The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The Good - Mikadi Beach

 

We spent last weekend here, and will definitely go back again. Beautiful, tropical, relaxing, the pictures sum it up. And somehow the water is even more pleasant than it looks!

Getting here involved a 10-minute ferry, and at 200 Shillings (8p) I thought it a fair price. Locals, however, don't agree and are unhappy with the recent hike from 100 Shillings (4p). I do wonder what they'd make of TfL.

When we arrived at Mikadi I had that feeling of recognition, and yes, I had stayed here before on my overland trip in 2008 - mad buzz! Great beach, and brilliant food (the calamari was probably the best I’ve ever had. And I eat a lot of calamari)

We're thinking of buying a tent and camping here every few weekends. Absolutely wonderful stuff.

The Bad - Mr Mugger

Well it had to happen sooner or later. Our lifetime perfect ‘zero-mugging’ record is gone. Some complete twonk decided to snatch Liisa’s bag when we were out walking, the whole thing happened very fast and he was gone in a flash. With hindsight, we shouldn't have been out walking after dark (it had just gone sun-down), but lesson learnt.

As muggings go, it wasn’t the worst. He got 20,000 Shillings (£8), a Kiswahili study book, keys, a cancelled bankcard and an 11-year-old Nokia phone. Good luck selling that, bozo.

The most irritating thing was finding somewhere to get new keys cut - it really is incredible how rare this service is in Dar es Salaam. After a swift 4-hour search, we finally found one in Oyster Bay shopping centre. Which is less than 5 minutes from home.

Also more inconvenient than the mugging itself was giving the police report. This took two hours, and it was old-school Good Cop / Bad Cop. Bad Cop got angry because we hadn’t reported it immediately. I felt like stating the bleeding obvious ‘it’s not exactly like you were ever going to do anything about it’. In the report he described the reason for our delay being "we were confused and we panicked". Hahahaha, we just weren't arsed! Good Cop was lovely and cheerful, and immensely impressed with our pidgin Kiswahili. Liisa's moreso than mine, but hey!

"An Ideal Husband"
.....Well, the programme at least

What slowed the process down was that the report had to be told and written down three times into three different books. They're currently writing up our copy of the report which we'll collect later in the week. Got to love bureaucracy - you'd never want to be in a hurry in Africa!

On Saturday night, we went to see a production of Oscar Wilde's 'An Ideal Husband' (thoroughly enjoyable), and we bumped into a friend of Liisa’s who’s on the same Swahili course. When she learned what happened, her response was classic [thick Aussie accent] “Well that’s bloody great news – Liisa’s so far ahead of the class maybe this’ll give the rest us a chance to catch up!”

The Ugly - Football

Ireland just can't pinpoint where
preparations have gone wrong

Ireland 1 – 3 Croatia.

Ugh.

Whatever, bring on Spain & Italy!!