Just arrived in Tanzania, sans luggage thanks to a combination of British Airways and Kenya Airways (neither of which seems likely to survive a deregulated marketplace without making huge changes). I do still have my laptop and camera since those were in my carry-on backpack.
When checking into the fairly upscale Hotel Seacliff here in Dar es Salaam, I asked the reception clerk if there was an adaptor in the room for a U.S. power plug. He seemed confused, so I pulled out a cell phone charger to illustrate. He had been chatting with a woman on the other side of the counter and said “She will go up with you to show you how to make it work.”
Once up in the room, this woman displayed a charming childlike ignorance of all things 90-250V. Her technical skills were not required in any case because the outlet next to the writing desk accepts European or American plugs directly. What was her ordinary job function? “I work here in the hotel for companionship and massage.”
Ha, the Seacliff is nice. I don’t remember having any problems getting ethernet in my room over their telephone lines. You should be able to get able support from their business center. Here are some of my photos from the area where you’re staying: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Tanzania, by the sea.
Paul Thourex’s “Dark Star Safari” and this beautifully filmed documentary film “Darwin’s Nightmare” filmed in Tanzania was more accurate and soulful pictures of Africa to me than any other sources.
http://www.coop99.at/darwins-nightmare/index.htm
It’s funny — while you, an Professor at MIT, are in Tanzania, a Tanzanian engineer is at MIT…small world?
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/08/09/fast_cheap_and_in_control/
“Compansionship and massage”
Hmmm, perhaps this makes most people forget about the power plug issues?
Doesn’t work for us engineering types, though. Gotta have that net access!
What type of socket is standard there? The regular European one? As for the wide input power supplies, I still have my doubts about them. One place I worked I had to do some testing and some of these could get momentarily “fooled” into making the wrong internal range choice (eg, during power dips) and at times their electrolytics would explode, which kinda wakes you up. I would never leave one plugged in unsupervised, nor when I was asleep. Maybe these problems have been overcome (it *has* been a long time since I did this testing) but I’d rather be safe than sorry.