We slept through the call to prayer and woke up sometime around 11am. Hungry and groggy, we sought to get some food. Around noon, we received sandwiches and pastries from a nearby place called Paul’s. It was a tasty sandwich, which did not require a pepto for once. We ate out on our balcony, and enjoyed the sun and heat while Nicole did laundry with the in-room washer and dryer. We are living the high life, though now slightly lower due to the change in rooms.
Since nothing very exciting happened today, I have a chance to catch up on some items that I couldn’t address while I was in some of the other countries due to their history of punishing dissenters and critics, so interesting factoids will be interspersed with a log of our daily activities. As you may recall, this entire trip is created around avoiding the US election, but we also skirted a Tanzanian election by about two days. More on that shortly.
Throughout the day, we researched various other covid requirements, testing locations, and what the next week might look like for us. These efforts were mostly inconclusive. At 415 pm, our groceries arrived at our door. Against all odds, the nearby Spinney’s grocery store had Florida’s Natural orange juice. This is quite a get.
Back to Tanzania, President John Magufuli, whose picture is seemingly everywhere in the country, has painted himself as the “anti-corruption” guy, but is also engaging in widespread intimidation, voter suppression, arrests, and major human rights violations. But since he has built roads, schools, and bailed out Air Tanzania, all is forgiven by a good portion of the population. He also ordered a covid test for a papaya to “prove” that tests are meaningless because he alleged that the test came back positive. Anyway, he was reelected with a suspiciously high 84% of the vote that would make dictators say, “Why not a more modest 81%?” The situation is still ongoing, but it appears this result will stand despite numerous oversight groups saying the election was a sham. Lesson? Don’t be the person who wastes a covid test on a fruit. You will look insane.
I was not very productive in determining how we might get an additional covid test to go to Abu Dhabi in the coming days because I don’t have a valid mobile number according to the app that schedules testing. This seems like a major error for the developers of the app since most of the population living here are from other countries. Abu Dhabi has a separate testing requirement from Dubai, so there’s another few hoops to jump through. Nothing is ever easy.
Now let’s talk about Turkey, and you will find President Erdogan who has a history of pursuing right-wing Islamist policies in a country that has previously prided itself on being a secular muslim majority state. In a brief recap, he refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, had 50,000 people arrested after an attempted coup in 2016, had bodyguards attack American journalists and protesters while on US soil, changed a centuries old UNESCO heritage site and museum into a full time religious site, initiated ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish minority, had a giant palatial mansion built for himself that is bigger than both the White House and Kremlin, alienated Turkey from its bid to join the EU, and most recently entered a pointless battle with the French president. The value of the Turkish lira has absolutely plummeted as a result. Turkey’s economic and political standing on the world stage has been severely diminished. Lesson? You can get away with a lot of pretty terrible things as a world leader, but once you make your house unnecessarily large, people will start to question everything.
Around 630pm, we attempted to make a pizza. At 7pm, we determined the oven didn’t work because the gas was not turned on. We called reception who assured us maintenance workers were on their way. At 745pm, we ordered our own pizza. It arrived 35 minutes later along with a Nutella pizza. Yum!
At 915pm, I answered a call from reception giving permission to maintenance workers to enter the apartment. At 10pm, we are still awkwardly waiting.
Stress eating has taken hold of Nicole. We continue to refresh our apps that will tell us when our results are in. We hope to wake up to freedom and maybe a view of Dubai that goes beyond our present 160º view. They tell me the Burj Khalifa is right behind our building, but I have yet to see proof of this. Results are expected shortly after the 24 hour mark, so even if it’s delayed a bit, I can’t imagine it being as slow as Quest Labs, which took two weeks. I feel a bit like Edward Snowden — isolated in a hotel room, escaping Americans. After just a day in quarantine, however, we have taken to lots of eating. If this keeps up much longer, we will turn into blimps.
passports & pepto bismol 