Nyerere Day

On Thursday, it was a Tanzanian national holiday, celebrating the first leader of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. Since I had the day off work, I seized the opportunity to continue exploring around the city. I went with a coworker Elizabeth by minibus (dalla-dalla) downtown. We passed by the Lutheran church, where we stopped for a bit to listen to the church choir performing outside with beautiful harmonies and coordinated movements.


Down the road, I quenched my thirst with some coconut juice. The street vendor cut open the top so I could drink the liquid inside, then he sliced the "meat" off the edges for me to munch on. The texture and color actually reminded me of calamari (mmm...), which I could have had if I had kept walking down the street to the fish market. But today's adventure called for crossing the bay on a ferry to the other side of the port of Dar es Salaam.

After our 10 minute ferry ride, we strolled down the busy market streets over to where we could grab a motorcycle taxi to a nearby beach. There as Elizabeth lounged, I took photographs and waded what seemed like 100 meters out into the Indian Ocean. It was low tide and extremely shallow, so I was still only ankle deep. On my way back to the sand, I watched as herders moved their goats and cattle across the sand. It was a wonderfully pleasant way to spend the afternoon. We made our way back to the place where we stay and I cooked up some delicious dhal stew and rice for dinner, with papaya for dessert.

The SWAHILI WORD OF THE DAY is mwalimu, which means "teacher." Nyerere was a teacher and made education an important part of the development of Tanzania. In the music videos I watched on this memorial day, they repeatedly called him Mwalimu with great affection. (I'm so glad I know Arabic, which has given me a huge jump start with Swahili. Muallim is teacher in Arabic).