Sweet Eazy and the noisy beach

Mark tonight as the latest I've ever stayed out in Dar, home around midnight. These are the benefits of living with someone with a car! Caveat [reader]: I'm tired, so I'm chatty.

"Sweet Eazy" is a restaurant that's on the list of good ones in Dar, but I had never been - but my hostess invited me along to an embassy get-together there, and I brought my new friend Darla, as an extension of our trip to the beach today. When we got there, Darla and I took up a place at the bar and Hostess and her embassy folks gathered to chatter (Germans - beer; Darla and I - Krest bitter lemon soda and fried banana dessert). There was a band playing, mainly reggae (more on the love affair with Bob Marley some other time), and the bar/stage area was really lovely - a semi-circle bar and dark wood, bright walls, neat stuff on them...very posh, all in all, but also comfortable. Wooden beams with ceiling fans going, candles, etc. We spent the next 3 hours listening to either a very, very tall guy singing reggae or a woman named Karola (?) singing everything from Tracy Chapman to the Twist to some really neat songs in Swahili. The Twist was actually the song that got the largest number of people onto the dance floor, which was cute. Really tall reggae guy and his friends were dancing when he wasn't up there singing, and when Karola wasn't on stage she was working the crowd, saying hello and embracing at least half of the folks there.

And then the Germans broke open the dance floor! It was sort of hilarious, a big gaggle of ex-pats on their night out, bopping around, but then it actually really got everyone else out dancing. Darla and I were really tired from our day at the beach (more later on that, too) and so we spent most of the time talking and dancing on our stools. Until I realized I really would regret not dancing at all, so we sort of danced a little bit with my hostess and the gaggle, but the tired took over and we sat back down. And then really tall reggae guy (who had helped the waitress tell me what a song title was, so what ensued wasn't totally weird) called me out into the group of 4 or 5 friends he was dancing with. I heard this "Wewe! [You! and then something in Swahili]" and said to Darla "well, we'd better get out there" and she replied "no, I think that's just you"...and so I went, completely forgot how to dance for a few minutes, I was so nervous, and then sort of hopped from one foot to another until it felt reasonable again. It's a bit strange to have everyone singing along to a song that you can only catch bits and pieces of, and I wasn't sure exactly what to do with myself, but it was me and the Germans and a bunch of Tanzanians who were clearly good friends, and it was really alright. My hostess knew half the room, alone. It was nice to suddenly be part of a group. How the embassy folks knew the main singer and how she knew the posh Euro-Tanzanian couples all around, I don't know, but it all just worked.

Otherwise, today has been my day off, really and truly. I finished the article this morning, and then went off for my other German excursion, to the beaches south of Dar. This was Darla and I's first real chance to hang out, and the crowd was a nice mixed group of six. Where in 2006 I went with my local expert friends to a lovely beach with thatched-roof bandas and a very quiet easy day, this time we ended up at a full-fledged resort with blaring bass and a pool - what I imagine Miami or Ibiza to feel like, but on a smaller scale. Eventually the bass calmed down and we settled in, but it was different than my memories of the beach there. This I largely blame the person I will only call Mr. Know-It-All, who insisted on going to this area outside of Dar but then, once we rode the ferry over, proceeded to walk in the back of the group and wander around and eventually come around to saying that he did not know which dalladalla to take to the beach, nor where the beach was, had just heard about it "from his roommate." Buying passionfruit and flirting with the girls was more interesting.

And this is when I realized that my Swahili kicks in when it has to. Like when we need to get to the beach. After a short exchange with a guy cooking fries on the street and the sudden arrival of his taxi-driver friend, all 6 of us piled into a cab -- once again, a cabbie playing Bob Marley constantly -- and headed toward the beach I knew. But Mr. K-i-T then asks the cabbie about the nicest beach, and insists that we go there instead of the one that I know. And then he tries to tell me that I was saying the word for "seven" instead of the word for "cool/okay" in Swahili. He does not know Swahili, or at least he never speaks it. I tell you, readers, if it would have been appropriate, I would have smacked him upside the head for that last bit.

But, all's well that ends well. We had a nice time at the beach, K-I-T tuned into his iPod and we met some other nice Americans and played frisbee in the ocean, walked and lazed about, and everybody went home happy. I went home via my new favorite samosa place, fixed dinner for Darla and I, and got cleaned up and went out to the Sweet Eazy, which brings me to the end of the long, nice day. Sweet and easy indeed!