Ice Cream Anguish

A few nights ago, the Engineer and I had just finished dinner, when I was inexplicably gripped by an urge to eat ice-cream.

The tricky bit is that it wasn't just any 'ol ice-cream but a particular kind that can only be found at Steers. Steers is the one and only 'fast-food' joint in Dar although there's nothing remotely fast about it but that's another story.

The ice-cream that I had my heart set on is that ridiculously creamy, softy, swirly kind of with the chocolate coating that starts off drippy but miraculously turns into a hard shell after a few seconds.

The Engineer heroically jumped into the car and drove me all the way into town just so I could stuff my face with ice-cream.

Anyway, we arrived there and waited patiently for about 10 minutes. I would have thrown a fit if we had been in any other part of the world but since this is Dar and everything is pole f-ing pole, I decided that I might as well grin and bear it (told you that it wasn't fast but "fast" food).

We finally get to the front of the line and I place my order for my solitary ice-cream (The Engineer isn't much of an ice-cream fan). The lady behind the counter started smiling so I smiled back but after nearly two years in Dar, I should have known that big smiles from sales/service people here is never a good sign.

Anyway, she smiles and tells me that they've run out of freaking ice-cream - this after that long wait! The Engineer, eager to diffuse my rage and save the Steers woman from obliteration, quickly stepped in at this point and suggested that we drive over to Movenpick and have a Movenpick sundae instead.

Lured by the image of a large bowl filled with lovely (albeit overly-priced) scoops of Switzerland's best, I allowed myself to be led away from the fortunate Steers lady.

The story doesn't end there, though. We arrive at Movenpick five minutes later and are courteously led to a table. When I asked for the ice-cream menu, the waiter gave me a smile. I consider myself a fairly quick study so I instantly prepared for bad news which was a good thing because the he proceeded to tell us that they had run out of Swiss ice-cream that night.

It was all I could do to refrain from physically assaulting the grinning waiter (in my opinion, I do suffer from low blood sugar) Instead, I opted to walk off in a huff (well, at least I didn't open my mouth and tell him what I thought of Dar and of Tanzania in general!)

Being the old hand that he is, The Engineer calmly allowed me my requisite 2 minutes to cool off and suggested that we try the BP station at the corner of Ali Hassan Mwinyi. At this point I was ready to call it quits, go home, wake up the next morning and catch a flight out of freaking Dar because I was so FED UP.

The Engineer wisely ignored my ranting and drove straight to the BP station instead and lo and behold - there was ice-cream available! Granted it wasn't Swiss or the swirly creamy Steers variety but it was ice-cream and we'd found it at 10 at night which is a minor miracle (everything here shuts at like 8 pm)

I was thrilled and all ready to allow Dar to redeem itself until we went to pay for the thing and discovered that it cost TSH4,000 (RM 11). For that price, there'd better be a gold nugget inside but of course there wasn't!

If you can get hold of it, it's too expensive and if it's not expensive you can't get hold of it....I suppose you can't have your ice-cream and eat it too!