Back in Dar, we had a pleasant evening with friends of a friend of our friend Prashant from New York – that’s how networks work. Mike and Karina introduced us to delicious tandoori chicken, followed by a drink at a collection of tables that is grocery store by day and a bar by night, and early the next morning, off to Arusha. A pleasant if long bus drive, through Masaai territory, and little towns that are the “real Tanzania.”

And finally, we were in Arusha and the luxury of Archie’s lovely home! Archie is the boyfriend of our friend the lovely Wambui in New York. He is an American and Liberian citizen (passports for both countries) and has worked for many years at the International Tribunal for War Crimes in Rwanda (ICTR to friends), which is based in Arusha. He was in a previous life also into politics, and his signature can be found third from top on the Liberian Constitution! Never have we lived in such close proximity to a celebrity!

When Archie heard that we were going to be spending some time in Arusha (which is essential to bargain for good safaris, Kili climbs and other ‘Tanzania’ things to do!), he generously put his humble home at our disposal. Which, when we got there, the evening of 16th October, after hours of searching for it, for the simple reason that many homes in Arusha (or for that matter all of Tanzania as far as we can see!) have no addresses or street names, we found to be not very humble at all! In fact it’s a gorgeous house, with a garden full of roses (Archie’s passion, other than Wambui!) and other lovely flowers and shrubs, including a rosemary bush as high as Daniel’s chest, which sends a lovely rosemary smell into the dining room when it rains (or when it’s been used in the cooking). From the large wooden table in the dining room one has a lovely view into the colourful garden, and often, brightly coloured blue or yellow hovering hummingbirds.

What most impressed us though was the furniture in the living room. Large, chunky, made of rough wood, we admired it the first evening (when Archie was in Liberia), but what was even more special, when Archie got back the next day and we expressed our admiration, he tells us that the sofas and centre table are all made of the wood from an old dhow! Archie, a man who knows what he wants, had a few years ago traveled to Dar-es-Salaam, found an old, no-longer-seaworthy dhow, bought it from the fisherman who owned it, and shipped it to Arusha in a truck to be made into a couch, two armchairs and a low, but by no means small, centre table, the top of which was previously the floor of the dhow, smoothened into its current polished texture by years of fisherfolk butt! The entire suite of furniture bears holes and other signs of its previous life as a boat. Which is also why the furniture has the solid look of something that’s going to last generations!

We have a lovely room here at Archie’s, with an attached bathroom (something we’re now quite unused to!) and a lovely view of Mt. Meru, Africa’s fifth highest peak. Having reached the comfort, or rather luxury of Archie’s place and very sweet housekeeper, Rahimah, we proceeded to spend the next few days resting, relaxing and recovering generally. And most important (for you!), utilising the heavenly feeling for the first time in days, of unlimited and fast computer and internet access, which we used to compose the first monumental entries of our blog!

We also met M.P. and Priya again (whom we’d met the previous week in Dar), had a lovely Ethiopian dinner with them (where Richa got bitten by a parrot because she would insist on stroking the poor bird who only wanted to be left in peace to do his songbird and cat imitations), cooked once for Archie, Priya and M.P. (despite serious hurdles like not finding a crumb of gorgonzola in the entire city of Arusha, being told by the housekeeper on the morning of the party that neither of the two ovens in the house works, and running out of oil four minutes before the guests were expected and having to send M.P. for oil within minutes after they got here).

Between the days of R&R we also managed to do some shopping around for safaris, spent two evenings at the local salsa club, where Daniel’s lovely dancing and Richa’s brilliant following-the-lead made us the star attraction of the place (modesty being our most outstanding virtue). The highlight of our time in Arusha came on Saturday the 27^th October, when we followed Archie to the ICTR’s celebrations of UN day, where Daniel almost beat the local reigning champion at table tennis, and we won a t-shirt (in Richa’s size!) for the best dancing couple (possibly because we were the only people dancing aged over 7 years). Sadly, however, Daniel was unable to deal with the blow of not having won a separate t-shirt for himself (what do you expect when you decide to be twice the size of everyone else in the area?!), and changed his dancing partner from Richa to little Ribella for the rest of the evening.

As will happen in lazy days of relaxation, we also got into the habit of playing checkers (which however, we’ve stopped after Richa found she never wins!), and dominoes (a brilliant and complex arrangement of which can be found in the form of a video on this blog, if we figure out how to post videos).