trips.schrull.us

Morning view of Lake Tanganyika, with bird on a wire.

Monday, yesterday, was basically spent getting to Dar Es Salaam.  Emmanuel picked us up from the Coast View at 9:30 and dropped us off at the Kigoma Airport.  There was a wait until the Precision Air folks arrived and we’re ready to check us in for our 11:50 am departure.  As always, we had luggage overage charges, but our charges on the way out amounted to 1/5th our charges on the way in.  Tablets with covers and chargers and household goods, as limited as they were, aren’t light!  Out of curiosity, I weighed our bags this morning.  Mine is a tad over the limit for a bag for Emeriates.  Bill’s weighs 13 pounds less than mine.  Of course, mine includes the dirty laundry, which means that half of his clothes are in my bag. 

We arrived at Dar on time and checked into our hotel, the Tanzanite Executive Suites, a little before 4:00 pm.  We saw yesterday’s version of the Emeriate’s flight that we will be on today arrive as we were leaving the airport.  Theoretically, we could have flown out yesterday, but not based on the original schedule we had for our Kigoma/Dar flight, plus it’s never a good idea to try and make in-country connections here less than a day apart.  Arriving on Sunday afternoon and flying out on Monday morning is as tight as you want to make it, especially as schedules have a habit of changing.

 

We had a late lunch snack and a relaxing evening catching up on grade “B” movies on TV, before going back down the the hotel restaurant for a late evening dinner.  The Tanzanite Executive Suites is in the Islamic Quarter, practically right next to the mosque and is run by strict Islamic rules (no alcohol allowed on the premises; no pork served in the restaurant), but it is clean, has a decent on site restaurant, has excellent wi-fi and has a reasonable in cost.  Needless to say, we were woken up at 5:00 am by the call to prayer.

 

 

Back in Dar, the view outside one of our windows.  The City continues to grow.

I actually haven’t been sleeping too well the last few nights.  I think that it was partially the light in the rooms.  Our room in Kasulu was very dark,  but a bright light right outside our door shone through the transom all night in Kigoma and in our current hotel each room has a mosquito zapper which glows bright purple neon all night.  Pretty sure there aren’t ever any mosquitos, I’ve never heard a “zap”.

 

I am hoping that this sleep deprivation will lead to a least a few hours of solid sleep on the flight home.  We will be comfortable on our flight to Dubai, but it looks like a quite full flight from Dubai to New York and I don’t really sleep when I have to sit up the whole way.  Please pray for some sort of miracle so that Bill and I can get somewhat flat for part of the 13 hour leg!

 

This time in Tanzania has been a time apart for me.  Quite frankly, a bit of a time of denial and forgetfulness.  I haven’t really mentioned it here, but we got word that my Mom had died as we were driving to the airport to come here.  It was not unexpected, and I had my Mom’s blessing to continue my plans to come here, even though we knew that her death was imminent and had visited her the previous Tuesday for what we realized would probably be our final visit.  (She had even asked me a couple of weeks before if I wanted to be notified if she passed while we were here….of course we did!)  The celebration of her life will be sometime in July when her ashes will join my Dad’s in Buzzard’s Bay, a favorite sailing spot.  I sincerely thank my siblings for taking care of everything that needed to be taken care of immediately while I was gone.

 

But the fact is that I was here, and although we did not hide the fact that my Mom had died, it wasn’t something that we broadcast far and wide, and it has been easy to ignore it while I have been here.  As we get closer to coming home, it is harder to ignore.  Mourning is starting to set in.  There will be a hole in our family each time we visit the Cape and at family holidays.  We have been planning for the “new normal” for a few years now, but actually executing it is not going to be easy.  I pray especially for my brother and sister, who have been and continue to do most of the “heavy lifting” in this new normal.  And I am sad for the conversations I won’t be able to have with my Mom…

 

We will be checking out of our hotel soon and heading for the airport.  I don’t know if I will be updating the blog again for this trip.  If  I don’t – our trip has been a blessing and I look forward to returning to Kasulu, our friends and our “Tanzanian Timeshare” next year.

 

Mungu ni mwema wakati wote!  God is good, all the time!