Friday, travel home

Frank arranged for Emanuel to take us around to spend some time before my departure. I woke up to the Mosques and chickens and dogs one last time. I decided to just spend some time in the courtyard drinking in the moment. I watched Mt Meru wake up and the neighborhood come alive.

Frank made another one of his spectacular breakfasts. Emanuel, Frank, Venanche, Rose and I all crammed around his little table and enjoyed his omelets, bread, oranges and avocados. I took some time to repack everything and discovered that I had brought a flashlight. Huh, who knew?

We stopped by the bank one last time, we revisited the Maasai market for the few things that I regretted not getting. Then we went to Tanzanite One. This is the largest Tanzanite mining company in the world. I had never heard of Tanzanite before I left for Tanzania and now it’s all the rage. Apparently it’s only available in the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It’s a gorgeous stone. This company has a small museum in their building. The security was pretty high but it was quite nice. They gave me free coffee, an interpreted tour of the museum, a short (dramatic) video and of course a tour of their showroom. There was no pressure to buy, but I enjoyed getting to see what it was all about.

Afterwards, we walked to the AICC International Conference Center where security was very high and photos were not allowed. This is where the court of the Rwanda Genocide is held. This is also where the United Nations offices are located. We met Lawrence, James’ friend who took over the ownership of the phone that James had loaned me.

We drove to the marketplace where we were greeted by Patrick. He gave us a tour of the market from the fruits and vegetables, to the spices, to butchers, to kitchen goods. It seemed to be pretty bustling to me, but I was told that business was low because of Ramadan.

Next we went to the Arusha City Garden restaurant. I think I was too excited to eat, but it was a beautiful place. Frank was pleased to see a popular member of parliament eating there. Frank really dislikes politics and has no desire to be associated with it in any way. But he did recognize the politician and brought up that he is a member of the opposition party and very well loved in Arusha in spite of efforts to discredit him.

Frank proposed taking me to the Arusha museum, but I was anxious to get to the airport. I knew I would have a five hour wait, but I remembered the looooooong check in in Ghana and didn’t want that kind of worry again. So we drove to the airport. I finally got to see Mt. Kilimanjaro peeking out from the clouds and managed to get a few pictures. It was clear enough to see the peak, but not the base so it looks almost as though this cloudy peak is floating in the air. 

I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that the Mt. Kilimanjaro airport had unlimited free wifi! I used my time to chat with Mom, Eric and David which was really nice. Mom said that she had been enjoying my blog but it needs a lot of editing. That's not a big surprise as I am usually writing during in-between times and rarely have a chance to review before I post.

Most of the airport stay was a boring shift from one room to another with no problems except my 1” blade knitting scissors were confiscated.  The security officer mumbled something about how he needed to “sahch” and then he riffled through everything until he found this dangerous weapon.  I never knew that the regulations for what you can carry on weren’t standard. I pointed out that they were just for knitting, but they opened and shut them and said, “They’re sharp.” They just tossed them into this huge glass enclosed cube with maybe a hundred scissors all looking equally dangerous to mine. I was disappointed that I lost a nice pair of knitting scissors, but even more, I lost the ability to knit on the trip. I have purposely held off knitting as much as I could to make sure that I would have this to do on the trip home.

The security line went on and on and on. I saw them confiscate so many things from people. There was one woman who looked so much like Daveed Hero’s mother that I decided to ask her just to make sure – she wasn’t. When she went through security they wanted to confiscate her walking stick and argued with her until she started crying a bit and they apparently agreed to check it instead.

I saw my friend from Amsterdam going through one of the last groups of people through security. She and her boyfriend were very glad to see me. We spoke for a short time before we got the go ahead to board. There was no sequence to boarding but they did open both the front and back doors for boarding. But this time it was quite dark.

I was seated next to a man who didn’t say a word to me on the short flight from Mt. Kilimanjaro to Dar Es Salaam where he got out. For some reason, they didn’t turn the entertainment system on for the quick trip, but the headphones were repeating the same introduction to boring documentary movie background music over and over and over.

New passengers got on a Dar Es Salaam and a husband and wife who were speaking Dutch got on and only said, “Hi.” The entertainment system was turned on, but I discovered that my connector was faulty so I could only hear if I held my finger right there. If I moved just a bit the sound would go off.

The fellow in the seat in front of me reclined the full extent of the seat and that made the screen nearly un-viewable. So here I am, packed like a sardine, no knitting, no video and demanding work to get audio. I did manage to listen to a movie with Christopher Walkin and Philip Seymour Hoffman called “The Late Quartet” which was ok. I understood why I had never heard of it.

I also listened to a bit of Capote and I actually fell asleep! That was really nice. I think I slept for about two hours before we descended a bit due to turbulence, which woke all of the babies on board. But at least the two hours were nice.

I listened to television shows until it was time to land. I rushed to get power for my devices and to capitalize on the free wifi for a while. I really like this airport – they really get what it’s like to be stuck at an airport for hours and needing a bit of pampering.

When I get home and have some rest, I will be going back and adding the pictures that I've omitted until now. I will also be writing some final observations, in case you're interested.