Day 27, 31 July 2012, Tanzania to Nairobi, Kenya - Our 7th wedding anniversary sees us farewelling Tanzania and en route to Nairobi for our last night in East Africa. We are tired but happy and looking forward to our next adventure. Whilst we've been in Africa barely four weeks it seems like almost four lifetimes. We have made a few wonderful friends along the way and met a couple of people who should have "Wanted - Dead only" posters hung in every group tour office in the world. Feelings have run the gamut from awe and amazement at the Victoria Falls to culture shock at meeting people who live in one room huts and have never been in a motor vehicle. The superb lodges of the Serengeti stand in our memories in stark relief with the images of men being used as beasts of burden hauling heavily laden carts along filthy streets with yokes across their shoulders. Crazy things stick in my mind like a little blonde miss sitting in luxury having a Coke and a Smile at the Africa House Hotel complaining she didn't have a mobile signal to seeing a small African boy running on the road with a bicycle wheel and having a whale of a time. I think if you gave him a GameBoy, he'd probably throw it like a ball - and understandably so - after all, it's not as though he'd be able to charge it. We passed fields of cheerfully nodding sunflowers earlier this morning and trees with lush pink and white flowers. So often along the way it is the natural world that provided relief from the grinding dirt and poverty and hard labour that is going on around us. Or the pointlessness of what sometimes appears to be the national pastime of sitting. Just now though, as we drive through downtown Arusha (well, sit in traffic in downtown Arusha), I spy one constant of craftsmanship that we have seen from Zambia to Malawi to Tanzania, beautifully carved and polished wooden beds. It is funny the images that stick and obviously hopelessly naive in the face of so much poverty, but wouldn't it be something if the skill and pride that goes into these pieces could spread to pride in streets, homes and schools. I fear it would be an uphill struggle however. People have told us they want to do well, and to earn more, but not too well and not too much more because they will end up having to support more family and their villages and be dragged back to the status quo, kicking and screaming. Something to mull over as we approach the border post into Kenya and for a long while after that I suspect.
PS. Today the border crossing highlight was being fingerprinted leaving Tanzania and when entering Kenya. Mainly because they also fingerprinted the elderly nun in front of us! There are systems. They will be adhered to. Paranoia is its own reward.
PPS. Made it to Nairobi! People and traffic all out of control . With only 15 hours here we speed shopped, napped and ate. And turned all the lights on and off repeatedly. Tonight's blackout lasted mere seconds... Utter luxury.