Braids, snakes and cardio club

I had my last jog around Dar es Salaam university today. When running around, you find the most interesting things on the ground. I see many braids which have fallen off and are lying around looking, well, sad. As most of them are synthetic, they never disintegrate and thus last forever on the ground. And then there is the occasional dead (making me think wildly about the living ones hiding in the brush).

But the best part of jogging here is the group of people you find doing the same thing! The first guy I see is totally buff and is a bit too energetic. The first day he was jogging with a football, the second day he was pushing a huge lorry tyre and yesterday he was on a bicycle. He has a huge smile and greets me with such enthusiasm.

The next group is father and son. Father is again, very friendly and is always willing to give a waive and a smile while the teenage son is a few yards behind and has this disdainful look on his face. It is obvious there is little choice for him and he is not a morning person nor an athlete...but today he actually acknowledged my presence.

Finally there is this white guy who is also about my age and with whom I thought I would get a decent greeting but the guy was simply too intense! And so I started to ignore him as well but it is such a shame...we are so few white guys around that you would think there would be some unspoken bond of 'hey, how you doin? go man go and enjoy your day - aren't we lucky to be able to do this?'

But the best part of today's jog was to see the orange/pink sunrise over the Indian ocean with all sorts of angel trails streaming over Dar and all of this seen from one of the 'highest' points of the city. Magic, I tell you, simply magic!

And this shot is my parting shot to Dar. We are having water problems as I mentioned earlier and so this is a very typical scene found around here. I like this shot...but as you can see, I like most of my shots...I hope you do too!