Part 1 - postscript
This is a brief summary of what happened after that final day, both for my own records and to resolve the minor cliffhanger (stephanger?) that things were left on. I can only apologise for its extreme tardiness, lockdown really seems to sap motivation.
The next day we flew to Zanzibar via a long wait at Dar es Salaam airport. At Bukoba airport Lake Victoria provided one last storm to see us off, which absolutely drenched us in the 30 seconds it took to unload the taxi. Bukoba airport was a tiny little thing with about two flights a day, but we did pick up a little box of the local delicacy of Nsenene - fried and salted bush crickets. They were honestly delicious, like a sort of softer pork scratching, and we wanted more but the airport sold out, presumably because they were so delicious.
When we arrived at Zanzibar we were accosted by local officials and forced to enter quarantine in a nearby hotel, at our own expense This was infuriating and wrong as we arrived in Tanzania before the quarantine law was enacted, and a document we saw later stated that it only applied to people arriving in the country after that date. We argued vociferously but nobody gave a shit, and eventually the police were called and we were forced to comply. The whole thing seemed be a total racket. We were charged for a transfer at $20 each way to a hotel less than a kilometre away, and when I asked for a receipt they just scribbled on some paper from a nearby cafe. I would be astonished if any of that money made it to the government.
Thankfully the hotel we were assigned to wasn't that expensive (about £15 a night) and was an ok place to spend our time. The bed was apparently made of rocks, to the extent that I had to use my camping mat, and the room was steadily taken over by huge ants, but there was a nice roof terrace and usually a hearty buffet breakfast, and our room was big and had a nice hot shower and AC. The quarantine aspect of things was total bollocks as pretty much everyone else in the hotel (including some guests, and from day 4 a local chicken as well) were allowed to come and go as they pleased. Once a day some "doctors" would come and take our temperature. This was also bollocks as a fever is not always a symptom of the virus, and the laser thermometres they used didn't seem accurate at all. My temperature usually came up on the low side and at one point was recorded as 33.5 degrees, which is mild hypothermia, but nobody thought to question the readings.
We were originally scheduled to stay four nights but early on our Sunday flight was cancelled and we were bumped onto a Tuesday one, so we ended up spending a full six days there. There was a short period between cancellation and confirmed rebooking when we thought we were stuck, which was not fun. Our mood veered wildly between boredome, high stress and a sort of manic elation which occasionally led to us singing "We are quarantined" to the tune of "We are Family" by Sister Sledge.
For the most part we were obedient but one morning the breakfast didn't appear and we were told we had to pay an extortionate price for a replacement, so Rebecca simply walked out of the hotel past the guards with machine guns and bought some chapatis from a nearby shop. There were no repurcussions from this, presumably because the soldiers did not want to admit to their superiors that they had been overpowerd by a small woman. In general the food situation was completely unpredictable; sometimes free food would be provided for lunch or dinner, but not always, and we never found out who was providing it. The rest of the time we had to live off stuff scavenged from breakfast or buy overpriced food from the hotel restaurant, which we tried to limit as we had finite cash and the police never allowed us to go to a cash machine.
We occupied ourselves by playing pokemon, reading a lot and watching stuff on my ipad. After a couple of days we met a guy called Kane who was in a much worse situation than us. He held a Philipines passport but has spent his whole life in the UAE, which hadn't ever given him a passport because he was "just" non-Arab migrant labour. The UAE had suspended all flights so he was stuck, but because he wasn't a passport holder he couldn't get repatriated. He was remarkably cheery about everything and was WFZ (working from Zanzibar) whilst he figured out how to get home (which he still hadn't managed more than three weeks after we left). We spent mornings and evenings on the terrace with him, including his birthday, which was celebrated by him buying pizza for all of us. Nice guy.
Finally Tuesday limped around and we took our extortionate 600m taxi back to the airport. We were stressed about something going wrong and us not being able to fly, which would have meant a lot more time in quarantine and potentially a LOT more time on Zanzibar, but everything was nice and boring and we made it home safe and sound. At Qatar airport we wandered around in a daze feeling very poor and dirty. At Heathrow we wandered around in a daze feeling slightly less poor and dirty but a lot more cold, then took a taxt to Rebecca's uncle's empty flat nearby, where we quarantined ourselves for two weeks.
