Farewell, Tabora

It's my last day in Tabora. My desk is cleaned out, my pantry is empty, and there's a bus ticket to Mwanza in my pocket. For the next week and a half, I'll be bounding across the Serengeti, wandering through Zanzibar's serpentine streets, and staring at a glassy blue ocean. In other words, I'm headed off to much more exciting settings than the dusty orange backdrop of the last few months. Still, this place has grown on me. It's been my home in Tanzania, and a good one, at that. It deserves, I think, a proper farewell.

The Top 6 Things I Will Miss About Tabora:

1. Biking Everywhere, and always being able to find someone to fix a flat.

2.Saturday Morning Trips to Market, and the prize-winning hauls that we pedal home.







3. Colorful Kangas, and dressmaking adventures at the tailor's

4. Culinary Adversity, and the creativity that results :)

Homemade lentil burger and Kilimanjaro beer: a Fourth of July classic

No gas? No problem. Pancakes taste even better on a makeshift backyard stove.

5. The Mzungu Crew, and their amazing ability to create fun in a town with not much to do

At the Livingstone House, the one and only tourist attraction near Tabora.

Post-brunch Bananagrams. Naturally.

6. The Kids. 'Nuff said.

School assembly under a mango tree. Why am I going home again?

I'm sure that traveling through the Serengeti will be life-changing, and that Zanzibar will be unforgettably beautiful. Still, dusty old Tabora has grown on me. It's always the little routines you miss most, isn't it? Africafe instant coffee and oatmeal for breakfast, a dusty bike ride to the MVP office, Mama Rosa's rice and beans for lunch, the people you spend time with in the evenings. Tabora, thanks for keeping me warm, well-fed and in good company. What more could I really ask for?

"Mambo!'' "Safi!'' Or, what I'm actually doing in Tanzania

Cliché Alert: This blog entry contains pictures of cute, smiling African children. Eye-rollers and cynics, be advised.

I’m happy to report that, in spite of my last post, I’ve actually managed to accomplish a tiny bit of that elusive thing called Development Practice this summer. Moreover, I’ve figured out how to compress pictures, so even my painfully slow internet connection won’t stop me from showing you what it looks like!

I was brought on to design a school-based hygiene outreach program, a project that lies at the crossing of the education, health, and water sectors (an integrated approach! Jeff Sachs would be so proud.) So, naturally, it’s totally neglected: the water guys build the latrines and the health workers treat diarrhea, but few are taking responsibility to connect the dots in between. In other words, you can build all the toilets you want, but how do you get people to use them?

This might seem obvious at first glance. But there are plenty of examples of things that we know we should do but don’t, even when they are cheap and readily available. Raise your hand if all your light bulbs are high-efficiency fluorescent. If you floss daily. If you eat 3-5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day. If you raised your hand for all of these, you’re a better man than I.

In any case, behavior change is a tricky beast. But fortunately, I’ve got a good model to follow: UNICEF's WASH in Schools is a worldwide movement to engage kids in good hygiene and create healthy school environments, through everything from pop songs to mural contests to Global Handwashing Day (October 15th – don’t miss it!) This program is based on the premise that kids learn and adopt behaviors much more readily than adults, who are already ingrained in their habits. It also takes a step further, suggesting that kids can actually be agents of change in their own families (who hasn’t heard of kids getting their parents to start recycling or to quit smoking?) and in their communities.

Sounds easy, right? All I had to do was get a bunch of kids to learn a few catchy songs and diarrhea rates would surely plummet. And Step 1 was done before I got here: MVP’s Water and Sanitation team has already built improved pit latrines and hand washing stations at all seventeen primary schools in the cluster. Enter the “Mambo! Safi!’’ Club: a five-week miniseries of WASH games, skits, songs, and activities to get kids at three primary schools thinking about hygiene in their environment. (“Mambo!’’ “Safi!’’ is Swahili slang meaning, “What’s up?’’ “All clean!’’ Ah! I slay me.) For the last three weeks, two MVP facilitators/superheroes, five very patient primary school teachers, 40-odd kids and I have been testing this thing out.

A few lessons learned so far: first, the infrastructure picture isn’t as rosy as I assumed. The hand washing stations look marvellous, really, until you peek inside and find that they are always empty (even though kids carry buckets of water to school every day). And you can forget about soap, which the teachers tell me is simply unaffordable. The well-engineered cement drainage basin might as well be a sculpture on the school grounds. The latrines are sturdy but dirty, and all I can say is you’d better be packing your own TP.

