a whirlwind

Well, I was all set to write about the R.E.M. concert that Kolz and I saw at the Waldbühne last Wednesday - complete with neat pics and playlists and about as much enthusiasm as one person can have for one band (let me in? acoustic? I almost died. They were impressive - a tight band, no lackluster in sight, and entertaining without seeming like they do it all the time. The German crowd was a little to ready to clap in unison to a given song, but hearing all however many thousand of them singing along to "losing my religion" (even though it's not my favorite song) was sort of hilarious and endearing. They felt it.

Then it was Kolz's last few days in Berlin, lots of running around and goings-on, visiting hometowns of friends and taking tours of Reichstags, getting him the last bit of good traditional German food.

And then it suddenly was time to pack and say goodbye to the friends who will be leaving these coming weeks, cleaning & organizing and not really letting anything sink in...

and now I'm in Dar. My connection isn't the speediest, so I don't know about photos, but it's easy and reliable. I'm tucked inside a big canopy of a mosquito net with a breeze coming through. The street noise is about comparable to living on Amsterdam in New York, but apparently the muezzin(s) will wake me at 5 or so. Which is not comparable to living in New York. Nor is the smell of charcoal and something cooking.

After 26 hours of travel and two not-insignificant moments of panic, things look to be pretty good here. My host is a lovely older German woman, very generous, and the apartment is just nice. We ate dinner on the beach outside of town, and I'm ready to go to my first archive tomorrow morning (Catholic missionaries - in French). It will be worlds away from my time here in 2006, which I have to laugh about in retrospect. It was great, but this time: hot water! internet in my bedroom! a wraparound balcony! no bugs running across my forehead at night (knock wood)!

My Kiswahili is terrible, but I'm trying to switch into English as my default language, and hopefully that will bring it back. I made it alright with my taxi driver, but I'm used to being able to say more complicated things. But my skills were sufficient to indicate to the probably drunken man sitting next to me on the Dubai-Dar flight that I a) was not going to tell him where I was staying in Dar [calm down, Mom] b) wanted to go to sleep so could he please move his arm over onto his side and c) was "married", accompanied by strong gesture with left-hand ring finger, and did not have children. Yes, folks, I'm married for Tanzania again. And my good luck on flight companions finally ran out, or at least hiccuped a little bit. What flight companion horrors or amusements do you have, friends?