Just wanted to give you a taste of the typical “untypical” day in my travels here in Tanzania…
May 7th....
This morning was spent in Nzega. While Father Chuwa went to the bank, Maggie and I went off to do some shopping. My intention was to pick up a couple of souvenir wraps for my sister and Ang…(but don’t tell them…) So I go in looking for something that you would wear with a swimsuit…but Maggie keeps showing me yards and yards of material. Our English communication isn’t going so well and I can see that Maggie is getting a little frustrated with my indecisiveness to buy anything…(probably not frustrated with me I think but frustrated because she might fail at helping me shop??) So Maggie finds here sister Tina, (who works in Nzega) to help. Tina is a little more forward than Maggie and she grabs me by the arm and is determined to show me every stall in the market so that I might find a wrap that I like…Well I finally figure out from my Swahili book that it’s a “Kanga” that I’m looking for and that a kanga is nothing like our bathing suit wraps. It’s about 12 feet of material that can be folded in half and wrapped around your entire body… I heard something about it being cut up and being made into 6 pieces but I lost something in that translation … So finally I ask the price and find out that each one is only 4000 shillings…about $4 usd. So for that price, I pick out two patterns that I like and with that, I have finally appeased my hosts because I have bought something…. I guess Danielle and Ang can always use them to curtain every window in their houses…lol
So I get back just in time to jump in the truck with Father Henry to head off to Igunga. We stopped at the bank where Father Henry just drops off his paperwork and then we get right back into the truck…and for some reason it decides not to start for us. (I thought it might have something to do with the interior temperature of the truck being 46 degrees!) So off we walk through town to go do our errands…When we get back to the truck, Father Henry bangs a few things with a crowbar…but nothing happens so he decides we just need a push. Some guys across the street start to push us…and of course, it starts!
We had one more errand to do before leaving…going to the post office. So once we get there, Father Henry gets a wad of paperwork that he had to fill out to accept money wires for students from their parents. My attention span lasts about 18 minutes in the small office before I decide to go wandering. I head next door to try to get a beer and the guy shows me a freezer full of fish…ugh. The next stop was a Vodacom trailer where you can make telephone calls or top up your cell. They had a couple of chairs out front under a shady tree so I decide to check it out…There’s a fridge inside so I ask the young guy if they have beer for sale. He opens the fridge and takes out a juice box of milk. Our students have told me there is some disease going around right now associated with milk so I just shook my head no…then he points to a warm Red Bull that is sitting on top of the fridge. … I then decide that it might help if I name all the Tanzanian beer I know…Safari, Killiminjaro, Castle…he just laughed but opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Castle. (Did I mention that all the bottles of beer here are about the same size as the quarts of beer in Quebec? And that comes into consideration when I am an hour away from my “real” toilet at my home in Ussango) So I pay for my beer…2000 shillings he tells me. ($2 usd) Then about ½ hour later, a guy from next door, who was there when I got my beer, came over and yelled at the Vodacom guy. He said my beer was only 1200 so that the guy should give me back 800 shillings. Vodacom guy comes out with 500 and from what I could tell, he didn’t have any other change. By the group, it was then decided, that I should take the 500 and then with the rest, buy a soda for a young girl who had just joined us…and I thought that was a very good solution.
So about an hour passes in which I sit and read as well as chat with a quite a few people who keep popping by…(I think Vodacom guy is calling his friends to tell them to come see the “Msumgu”. ) I then check on Father Henry, who is still filling out paperwork…I can either stand on the street and have people gawk at me or I can go back to my Vodacom Paradise. I opt for one more Castle…Another hour passes and this is where the size of the beer comes into play and I have to go search out a toilet. (after my “Madagascar outhouse tour”, here, I have become quite good at managing my intake to coincide with access to my “western” toilet.) And you might think it’s any easy thing to find a toilet, and it is…but you are never sure what you might end up with…So I search out Father Henry to help…He points somewhere down the road and shakes his head…I sometimes think I am too pushy but I’m thinking to myself…”the people in the post office must have somewhere to go to the toilet” so I send Father Henry back in there. The guy behind the counter hands us a key and sends us around to the back of the building. This is where it gets tricky as there are a whole lot of locked doors back there and it’s tough to tell which doors are a part of the post office. So a young guy in an “England” soccer shirt tries a few of them for me, unsuccessfully. So he starts walking off and is waiting for me to follow. He takes me across the street to someone’s home and to their outhouse…By this time, pretty much anything will do…but I find myself in one of the best outhouses I have seen. It was about 10” by 10” and had no roof…In my mind, open- concept outhouses are the best…there’s lots of light, no flies and you don’t feel like you have to hold your breath the whole time. (although it might have more than a few problems during the rainy season…lol)
So, I head back out front to find Father Henry still working in the now closed Post Office. (it’s 6pm by this time…) So I was just contemplating whether I should go back to Vodacom when I heard my name coming from the other direction. Two guys I had chatted with at Vodacom, Stephan and Vincent were calling me to come play pool. Yes… although the balls would roll around on their own sometimes, there was an actual pool table out beside the road. I think they were just being nice letting me play but after I beat the first three guys, they brought in the town shark. He was kicking my butt but sewered on the eight ball so I ended up winning. After that, the rules got a bit strange so that in some games I couldn’t tell if I had actually won or if they just wanted everyone to get a chance to play against me?
Finally, around 7pm, I see a group of guys pushing our truck to help start it, so I run back over and then we were off.
It was now starting to get dark outside and we had about an hours drive. Just outside of town, on a major highway, we go through a police check. I think they’re looking for bad guys, or drunk drivers or maybe inspecting the vehicles…but no. Father Henry then says, “it’s a good thing we’re not going far or they wouldn’t let us through….the police don’t want us on this road after dark because all of the robbers on it!” ugh…
