This is Africa

Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - Cesare Pavese

Finally the moment you've all been waiting for (I'm an optimist at heart), my first post ever from Haydom, and in fact from Africa.

As with many things in Africa, things happen at their own pace, a pace that can be very different to what you are used to. So after several days of no internet, we have finally got some resemblance of internet back in Tanzania, which has given me a brilliant opportunity to post.

The biggest challenge facing me right now, is how to condense all that has happened into a story, where you as the readers can comfortably reach the end. I hope that the stories I share will both be entertaining, but also impart some lessons I've learnt about traveling and working in Tanzania.

Arriving into Tanzania
Arriving into Dar es Salaam gave me my first lesson, into the pace at which Africa can operate. I waited nearly over an hour to get a visa at the airport (know doubt if any of my family are reading this they would be saying 'I told you so'). Consequently, my first point advice to any traveler to Tanzania is to try and get your visa in advance, it's not worth the wait at the other end.

With this delay in getting a visa and delays embarking the plane I actually ended up missing my booked flight from Dar es Salaam to Arusha with PrecisionAir. These flights were initially booked about a gap of about 2hrs.

Lesson 2: Book enough time between flights.

Of course you could argue that I'm largely to blame for not being better prepared.

However, because of this little mishap, I was more or less thrown straight into another aspect of Tanzanian culture; their friendliness and willing to help. I was helped by many different Tanzanians and eventually got a flight later that night to Arusha with FastJet. Sure there was money involved in this case, but just their approach was outwardly friendly and welcoming.

A quick comment on FastJet as I was supposed to originally fly Precision Air. FastJet provided a good flight to Arusha. The only discernible difference I could detect between FastJet and PrecisionAir is that more foreigners seemed to fly PrecisionAir.

I would like to provide a quick lesson on money in Tanzania, which I also learnt during this experience. They are both quite obvious, but I saw one American kick up a stink (Australian phrase to overally complain about something, where it's probably not necessary).

Lesson 3: If paying in $US expect to receive change in Tanzanian Shilling, often worse than official rates.

Lesson 4: In addition, to this if are going to use $US make sure you have small change (e.g. $1 bills) as many vendors won't accept larger notes. However, the larger notes do get better exchange rates.

Lesson 5: New $US bills get better exchange rates.

Getting to Haydom
Before I left Australia I had an initially planned to take the public landcruiser from Arusha to Haydom. Many of the visitors to Haydom do this and it is one of the most common transportation methods.

The down-side (as others have told me) is that it's a 5-6hr journey in a cramped bus, which has zero suspension and subsequently lots of sore buttocks.

I however, was very fortunate to score a last minute plane flight as a joiner (extra passenger on a chartered flight), with Mission Aviation Fellowship or MAF. The flight was an amazing experience and I got to truly see Africa for the first time during the day. One lake we flew over had so many flamingos all you could see from the sky was a mass of moving pink. That was alive both in movement and also colour.

Joiner Flights cost around $US35 a huge saving. Plus your supporting outreach flights.

On this flight, I met one of the nicest and generous families that I've ever encountered. And they are largely the inspiration for the opening quote, so they well and truly deserve a mention. The three team members of the Egenberg family that I met were Ark (Pallitive Care Doctor), Signe (Midwife turned researcher) and their son Lars (future army helicopter pilot). Signe is involved with setting up an initiative in Tanzania to improve maternal outcomes during labour.

And that's it from me for now with plenty more stories to come, especially featuring the Egenberg family.