All seemed well on our return to Dar es Salaam for about four minutes until it dawned on us that our one remaining camera had somehow been left on the bus. A few phone calls to the bus company left us empty handed and so, with our Somaliland Nokia phone being of a slightly basic model, we were left with no photographic equipment whatsoever.
The Kigamboni ferry prepares for yet another 4 minute crossing
We were determined to give Freda a good send-off anyway and put the camera issue on the back-burner. In the shadow of a ferocious looking storm, we sailed/took a tuktuk/trekked off to the Kigamboni peninsula on the other side of the bay for a day at the beach. In one of the more surprising events of the day, the jet black clouds which had been chasing us for several hours suddenly decided to change course and our afternoon in the sand was spent in glowing sunshine. The atmosphere was only dampened when a bit of a commotion went up and it turned out that a girl had just arrived in the area after having her arm knifed by fishermen who were trying to mug her further up the beach. Not wanting to crowd her out as she was already being helped by many people (including the barman who ingeniously disinfected the wound with a generous helping of Johnny Walker) we stayed our distance a bit as she was helped into the car. The wound wasn't huge but there was still quite a bit of blood – as M pointed out her distress was probably more fear than pain but it was still a reminder of what can happen in broad daylight. We've been so fortunate so far on this trip not to have had any trouble at all that it's easy to become complacent sometimes. We made a mental note of this as the barman's friends drove the girl off to get medical help somewhere.
Generic view of Dar es Salaam from the sea #58823294 (featuring Fish Market)
The final part of Freda's send-off was a trip to the suburbs to an Ethiopian restaurant which I'd been dreaming of ever since our last one with Tom in Nairobi. It was pretty good all in all but the kitfo was probably the best we've had, including in Ethiopia. So to all raw-meat fans out there, “Addis in Dar” is a great place to chow down, even if it does cost 5 or 6 times more than what it would in Ethiopia itself. We got an early night and, when Freda sailed out the door at 3.30am for his early morning flight from Nyerere International Airport, we gave him a rather anticlimactic farewell, half asleep as we were. I vaguely remember wishing him a good trip but that's about it. We tried to make up for it with text messages through his long trip home, attempting not to rub it in too much by mentioning the Finnish climate at this time of year...
"Addis in Dar", a paradise for lovers of raw meat and unleavened pancake dough.
The next day, we had a mission – get a new camera. For this we headed out to the posher suburbs of Dar es Salaam where we aimed to find shopping centres, hopefully to get what we were looking for. After several underpopulated and uninspiring places totally devoid of any character (and camera shops), we were engaged in conversation by two girls taking a lunch break who asked us our opinion on a new marketing scheme they'd drawn up for their company. The pointed us towards another shopping centre where they said we'd probably have more luck and, after far too long agonising over what to get, we finally emerged with a new camera. It got dark, started raining, and we finally injected a bit of life and character into the day by going to eat some Ethiopian again. The kitfo was still as good. This was our final farewell to Dar es Salaam as we packed up, got up early, and headed towards the docks to get a ferry over to the legendary Zanzibar Island.
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