Second, the kids actually know loads about hygiene already. They brainstormed more critical hand washing times than I could think of, and they knew the names of tons of diarrheal diseases and their transmission paths. They rattled off germ-blocking strategies like sanitation pros: protect boreholes, use a toilet, cover food, boil water. They also tell me that they wash their hands at home, just not at school. To me, that means we’ve got more than hygiene education to do around here.

I’m convinced that just as kids are more inclined to adapt new habits, they are less inclined to accept the status quo. While an adult might say “Soap’s not in the budget,’’ a kid will ask, “Why?’’ (or, even better, “So what?’’) In other words, we can take this a step further: instead of just trying to get kids to wash their hands, we’re trying to get them pissed off when they can’t.

That’s a little tricky, because Tanzanians don’t get pissed off easily. The kids I’m working with are respectful, obedient, peaceful, and often frustratingly shy (a far cry from the sassy, noisy Dominican kids of my teaching past). But they're also very diligent and great at working in teams. It’s hard to picture them storming the Ministry of Education to demand soap, but I think there’s a fighting chance of them eventually pooling laundry soap stubs or appointing a captain to make sure the hand washing buckets get filled. All it takes is a little bit encouragement, and that encouragement is going to need to continue after I leave Tabora in three short weeks. So I’m putting my hope in a lot of different baskets – the MVP team, the primary school teachers, and the kids – to carry this thing forward. I'm also leaving behind a whole stack of Mambo! Safi! Kits - everything a teacher would need to conduct the five-week program at their own school.

Today, we’re launching an interschool poster contest on hand washing and diarrheal disease prevention: winner’s poster gets photocopied and hung at every school and clinic in the cluster. Plan for sustainability: lamination. Hey, it’s a start :)

Week 1: the kids conduct an experiment to see which hand washing method will get their hands the cleanest: a towel, a bucket of still water, running water, or running water and soap. These kids' hands are coated with cooking oil and tea leaves to represent germs.

Week 2: Germ mapping! The kids drew a map of their school, illustrating all the places that germs might be hiding.

Presenting the maps! (I'm a little bit in love with this kid - he's the youngest, tiniest, and most eager and precocious of the whole bunch.)

Next, the kids played Germ Police and set out to the latrines to conduct a hygiene survey: how many are there? Do they all have doors? What's on the floor? Is there water and soap for hand washing?

Investigating at Ilolangulu Primary School

Yep, doesn't smell so hot in there.

Dutifully filling out the surveys

Finishing up back in the classroom...

...and then deciding on the most important hygiene problems facing our school. On Week 5, we'll be voting on one or more of these to take on as a club.


Working with the primary school teachers is both an opportunity and a challenge - they are the ones with the power to keep the sessions going, but the tough part is getting them to believe that the kids (or the teachers) can make a difference!

Week 3: Mapping the journey of a germ from poop to mouth, through flies, fingers, floors and fluids. It's worthy noting here that the Swahili word for germs is "wadudu.'' This keeps me endlessly entertained, though I think I'm the only one who gets the joke...

Hours of low-bandwith picture downloading paid off - the kids were fascinated by the microscope photos of diarrhea-causing germs. After learning about the different categories, we played a fun memory/matching game.

Man plans, Africa laughs

Carrianne warned me on my very first week to remove the words ‘’plan’’ and ‘’expect’’ from my vocabulary. For anyone who has ever met me (or anyone else who is type A, a Myers-Briggs J, or a Budzyna), you know that this is no easy task.

Still, in the interest of keeping my blood pressure at bay, I’ve done a decent job of going with the flow for the first four weeks. With the myriad barriers to accomplishing every small task – no electricity in the office, project vehicle has a flat tire, point person has malaria, and so on – you quickly learn not to get your heckle up too easily. I’ve started to mentally add an hour and a half to any stated meeting time, or to keep things lively, take over-under bets on when things will actually start. (Either technique also works with estimated time of food arrival at almost every restaurant in Tabora).

Somehow, though, I’ve managed to convince myself that as soon as I was working on my OWN project, everything would suddenly work more smoothly. On paper, the after school health club scheme I’ve spent the last few weeks designing looks satisfyingly straightforward. With a five-week schedule chock full of soap bubble experiments, dramatic role plays, mapping exercises, and poster contests, complete with planned hand-off to student leadership, all that stands between me and a brigade of health-promoting youngsters is a teaspoon of buy-in from the primary schools. Oh, and a gaping language divide.

Enter the MVP Education and Community Facilitators – my ticket to the primary schools. A hilarious and fun-loving duo, these guys are well-loved by the community and crucial to the kickoff of my project. I took deep breaths when the driver arrived an hour and a half after we were supposed to leave for our first teacher meeting and I found these two eating potato stew and chicken at Mama Rosa’s across the street. ‘‘We need our stomachs to be strong! No more than ten minutes!’’ they reassured me.

