Frank in Africa ‘08

so after writing my last post Beer and I spend most of the day at the internet cafe trying to upload things to the virusfreegeneration hiphop tour site, we uploaded a 5mb video which took 10 minutes, and after that wasted about an hour on trying to upload 20kb (2 small thumbnails).

I decided it was a good day to wear my official tour t-shirt today, but its really thich fabric and the print on it doesnt let any air go through, so I have a wet spot between my boobs, sexy I know, more sexy stuff I forgot to mention, last night I got rid of a lot of my hair, it was just too hot for long hair, the usual routine, using 2 hair elastics and cutting in between them removing the pony tail completely in one go.

not much else happened today, im tired after 2 sleepless nights, but I can’t really seem to relax. I talked to an african person from music mayday today after the electricity went down, and the first thing she said was “don’t worry about it just relax, and after a while they’ll find a way to fix it” so that’s what I’ve been doing, no website updates without laptops, and those run on electricity, since my battery has 3 more minutes on it, it’s time to start living the african way, walk slowly, relax, have a drink, and don’t worry man…

Tags: Tanzania, Uncategorized by Frank
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Mamba (that’s what all the people say here),

Day 1 started with a walk around the neighbourhood, after which we cooled down for a while in a luxery shopping centre, with marble floors known as “the Millenium Towers”.

It’s strange to see a big marble block with futuristic reflective windows in a place like this, there are a lot of small dirt roads with a lot of small shops, they sell food pretty much everywhere, there are a lot of strong smells while walking around, 1 moment you’re enjoying the smell of meat being grilled and the next its the typical smell of hot trash.

There are lots of chickens walking around and dogs sleeping in the shade, it’s really a different world, and even though it’s a pretty “rich” part of town it’s still really poor by my western standards.

All the people are really friendly, but for the most obvious reason, white people have money, as soon as you stop and talk to them it’ll result in them trying to sell you artsy stuff, or trying to get you in their taxi.

After all that walking we decided to go back, eat and drink something and after that try if we could get some money at the ATM, which we couldn’t, just the receipt, no money, but that’s pretty normal here, nothing to worry about, after finding an internet cafe (see previous post) and buying some SIM cards for our phones we took a taxi to the kilimanjaro hotel, where Beer, Jeroen and I met the rest of the crew.

We walked to the ferry to paradise, which was an experience on it’s own, we’re were told to watch our bags/wallets because it was gonna be crowded, so crowded that it wasn’t possible to move at all, we took a taxi to a nice resort at the beach where we sat on the beach and drank a beer, it was heaven, and hard to believe that it was all real, the contrast between the poor city life and the beautiful beach was a surreal experience.

I walked down the beach and through the water for a bit (setting foot in the indian ocean for the first time), chased some crabs and within 5 minutes found found more cool sea shells and pieces of coral than I’ve collected in the previous 23 years of my life, too bad it’s illegal to take things with you, guess the small sea shell that’s in my bag now officially makes me a smuggler.

We had dinner, I had chicken curry, and after that went back to the guesthouse, where I edited pictures for a while and got my first mosquito bite (on my foot), all together a great first day.

the power just died, so I better save my battery and end this post.

some (small) pictures:

the wing

the plane

the view from the mil. towers

the ferry

the treasures

the beach

Tags: Tanzania by Frank
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