Flashback: A morning of markets

(This posting is a flashback to Tuesday) We have had quite a day in DAR! After breakfast we went to the largest local market in Tanzania - called Kariakoo where we wandered past hundreds of stall and booths selling every vegetable and grain imaginable and random household products. We got some friendly waves and a 'Barack Obama' shouted at us once or twice (quite a boost to our popularity factor here) we chatted with one guy that knew a bit of English... And we said a lot of the same Swahili words over and over again... For lack of not knowing the correct words. There was also a guy that seemed to be following us for a bit, but eventually he went elsewhere. It is CRAZY humid here...and pretty hot. But feels just a little more humid than an intense humid day in Chicago - so we were ok...sweated like crazy, but our odor had little impact on those around us.

After the market, we went back to the hotel to meet our pick-up guy from the night before and the driver.... To head out for our city tour. We went straight to the 'biggest fish market in Tanzania' where they had a whole assembly of businesses going....fishermen bringing in the catch selling to hotels and retail shops and restaurants...but also handing off some fish to hundreds of people scaling and filetting the fish...and then passing it to a cooking area and the cooking area backed up to a group of people selling random alottments and fragments of firewood to keep the fires going for cooking. The smells were pretty intense...actually putting Kate into near-hurling her breakfast mode... But she held it together. I also had an incident in which I accidentally slipped in some fish-guts water and it splattered all over my pant legs AS WELL AS some poor guys standing nearby in semi-decent outfits. I felt really bad about it, but our guide
encouraged us to move along and just accept that it was an accident.

After the fish market, we went to TingaTinga which will be the topic of another blog soon.

Hope everyone back home is doing well!