September 23rd -- Dar

Now we’re back on campus for a while, and lots of Tanzanians have moved in. We still don’t have roommates, but we’ve moved out of our old rooms, so right now I’m living by myself until my roommate gets here. And no, I don’t have any idea who I will be living with, and I won’t know until she shows up one day with all of her stuff.

It’s so crazy coming back to the same place and having it feel so different. Before we left, I felt like I knew what to expect everyday, but now I feel out of place again. There are two more giant cafeterias open which weren’t open before, and there are just so many people. It reminds me of the first day that all of the upperclassmen moved in when I was a freshman because I haven’t quite figured everything out yet, but it’s old news to them.

In addition, I’m much more aware of the fact that I’m a minority because the white people’s percentages just plummeted in that one week. As I mentioned before, I had never been bothered by the fact that I was a minority in Dar before, but the first day back here was a little disconcerting. It’s just because instead of having 20 people stare at you over the course of your walk to lunch, now it’s like 60, 70, 80… I’m just really anxious for classes to start so that I can feel like more of a normal student because right now I am still the freshman who’s never been in a college class; I won’t feel legitimate until I am in class.

September 16th --Moshi

The view about 50 feet from the front door... Mt. Kilimanjaro, everyone

Last week, everyone in my group had the pleasure of relaxing in the northern highlands at Chris’ family friend’s house. It is actually in a village in the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. We met a bunch of her late husband’s family members, and hiked around by her house. Because there are always clouds around Kili, during the day you really can’t tell that the mountain is even there. However, in the morning and at sunset the clouds would lift for like half an hour, so we could see it then. It was really frustrating trying to take pictures because the haze made everything so beautiful, but you can’t really see anything in the pictures, so you’re just going to have to take my word for it.

One day we went to visit a hotel which on of our friends’ dad owns. It is very near to the entrance to Kilimanjaro National Park, which is where people start their climb. We hiked up to the entrance and actually got in and walked up to the point which you can’t cross unless you pay a large sum of money. So technically, we climbed Kili! Haha.

The rest of the days were filled with drinking tea and coffee and hiking around. We had to go fetch drinking water from a stream which was clean enough to drink without boiling. So, we actually drank natural spring water from Kilimanjaro! And yes, I’m sure it was safe to drink because we all drank it for a week and never got sick. 

September 9th --Kilwa Masoko

Siri and Stacey finally relaxing on the beach after a long week of travel

Finally, we were waiting for the bus to Nangurukuru, which is the junction near the coast where we could catch a daladala to get to Kilwa Masoko. We found the guy who sold us our tickets yesterday and asked him where the bus was, and he said it was coming, but that we had misunderstood the time (he had written it down incorrectly) and that we were an hour early. We were a little bummed that we missed out on some sleep, but now we had time to find more food for breakfast.

After about an hour and a half, our bus still wasn’t there, so we were starting to get nervous. The signs around the station all said that there was a bus going to Tunduru today and Dar (this is the one we wanted) tomorrow, so we got really concerned that he had misunderstood and thought we wanted to get on the bus coming FROM Dar going to Tunduru instead of the other way around. We found the guy eventually, and he seemed to understand and said that no, we were going to Nangurukuru. Seriously about 5 min later, the bus showed up, and it only waited there for about 5 min before it started going; we hadn’t even gotten into our seats yet.

This bus ride felt like the most amazing bus ride ever. I had an entire inch of leg room, no one was sitting on me, and the road was PAVED! According to our book, most of the road was supposed to be unpaved, but it has been paved since then, so what was supposed to be an 11-14 hour bus ride only took 5. After 5 straight days of traveling on crappy buses, we were SO EXCITED when we got there at 1:30. We took a taxi the rest of the way, so we got there at about 2. It took us an hour and a half to figure out our hotel situation because a lot of places were full, but we got everything figured out and immediately headed towards the beach.

