Hanging over a toilet bowl, retching in the oppressive heat. Watching ‘true crime’ series The Serpent set in 1970s Bangkok brings back raw memories of the first year spent living in Dar es Salaam in 1999.
We weren’t being poisoned by a sinister character bent on robbery or murder, but rather simply adjusting to life in ‘the tropics’, having emerged pale and low on vitamin D from London’s February gloom.
The Tanzanian capital in the late 1990s was not dissimilar to The Serpent’s televised scenes of Bangkok. Cicadas, palm trees, manicured grass lawns, hotels, banana fronds, and bougainvillea set against a warm, lapping Indian Ocean.
Dar’s city skyline was dominated by ugly 1960s blocks of offices and flats. A country emerging from a socialist past with communist undertones and clear evidence of Chinese influence.
City streets rammed with minibuses, tuk-tuks, handcarts, rusted saloon cars, smoke-belching lorries, and bicycles. Streets peopled by hawkers selling second-hand clothes, cigarettes, sweets, or cashew nuts and taxi drivers touting for custom.
Beggars in wheelchairs, or mothers with babies strapped on backs, shaking empty plastic cups at the windows of stationary vehicles. Streets lined with fruit stalls, shoe shine stands, knife sharpeners playing their trade from upturned bicycles.
Roaming forex agents offering ‘very good rate’ preyed in packs on unsuspecting foreigners like me. In those days, any foreigner travelling in Dar was labelled ‘teacher’ by the local population who called out ‘mwalimu’ as you passed, since most outsiders were traveller volunteers, missionaries, or NGO workers.
Shoeless, long-haired backpackers were occasionally in evidence but generally en-route to the beaches of Zanzibar and, even then, pretty far off the beaten track.
Following a honeymoon stay in Zanzibar that kicked off with a violent bout of food poisoning, then staggered on for ten more days with low-level nausea, we moved into a small apartment on the mainland. Each morning began with my new husband and I checking-in with each other.
“How are you feeling? Did you sleep okay? Were you up in the night?”
Even though I find myself shouting at the TV as The Serpent ‘longhairs’ ortravellers serially fail to grasp the fact they are being poisoned or they try to seek help, I can understand why tropical stomach bugs were broadly accepted and going to the hospital for such a commonplace illness might have been a daunting prospect back then.
Visiting the hospital in the late 1990s Dar es Salaam was an ordeal. First, because of the language barrier and then the bureaucracy. At that time, the Aga Khan was a private hospital built in the 1960s (since rebuilt).
There was not much comfort to be found within the large, square concrete structure, four or five stories high, arranged around an inner courtyard that was open to the sky.
Rays of sunlight shone down from above to illuminate leafy pot plants alive with dancing mosquitos in search of shade. Open corridors lined with numbered rooms had clusters of visitors waiting outside, seated on benches and plastic chairs. No respite from the high levels of heat and humidity.
On our first visit, after wandering around aimlessly for a while, we were directed to a wooden booth marked ‘Registration’, which was deserted. My husband tapped impatiently on the wooden counter until, finally, a man wearing a sleeveless sweater in eighty-degree heat, strolled over to take his seat behind the glass partition with a plastic mug of steaming sweet tea.
“kadi iko wapi?” The man asked once he was fully settled. “Kadi ya usajili?”
Sweat trickled down the back of my legs as we puzzled for a moment about what he could mean. After a little confusion, registration forms were pushed toward us through a hole in the glass and a biro found.
We duly filled out the papers, only to watch the information then painstakingly transcribed onto new cards with our names misspelled. We were then gestured to take the cards to a payment booth where it took more time to summon up staff and yet more bureaucratic hoops were laid before us to jump through.
“Lucky this isn’t an emergency.” My husband muttered as I wilted weakly on his arm.
Nobody was in any hurry and queuing, resignedly accepted by all. Visiting the hospital could take half a day for a single consultation. Dignity was left at the door when producing a stool sample proved to be a necessary part of a doctor’s visit.
If the toilets had running water or tissue paper, it was a bonus. Diagnosis of giardia, amoeba, or dysentery came as a relief as it meant that a course of antibiotics would help. At least until you picked up a new bug a month or two down the line.
The 1970s glamour and partying featured in The Serpent was absent for us. Our coastal home was predominantly Muslim in culture, so covering shoulders and legs in public was expected and my hotchpotch wardrobe comprised of whatever could be gleaned from clearance racks in February back in the UK.
A smattering of expats at that time worked at embassies or at the International school. In a bid to find friends, we joined the ritualistic, Monday night, Hash House Harriers, ‘the drinking club with a running problem’ (an idea that originated in Malaysia in the 1930s) and I managed to give the whole group food poisoning when it was my turn to host — but that’s another story…
The flushed, sweating discomfort of Dutch consular secretary Herman Knippenberg and his wife Angela in The Serpent sum up perfectly how we must have appeared.
A far cry from the suave, acclimatised ease of Charles Sobhraj and his girlfriend. But we stayed on and have lived in East Africa for twenty-three years now.
Any discomfort spent adjusting back then has clearly been outweighed by reasons to stay in these friendly, sunny climes which we’ve been privileged to experience.
Africa Expat Wives Club 