Touching Down in Tanzania

I left Mozambique on my mum's birthday. As I sat in the plane and during my five hour transit in Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport my mind moved between the celebratory family dinner in Melbourne and what lay ahead for me when I touched down in Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania (TZ). Dodoma is the administrative capital.

Here's a picture as the plane was coming in to land in Dar.

Unable to find my luggage on the arrivals carousel, I was instructed to fill in the requisite paperwork at the lost and found counter only to have my suitcase tracked down as soon as the paperwork was finalised! Following that mini-saga, in the wee hours of Saturday 31 October I made my way out through customs to meet Msafiri the WFP driver who was there to pick me up. Worn out after a long day Msafiri took me to my hotel and we made arrangments to meet at 10am the next morning to scout around for more permanent accommodation for my six weeks in Dar es Salaam.

From Mozambique I had made contact with Timo, pictured below on the right with Msafiri (left) and me, to help me find a house. Timo is a part time property agent and a full time IT professional in Dar es Salaam.

Between the three of us, we visited three places and I settled on the last one. Afterwards Msafiri took us to his family home where we met his father and refreshed ourselves with a cool drink.

Dar es Salaam is Tanzania's major port city situated on the coast of the Indian Ocean. In between house hunting we visited the port where WFP has two large warehouses and a logistics office. The warehouses contain large quantities of WFP food supplies to be distributed to those in need. In the pictures below you can see some one of the warehouses and USAID food bags being loaded onto a carriage.

Here is a street view taken as we were driving near downtown Dar.

And a picture of the port behind the trees.