We were really hot and sweaty, and we accidentally took the long way there, so once we got in the ocean, we were all very relieved. We lounged in the water for about an hour before heading back to go find dinner. At this point, I hadn’t showered in a week, so I didn’t even care that I was all salty. I felt cleaner with only salt on my skin instead of dirt and sweat combined.

It is Ramadan right now, so finding food was difficult in the smaller towns. We asked the lady working reception at our hotel, and she brought us across the street. The guy there told us that dinner wouldn’t be served until 7, and it was 6:20, so we said that was fine. A secondary school girl came out and started talking with us, and ended up pulling a chair up to our table for like an hour because our food wasn’t actually served until 8. Everything was going fine with her, but we seemed to be attracting a crowd of kids. At one point, there were 10 of them surrounding our table, all asking for things from us. One girl wanted colors and paper to draw, and a swimsuit, another wanted my watch. They only spoke Kiswahili, so I ended up pretending that I didn’t understand because we can’t give stuff to every kid that asks us or we’ll go completely broke.

Then, all of a sudden, the girl says she’s going to give us her address so that we can send her money for school fees. We didn’t know how to react because no one understands when we tell them that we don’t have a lot of money. We ended up just not really answering because our food came out, so she left. That encounter was frustrating for all of us because we were really enjoying talking to her up to that point, but then we sort of thought that the only reason she was talking to us was to get money. We started wondering how we would ever know if anyone was genuinely interested in who we are as people and had no supplemental motives for talking to us. I don’t blame her for doing that because if there’s someone who you think has a lot of money, you don’t really have anything to lose by asking them to help you out. It’s just not something that we do in our culture, so it’s really hard to get used to.

The next day we finally got to sleep in, so I got up at about 8:30 (late compared to 5 or 5:30!). We didn’t have any plans except to go to the beach, which was really nice. Swimming and then resting on the beach after such a tiring week was glorious. Nothing too exciting happened, we just bought our bus tickets for the rest of the way to Dar, ate, and went to bed. We got back to our dorms at about 2 the next day.

September 8th -Masasi

Us in our hostel in Masasi celebrating my birthday with chocolate

The next morning (my birthday) we left for Masasi. This time we weren’t on a coach bus, so we were uncomfortable in new ways. Still no leg room, but now also our butts started going numb. I made a friend, though, because the girl next to me slept on my shoulder almost the entire ride. The whole reason we were going through the rural south part of the country was to get to Masasi to see the famous woodcarvings that the tribe there makes. But, when we got there we had to figure out where we were going the next day and how we were getting there in Swahili at the bus station. This took about 2 hours because we would ask if buses went to Nangurukuru, what time, and how much it cost, and we’d get different answers from everyone we asked, but we were pretty sure there was only one bus that went on this route.

Anyway, we finally got it all worked out, so we wanted to go see the market where they sold the carvings. However, we had no idea where it was, and we didn’t have a map of the city, so we asked a taxi driver. I ended up doing all of this, but I didn’t know how to ask about woodcarvings in Swahili. I struggled for a bit, then I tried using a mixture of English and Swahili, but it wasn’t working. Finally I looked up “art” and “wood” and basically guessed at a phrase that I thought would mean art made of wood, and he understood. I was so excited that he laughed at me and pounded my fist like good job. He even said the same phrase I used back to me, which meant it was a real phrase, so then I was even more excited.

Then we just had to negotiate price. I bargained, and he said that my price was too low, that it was far, and I said he was lying, that it was not far, so he laughed and reduced the price. When we got there, I was going to ask the driver to wait for us, so when he saw me take out the dictionary, he shook his head and walked over to me to read what I was going to say. I started laughing and said “Oh, rafiki yangu! Pole sana!” (Oh, my friend, I’m very sorry for your trouble), and just like that we were friends. He pointed stuff out to me and explained what they were, and I just loved it. Stacey told him her name and asked what his was. I told him mine was Elisabeth because Tanzanians don’t understand Liz. He just decided that he would call me Eliza (Eh-leez-ah) instead. Anyway, the “market” was this little tiny shack that contained like 20 carvings… not exactly what we had in mind. At this point, we were all just laughing in disbelief.