‘’Five!’’ I shouted, half-jokingly, as I left them to their feast.

Happily, with the help of the smooth-talking Community Facilitator who made everything sound much better in Swahili, all three primary schools agreed to take me on. Ilolangulu Primary School immediately picked out a teacher, selected 15 students, and invited me start on Monday - the first day of school after break. I couldn’t believe my ears – was this really going to be that easy?

Spurred on by these successful meetings, I spent the weekend biking around town collecting materials – wash basins, plastic mugs, tea leaves, hand soap, colored pencils, cooking oil. I texted the teachers to confirm the time for Monday. I stayed up till midnight on Sunday typing up the lesson plan in detail so that I could have a co-worker help me translate it into Swahili the next day. And on Monday morning, bursting with adrenaline and plastic-ware, I triumphantly entered the conference room.

Saira was the first to break the news: mandatory all-staff meeting in Ilolangulu – 9:00. No vehicles, no facilitators, no MVP resources at all would be available until the meeting was over. Harried, I ran the lesson plan through Google Translate and printed out the crude translation before the Tabora office closed up. I prayed that the meeting would end before my 12:00 appointment in Mpenge, or at least before 1:00, when the kick-off club meeting was supposed to start in Ilolangulu.

For the next hour and a half, three SUVs shuttled the entire MVP staff from the Tabora office to Ilolangulu. (If you’ve ever played Zoombinis, this maneuver can be likened to trying to get your whole clan across the river on three canoes in the lowest number of moves.) On the second trip, the wazungu squeezed into the chassis of the project ambulance and bungled our way to the village. We waited another hour for the rest of the staff to arrive from various corners of the cluster. At 10:45, the 9:00 meeting began.

When the photocopy of the agenda fell limply onto my lap, my heart sank. Employee contracts, incentive schemes, procurement policies, software updates – everything that did not apply to a summer intern. Early on, the moderator apologized to us, saying he would be conducting the whole meeting in Swahili. We smiled weakly. An hour passed. I dejectedly doodled the nametags I had hoped to design and print that morning.

As the secretary began to read sections of the new employee handbook out loud, I suddenly decided that I, Laura K. Budzyna, was a free agent. I will NOT go with the flow. I have a plastic bag full of markers and cooking oil and COMMUNITY BUY-IN, damnit! I will not be defeated by meeting protocol! I can do sustainable development single-handedly if I have to!

At 11:45, I slipped out of the meeting, school supplies in hand, and walked toward the field office in search of a pikipiki (motorbike) that would take me to Mpenge Primary School. I was lucky enough to come across one of the school administrators, who sent for his son to escort me along the dirt roads to school. I was thrilled – bouncing along the reddish-brown roads, shaded by the mango trees – this was everything field work should be. My meeting at Mpenge went smoothly, and the head teacher escorted me back to Ilolangulu himself. Ha! I’d done it. Piece of cake – who needs a facilitator or an SUV?

I was feeling quite pleased with myself when I arrived at Ilolangulu Primary triumphantly at 1:00. The plan (there’s that word again) was to go over the lesson with the head teacher and the chosen health club advisor (who does not speak much English) an hour before giving our first class. When I arrived, the two teachers greeted me heartily, then told me to wait a moment while they attended an unexpected all-teacher meeting.

For the next two hours, I sat in the schoolyard, leaning against the wall, trying to be as patient as the 200 kids who were also hanging around waiting for their teachers to emerge. At 3:00, I sent a text to both teachers, asking whether we would be better off rescheduling for another day.

Moments later, bless their souls, they both burst out of the meeting. They apologetically hurried me into a classroom that suddenly, inexplicably, was filled with exactly 15 kids, wide-eyed and at attention. Realizing that they wanted me to jump right in, I turned to the teacher and said, ‘’Wait, first we should prepare – we are not ready to teach yet!’’ She helpfully sat me down at the desk, beginning to read the horrendous Google translation as the students watched. My voice got more urgent, ‘’No, I mean, maybe we should talk for 15 or 20 minutes before we invite the students in.’’ Not understanding, she called in the head teacher, who heard my request in English and then promptly herded the children back out. The first teacher and I sat down again, starting to decipher the lesson plan line by line. Worried about time, I tried to rapidly explain the role play, the brainstorm session, and the hand washing contest, and I heard my voice rising in irritation. I wanted to call the head teacher back in to translate, but he was now entertaining the 15 students who were waiting to be called back in.

My phone rang – it was Hannah. ‘’The meeting’s over – all the cars are leaving for Tabora.’’

