Saturday June 18, 2011 – Trip to City Centre

Found out a couple days ago that one of the interns on the trip has malaria, so he is very sick and none of us has seen him for about two days now. During dinner mid sub sandwich he got up and said he would be right back and had to go to the bathroom, he never returned and then his wife took him to the hospital and they tested him for malaria. We’re all very cautious not to miss a malaria pill now! A bunch of us went to city centre today because I hadn’t been there yet and wanted to check it out. We bought our bus tickets for Arusha and then went to the National Museum, a delicious thai restaurant for lunch, and then to the Kilimanjaro Hotel for a cappuccino! At the thai restaurant we got a dish of choice (I got veggie pad thai) and a drink for 8,000 tsh which is $5.33! And we were all overly stuffed afterwards, so it was a pretty good deal! We’re gonna go back to city center on Tuesday to see the fish market and check out Kariakoo market because we ran out of time today! Kariakoo market is a local market not tailored to tourists so it will neat to experience it and they also have an underground market that were gonna go to as well. The National Museum today was kinda cool to see, I wouldn’t go back but it was worth a visit. They had lots of stuff on the slave trade and history of Africa from colonialism to present, as well as information and fossils of some of the early hominids. I took an anthropology class a couple semesters ago, so it was nice to be able to recognize the different types of hominids and the names of them. It would be so cool to be able to go see Olduvai Gorge where a lot of the fossils were found because it is near the Arusha area in the Great Rift Valley.  

Pretending to be dinosaurs!

Another thing I’ve noticed in Dar is that there is no fast food places anywhere! I know Africa’s a developing country but I kinda just expected to see at least a McDonalds or something, but there’s not! Which is more than okay with me, but it’s just weird not seeing fast food on every corner!