We had read that there were two markets, so I asked if he could take us there, and he said he would. The second place had even fewer than the first, so I just asked him to take us to a hostel listed in the guidebook. On the way, we saw more carvings, so he pulled over and asked us if we wanted to look, which was really nice of him. This place was still small, but at least it had a few full shelves of carvings, and the girls seemed satisfied. I was running low on money, so I wasn’t going to get anything, but my new friend continued picking stuff up to show to me. When everyone was ready to leave, he took us to the hostel, and dropped us off. He shook everyone’s hand, and then he was like “Ah, Eliza, asante sana. Safari njema” (thanks very much, have a good trip). So awesome, I love Tanzanians.

Our day did not end there. The hostel he dropped us off at didn’t have any open rooms, so we wandered around and it wasn’t until the 5th one we tried that we finally got rooms. We were so exhausted, and hungry, so we went to find food. We sat down at a random restaurant and the girls paid for my meal, which was really nice. We walked to get some snacks for the bus the next day, and then hung out in Siri’s and my room for a while. Siri and Sara had also bought me chocolate and apple soda while we were out which I totally didn’t expect and was really excited.

September 6th -Songea &Tunduru

This is Siri about to attempt to slice open her coconut...

Next was on to Songea which is basically in the middle of southern Tanzania, close to the southern border. The bus ride here sucked a lot. We were on a coach bus, but we had very little leg room. The ride was 9 hours, and the driver packed it almost like a daladala. Everyone was trying to fit three people into each pair of two seats, and there were people standing in the aisle as well. The girls in our group who happened to be sitting on the aisle pretty much got sat on the whole way. We were not so happy when we arrived in Songea… We only stayed the night here, and we actually stayed at a place called New Star Bar and Guest House. I thought it was pretty funny that we were staying in a bar. This was the last time that we had running water.

The next morning we left for Tunduru. Keeping in mind our last bus experience, we chose the back 5 seats so that no one would be sitting on us, and if they were it would be on Sara, but at least she would have leg room since there’s no seat in front of her. However, we failed to consider that our guidebook at referred to this road as literally the worst road in Tanzania. It is a dust/dirt road, but not like American dirt roads. There were a couple points where everyone had to get out of the bus so that it could get up a hill, or get through a portion of the road that was literally like sand. The rest of it was just incredibly bumpy. So, we were literally flying around in the back seat. We bounced so high that we would get into a standing position. Every time this happened, we inevitably started laughing, and the Tanzanians were all very amused by us. The other thing, was that on this bus we had the least amount of leg room of any bus we have ever taken before or since. I literally couldn’t sit down in one of the seats. I had to sit with my legs at an angle in order to fit, which left my back in a twisted position for about 4 hours because Siri and I took turns sitting there.

When we got to Tunduru, it was in the afternoon, so we wandered around looking for a guest house for a while. When we finally found one that had open rooms, the money collector wasn’t there, so we had to wait for him for an hour and a half. We had no running water, but we were so tired we didn’t even care. We basically just went to eat dinner and then went to bed. The atmosphere here was a bit like Tukuyu.

September 3rd -Tukuyu

The next day we went to Tukuyu, which is an extremely small town in the Southern Highlands. Both days we stayed here, I only saw one other white person. It was here that I had the most intense cultural experiences. So far, I had never been uncomfortable with people’s reactions to my presence, but here I definitely was. A lot of the girls have complained about people always staring at them or calling them mzungu or whatever, but I haven’t minded at all because it makes sense that they are curious to know what we are doing. I can’t really put it into words, but the looks people gave in Tukuyu were not honest curiosity, but almost cynical. It wasn’t as if they were just wondering to themselves “Why are you here?” but it’s more like “Why are you here?” if that makes any sense. And of course this wasn’t true of all people; I had plenty of people respond enthusiastically when I greeted them. However, just walking down the street, I was uncomfortable, which had never happened before. I felt like everyone thought that I thought that I was better than them or something. It was quite disturbing.

