Tanzania -part 1

Here is a trivia question that you will never hear anywhere else except this blog: What do Freddie Mercury (from the band Queen)and Jaideep Nair (from this blog) have in common? Before you answer that question, let me squash with brute force, any wild guesses that might be forming in your fertile imaginative mind by emphatically stating that 'sexual orientation' is definitely not the right answer. The correct answer to the question is - (i) Both are Indian (ii) Both grew up in Bombay and (iii) Both spent some time of their life in Tanzania. Well, I am stretching the Tanzania part a bit. Freddie Mercury (or Farrokh Bulsara) was born in Tanzania and he must have spent a few years there, whereas I just happened to spend 3 weeks in Tanzania recently. Now that you have realized that the true intent of my trivia question was just a shameless attempt to mention the fact that I had visited Tanzania recently, let us all move along and you can waste your time by reading my post.

I went to Tanzania for 3 weeks in the middle of December, returning back to the US at the end of the first week of January. Tanzania is a beautiful country with a lot of friendly people and I recommend it. With apologies to my friend TK for misusing an abbreviation usually meant for cakes and cookies, let me just say that Tanzania is a JCC (Jaideep Certified Country). If any of you ever plan to visit it, here are some words of wisdom gathered from my experiences in the country. Whether my pointers are useful or not is a separate matter, but I hope they are interesting enough for a good time-wasting read.

1. Only one foreign currency is the King. Although the state of the current economy may lead you to think otherwise, the US Dollar still rules. It is the only currency which, you can be sure, will be accepted anywhere in Tanzania. In fact to enter any national park, foreign citizens have to pay the fees only in USD. No other currency is accepted. Only Tanzanian citizens pay in Tanzanian shillings (Tsh). Everyone else pays in USD. The exchange rate is about 1000 Tsh to 1 USD for notes of denomination 20 USD and lower. Anything above that is about 1200 to 1300 Tsh. So carrying higher denomination notes will give you more bang for the buck. Travelers' cheques are not accepted even at Banks unless you have the proof of purchase (the receipt), which Bank of America in the US clearly tells you not to keep along with the Travelers' cheques. So if you are like me, you will take BoA's advice to a higher level and keep the receipts at home in the US and walk around in Tanzania with some completely useless travelers' cheques. By the way, if you are in a decent sized town, there will be ATMs to solve your problems since as long as your debit card is a visa card, you can withdraw money from your home bank account.

2. When you meet someone for the first time, try not to fall asleep during a conversation. Definitely don't lurch your head violently falling sideways, when somebody you met 15 minutes ago is talking, especially when you are going to rent a place in that person's property and run into them almost daily. But in my defense I must say that jetlag and 48 hours of continous travel can overcome the best of us and I had mastered the art of sleeping when someone is talking, way back in college during Geology and Construction Engineering lectures. But having put forth all the excuses that I can think of, I confess that I have not felt as embarassed as this in a long long time.

3. When you stay at any place, do check if there are any roosters close by. We (the wife and I) stayed in a picturesque town called Morogoro
which is at the foot of the Uluguru Mountains. We were put up in a nice little place built inside the property of a professor teaching at the University where my wife is doing research (see point 2 above).
The first night we fell asleep at 9 pm and at about 4 am, I woke up with a start when I heard a loud screaming sound right next to my ear. My wife is not a morning person, so I knew it was not her. I woke up and there it was again - It was a rooster and it was so close that it felt like the bloody bird was sharing our bed. He was screaming his lungs out in a long-drawn out 'kukdoo-koooooooooo'. I have heard roosters before and this was not a normal rooster's call. It had a sort of mischief in its call and the last part of the call - the long drawn-out 'koooooooo' felt like he was enjoying the fact that he was disturbing everyone's sleep. And of course, his other rooster friends in the neighbourhood joined him very soon. When the sun came out and I ventured out, I realised that right outside our window, hardly 10 feet away, there was a chicken coop and that is where the offending bird operated out of.

The rooster continued his sadistic calls every day at an ungodly hour and we soon realised that we had to go to bed at 8 pm so in order to get a decent night's sleep.
But one night I thought I would pay the rooster back in his own coin. My wife would not let me crow like a rooster at 10:30 pm outside the chicken coop and I am thankful for her judgement. Sleep-deprivation had diminished my faculties. So I got a flashlight and shone it inside the chicken coop on the rooster for some time. It did wake him up and he fluttered his wings sleepily and I felt a sense of satisfaction that one only gets from sweet revenge. I don't know whether it was a coincidence or whether it was my "light-treatment", but the next morning the rooster crowed at 6 am instead of 4 am. This may be a solution for anyone who is faced with a similar problem. Do try it out and let me know the results.

This is turning out to be a very long post so I will break it up into parts

To be continued.............