And just when I thought Tanzanian time could stretch forever, it was up. I apologized to the teachers, promising to call soon to reschedule. I packed up my unused water bins, mugs, tea leaves, and markers, and I climbed back into the ambulance chassis, feeling defeated. I wanted to curse the endless parade of surprise meetings that had thrown off my day. I wanted to curse the hurry-up-and-wait pattern that plagued every small task I tried to accomplish. I spent a good portion of that ride home grumbling and ranting and blowing off steam to my very patient friends, who of course had just suffered 5 hours of HR policy in Swahili.

But as I stewed, I realized that most of my frustration was at myself. In that last frantic back-and-forth to get the lesson started, it became painfully clear that I could not do this alone. My Swahili phrasebook vocabulary was not going to transform students into health promoters or teachers into pro club advisors – I was going to need an advocate from MVP to translate, facilitate, and carry this process forward. What’s more – I shouldn’t do it alone. The urgent, bossy voice I heard myself using in that classroom has absolutely no place here. I’m here and gone in a few short months. This is not my club, and if it were, it would be finished before it started.

In short, my cocky pikipiki escape had veered off course and landed me into a big old puddle of humble.

When I worked in the Dominican Republic, my amazing friend Merrill passed on a quote from one of her favorite professors of development: ‘’If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’’ It’s one of the hardest lessons in this line of work, especially when the meaning of ‘’fast’’ is so frustratingly relative. I’m clearly still trying to learn this one.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with planning. Arguably, you need to plan more, since the x-factors (as my dad calls them) abound. And in a context where I’m stuck at an office with no transportation to the villages on most days, and the teachers are swamped with planning other classes with no internet access, this division of labor makes sense. But without a solid block of time and a bilingual superhero to walk through the lesson in advance, to criticize it, to adjust it, to practice it and to make it ours instead of mine, the plan is nothing more than a pretty vision in my own head.

Speaking of plans, today, I’m supposed to have a meeting at Mbola to confirm a teacher and 15 students for the club, and to spend some qiality time looking through the lesson plan (thankfully being translated into real Swahili as we speak). I received this text from the head teacher last night:

Teacher: How are you my best i’m very sorry because tomorrow i will go Ulimakafu primary school class 7 will sit there region examination. But every thing is okey teacher and club which contain 15 pupils. Have a nice day or NAKUTAKIA SIKU NJEMA.

Me: Hello! Does that mean I should or should not come tomorrow? I would like to at least meet the teacher before Friday.

Teacher: I MEAN YOU SHOULD NO PROBLEM ABOUT THIS IF YOU WILL GO MBOLA YOU WILL OTHER TEACHERS DON’T WORRY. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Sigh, nope. Who knows what will happen this afternoon, whether there will be a vehicle available or a staff member with some time to spare. But I do know that I won’t be taking off into the field again without an advocate by my side. That liberating pikipiki ride through the mango trees is small change compared to a plan that works.

Addendum: Africa laughs at a lot of things: Apple and Amazon, to name a few. With both my overheating MacBook and frozen Kindle resigned to the inside of my suitcase for the remainder of the summer, I have entered a new earth-loving, friendship-appreciating, technology-free zen (the first five minutes of which consisted of crying and spoonfuls of Nutella). Many thanks to the patient people in my life who have listened to all the sob stories before they became funny.

The Wazungu of Tabora

We’re a strange sight in this part of the world – light-skinned women in cropped pants, Chaco sandals and ponytails, simultaneously looking seriously busy and hopelessly lost. We strike most people as pretty ridiculous. Nearly everyone shouts, “Hey, mzungu!” as they ride past on their bikes. Children squeal, “How ah YOU?” and run away giggling when we answer. Men whistle and make kissing noises. Vendors charge us double without blinking. My redheaded friend Megan, whose unique looks turn heads in almost every country in the world, has written a fascinating post about trying to fit in where you will always stand out. "Remember that you are, in fact, a foreigner," she advises. "It's important not to take yourself too seriously." With the Tanzanians laughing at us all the time, I think we're safe on that front, anyhow.

At the same time, we’re not the first wazungu to pass through Tabora. This town has a long history of contact with white foreigners, going back to the first Europeans who set foot below the Sahara. You’ve heard of Dr. Livingstone, I presume? His old house is just on the outskirts of town. The German-built Tanzanian railroad passes straight through, and Tabora was a major trading center during the heyday of rail travel. Oh, and that bit about the slave trade and British colonialism – well, let’s just say we’re lucky Tanzanians are not vengeful people. We found out just a few weeks ago that the name of the street we live on – Ulaya – means “Europe” in Swahili (so much for going local). The houses on this street are pretty shabby now, but they once housed some of the most well-to-do colonists in the region.

