We arrived back in Moshi from Kilimanjaro with the entirety of our climbing team, Pasian and our driver around 1:15pm in the afternoon. With dirt covering our bodies from head to toe, caked under our fingernails like some kind of trash mongaloiding vagabond burglar you’d find on the show of Real Housewives of whatever city of your choosing… My point is that we hadn’t showered in 6 days, smelled somewhat foul and were in desperate need of showers.
Pasian promptly checked us in and we sauntered like debilitated marathon heroes up to our room one floor from ground level. T took the first shower. Let me preface this by saying the Leopard Hotel is not up to your Motel 6 standard. Each room has a water heater above the toilet that if your are lucky is place not one, but two feet in front of the sink and directly next to the shower. Basically, you can shower, pee, and wash your hands all at the same time, but I digress… The hot water heaters at THE Leopard Hotel of Moshi are not terribly big and can run out from time to time, so when you baske in the glory of the feeling of a hot water shower for 5 minutes after just having checked in, more often than not, you are going to pay with the sudden razor sharp beads that feel like they are coming Poseidon himself. This happened to T. o
Luckily I had just purchased a 6 hour span of Internet usage from the concierge downstairs and was happily interwebbing my way away. T waited about 10-15 minutes for some hot water to reinvent itself in what has quickly established the tank of happiness on this trip. The oohs and ahhs coming from the bathroom following that wait time, rivaled even some of the best Herbal Essences commercials. Soon after, I followed up with a hot shower of my own. Sorry to disappoint, but I did not try to pee from the shower into the adjacent toilet, however I still got yelled at for leaving the toilet seat up – a habit that must have reestablished itself after a week of 20 foot deep ground pee holes.
I believe I entered the shower at around 4:40pm. This is only of importance becaue a fellow salesman / street hustler that T and I had met during our last stay at THE Leopard Hotel was waiting downstairs to bring me to a nearby tanzanite jeweler and had been for some time. I hustled and went downstairs looking every bit the tourist I am, met up with the guy. The guy had nothing on him except for what I suspected was the same exact shirt on he was wearing last week. I said be right back and bought T and I some coca cola lights from the shop next door and went back upstairs. Ten minutes later T was ready and we followed this guy 2 blocks to some no name hole in the wall jeweler, the whole time getting the heebie jeebies. We get there and I ultimate determine buying tanzanite from this place is just like buying it on Union street back in San Francisco – a rip off, and we head out. The street hustler “friend” then proceeds to bring us to another store 2 blocks back in the direction we came from. While on the way to that store, we see our friend who runs a shop we went to last visit to Moshi who insists we go to his shop “right now.” I go into shop number one, it fills up with people, and I quickly leave with guy from last week and T to his shop. There, we unload some real dough on a set of eight bowls I think my rents are going to lay eggs over. Salads will never be the same. I got the guy to drop $145 dollars off of his asking price. It only took an hour of saying and typing my price into a calculator the entire time. Meanwhile a collection of other salesmen “friends” is building up right outside the store. After T bus some jewelry from the shop, we leave and are bombarded by all these guys peddling their shit. There is only one guy we actually have interest in – another guy (Dancan) we met before leaving for Kilimanjaro last week at the very shop we had just left. Confusing I know, but it goes somewhere I promise.
At this point, it’s dusk, probably somewhere around 7:00pm and getting dark and there is one other “friend” that has been following us for a block or so now trying to peddle us his paintings for 10,000 Tsh or less (~7,000 Tsh = $1 US). We find this guys work and lack of hustling skills sad and humiliating and repeatedly say “kesho” (tomorrow) to him, but he’s on us like flies on shit. The fucker is persistant. We continue to follow Dancan to his friends shop and pass a rack of bags on this one street. T’s eyes light up like a lion’s with fresh gazelle meat on the mind. She nets not one, not two, but three bags for 17,000 Tsh. WINNER of the bargain of the day award. We move on with Dancan. Sad painting man is still in tow.
We get to Dancan’s friends shop. It is directly across from the shop we initially were at when our friend from last week picked us up and urged us to come along with him. We enter shop. There is a generator running in the background, keeping the light above on. Every few minutes a sculpture of some random animal falls of the racks because of the generator. Design flaw, buddy. T buys some rings she presumes will turn her fingers green and some coin purses. We leave and follow Dancan back to THE Leopard Hotel.
Fun fact: there are NO, if not little amounts of, street lights in Moshi. This means that the streets are pitch fuckin’ black at night with the absence of cars. Mix in the switched roads and things get a little interesting, if not dangerous. Don’t worry, no one gets hit by a car, but this fact definitely struck me as strange.
We are one block away from the hotel. You can literally see the sign. Another fun fact: there are these huge meter-deep gutters on the sides of some roads in Moshi to help with rain fall in the rainy months (March – June) and some of them are uncovered, but have pathways across every so often. In day time, you can see them easily, but at night, you should probably be aware and not be texting or playng pocket pool while walking. As we were crossing the pitch black street, one corner from our hotel, I see said gutter, but T does not. T is heading straight towards the corner of where one of the little bridges ends and the gutter begins again and is two or three feet in front of me. “T, heads up”… “T HEADS UP!”. Too late, she steps right into the void. It is at this moment where your first instinct is to laugh, because you do that when you see this type of stuff on television. I do not laugh. The gutter swallers her whole, she bumps off the side and has to pull her five foot body out of the four foot hole. We are in Moshi in the middle of Tanzania, Africa, it’s night, and we know no one. The last thing we need is a hospital visit. T emerges laughing. I’m suspect. I’m expecting the worst. We quickly check her out with the light from our cell phones. No broken bones, no gashes, only minormbumps and scratches and probably some bruises tomorrow.
We get back to the hotel entrance and look a Dancan’s paintings. I buy two because they have a story behind them. He also has a Kilimanjaro climbing company he’s trying to lift off the ground (www.robustadventures.com). I tell him I will help him with a fb presence. T and I go upstairs and neosporin the crap out of her and then we head down for some dinner at Ristorante Italian Passion. A hawaiin and margarita pizza later and it’s time to call it a night.
Zanzibar tomorrow!
Lala Salama.
