Wednesday, June 26 through Friday, June 28
Mtwara, Tanzania: Lutheran Hostel Centre
On Thursday, our first day in a big city in quite some time, we do the usual errands, starting with the bank. From there we attempt to find the ferry office listed in our guide book; after a number of inquiries, we find that it no longer exists and that the office that we're looking for was, of course, directly across the street from the bank. The woman at the ticket office speaks no English whatsoever, so we pull out the Swahili-English dictionary, and after a long discussion, we purchase tickets to Dar on a boat leaving on Friday. We leave the office very proud of ourselves for managing entire transaction in Swahili.
We spend the rest of the day wandering around
town, first checking out the food market down by the local ferry dock, where we
had some very good fried cassava with a spicy tomato sauce, and then heading off
to the beach. We happened upon a very pleasant beach bar on Shangani beach
and spent most of the afternoon relaxing by the sea and watching the local women
dig for shellfish.
The area is known for its carvings from the Makonde tribe, beautiful ebony wood sculptures and figurines. On our way back to the hostel, we meet one of the carvers and buy a couple of sculptures, some letter openers, and some animal figures.
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