As a bit of a migration studies junkie, I think one of the most telling things about a place is what brings foreign people there. Is it tourism? Investment? Education? Jobs? When I lived in Cabarete in the Dominican Republic, the other gringos were windsurfers and kite boarders on perpetual spring break, and that shaped the entire community’s dynamic. In Valparaiso, Chile, they were backpackers or students studying abroad. Saira tells me that Tamale, Ghana was full of aid workers. So, what brings foreigners to dusty Tabora these days, long after the colonists left and the railroad tracks began to crumble?

To find out, look no further than the Orion, the railway-station-turned-hotel where you can enjoy a Serengeti beer, play a game of pool, and order a multitude of dishes that are not ugali. Owned by a husband and wife pair (from Pakistan and Manchester, respectively), the Orion is the seat of Taboran wazungu culture - or at least what's left of it. Rarely do you ever find more than three or four tables occupied, and more often than not, these tables end up merging. Misfittery, it seems, loves company. Hop from table to table, and you'll quickly get a taste for the motley nature of this unlikely crowd.

The Wazungu of Tabora: A Who’s Who Guide

The Baptist Missionaries

A jolly couple from Arkansas, these self-identified “church planters” have lived in Africa for 17 years, seven of those in Tabora. They host a revolving door of other missionaries looking to relocate their families to Tanzania to start Bible colleges and the like. Their Swahili is impeccable. Their spaghetti is better. They have generously offered us dinner (cooked in top-quality ovens shipped from the US) and several copies of the Gospel.

The Tobacco Boys

These fun-loving chaps come from England, Canada, Brazil and Zimbabwe, and they are the first to break out the karaoke machine on a Saturday night at the Orion. Their houses have hot showers and swimming pools, which they generously share whenever we need a break from bucket showers. They are here to oversee an industry the West loves to hate, and for better or for worse, they are the biggest employers in an impoverished region. (See Saira’s post for a closer look at the tobacco industry in Tabora)

The Pre-Post-Colonialists

We’ve met two older Brits who spent childhoods in Tanzania when their parents were in the colonial service. Both glazed over with nostalgia when we asked them how much had changed since they were kids, and they waxed poetically about their all-white prep schools and the lush gardens around their houses. It’s a testy subject – everyone has the right to romanticize their own childhoods, but you can’t help but feel uncomfortable at the notion that things were better “when the Brits were in charge.”

The Merchants from the East

These don’t quite count as wazungu – most of them are second and third generation Tanzanian, but still speak the regional languages of their grandparents in South Asia and maintain a tight-knit and rather segregated community. They also own some of the most successful businesses in town – the bakery, the bike store, the honey and peanut butter shop, and the two mini-supermarkets are our favorite stops on Saturday afternoons. The fact that Saira is from Pakistan and can banter in Urdu and Punjabi has won us a lot of favor in these circles.

And then there’s us, a handful of young women – teachers, students, engineers, doctors, volunteers – struggling to be helpful in a place where we can barely buy tomatoes without something getting lost in translation. We clink our glasses and toast the others who, for whatever their reason, are already here and are willing to help us out.

We’ve attended evangelical services in the villages and enjoyed backyard pool parties courtesy of the Marlboro Man. We’ve tagged along to dance ceremonies on the Muslim holy day and suffered diatribes on how much worse things are since the Muslims took over. We’ve accepted advice, beers, bike discounts, and pamphlets about hell (complete with fiery clip art). And slowly, we’re learning to understand the ins and outs of being outsiders in this particular corner of the world.

Hannah, the 18-year-old daughter of the family that owns the Orion, is a perfect microcosm of this mix. The Tanzanian daughter of a Pakistani and a Brit, she went to an international boarding school in Arusha and speaks about four languages. She’s a pretty cool cat, too - she wears bangles with skulls and stars and she jams with the Tanzanian band that plays the Orion on Friday nights. In two weeks, she leaves Tabora for a gap year in Manchester – a place she’s only visited once, for two weeks. I asked her what she was most excited about. “Buying a soda from a vending machine,” she said, with eyes widening. “I’ve never seen one! Or ordering a pizza and having it delivered to my house. Or…” she thinks for a moment, “using one of those paper toilet seat covers in a public bathroom.”

I’m incredulous. “Are you serious? But those don’t even do anything...they’re actually kind of gross…”

“I don’t care!” she interrupts. “I want to take one home and hang it on my bedroom wall!”

I suppose if folks have this many reasons to come to Tabora, there should be just as many reasons to leave it for someplace else. From this angle, at least, I guess a toilet seat cover is as good a reason as any.

