The Blind Man Society

Good afternoon everyone, this is an excerpt from something I’m working on and I wanted to share it with you! Blowtorch Lady did NOT proof this today – a kind person at the coffee bar did – so I apologize for any errors on my part…

We left Mt. Kilimanjaro. My head was in the clouds. I had a fever and the Larium I took for malaria was kicking my ass. I was hallucinating and concentrating on a girl named Dee who sat next to me as we drove through the day and into the late afternoon. The truck stopped for diesel and the driver informed us that we would be in Dar es Salaam by that night. He took one look at me zoned out and said that “for those of you who are here in the truck, we are on the way. For those of you who are still on Uhuru peak, Jono (cough!), it is an easy drive and we’re staying at a campsite.” Then he returned to the cab, cranked the music and we were off.

UB40’s “Don’t break my heart” was jamming through the speakers and the music matched up perfectly with the passing landscape and mood in the truck. I was in a fever trance. Sound was rising up to my ears like bubbles rising in a gelatinous liquid. I just zoned out to the music…physically feeling the beats. I slept a good portion of the day and was unable to journal or talk to people clearly due to my fever.

We arrived that night in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania (which, I was told stands for Tangenika, Zanzibar National Independent Alliance), and went to the campsite. Travis set up the tent since I was ill, but I had been pounding aspirin all day and my fever finally broke. Because it was too late to take everything out of the truck and make a proper dinner, we got a ride to a bar & grill to get seafood and drinks. I don’t know what I was expecting to see for clientele but the place was full of Europeans eating dinner with their families. I was surprised. Blues and jazz music was playing and after that everything became a blur. I remember returning to the campsite and passing out.

The next morning, I felt better. We packed up the truck and drove to Dar es Saalam’s port to buy our tickets for the ferry to Zanzibar. I was left to guard the truck, and while everyone was in line a homeless looking hustler appeared and tried selling me trinkets. I said no, and he attempted to board the truck. I shouted at the top of my lungs and raced towards him to force him off. He retreated and disappeared. The group returned, gave me my ticket and secured their gear in lockers under the seats of the truck. Everyone grabbed their cameras, and a few clothes.

We locked up the truck and went to stand in line. The boat was white and sleek. Sunny and I went to sit on the bow since he worried about getting seasick. I told him to keep his face into the wind and his eyes on the horizon. While everyone else in the group was below deck, we sat out in the wind and spray. I told him about my family’s cottage on an island in Northern Michigan and growing up on boats and the water. We traveled 15 miles on our way to Zanzibar and docked in Stone Town.

Stone Town is a National Heritage Site located in Zanzibar city’s old quarter. There are many markets and bazaars there, and amid this setting was our one-star hotel. After checking in, we found our rooms, ditched our gear and then headed to the rooftop deck to take in the views of the city. There were yachts worth millions anchored in the waters off the coast, and it really made me wonder what life was like for the people that owned them. I felt like Johnny Cash singing Folsom Prison Blues…guessing what people in fancy dining cars on the train were doing.

We had lunch and then walked into the town to explore. One of the girls went to get her hair braided, the others went to the docks and I went to an internet café. Entering the cafe I saw a Masaai warrior in his red and black cloth using email on a computer. His spear was leaned up against the wall as he typed. It was quite a shock to see this, and I didn’t know how to feel about it. Times were changing. I paid for two hours of internet and sent my messages. Then I rejoined the others at the docks and the seafood market.

The sun was setting and eight or nine vendors had their latest catch displayed on tables. I bought a reddish-brown crab (the size of my head) with huge claws for two dollars. The vendor chopped the crab into four pieces with a cleaver and put it on a small charcoal grill to cook. The others bought octopus, fish and spices. We ate our fill and then it was time for the club.

We walked along the oceanfront to a dance club in Stone Town and had it to ourselves. It was a small room, probably 50 by 50 feet, and there was a ladder leaning against the wall at its entrance. Up it, the DJ was in a crawl space with his equipment and records/cds above us. On the far wall was a well-stocked bar. It was 2,322 Tanzanian shillings to the US dollar, so we drank like royalty and danced like crazy. Travis and I did the “catching the fish” dance and then Doc and I sipped gin and tonics while all the British travelers demanded ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” Normally, that song drives me nuts. However I was so drunk I found myself exclaiming “Wow! This is REALLY good!” We requested the Kilimanjaro song and tried to dance to it, but it was futile. We stumbled out of the club in a tight group singing and laughing the whole way back to the hotel.

The next morning, our previous night’s seafood feast claimed it’s first victim. Sunny had giardia. I went to his room and gave him some cipro tablets to kill it off. He stayed there while the rest of us took off to explore once more. I had my head set on scuba diving, and Doc and Jim asked if they could come along. The three of us went to the dive shop to inquire about going out to the reef. We were out on the boat in less than two hours.

We changed into our dive suits and gear on shore, then took a brown wooden skiff with a beat-up outboard motor to the dive site. We dropped over the side, touching our hands to our heads to signal we were ok, then submerged. The dive was impressive. And, it was great to be out in the ocean and using my advanced open water scuba training. We swam side by side and followed a route along the large coral boulders. I did my 360 degree rotations to watch for sharks while we followed the divemaster.

Once back on the boat, we noticed something flesh colored floating in the water. It was a dead body. It was all chewed up…mangled in fact, and a call was made to the authorities to come dredge it out. We were so desensitized to death by this point, or being in danger of dying from wildlife, that I said to my dive partner: “There’s a dead body over there”…he shrugged and calmly replied “yes I know.” We looked at each other, quietly ate our pineapple and then said simply “are you ready to go on the second dive?” like nothing had happened. I mean, what could you say? We were told that it was death by misadventure. Shortly after, all of us jumped over the side and slowly sank under water. The dive was as eventful as the first, and after, we wrote in our dive logs and the captain piloted us back to shore.

We spent the rest of the day sleeping and journaling. I got up and went to the spice market. The spice packages and powders were brilliant red, yellow, orange and purple. I took a photo or two of the stands. Travis had gotten friendly with the fishing boat captains and they allowed him to join them at sea that night. Tom-Tom (the piper’s son) decided to go with him. The two of them departed at sunset and we stayed at the hotel talking well into the night.

Travis and Tom-Tom returned at dawn. Travis was almost bursting he was so happy at being along for the catches. The fishermen used hand-held rope lines (think Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea) with bait hooks to catch the larger ocean fish, and Travis had gotten to hold them and bring a couple in. Tom-Tom was just exhausted.

A small bus picked us up late morning and we went to tour a spice plantation. We sampled a lot of spices but I remember cloves, cinnamon bark and vanilla the best. At mid-day we took a break and entered a small mud hut. Sitting cross-legged on the floor we drank tea and sampled the spices that were there. It was great, and I wished I could buy some…but they never would have survived the remainder of the trip. We left the plantation.

The tour finished at an ancient sultan’s palace, where we heard about his harems. We saw the central chamber and large empty pool where the women were bathed before being brought to the sultan. The females in our group were indignant.

We got back to the hotel and checked on Sunny. The medication was working and he was able to join us on the roof deck. We sat in the late afternoon sun and reflected on our brief time on Zanzibar. We all opted for a grilled chicken dinner that night and crashed hard after…it had been an incredibly great visit.

The next day we returned back to Dar es Salaam and the truck, and were immediately on the road for Lilongwe, Malawi.