look back at the last few days as an aberration.

After spending 3 days in Dar getting mugged, setting up local appointments, meeting other expats (through friends in the US), and having meetings with several NGOs & potential business partners, I feel that were are off to a promising start. Strangely enough, the fast pace of our days has manifested itself not in stress, but in optimism. In fact, the tension in my upper back and shoulders that has been bugging me for over a year (borne from stress and extended computer usage) has simply gone away.

The reason for my reduced level of stress came to me as our boat docked at our weekend destination of Zanzibar and I read the slogan that greets visitors to the island: Hakuna Matata (no worries). Kat and I had arranged to meet a few of our new friends (other expats from the US and UK, who are around our age) on the northern tip of Zanzibar, and the 20-odd hours that the six of us spent there was time that I absolutely relished.

Every once in a while, you have an experience that – while living it – you know will be engrained in your memory for life. I’m not sure that describing our time there really does it justice, but the heavily Arab-influenced island still maintains an old-world charm that made me feel truly immersed in a completely different world. This immersion allows a vacationer – even a 20-hour vacationer – to escape common worries and live the crap out of every minute.

Nearly every moment of my time on Zanzibar can be characterized by details that I’ll look back on fondly: the distant sound of Arabic and Hindi music and the smell of saffron as I walked through a narrow cobblestone spice market in Stone Town…the satisfaction of talking down a taxi fare from $50 to $35 for the one-hour trip to the Northern end of the island…the faint sound of the Muslim call to prayer as I walked into the cooling Turquoise-blue water just before sunset…the taste of locally-grown cloves as I bit into the vegetable pakora that I had for dinner…the suspicion we had about our “native Tanzanian” waiter who had an East-London accent (as identified by the Londoner among us)…the view of African dancers and flavor of hookah at the beach party we attended…the alternating reggae, hip-hop, and Swahili music and the feeling of soft, cool sand between my toes on the outdoor dance floor …the view of a star-lit southern hemisphere sky as I floated on my back in the Indian Ocean at 1am…the fun of wading through waist-deep water at 3am to get back home during high tide…and the birds-eye view of the greenish-blue reefs, small fishing boats, and beautiful coastline as we flew back on a single-engine plane from Zanzibar to Dar Es Salaam, are all details that I will not soon forget.

Now I’m back in Dar, refreshed and eager to get back to work. I may have sand-soiled clothes and a phone that hasn’t recovered from being dropped in the ocean (by the way…email will be the best way to reach me for a few days), but that’s ok...Hakuna Matata!