PAUSE...
The next day we flew to Zanzibar via a long wait at Dar es Salaam airport. At Bukoba airport Lake Victoria provided one last storm to see us off, which absolutely drenched us in the 30 seconds it took to unload the taxi. Bukoba airport was a tiny little thing with about two flights a day, but we did pick up a little box of the local delicacy of Nsenene - fried and salted bush crickets. They were honestly delicious, like a sort of softer pork scratching, and we wanted more but the airport sold out, presumably because they were so delicious.
When we arrived at Zanzibar we were accosted by local officials and forced to enter quarantine in a nearby hotel, at our own expense This was infuriating and wrong as we arrived in Tanzania before the quarantine law was enacted, and a document we saw later stated that it only applied to people arriving in the country after that date. We argued vociferously but nobody gave a shit, and eventually the police were called and we were forced to comply. The whole thing seemed be a total racket. We were charged for a transfer at $20 each way to a hotel less than a kilometre away, and when I asked for a receipt they just scribbled on some paper from a nearby cafe. I would be astonished if any of that money made it to the government.
Thankfully the hotel we were assigned to wasn't that expensive (about £15 a night) and was an ok place to spend our time. The bed was apparently made of rocks, to the extent that I had to use my camping mat, and the room was steadily taken over by huge ants, but there was a nice roof terrace and usually a hearty buffet breakfast, and our room was big and had a nice hot shower and AC. The quarantine aspect of things was total bollocks as pretty much everyone else in the hotel (including some guests, and from day 4 a local chicken as well) were allowed to come and go as they pleased. Once a day some "doctors" would come and take our temperature. This was also bollocks as a fever is not always a symptom of the virus, and the laser thermometres they used didn't seem accurate at all. My temperature usually came up on the low side and at one point was recorded as 33.5 degrees, which is mild hypothermia, but nobody thought to question the readings.
We were originally scheduled to stay four nights but early on our Sunday flight was cancelled and we were bumped onto a Tuesday one, so we ended up spending a full six days there. There was a short period between cancellation and confirmed rebooking when we thought we were stuck, which was not fun. Our mood veered wildly between boredome, high stress and a sort of manic elation which occasionally led to us singing "We are quarantined" to the tune of "We are Family" by Sister Sledge.
For the most part we were obedient but one morning the breakfast didn't appear and we were told we had to pay an extortionate price for a replacement, so Rebecca simply walked out of the hotel past the guards with machine guns and bought some chapatis from a nearby shop. There were no repurcussions from this, presumably because the soldiers did not want to admit to their superiors that they had been overpowerd by a small woman. In general the food situation was completely unpredictable; sometimes free food would be provided for lunch or dinner, but not always, and we never found out who was providing it. The rest of the time we had to live off stuff scavenged from breakfast or buy overpriced food from the hotel restaurant, which we tried to limit as we had finite cash and the police never allowed us to go to a cash machine.
We occupied ourselves by playing pokemon, reading a lot and watching stuff on my ipad. After a couple of days we met a guy called Kane who was in a much worse situation than us. He held a Philipines passport but has spent his whole life in the UAE, which hadn't ever given him a passport because he was "just" non-Arab migrant labour. The UAE had suspended all flights so he was stuck, but because he wasn't a passport holder he couldn't get repatriated. He was remarkably cheery about everything and was WFZ (working from Zanzibar) whilst he figured out how to get home (which he still hadn't managed more than three weeks after we left). We spent mornings and evenings on the terrace with him, including his birthday, which was celebrated by him buying pizza for all of us. Nice guy.
Finally Tuesday limped around and we took our extortionate 600m taxi back to the airport. We were stressed about something going wrong and us not being able to fly, which would have meant a lot more time in quarantine and potentially a LOT more time on Zanzibar, but everything was nice and boring and we made it home safe and sound. At Qatar airport we wandered around in a daze feeling very poor and dirty. At Heathrow we wandered around in a daze feeling slightly less poor and dirty but a lot more cold, then took a taxt to Rebecca's uncle's empty flat nearby, where we quarantined ourselves for two weeks.
PAUSE...
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