Dar es salaam, Tanzania

I am so far underwhelmed with Dar. I'm not sure what I expected, I hadn't put any thought to it, but it was not this. Something a little grander, perhaps, a little more openly exotic, openly foriegn. It took me most of the first day to realize the three-story YWCA compound we are staying in was not in the outskirts or the sprawl of the city but the center. My conception of City includes towers, places where you walk through canyons of glass and steel, but the tallest buildings are hotels, not offices. It strikes me that the offices in the cities i'm used to might manage the hotels here. Dar reminds of Atlants on a small scale.
I feel uncomfortable being a tourist here, and I feel uncomfortable being constantly objectified for my money or my citizenship on the street. The city feels to me as if it sells itself but receivs nothing in return.
I pass compounds, all surrounded by metal bars or concrete walls topped with barbed wire (Dar as a city does not seem overly adverse to barbed-wire--the stuff is everywhere). Each gate bears the name and logo of some security group. Based on the man or two all dressed in kakhi in our hostel's courtyard I assume security means men with kalashnikovs. These compounds are for contractors, concrete companies, an oil exploration group, consultancy (lots of these) and a countless number of ambiguously titled and undescribed companies.
The swimming beaches are reserved for tourists. The coast not suitable for tourist ebaches are worked by locals, for what I cannot tell from this distance; at low tide there are several hundred yards of green sandbar and tide-water between the road and the ocean. Where one of these tidal inlets is deep enough locals are bent over, wading and reaching into the water. We want to swim but don't feel it would be appropriate to do so where someone works. Appropriate. This idea comes up over and over again but has no clear definition, only a mess of meaning muddied by Mikhal's (our anthropology professor) impressings on the uncertainty of any judgement. Anthropological thought has become a maze of shifting sfumato layers of awareness, self-awareness and self-unawareness more akin to a chess game played without seeing the pieces and best navigated by uncertainty.
I knew there would be trash, that the city would be dirty, but I was not prepared for the casualness of how trash was spread. I see it especially in areas of grass. I am used to seeing litter by the sides of roads, in alleys, but litter is not what is in Dar. Trash is the only word that seems appropriate, and it is omnipresent like the dust.
This, apprently, is development. Hotels and awkward construction and street venders hawking shoes, clothes, wallets, all cheap factory-mades, either 'local' or chinese or indian or south-east asian. Yay globalized production model. So much here seems to cater to the outsider. Evidence of americana in the form of foods, experiences, services, consumables of all shapes and sizes, is thrown in everywhere. It seems plastic and cargo-cultish. The american food is wrong, off in a subtle, glossy, cut-out kind of way, the western-style outifts the waiters wear in the restaurants that cater to tourists look costumish to me. Everything western is shaped right, but the flow, the shift and shuffle of life here is different, is not American of European, never will be, never should be. But it is sad to see how innefectually parts of this place seem to sell themselves out.
My first day of classes is tommorrow. Wish me luck.

-October 5th, 2009

None of this is to say I am unhappy, or even dissapointed. In fact I am enjoying myself immensly. I am writing these posts in the moment (gonzo style) and then posting it when I can, so these are not crafted, complete views but snapshots of my reflection and experience. Also, there will be typos. I pay for my internet here, and my typing muscles have already atrophied (I write all my papers by hand now).