Arusha, Tuesday, January 17, 2017

I have been trying to watch some of the interregnum action on MSNBC and our wifi connection has been spotty, so I have not written as much for my blog as usual. Here's the latest, however.

During the night, we were disturbed by the sound of large trucks rumbling on the little, dirt road in front of our compound. There were other loud noises as large loads of something was being dumped out onto the ground. This made no sense as our road is so narrow that two cars can barely pass each other without scraping the side walls. Neither of us got up to check what was happening, so it was the next morning before John discovered that large mounds of broken concrete now were strewn here and there on our road. Some of the business owners on Kundayo Road had gotten the discarded concrete from the big highway project near us and brought it to our road as "repavement". They hired men to spread the rocks more evenly on the road surface and said the chunks would eventually break down and make a better covering with less dust. For today, however, driving on it looks like an axle breaking activity to me.

Our paradise has been a bit blighted this year by the huge road construction project taking place nearby. The Chinese are changing a nice, two-lane, tarmac road into a four-lane, divided highway. While this will certainly help with all the truck traffic to and from the airport, it will also make it much more difficult for people to get across the road and cut off many little shops from their customers. What I personally dislike most is that all the lovely green space and landscaping which used to be along the road is now gone and there will be no space in which to replace it. Development and “progress” are often not as wonderful as touted.

The construction also stirs up massive clouds of dust which settles on everything; our computers, dishes, tables, chairs, etc. John came with a bad cough which is now exacerbated by the dust. He won’t wear a mask because it looks threatening to others, so he coughs, and coughs, and coughs. Today, in a effort to get some relief, we had Ray take us out to Njiro, the nearby suburb with a mini shopping mall. I was looking forward to two things we always do at Njiro: shopping at the Village Grocery Store, which carries everything from cupcake papers to Pringles, and eating my favorite chicken saagwala from the Curry Pot.

In the Village Grocery Store, I noted both higher prices and the absence of usual commodities such as curry powder and Pear’s soap. The bakery was still the same with wonderful breads, pastries, and samosas. I had wanted to buy some yogurt, but at $7 a pint, I passed it by. Also, there was no Stoney Tangawizi, so we bought boxed milk, more Wheetabix, bread, jam, gingernuts (cookies), plus a few other items. Another change was that we were to have reusable shopping bags, as they no longer use plastic. While I applaud this change, it meant that we had to buy cloth bags which we cannot use for our garbage at Kundayo. This wasn’t the entertainment shopping that I had been anticipating.

When we went out into the central open area for lunch, we learned that the Curry Pot had closed just a week ago, so there would be no chicken saagwala for me. I was devastated. I love that dish as the C. P. made it more than any other Indian food I’ve ever had. My consolation was that Chinese Whispers, a fairly new establishment in Arusha, now has a branch in Njiro, so I ordered cashew chicken from them. While the food was delicious, I still wished I could have had my saagwala