Hob

Hob House is the homely bed and breakfast / restaurant where I’ve stayed for the last few days. The name doesn’t reveal the fact that it doubles as a delicious and authentic Lebanese restaurant run by a Lebanese woman.

At breakfast I hadn’t had enough coffee by the time the owner plonked down and started an uncomfortable conversation (more like a soliloquy) about doing business in Africa. Often I’ve encountered white Africans or foreigners in Africa talking to me adopting a certain rhetoric of what I think they believe is a solidarity with someone ‘like them’, but what actually just reveals their prejudice towards others. These prejudices are often not explicitly articulated, and the holder of them would most likely reject the accusation in the strongest terms. But they exist.

The owner started telling me loudly about staff pilfering sausages and milk from the stores, and how it’s been a struggle to train the Kenyan servers on breakfasts as ‘people here don’t really do breakfast.’

As far as my experience in Africa has shown me, many people do in fact eat breakfast. They may just not cut toast into triangles and spread marmalade from a Lebanese orangerie on it. I think there’s a real insensitivity in speaking indiscreetly in such a generalised way. The Kenyan restaurant staff, who could have overheard their boss talking, could have felt accused and inferior, adding to a long history of where damaging rhetoric has been used against them both deliberately and accidentally.

Coincidentally there was another woman in the restaurant whose sister lives in Dar es Salaam. I explained I was moving there today. The sister runs a yoga studio, if I would be interested to know more? Well yes I would, thank you very much for her WhatsApp contact and Instagram handle.

I arrived in Dar es Salaam in the evening. 26 degrees and humid. Fairly torturous at immigration but only the type of shenanigans I’ve encountered before. A friendly driver sent by the hotel by the name of Mudi. However, not with a moody disposition.

It was dark but he pointed out things of note as we travelled through Dar es Salaam. I asked about face mask regulations here. ‘In Tanzania there is no no no no no.’