Last night I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya. This is by far the biggest and busiest city I’ve been to and it has appropriately been called the capitol of East Africa. It is definitely the most dangerous city I’ve been to (sorry mom), but also the best place to find the kind of hardware startups I am interested in. I can’t wait to explore!
This last Sunday I got my wallet stolen. I had finished some shopping in Kariakoo and was walking down a street thick with people.
I was feeling apprehensive about my messenger bag which held my two high value items, my camera and laptop, so I had swung it around to the front so I could have my arms around it. I get to an intersection that is clogged with people, and there is a car coming towards me, though it’s coming very slowly due to all of the people in its way. As I am trying to shimmy out of its way a guy smoking a cigarette and standing next to me grabs my arm. Now this alone is not really that unusual, people here will use varying degrees of physical contact to get my attention and I just assume he is trying to pull me out of the path of the incoming car. But it doesn’t stop with the arm. So next he puts his foot on the side of my right knee. What goes through my head is this: “What is he doing? Some sort of convoluted gang handshake(not that out of the norm)? Oh shoot if he pushed down with his foot he could break me leg! Does he want to fight me? Oh crap lets get away!” At that point he let go of my arm and I walked away about as fast as I could, crowd permitting. Throughout this whole exchange my arms have been wrapped around my bag in front of me and exactly zero attention has been paid to my front left pocket. Once I am out of the intersection it only takes me a few seconds to realize that my wallet is gone. I do a quick check of all of my pockets and bag but it’s not there. Again my mind races: “ok what now? I have to go find that guy! And beat him up! I am in no condition to fight with this heavy bag containing all of my valuables. Hell I would probably loose more stuff if I went back. And he’s already gone.” At this point I am a little freaked out over the loss of my debit card, which is my only way to get cash. Nowhere takes credit (and all of those cards were in the wallet too) so I am now left with the little bit of emergency cash that is stored with my passport. As I am contemplating the ramifications of all of this I decide there is nothing to be gained by hanging around, so I turn to leave, taking one last look back towards the intersection. What I see is a young man with a bundled up package on his head walking towards me and hurriedly patting his pockets as if he has lost his wallet. I instantly get the message and nod that “yes, I have lost my wallet”. He hands me the wallet, sans cash, but with everything else intact! I thank him profusely and count my lucky stars. It’s time to head back to the hotel.
So what did I loose? In all about $10. On the shit-sucks-o-meter this doesn’t even register. It really could have been much worse. For instance that morning I had a lot more cash in there but I had used it to prepay for two more nights at the hotel. My passport and yellow fever card which were (stupidly) in my other pocket could have been a massive headache to replace, especially being in a yellow fever endemic country. And the photos on my camera would have taken an emotional toll.
So what have I learned from this episode? Maybe don’t have all of your valuables in the same place at the same time? Though if they’re not on your person how do you know they’re safe? I am going to be less lax about always stashing my passport under my clothes. The biggest lesson I take away is to always return to the scene of the crime. You won’t catch the guys, but you might get some of your stuff back. I was a second away from just leaving when I got the wallet back. The young man who returned it said it was just left on the ground, so it makes sense to take a good look around when something gets stolen.
So I’ve had an interesting week in Tanzania’s biggest city, Dar es Salaam.
The trip to Dar itself was not uneventful, with the bus breaking down for a couple of hours and a fist fight at the station when we arrived.
The bus was lit up like a christmas tree.
A friend of one of my travel companions had arranged for someone to pick us up at the station. I was dropped at a budget hotel in the Kariakoo neighborhood, an area of town known to be a little dangerous. In the morning I took a look around the neighborhood.
After a few days in Kariakoo I decided to check out the city center. City center is a more upscale area and the home of many government buildings and hotels.
So a lot happened after seeing the city center. First I met a local guy named Eddie. I was walking back towards my hotel and he stopped me on the street and invited me to come to his house for Eid lunch with his family. He is a super nice person and I am actually in his house right now using his wifi.
Eddie convinced me to move to a new hotel, closer to his house and in a safer neighborhood. We spend a lot of time hanging out, including trips to the German cultural center for movie night, lunches with his family at his place, and other trips around town.
So life had been pleasant and largely uneventful up until yesterday, when I had my wallet stolen. But this post is long enough already so I’ll save that story for later.
Well after two solid, and I mean solid (read 20 hours on a bus), days of travel, I find myself in Dar es Salaam. Can’t wait to get some of the good food that this place is famous for!
So here I am on the first public computer fast enough to resize photos and make skype calls! What a great opportunity to post an update on what I’ve been up to.
So I left Lilongwe on a big bus that was supposed to take 4 hours but ended up taking ten. That bus got me to Zomba, the former capitol city that is smaller and situated up in the mountains.
There I stayed with a VSO volunteer named Florent. Every night he would cook veggies
and his guard would cook nsima (a maize flower paste, pronounced see-ma)
and we would eat it together on the porch.
After spending a few days in the mountains I wanted to see Lake Malawi (the third largest lake in Africa!). I took what ended up being three minibuses and a taxi and ended up in Cape Maclear, a little beach town at the south end of the lake.
I get rather frustrated just laying around on the beach, so I kept my one day in Cape Maclear busy by going on a little boat tour where I got to snorkel with tropical fish
and watch these eagles eat fish thrown from the boat.
The next day me and some folks who were staying at the same lodge hopped on the back of a pickup and were taken to the ferry at Monkey Bay.
The boat was called the Ilala and it’s route went from the southern end of Lake Malawi almost all the way to the north, with multiple stops along the way. Here I am ready to go!
Accommodations were a bit rough, with first class passengers (me) sleeping on the uncovered deck. Here you can see what my bed looked like the morning after my first night on the boat. All of my clothing was spread out for padding, with my legs covered by a garbage bag my torso covered by my rain jacket to block the wind. I definitely feel like my search and rescue training helped me out with this one!
While I was originally planning to ride the Ilala all the way north and cross into Tanzania, I had run out of cash (no ATMs on board) and was not looking forward to spending another night on the deck, so I got off early at a popular backpacker’s town called Nkhata Bay, which is where I am now.
Until next time!