How to Make an Omelet in Tabora

This overdue post was originally going to be accompanied by photos, but my MacBook is sick and being tended to at the nearest Apple store...in Nairobi :( In the meantime, use your imagination!

How to Make an Omelet in Tabora

1. Locate a house with chickens. (The sign "KUKU WAPO" - "Chickens are here" - is a good clue.)
   


2. Rehearse the Swahili for "Do you sell eggs here?" Wrack your brain to remember whether the word for "egg" is in the n-class, or the m-wa class, or the...screw it. "Egg here?" will do fine.



3. Knock on door and prepare to engage in the traditional rapid-fire greeting exchange. This piece is crucial. Make sure you've asked about her news, her morning, her work, her house and her children in rapid succession before continuing. If you can get onto on the asking side, you retain control of the situation and you avoid getting tripped up by questions you don't understand. If you end up on the answering side, switch up your "Fine" answer between "Nzuri," "Salama," "Safi," and "Njema" to make it seem like your vocabulary is vast and versatile.



4. Conduct your negotiation. Nod enthusiastically when the woman answers in a stream of incomprehensible Swahili. Pool 2500 shillings and triumphantly claim your 15 eggs.



5. Carry the eggs home gingerly. On the way, grab onions and tomatoes at the corner veggie stand (extra points if you already bought them cheaper at the covered market in town).
   


6. Crack each egg into a separate bowl BEFORE throwing them all together. You never know when you'll find a rotted yolk...or an unhatched chick. I wish I was kidding.



7. Turn on gas, light match, and attempt to light stove.



8. Attempt again.



9. Stick face near burner to see if you can detect gas coming out.



10. Look forlornly at bowl of yolk. Go next door and report problem to neighbor in broken Swahili: "We want to cook but stove problems!" Invite neighbor in to investigate, then watch curiously as she quickly disappears into her kitchen.



11. Race to open the door when you see her coming back, hauling a flaming charcoal stove with her bare hands. Help her place it squarely in the middle of your kitchen floor.



12. Reassess your development practitioner's standpoint on indoor cookstoves. Decide that a little respiratory disease is less important than your hunger.



13. Place skillet full of eggs and veggies on cookstove and cook normally.



14. Enjoy!

Addendum: Having refilled our gas tank, we've since graduated to pancakes, though we have not yet arrived at the level of "hibiscus sorbet" recently pulled off by our neighbors from the UK. Will keep you all posted on our newest adventures, culinary and otherwise!

The Long Road to Tabora

Now that we’ve been safe and sound in Tabora for a solid five days, I’m finally ready to talk about our epic (and traumatic) trek from Dar es Salaam with a healthy dose of perspective.

A bit of background: We found out after arriving in Dar that there are no flights going to Tabora this summer. We weighed our options. Option 1: an expensive flight from Dar to Mwanza and a hired car for the remaining 5 hours to Tabora. Option 2: a sleeper car on the famous Tanzanian railroad, renowned for its history (also for its breakdowns, thieves, and rats). Option 3: a 10-hour straight shot charter bus from Dar to Tabora. Option 3 seemed to be the best compromise of cost and safety, so we resolved to bus to Tabora first thing Friday morning.

Ticket Purchase, Take 1: We woke up extra early on Wednesday to secure tickets before our Swahili lessons. On the advice of every Tanzanian we spoke to, we asked Felix, our trusty taxi driver, to accompany us to the ticket office to avoid getting scammed. It was easy to see why: on the ten meter walk from the car to the ticket office, we were accosted and followed by a horde of men shouting, “Mzungu! Yes! Hello! You want ticket! To Arusha? Hey, mzungu!” We sought shelter in the Sai Baba ticket office, where the driver helped us buy three tickets to Tabora for 60,000 shillings (around $45) each.

Thoroughly pleased with our purchase, we announced proudly to Yusta, our Swahili teacher, that “Tulinunua tiketi kwenda Tabora!” She asked which bus company we would be travelling with, and we produced the tickets to show her. She frowned immediately. “I didn’t know Sai Baba went to Tabora…” and then, suspiciously, “How much did you pay? They did not write the price you paid on your ticket.” We looked at each other. Us, three savvy travelers who took all the recommended precautions, get scammed by a bus company? Impossible.

Sure enough, when we called Sai Baba’s central office, they confirmed that they had no buses to Tabora, but in special cases they could arrange a two-bus transfer for 40,000 shillings. Yep, we’d been had. At lunch, Yusta called our driver and drove straight to the Sai Baba office, where she coolly asked if they remembered selling three tickets to Tabora to a group of foreign girls. She wondered aloud whether Sai Baba went Tabora now and whether it was legal to omit the price paid on a ticket. Then she broke out the threat to bring the police, with Felix as witness. The entire ticket office promptly emptied their pockets of 180,000 shillings, which Yusta smartly delivered to us after lunch.

