Day 68

First thing this morning, we went to the National Museum to hand deliver our formal request for loan and export. I was still feeling optimistic from our meeting with the director yesterday, but I couldn’t have predicted how well it actually went. Upon seeing us, the first thing he said was “permission granted!” Then he laid out some of his stipulations, which were all extremely reasonable and easy to accommodate. Once again, a task that I thought would be nearly impossible was accomplished without so much as a hiccup. What a strange world we live in. Or perhaps what a strange world I live in. I’m so burned out at this point that I probably can’t even worry in a reasonable fashion.

Tomorrow, we should be able to pick up both our export permits from the National Museum and the Antiquities Division, round up all our boxes of artifacts, and get down to the business of shipping. As I mentioned, we need clearance from the ministry of mines since a large percentage of our artifacts are rocks. An inspector will have to look over each box to ensure we’re exporting stone tools instead of gemstones. In preparation for this, Pam has bought string, lighters, and sealing wax, so I anticipate quite the show. If all goes according to plan, we will hopefully be able to ship our artifacts back to Canada ahead of ourselves. We might even have a few days in Dar es Salaam free of responsibility at the end of the week. Now we’re really in the final act of this show.

In some bizarre foreshadowing event, we found a genuine mall in Dar es Salaam today. It was something straight out of a North American landscape. It all started with my request to return to the infamous Chicken Hut, a great little restaurant we ate at in our first week in Africa but never again since. After enjoying some sizzling stew and ugali, we decided to explore the shopping complex behind it. We thought it was just a ShopRite (a grocery store), but in fact it was an entire mall with jewellery, souvenir, and clothing stores, a cafe and food court, and a series of large department stores. Naturally, the first thing I did was get a cup of coffee. There was a store called Game which was a passable equivalent to Wal-Mart with some food, home wears, and even an aisle of Barbies. In ShopRite, we found aisles of familiar groceries alongside some new additions like African spices, mchuzi mix, and a formidable wall of Africafe. When we were in Iringa, we ate at the hotel every night and bought our lunch groceries from a large outdoor market in which unpackaged goods were piled high in a series of colourful pyramids. Now Dar is a considerably larger city than Iringa, but we still didn’t anticipate running across a Western-style supermarket. It was so much like being at home that it gave us reverse culture shock. I can’t even imagine what actually going home will be like. At least I got some more Red Bull out of the deal.