Randi and I are back from our East Africa safari but, other than the few pictures we uploaded along the way, we have nothing to show for it! My fancy Nokia camera phone decided to eat all the pictures we took. There are lots of great stories to be told, though, like the day I swapped t-shirts with some dude on the streets of Dar Es Salaam.

It went down like this: Randi and I had decided Dar Es Salaam was way too hot and humid, and we hadn’t had a cup of coffee in a couple of days. We noticed a sign saying “Coffee Lounge” outside a fairly classy building in a nicer part of town (read: probably had air conditioning), so we went inside to investigate. It was there, climbing the stairs, that I saw a dude coming down the stairs with a shirt that said “Niko Juu!!” (slang, literally “I’m up”). He kinda paused when he saw me, and then I told him, “Wee, shirt yako iko poa. Tubadilishane?” (dude, your shirt is cool, let’s trade). To my surprise he took his off immediately and we traded right then and there. So if you see some dude walking around Tanzania with a Ramones shirt it’s probably the same guy. Hopefully he enjoys telling the story as much as I do!

The rest of our trip went off without a hitch. We did eat a lot of mangoes and gelato in Watamu and Malindi, just like we said we would! We ate so many mangoes in Watamu that as we were leaving one mama told us “Unalipa moja, na nikupe moja. Zawadi.” (you pay for one, and I give you one. Gift.). Randi’s back in the US now, and I start work on Monday, so I gotta get back into the routine of things around here. In other news, I’m finally moved into my new apartment, just down the road from the penthouse I was staying in before, but I’ll wait until it’s all furnished to post some pictures.