What Awaits Me at Home

I leave today (Wednesday 5th September) and arrive home tomorrow.I have mixed feelings about going home. All in all, I'm more than happy to go home but I will definitely miss alot of stuff here.Maybe I have made them out to be horrible but I will miss the unpredictable entertainment of dala dalas. I will miss getting chips or zege whenever I feel like. There is alot I'm going to miss about the daily lifestyle of Dar es Salaam.

There are some things I won't miss though. As I type this, a mosquito just bit me 3 times on my shoulder and once on my finger.I caught him on my finger, squashed him and all my blood that was inside him remained splatted all over my finger with his insides.Also, mosquito related, I won't miss taking lariam. They make me feel sick for a while, had a freaky dream once (wrote about it)and they make me more attractive for mosquitoes to bite. I won't miss being the only early 20s person around the place.

The whole standing out as a mzungu won't be missed.

I dread going into my final year of college. Should be the toughest year of my life to date. I do accept I have to do it as I've had the best year of my life in Linz and Dar. I go back to Dublin where all the kids have shoes, where burning your rubbish outside on the street is an arrestable offence, where women have small asses, where people won't stare at me, where people are generally not as friendly, where there is a legal age for drinking but at the same time where under 18 year olds drink too much, where the windows have glass and the bed don't have nets over them, where the chance of diseases is minimal, where blaring music at 3am for the whole village to hear is a taboo, where young teenagers are cheeky bastards and don't respect their elders, where taxis prices are unmeetable and where a price to go somewhere in Dar is already on the meter just for sitting in the seat and telling the driver where to go, where bouncers and security men won't be masaai warriors and won't have any respect for me, where a shitty beer is 3 times more expensive than a great beer in Dar, where saying you be somewhere at a certain time means you will be there at that time, where people kill flies because they don't like the sound of the buzzing rather than preventing themselves getting bitten, where 1 pot hole on a road is complained about, where there is grass completely covering football pitches, where I can have a hot shower, where the biggest money note is €500 and not 10,000tsh (€6), where the city has an ATM at most corners even if most of them are out of order, where power cuts are rare, where the coast of the city has no or really shitty beaches, where I will spend hours watching a TV even if there is nothing good on,where the Internet connections are at least decent, where the minimum amount of phone credit I can buy is €10 as opposed to the maximum being 5,000tsh (€3), where scumbags walk the streets thinking they are better than me while spitting, smoking "Johnny Blue" and drinking cider!

and finally.... where I won't be living like a king for a few quid !!!! :-(

I would love to come back soon but I've done Tanzania twice now in my youth and young manhood, so for now my life is doing this awful degree so I can get money together through a shitty job in a cubicle where I'll stare at a computer screen for hours while knocking back aspirins to cancel the headaches so I can do more travelling. Who knows where though, I would like to do Asia and North America but.... who knows.

The things I have already marked on the calendar to look forward to are:

1. most noticeably (along with point #2), I go to Switzerland on Monday(10th) to see Kristin. I've been counting down to that for a long while now.


2. Mom's cooking. She's the best cook I know. The few times I'd come home from Linz, I would request a certain dinner but this time, I trust her knowledge. Usually it's her pasta with cream sauce or a chicken broccoli dish.


3. I'm having a piss up gathering in Sweeneys on Friday night (7th Sept) with a few of my friends, so a nice pint of the black stuff is included in this point.


4. The only thing that will keep me sane in final year is the act of insanity and going back to play American Football with my fellow pissheads of DCU Saints. Missing all of last season has made me hungry to crack heads.


5. Spar rolls: "Mayo, plain chicken, red onion, grated cheese please, in that order, thank you."


6. The rugby world cup, sadly I don't think Ireland are ready to take on any major teams but we'll see.


7. Seeing Arcade Fire on concert in October, it shall be epic !!!


8. Philip and I are going on one of usual Dublin pub crawls when I get back from Switzerland and when he is in Dublin for a short while. I love these. Also he got a new dog I'm dying to see.

I'm sure there are a few things I'm looking forward to but have forgotten them right now.