We Are Legend

Most of you are probably familiar with the movie I am Legend that came out at Christmas time so you’ll have an idea of what we mean when we say We are Legend but really our experience is much more like the less well known book (Flatt and Steve- this one is for you!). Everyday at 6:10 pm the alarm on Brandt’s watch goes off. We have deemed this Robert Neville time (after the I am Legend main character) and it’s the time when the mosquitos start emerging. We seal up lock our doors to the outside (this involves many sliding bolts and unfortunately seals off main flow of air through our stifling house). We finish our dinner of beans and rice and then lock ourselves into our bedroom where we’ve duct taped plastic over the broken air conditioner. We cover the crack at the bottom of the door with whatever dirty clothes are around and begin our search for rogue mosquitos. We violently squash all that we find, leaving their carcasses on our walls and ceilings like heads on spikes on the wall of a medieval castle. So far this tactic hasn’t proven a useful deterrent but it makes us feeling like we’re winning and so the practice will continue. By about 7 pm we’re done with the security measures and then we have to figure out what to do besides stare at each other until we’re tired enough to go to sleep. Luckily, we have a fan to keep us from roasting to death. The fan’s name is Francis, he our friend and the best $30 we’ve spent in Tanzania—and yes, we are slowly descending into madness.
At this point in his story, Robert Neville begins intoxicating himself to try and drown out the sounds of the screaming vampires outside. In our story, what we need to drown out is the sounds of this dingy “bar” that just outside our front door. During the day, it seems a harmless place—a few patrons enjoying a Coke, or some chispi (French fries), maybe a beer or two. However, once the sun sets, and about 10 PM rolls around, the music starts—loudly. After two weeks, we can now be certain that they have precisely two mix CDs. One is African and the other is 80s ballads--“Well its no sacrifice, no sacrifiiiice, it no sacrifice…” , and “Lady in Reeedddd…”, Elton John, Toni Braxton, Celine Dion…all the classics from K-tel. They prefer the American mix about 2:1. Awesome. Our only wish is that we had brought some blank CDs with us so we could burn them a Phil Collins mix. I think they’d love it. There is one noise that breaks through the tunes…the sound of creatures scampering across our ceiling. There’s on that makes a loud banging sound on the tin roof. It scared the crap out of me the first time but we’ve since identified this noise as crows. The other is a bit more disconcerting since it is not on the roof but rather scurring across our not entirely solid looking ceiling. Gauged by the speed at which it traverses the ceiling of our room, we’re voting (hoping) it’s a feral, non rabid cat. It just sounds too big to be a rat (that’s what we keep telling ourselves anyway). So mosquito proofing we’ve got down but we haven’t come up with any ideas of how to reinforce our ceiling. Suggestions welcome.

There’s one last element to life on Kinondoni Road that fits with the We are Legend theme. Everyone from the guy who lives in the little 2 room house out back, to the woman down the street who sold us Francis the Fan, to the few random Tanzanians that have approached us on the street all seem to agree that it’s very very strange that we would live in this neighborhood. They sort of look at us with some combination of incredulity/astonishment/disbelief and then ask really? One guy even came right out and said we shouldn’t live here that we should live on the peninsula with the rest of “our people.” We're not really sure what to make of these comments/looks but the opinion that we are strange and don't belong here appears to be unanimous. So while we feel we’re accomplishing very little with our days, at least we can say we’re attempting to integrate and well on our way to memorizing sixteen sweet 80’s ballads. Let’s all just hope that we don't meet the same end as our beloved Robert Neville.