Kipepeo

I am slightly ashamed that it has taken me so long to get to the beach. I've been in TZ for about a month now and I took my first trip to the beach yesterday. I went to Kipepeo Beach in Kigamboni for the first time and had an unbelievable day.

The sun was on duty, the breeze was pleasant and the Indian Ocean was as blue and beautiful as always. Seeing it again felt like visiting an old friend. The shore was full of an interesting mix of tourists and local people and it was definitely alive but not annoyingly overcrowded. Within minutes of arriving we witnessed two local men herding their cattle across the beach. I got quite a kick out of seeing cows on the beach so we took a few pictures. After the cows blew through we decided to move down the beach to get closer to the music coming from the bungalows and bars linked across the shore. Marnie and I stripped off our clothes, spread out our kangas and kitenges and settled down in the sand. It wasn't long before we made a friend.

She asked us to watch her things while she went for a swim. When she got back we discovered she lived in Mozambique doing humanitarian work but was originally from Brazil. She was about 30 years old and had a charming Portugese accent. The three of us had ice cream and chatted about Brazil, TZ, and life in general. I finally got tired of squinting and flagged down a man selling straw hats. I've always been weary of wide brim hats b/c I've always felt like they're for moms, but my face was beginning to hurt from being squenched up and the sunglasses seller was nowhere in sight. I shelled out 3,000 Tshs for a straw hat that Marnie described as "Amish style". To my surprise I felt cool with it on. The hat man was also selling kangas, so Angela and I began to search through them for good saying and patterns. I chose a blue and yellow zig zag striped one with a black polka dot border (busy! I know) that read "Nakuvika pete yangu, uwe mchumba wangu." (I'm giving you my ring to wear, be my fiancee." Angela settled on a green and black one that reminded her to never undertake difficult tasks alone.

Angela shared with me a bit of local wisdom she had picked up- the person may think he chooses the kanga, but really the kanga chooses the person. The message we get on our kanga is the one we need at the moment. We were evaluating our own kanga choices when a man approaches riding the infamous camel. I had heard the tales of 2,000 shilling camel rides at Kipepeo beach and I had long ago decided that if I saw the camel I would indeed ride it. I almost melted into the sand with excitement when the camel actually materialized. I stayed with our stuff and snapped pictures while Marnie rode first, then I climbed up into the damp saddle settled atop the camel's hump for my turn.

"Shika vizuri!" (Hold on tight!) the camel man told me and I saw why when the camel stood up pitching my body at a sharp 45 degree angle. After the initial effort of hoisting itself up, the camel strolled up and down the shore and looked out at the people littering the beach. Small children offered the camel ice cream cones and adults stared like I had lost my last shard of common sense. I just held onto the Amish hat with one hand and grinned until I thought my cheeks would crack into pieces and fall off.

We were supposed to be meeting a group of the Princeton kids there but one of them had stepped on a sea urchin and been rushed to the hospital before we arrived. Consequently, Marnie and I had decided against venturing into the water, but after chatting with Angela about the Brazilian goddess of the sea and the healing powers of the ocean, I decided a dip in the warm, salty water might be exactly what I needed. Keeping an eye out for sea urchins and jellyfish, I waded in up to my ankles hoping it would be enough to cleanse my soul. I stood there soaking in the rush of the ocean, the tide sucking my feet into the sand, the sun warming my skin and the laughter and music carrying on the breeze and I couldn't resist going out farther. Sea urchins or no sea urchins I went in up to my neck and in a few minutes I was surrounded by a friendly circle of local people wanting to know where I was from and what I was doing in Dar es Salaam. Before I knew it I had a local girl holding each of my hands (a sign of friendship) and asking for my phone number. I just smiled and chatted away in swahili, bobbing up and down in the ocean and watching the sun settle lower in the sky.

After drying off on the shore and exchanging numbers with all my new friends it was time to go. Angela, Marnie and I piled into the back of a Bajaj and headed back to the ferry. At home I stuffed myself with good food, chatted about the sea urchin mishap, washed the sand out of my crannies and tucked my drowsy little self under my mosquito net to dream about floating in the indian ocean with a camel.