DC to Africa (And Europe Just Because): Tanzania Week One
Pole Pole. Slow slow. Words to live by in Tanzania, where everyone moves, speaks, and lives at the same relaxed, leisurely pace. The people are friendly, the Swahili comes easy, and even while you are working you can’t help but feel like you are on vacation. The sun, smiles, and ocean breeze from the Indian Ocean don’t hurt either. This makes the juxtaposition between the people, for whom Hakuna Matata is a catchphrase, and the hectic free for all that is Dar’s traffic all the more jarring. Cars, trucks and buses vie for space. Smaller bajajis, dalla dallas, and motorcycles veer in and out of the gaps. Nimble pedestrians somehow find a path in what seems to be a lifelong game of Frogger.
This was Dar es Salaam, a city I was quickly falling in love with and was so relieved to have finally arrived in. But first let me tell you about the journey.
My original itinerary consisted of a flight out of Washington, DC on the afternoon of August 23 to Detroit where I would board a flight with KLM to Amsterdam and then from there arrive in Dar es Salaam the night of August 24 at the same time as the other students.
As you can guess since I’m writing about it, that’s not what happened.
When I first arrived at DCA, my flight was still due to be on time. By the time I had gotten through checking my bag and security, it was delayed by two hours. This meant I wouldn’t be in Detroit to board my first connecting flight. I went to the customer service desk to change my connecting flights which proved to be rather difficult as there weren’t many available seats. Finally, the service representative found one right before my flight was leaving. My new path was DC to Detroit to Amsterdam to Nairobi to Dar. However, when I tried to board something was wrong with my ticket. They wouldn’t let me board and told me to go back to the desk and get the ticket fixed and return. I went to the desk and they closed the door and left me.
It turns out that the first woman who helped me did something wrong that prevented me from boarding, so someone else fixed the error with some quick keyboard wizardry and got me on a plane in time to make it for my flight of Detroit, which then experienced delays due to weather. I made it to Detroit just in time to run to my connecting flight. As we were taxiing towards take off, there was a medical emergency on board, so we had to return to the gate. It was late at night so due to limited crew numbers it took a long time to finally assist the woman and then due to the amount of fuel burned we had to refuel. Almost three hours later I was finally on my way to Amsterdam. After which my flights finally started going well.
There are two bright sides to all the delays though. The first was that I had an opportunity to spend 6 hours exploring Amsterdam, a wonderful city. The second was seeing my first African sun rising over the hazy Kenyan horizon. Large, looming, and unbelievably beautiful, it was unlike any sunset I’d seen before. I finally felt it. I was in Africa.
When I arrived in Dar the morning of August 25, my driver, whose name is Saniff, and I had an immediate opportunity for a bonding moment. A 3 hour long bonding moment. For some reason, my luggage was still in Nairobi and would not get to Dar for another three hours, so we waited. And waited. Saniff, the human embodiment of patience, seemed perfectly content to sit on the bench outside the airport and enjoy the sun. I on the other was growing restless around the 2 hour mark.
So I learned some Swahili. Saniff, like every single other Tanzanian I have met since I’ve arrived, loves to teach Swahili. Any efforts to speak in Swahili are immediately rewarded with a bright smile (and in my case a quick but gentle correction). Eventually our conversation took an interesting turn: family planning. He spoke very passionately about how important it was not to have more children than you can afford to take care of. It didn’t make sense economically, for the children or for the parents and he was very happy that Tanzanians were having less children than their predecessors. It seemed that those working in reproductive health had not been working in vain.
The past few days have been a whirlwind of activity and exploration. We’ve eaten at all types of places, visited the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), the institution we will be working with this semester, walked 5 kilometers along the gorgeous Indian Ocean, and refined my haggling skills in at least three different markets, including the bustling mini shanty town that is the infamous Kariakoo Market.
Today, Saturday, August 29, was different. Everyone was much more excited than normal. There were small gatherings of people huddled around radios on every street. We heard that there was going to be a large political rally that day for the opposition party in Tanzania. The presidential elections are coming up in October and there seems to be a lot of discontent with the current party candidate. While doing work in a local spot with wifi, a motorcade of buses and cars waving the opposition flag drove by followed by people running with them on foot. All of the workers excitedly ran outside to cheer, fists raised in the air in solidarity. As we walked back home we could hear different rallies in the city and the same speech coming from radios everywhere. At some point in the night, the rally ended and the street became a flood of excited rally attendees and vehicles with horns blaring, music blasting, and voices cheering. It was a celebration of a potential turning point. Tonight, the air in Dar is electric.
It is truly an exciting, historic time to be in Tanzania. This time next week, I will be in sleepy Tanga, the north-eastern port city where I will be residing for the rest of my stay.
Marafiki Kwaheri. Until next time.
