Last post in Africa

Just milling around this morning, passing the time until the flight this afternoon - we get into London early tomorrow morning.

Last night we had dinner at JJ Restaurant, and then went to the New Africa Hotel in the hope that they were showing the England game. They weren't, so after one game we went to a place on the edge of town called The Jolly Club. At first it seemed a pretty normal outdoor bar (it was 29C last night), with a live band playing and lots of little steps to trip over.

Then Adam, Nick and I went over to stand a bit closer to the band where there was a bit more atmosphere. After a couple of minutes it became difficult not to notice that there was a rather disproportionate number of pretty young Tanzanian girls stood around; after looking around, there were also several tables of pretty young Tanzanian girls, shared with single middle-aged wazungu men. Hmm...

Seeing as we were three men stood there, and there were no girls with us, it became very difficult not to attract attention, as desperately as we tried. The crowd around us, however, seemed to disperse once Jenny and Althea came and stood with us. However, once some of the others started to leave, Adam, Stuart, Sandy and I were left alone and suddenly we felt vulnerable again.

It was difficult to know who to feel more sorry for - the prostitutes (who spoke quite good English and must have sometimes got quite good money, but were demeaning themselves and running a huge risk of contracting HIV), or the sad punters who pretended they were on the receiving end of any kind of real affection. The was already an unspoken agreement that we would leave when we finished the drinks we were on, but then a fight that broke out between a man and a woman just as we finished (presumably over payment, or something he did that he shouldn't have done) and we left pretty sharpish.

Overall, an interesting last night in Dar.