Not another boat trip!

For the Easter week, Edd and I travelled to Zanzibar in Tanzania. It can take 1 day on the coach (if you don't stay overnight in Mombasa) and 1/2 day on the boat. The coach was quite an experience, but that's another story.

At the boat desk in Dar, we found out we had to pay three times the price for our ticket as nationals do. We felt a little bitter about this considering we were paying in the same currency as everybody else and sitting in the same seats as everyone else. Imagine if we implemented this triple fee policy for foreigners in England - do you think people would have a problem with it?

We were advised to get on to the boat 1.5 hours before we left to "secure our seat". The journey was a similar story to the Zig/Dakar ferry, except that it was only 3 hours and during the day. Africans just don't have the same concept of personal space as us. Edd and I sat on a row of 4 looking back at the sea, taking up 2 of the seats but hoping we might have the 4 seats to ourselves. A woman opposite had lain across 3 seats and was pretending to be in deep sleep as her personal land grabbing strategy. Therefore the next woman to come along placed her chicken under my seat, herself next to me (bashing me as she sat) and her child on the next seat. Every minute of the journey the woman pushed harder and harder on my left side as she squirmed and shoved a continuous stream of toffees in to her child's mouth. I held firm and tried to maintain control of my single seat staring with determination at the sea hoping not to get seasick this time.

20 minutes in to the journey I noticed the woman quickly pass her child to another woman opposite who was a complete stranger to her. The woman was very smartly dressed in a red dress but she willingly took the child in a natural maternal embrace. I was momentarily confused by this and then soon after my puzzlement was answered. The woman to my left then started throwing up in to a plastic bag only inches from my own face. She did this with such loud retching noises that the whole boat became aware, even above the roar of the engine. In fact it sounded more like the sound of  a throaty motor bike than an actual female being sick! What is the problem with just being a little more discrete about these things? 

The orphaned child, slightly alarmed but calm, watched her mother, blinking as she sat patiently on the guardian woman's lap. The woman to my left continued to throw up every 20 minutes then for the entirety of the journey. In between gags, she then of course was able to lie down on the TWO seats she had now been able to secure. Mmmmm, A bit too convenient I thought! I had by this point became slightly less persistent about resisting her ground creep as before for fear of being covered in vomit.

What surprised me the most was that the mother to my left was perfectly comfortable with the inconvenience she had bestowed on the woman in the red dress. She confidently left the lady with the baby for 2 hours, with no apparent sign of apology or gratitude for the help. In between her puking fits, she would pass more African doughnuts or toffees to the contented child. The red woman would smile awkwardly as she was obliged to unnecessarily feed the child more and more, increasing greatly the likelihood that her smart red dress would be covered in greasy baby goo.

At the end of these two hours this patient woman firmly passed the little child back to the mother to once again take responsibility for the child. I have no doubt that most other passengers on the boat felt some compassion for her obvious malaise, but she really had pushed the tolerance to the limit. At this point I then felt a tap on my leg. The woman picked up her child, and plonked her on my lap and lay down again to get comfortable. No words were spoken. It was obviously my turn to play baby sitter. I placed the child straight down on the seat next to me. Not because she wasn't a little sweetie, but because I wasn't going to have this woman take advantage of me too. The child sat there quite happily apart from the odd sharp kick of its leg into her mother's bum, in her own vain attempt at grabbing her mother's attention once again. This disturbed complaisant woman's two seated sleep. I enjoyed that :-)

We arrived, and then this crazy man redressed himself in his electric blue socks. Just what one needs in 35 degrees c of heat! He completed the activity while staring at me with a deranged grin the entire time.

Well, after 7 months in Africa I have learnt a saying amongst ex-pats which applies in this scenario."I'm surprised I'm still surprised".