Ice Cream and Camouflage

I am in the big city with all the accompanying hustle and bustle intensified by the hot equatorial sun, but I have to admit I am enjoying it. As much as I love going to wilderness (and I am going to the storied Selous tomorrow!!), I am a city-boy at heart.

One of the joys of city life here in Tanzania is ice cream. I don't think I have appreciated ice-cream this much in a long time. It has been a while since I have been some place this hot without much air-conditioning, but with a consistent enough electricity supply to support freezer technology. It is not Toscanini's quality by any means, but there is something very satisfying about the cold, creamy, sweet indulgence when you are still sweating after the sun goes down (and generally the ice-chip content is very low). All the fancy ice cream in the world is great, but it is a very different experience. I don't eat much real food during the day when it is this hot, but I am more than making up for any caloric deficiencies with ice-cream bars and shakes.

My second anecdote is not related to dessert at all. But is connected to Dar's quaintness despite it being a humongous city. This post was just going to be about ice-cream, but as this happened while I was walking in the street just 10minutes ago, I felt I had to share. I was walking along minding my own business when two police officers (or they could have been soldiers, it's a little hard to tell the difference, they all have big guns) stop me and ask me how I'm doing. I say fine and start to keep walking, and they tell me to stop and I am told that it is against the law in this country to wear the camouflage shorts that I am wearing..

Now I've actually been told this before by people that I've met, but since I only have two pairs of shorts, it's not really feasible for me to stop wearing one of them, and I am mzungu after all..

So I tell the cop I won't wear them anymore, but he says I need to pay a 20,000 shilling fine (about $16) or go to jail for a year. His partner doesn't seem as into this and asks me where I am going, and seems legitimately interested in helping to orient me (though I'm not lost). So I call his bluff, and say, "let's go to the police station so I can pay my fine". So we start walking around the corner, and of course the first one asks me for the money now, and I tell him I'll pay at the station. His partner meanwhile is pointing out the street that goes toward my hotel, so I ignore the guy trying to shake me down, thank the one giving me unnecessary directions and walk away.

It was almost cute how unpersistent this representative of Dar es Salaam's finest was. This really is a big frantic city (as evidenced by the 6 dalla-dalla rides I took yesterday with a person from a local NGO), but I could definitely imagine getting to like it.