Lessons learned (and relearned): Do your research. Check your receipt. Cherish your advocates.

Ticket Purchase, Take 2: The next morning, we went to the correct bus company, NBS, where three tickets with our names on them were already waiting for us. We paid 40,000 shillings for each and prepared to depart the following morning at 6 a.m.

And just like that, we were up before dawn the next day, beating the Dar rush hour traffic to make the 5:30 boarding time. The sun was not yet up, but the bus station was absolutely swarming with people. We had to run to keep up with the porter who carried off our luggage, keeping our valuables close as we dodged through the chaos. We nervously stowed our bags below, although we were thankful they wouldn’t be strapped on the roof. We climbed aboard, already exhausted.

The bus was, at first glance, all right. The seats were sufficiently comfy, a TV was playing Tanzanian music videos, and a kind soul let me switch seats so I could sit next to Saira (Hannah, on the other hand, was in for a 10-hour conversation with her seat neighbor). I had my laptop bag at my feet, which was comfortable enough if I could straddle it and rest my right foot in the aisle. The only issue we could see was the lack of a bathroom, which we imagined wouldn’t be such a big deal – on a ten hour trip, surely the bus would stop a few times at gas stations along the way.

The first perk to go was the freedom to put my foot in the aisle. As soon as we were out of the official jurisdiction of the city bus station, we pulled into an informal parking lot where we took on another ten or fifteen passengers, who plopped their luggage and their selves down in the aisles. After being stepped on several times, I resigned myself to a pretzel-esque knee-contortion that would have to last me through the trip, consoling myself with the fact that I wasn’t one of the poor souls sitting in the aisles.

Around three or four hours in, I was feeling a bit more strongly about the lack of a bus bathroom. We had stopped once or twice, but only long enough to allow the passengers to buy the oranges, cashews and Coke bottles that were being knocked against the bus windows by vendors. Finally, the bus pulled over, and people started to file out the door. Ecstatic, I looked around for the latrine. There was nothing in sight but open field and shrubs. And suddenly we understood. The men fanned out in one direction, the women in another, and Hannah and I marched resiliently into the field to join the party, much to the delight of the Tanzanian women. I will spare you further elaboration except to say that Wet Wipes, ladies and gentlemen, are a gift from heaven.

I should add, before I continue, that this cross-country journey was absolutely gorgeous. As the day went on, we watched as the landscape turned from tropical to mountainous to savannah-esque, passing scores of sunflower fields and straw hut villages along the way. The blurry, dirty-window pictures don't exactly do it justice, but they can at least give you an idea:

Several more hours of knee contortion and field squatting passed until it began to get dark. At this point, we had turned off the highway onto a dusty, bumpy, twisty dirt road, and around half an hour along this road, we stopped in the middle of a village. I looked around again, expecting another bathroom break, but the people who filed out just seemed to be hanging around the bus and talking blithely with the villagers. Ten minutes passed. Hannah asked her seat neighbor what was going on, and he replied, “They are checking the fuel.” Not a good sign, since we had just been to a gas station an hour earlier. The sky got darker and darker, and suddenly there was no light at all. We checked our phones: no service. The Tanzanians on the bus were giggling, and we heard them say in Swahili something like, “These mzungus are probably thinking, ‘Why did we come to Africa? I want to go home!’” The bus driver climbed in and turned the key; the engine started, then stopped again. It had been thirteen hours since we got on the bus.

These are the kind of moments when you realize how little control you have over the universe, and how you can do nothing else but go with the flow. We were still hours away from Tabora, the bus had broken down, there was no cell service, and we didn’t speak Swahili. Nor were we, incidentally, bus mechanics. The Tanzanian passengers weren’t getting worked up, and there was nothing to be gained if we did. We decided it would be best to look at the stars, which are brilliantly clear in this part of the world.

One more go at the ignition, and the whole bus lit up. The passengers poured back on, and we were off again on our dusty route. We were elated, and spirits were high as we bungled up and down the road. Until, that is, the bus sputtered to a stop again fifteen minutes later.

The Tanzanians laughed. They laughed! And not with the obnoxious New York laugh that’s really saying, “You gotta be kiddin’ me.” But a genuine, gentle, “Oh, isn’t life funny?” laugh that kept the mood light and merry and made us feel like we were all in this together.

Yusta had described the difference between task-oriented and people-oriented cultures and the contrasting ideas of “time is scarce” versus “time is abundant.” She mentioned that being late in the US is considered very rude, whereas here, it’s acceptable and normal. Part of this is cultural, but part is actually due to infrastructure. In other words, you never know when the bus will break down. To be always on time is, in fact, a luxury of the developed world. Or, if you look at it a different way, to be forgiven for being late is a blessing of the developing world.