While in Tukuyu, there were a couple guys who came to sit with us for a while in the lounge of our hotel. At first we were talking about little cultural differences and discussing the politics in our countries, which was really interesting. However, one of the guys told us that he loved Siri and wanted to marry her. She asked why, and he started saying that white women are just so beautiful, blah blah. We said that black women are beautiful as well, but he didn’t agree. This was shocking to us. He said that all white people are more attractive than Africans, and even that white people never stink like Africans do. We had a really difficult time with this because we were almost shocked speechless. These attitudes have been around for ages, unfortunately, but I can’t figure out if they have existed that long here. It wasn’t until recently that a lot of white people started coming to African countries, so I don’t know that these attitudes could be still existing from colonial times. I think it’s more likely that the American media and Westernization is the culprit because a while ago it was possible for an African to never see a white person, so how could they believe they are more beautiful.

Anyway, while Siri and Stacey argued with that guy, I was talking to the other guy about it, and he didn’t say that he personally thought those things, but that many people here do. He said that people think of Americans as first class, Brits, Chinese, and Japanese and second class, and themselves as third class. I felt extremely awkward to say the least. As I struggled to come up with words, he asked if this was true, and of course I said no very emphatically. He said that Americans don’t have any problems. I told him that many Americans are very poor as well and explained that our cost of living is extremely high compared to Tanzania, so even though we make more money, we also spend more.

Then he tried saying “well yes, but have you seen the way people live here? The way the Maasai live?” I said yes, but that most everyone I meet here seems to be very happy. He agreed, but when I told him that many Americans are unhappy, he didn’t believe me. The concept that money can’t buy happiness was completely new to him, so when I said, “Things don’t make you happy; people do,” he really latched on to that idea. I told him that I think the reason that Tanzanians are usually so happy is that they have such strong family and community connections. He didn’t understand that many people in the States don’t even know their cousins, or that maybe some people don’t know all of their neighbors. He kept saying that a person should know their entire family and live closely with them, and also know everyone in their town. So yeah, that was the most interesting yet depressing conversations I’ve had while I’ve been here.

August 30th -Iringa

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So, for the last 12 days, me and 4 other girls traveled in a loop around the southern central and coastal regions. Ok, the first city we went to was Iringa. It’s southwest of Dar, and it was about an 8 hour bus ride. We road a pretty nice coach bus, and I slept almost the entire way. The girls did wake me up, though, when we had stopped to let some elephants cross the road (I know, SWEET). We also saw a herd of giraffes randomly.

Alright, so we got to Iringa at sunset and walked to a hostel we had picked out from our guide book that was supposed to be good and cheap. When we got there, it looked really nice. My heart sank a little, and we went inside to ask how much it was to stay there. The lady spoke ok English, which was also not a great sign as far as price was concerned. We ended up getting a triple to share between the 5 of us, with me and Siri, and Wendy and Stacey sharing over-sized twins. It even had hot water, which I never ended up taking advantage of because I forgot to turn on the hot water switch and then was just too lazy to go out and do it. We stayed in this hotel for three nights, and just wandered around every day. We found ourselves hiking up a bluff one day, seeing an archeological site another day, and then just walking around the markets. I absolutely loved this city. Everyone was really fun and nice. When we walked past the bus station, like five guys kind of mobbed us asking over and over in Swahili where we wanted to go. After I told them we were staying here, they really liked me, I think because I spoke Swahili, so they all started calling me “rafiki” and shaking my hand. One of them pulled Siri aside and told her that he loved me, haha.

The fourth day in Iringa, two of the girls went ahead of us, so me, Siri, and Sara moved to a different hostel right by the bus stand. This time we just sort of wandered and went into a building that said Guest House. The innkeeper didn’t speak any English, so we figured everything out in Swahili again, which was really cool. I sort of became the negotiator of the group because the other girls were a lot less confident in their Swahili skills. I’m really not that good at speaking either, but I really don’t care if I mess up, and I liked being in control, especially with prices ;-) so I didn’t mind.