If you can't give good directions.....

The thing is many Dar Es Salaam-ians do not know the FIRST thing about giving good directions.I suppose I should attribute this to language skills (it could be their lack of English skills or maybe I should blame myself for not knowing more than 12 words of Swahili after two years in Tanz!)

Let me elaborate....

A friend is planning to throw a fairly large party and since she's only been in Dar for about a month, I offered to help her. She had already been recommended a good caterer but had no idea exactly where the restaurant was located. So, in the great tradition of the blind leading the blind, I leapt into action and offered to try and find it with her.

My knowledge of the roads in town is very close to zero but I was willing to give it a shot. What I had not compensated for was the UTTER INABILITY of some people to give directions...

We ended up spending an inordinate amount of time driving around in an area that was not remotely close to the location of the restaurant.

When we were finally in the correct vicinity of our destination, we ended up sitting in traffic for what felt like 10 hours.

Despite our spectacularly talentless direction-givers (there were not one but two people who were leading us down the garden path) and the bumper to bumper traffic we did manage to arrive in a fairly reasonable amount of time.

However, my patience (already being on the thin side) was now thinner than Nicole Richie's right thigh. When I caught sight of the restaurant manager (this was one of the talentless direction-givers) I was ready to strangle the man.

Luckily I remembered my newly-gleaned skills in tolerance. I took a deep breath and ignored him (I'm still in the practice stage- I'm supposed to take a deep breath and let it go!).

This isn't the first time I've run around like a headless chicken because somebody said turn right at the traffic lights instead of left but I certainly hope it's the last (somehow I doubt it!) After today's episode, though, I would like this down on record: "if you can't give good directions, don't give any directions at all!"