6.28.2011 Dar Es Salaam (“House of Peace”), Tanzania
The days and nights, though tedious and tending towards loneliness, pass relentlessly.
As my time in Africa winds down, the memories flash in mind, which remains cognizant
of this essential truth: now, they are just memories, just quick glimpses of the past, of the ups and down, the tedium tends to dissipate quickly in the mind, and that is all.
Trying to accumulate these glimpses is like building a house on a foundation of sand; it will not hold. It will slowly slip away, recede back into the ocean of life.
Simply move forward, move on; unceasingly, unnervingly, there is no other way.
The housemaid, clad in baby blue, sweeps the dust from the top layer of the dirt courtyard,
her wooden broom rhythmically sweeping, playing a soothing melody for my tired mind.
The generator, big, nasty, in its tin roofed shed like an angry attack dog growling at the moon, finally turned off at 7:15am after a long night of rumbling underneath my pillow.
The morning tables filled; where these folks all come from, always dressed in collared shirts, starched dresses, I haven't a clue, but the tables are always full when I stumble downstairs for my coffee, confident in my early morning prowess, always to be deflated upon entering the open canteen, the golden African dawn creeping in through the hazy courtyard.
The more time I spend here in Dar, the more aware I come of exactly how little there is to do in Dar. Yesterday, Sunday, was the most closed-up I have ever seen a major city on a weekend, weekday, or even major holiday. Other than the incessant ringing of the church bells at 6am, everything was closed, silent, shuttered, gated, people nowhere, a ghost town to behold. Could one imagine New York simply closing up shop one day a week? What is the simple cost to business? 1/7 gross profit, I would assume. I suppose the equation is simply illogical in this place, its veneer of modernity, its new glass and steel buildings being slowly unwrapped from their giant scaffolded bows, often simply a facade for very different underpinnings of life. Different realities. Different priorities. Altered states.