Over the next three hours, the bus broke down five or six more times. We hunted the sky for the Southern Cross. We played several rounds of the game where you take turns naming a celebrity whose name begins with the last letter of the previous celebrity (As a side note, a lot of celebrities have names ending in N). We were thankful to be together and in a bus full of people who had clearly been through this before. And at 11:30 p.m., 17 1/2 hours after we left Dar, we pulled into the Tabora bus station.

It was another two hours before we arrived at our house, though we live only a short distance from the station. A missing driver, a miscommunication and a midnight meal diverted us until we arrived, battered, at the house that will be our home for the next two and a half months. Too tired at that hour to battle the spiders and the bucket showers, we crawled under our mosquito nets and slept until the cries of goats and roosters wakened us to a different Tabora - one that looks a lot lovelier by daylight.

Teksi!

The aspect of both Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that has been the hardest to ignore has been the excruciating traffic. During rush hour, a 20-minute drive can easily turn into 2 hours or worse. Imagine, if you can bear it, driving from New Jersey to Long Island on Thanksgiving. Now eliminate traffic lights, lanes, air conditioning and the possibility of receiving a ticket, and throw in a couple of street vendors selling clothing hangers, hedge clippers and pool floats. That will more or less give you the picture. Neither of these cities is especially walkable, either, at least if you’re trying to cover much ground.

All this means that we spend the majority of our days (and our money) in taxis, mostly at a standstill.

In some ways, this has huge advantages. Taxi drivers have been some of our best tour guides and strongest advocates, giving us insider tips and even accompanying us on errands to make sure we get a fair, non-tourist price (although this plan is not foolproof, as we’ve discovered). In Nairobi, Samson and Fred were our go-to guys. In Dar, Felix, Salim and Abdul have stood by us through lost luggage, bus station trickery and epic traffic jams. We’ve done our best to return the friendliness by amusing them with our laughable Swahili.

A flat tire didn't stop Fred from getting us to the giraffe center in Nairobi!

Saira might win the award for taxi conversationalist. I’m not sure how she does it, but she can carry on for an hour and a half by simply stating the obvious. “Ah, furniture – 30% off!” “That is a big hotel – many rooms! Too many for one person.” Her already musical South Asian accent acquires a deliciously African sound whenever she does this, and this makes her especially endearing. Her talent comes out particularly when we are in danger, for instance, when our driver decides to drive into oncoming traffic or when a city bus comes within an inch of our window. Hannah and I are wide eyed in the backseat, and just as we’re about to cover our faces and brace for the worst, Saira’s whimsical voice comments breezily, “Ah! Hair design.”

Today, our taxi ride to a restaurant on the other side of town lasted an hour and a half, which allowed for some excellent commentary. The ride back (only twenty minutes) also provided a few gems.

Saira, taking in the street scene in Dar es Salaam

Saira: “But he has a new car. He is not afraid of breaking it?”

Abdul: “I am not afraid of HIM.”

Abdul: “We are fighting and we are going to WIN. We will no lose.”

Hannah: “Good. I don’t want to lose.”

Abdul: “Yes please.”

Saira: “So, what is Kawa Beach like?”

Abdul: “It is far from town.”

Saira: “Yes. What is it like?”

Abdul: “It is a beach.”

Saira: “Is it a nice beach?”

Abdul: “Yes please.”

Abdul: “You will see the sign.”

Saira: “Yes, okay.”

Abdul: “Can you see the sign on your right?”

Saira: “Ah, you mean this sign here?”

Abdul: “No, not yet. You will see.”

Saira: “Ah, okay, I will look.”

Abdul: “You will look for the sign here.”

Saira: “Yes, okay.”

Abdul: “You will see it.”

Saira: “Fine.”

Hannah: “Have you been to the casino?”

Abdul: “No, I am not interested in casino.”

Hannah: “Me neither.”

Abdul: “I am more interested in coffee. And soft drinks.”

Abdul: “Hakuna matata. It means no problems. And hakuna patata. It means no potatoes.”

Abdul: “Chizi kama ndizi. Crazy like a banana!”

Hannah: “WEWE ni chizi kama ndizi!” (YOU are crazy like a banana!)

Abdul: “Noooo you are crazy banana!”

Hannah: “AH! HAKUNA PATATA!”

I’m told Tabora has a unique charm in that most people get around with bicycles, not cars. I admit that I won’t miss the smog and the horns, but the taxi conversation is something I will miss when we leave this twisty, congested city.