There we go, my first real post! Today seemed like a good day to start since my first real day in Tanzania, the 3^rd of July, is exactly two months ago now. I got on the plane the day before, went to our hotel and saw Camp Tanga for the first time, this is what I wrote about it:

Day 2, Camp Tanga
Date: 03-07-2014
Time: 20:15 (What?? Still that early?)

Today we finally arrived at the camp around five o'clock. The food is way better than the food at Keys Hotel in Moshi, the Hotel where we stayed last night. Oh and btw, we had a prosperous flight! In eight hours we flew straight from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro, and I had a seat with extra room for my legs (Yeah, really need that with my long legs right..). Anyway, when we arrived at Kilimanjaro Airport we had to arrange our visa. This also went pretty quick and prosperous. After that, Mwa, our driver, came to pick us up. I seriously don't know how to spell his name (it's actually way longer and harder than 'Mwa', but it's pronounced like "Giving a big kiss" as he says himself). He drove me and three other Dutch girls (René, Iris and Michelle) safely to our hotel in his typical African Landrover. Oh wait, funfact: the police wanted to arrest Mwa when he drove us, because he had some kind of temporarily Kenyan drivers license they didn’t approve.

I shared a room with Iris at the hotel but didn't get much sleep because of the heat and whatever more. Lucky for me I did not have to wait very long until I could get out of bed again, because we had to be at breakfast at 6:00. Iris and I however forgot to change the time zone on our phones from Amsterdam to Kilimanjaro, so we had to hurry like hell. After a lot of running and throwing stuff through the room, we did manage to be ready before we had to leave. Unfortunately we were introduced to one of the Tanzanian habits that same morning: pole pole simba. Our rides to Tanga didn’t arrive until fucking 9:00. Well, when they finally did arrive, most people went on the big bus. But me and the other Dutchies could sit in the Landrover again! And we were lucky because our road trip to Camp Tanga took over 6 hours and was VERY bumpy.  

During the trip we saw the most beautiful landscapes and a lot of locals in their well-known mudhouses. This was kinda confusing to see. On the one hand it looked really beautiful and it was really cool to finally see them in real life, on the other hand it was a bit weird. Weird that people actually live in those tiny muddy houses their entire life. At the same time, those people didn’t know what to think about us either. Some of them looked really angy, others were smiling and waving. Well, they might have been smiling because we looked totally haggard since we had been driving 80km/h for 6 hours in a car without windows. So we were completely covered in dust and our hair looked.. interesting. I don’t know if I dare to comb my hair now. At the moment I’m not sure if I dare anything over here: still have to get used to all the huge insects and shit. And the wind. The wind is way stronger than I expected it to be in Africa.

Well, good story huh! Now let’s compare this adventure on the African roads to my day in Holland, the 3^rd of October (it’s actually one of my best friend’s birthday today, love you!). I will not write about this day as long as I did two months ago, since it’s really not that interesting.

Date: 3-10-2014
Time: 20:53

It's friday and I had to work at 9:15 at some kind of congress at the World Forum in Scheveningen (yeah my English friends, try to pronounce that!). I decided to go to work all the way by bike, it took around an hour. No, I don’t know why I thought that would be a good idea. Probably because I sat on my ass all day for the entire week. Anyway, I stepped on my beautiful pink mountainbike (ha, who needs a Landrover right?) and discovered it was really misty, so when I finally got there my face was covered in tiny little water drops. I think the 3^rd of the month might be the day my face gets covered in whatever. Dust, water.. what’s next? I don’t wanna know.

Okkkk, back to my workday. I’m a waitress, and today I had to serve real posh people who did not thank me or my colleagues (or even looked at us) whenever we served them. Stupid wannabe rich people. Luckily my colleagues are very nice, so I survived the day. (Oh funfact, I just tried to kill a mosquito while typing this. Killing mosquitos suddenly reminds me of Sammy’s MALARIAAA.) So yeah, I survived my day at work (but this mosquito didn’t haa) and cycled all the way back. I immediately took a shower when I got home and started typing an essay for my course Television Genre, ugh I hate that stupid course. Therefore I’m really happy to be able to use this blog as an excuse to just procrastinate working on my essay. Unfortunately I’m done with this blog for today I guess.. I found it surprisingly fun to do! Hope you liked reading it and please let me know what you think about it!

Lala Salama xxx