In 24 hours, two strange encounters with short-statured people. First:
I was lying on my rather splendid Tanzanian four-poster bed yesterday evening watching a dreadful film called Mindhunters by Renny Harlin and “starring” Christian Slater, who gets iced in half by liquid nitrogen, Jonny Lee Miller, who demonstrates perfectly clearly why he has never become more famous, the bloke who played Webster in Band of Brothers, some Hispanic chick with Tude, and another person with Tude but justifiable Tude because he was in a wheelchair having been shot. They were all FBI agents and getting killed off one by one in surprisingly inventively gruesome fashion. it was beyond dreadful and impossible to stop watching.
Then there was a knock on the door and someone tried the handle. I opened the door to find a ten-year-old (ish) boy. He pushed the door open and said,
“Have you seen [something indistinct]?”
“What?”
“Have you seen Beata?”
“Who is Beata?”
“Oh, OK.”
And he left. I have been staying in the hotel all week and have never seen this boy before or since. Perhaps he was an FBI agent who had actually killed his parents and turned into a serial killer because the first FBI agent at the murder scene instead of arresting him said, “kid, do you want some gum?”. Oh, no, that was Jonny Lee Miller.
Encounter number two:
I was at the ferry terminal in Dar buying a ticket for Zanzibar, where I will go at 3.45 this afternoon with a light heart and no prospect of trekking through slums to look at toilets. I had just bought the ticket when Kisheri turned up. Kisheri is a young man with curly eyelashes (I have noticed, being extraordinarly perceptive, that all Tanzanian men have strikingly curly eyelashes. I haven't been looking at the women) who is a trained Environmental Health Officer but who is interning at WaterAid. He has been most helpful this week and says he has learned a lot. Yesterday I gave him my card and today he happened to be passing, he said, when he saw me at the ferry office, and arrived bearing two sheets of paper. “I am pleased I met you,” he said, “because I wanted to ask you about this.” And he showed me what was printed on the paper. It was this, which he had from my website. I think I'm quite unflappable but being confronted at a crowded ferry terminal in Dar es Salaam with a story I'd written two years earlier - and forgotten - about a man called Mick who drives a cab in Brighton? That made me flap a little. In a good way.
I didn't go to see the rats. I've had enough of cars and roads and driving for one week and the rats are 250km inland. Instead, I'm heading for spices and beauty and touts. And some of the best beaches in the world, though I have not packed any swimming gear. Before anyone berates me for this, like someone annoying at WaterAid just did - “YOU CAME TO DAR WITHOUT A BIKINI?” - having an open wound while you're packing a suitcase doesn't put you in the right frame of mind for beaches.
Anyway, there's always the London Fields Lido. Unless they've closed it again for no discernible purpose.