Lucky Numbers

There’s a certain place, deep in our brains, that I think exists solely to make us terrified of situations in which we will unexpectedly look like idiots in front of other people. (This is the selfsame lobe that produces all those “I’m at school/work and forgot to put on clothes” dreams.) You will all be pleased to know that this lobe is alive and well with me here in the WD offices, where I arrived on Monday morning to discover that not only was there a 9 AM office meeting, but that I was expected to speak first, discussing my recent trip. I did my best to sound analytic and coherent, trying to remember all the things I’d thought were important and noteworthy over the past 10 days; hopefully I didn’t come off too badly. There was some thoughtful nodding around the table, but as Christine the Executive Director had proclaimed at lunch one day, “if East Africans don’t agree with you, they will just cross their arms and keep quiet”. So who’s to know.

So Monday was spent with putting data into the computer and preparing for Wednesday’s board meeting. What I didn’t realize until Monday evening, however, was that Tuesday is actually a national holiday in Tanzania – good thing I don’t live alone or I would’ve shown up to an empty office the next morning. The day is just called “Saba Saba”, Seven Seven, for July 7^th, and seems to be some sort of celebration of the peasant (or possibly the farmer – even Tanzanians are a little hazy on this one). What it really represents is a day off for everyone in Dar to visit the Saba Saba fairgrounds, a huge expanse just out of town with all sorts of exhibits and markets and trade shows. Several people enthusiastically told me they buy all their buckets there every year. I’m not sure why plastic buckets are such a hot commodity, but there you are.

I had met a Kenyan-recently-living-in-Houston named Linda at my house the previous evening. She was in town for a few weeks on a public health project, and she and her professor had plans of heading to the fair the next morning. Certainly, I could tag along. So could the two Swedish med students who’d recently arrived. It’d be a party. And so that is how the next morning, 20 minutes after meeting Professor Sheryl, I was riding out in the back of her pickup truck on the way to the fairgrounds, mzungu hat firmly in place.

The Saba Saba fair was a hot, interesting, and very crowded place. There were hundreds of hastily constructed buildings and thousands of people, and the whole thing had was slightly jarring mix of the modern and traditional aspects of Tanzania. All the big cell phone companies had their own halls, naturally, and at one point we walked by a breakdancing exhibition, but we also made our way through a large warehouse space displaying crafts from each region of Tanzania: hand-woven Iringa baskets, dried Zanzibari spices, Maasai beaded jewelry.

The Maasai stand actually caught my eye, not because of the jewelry so much as something that the storeowner selling me my Zanzibar sandals had said. When I had tried to get a lower price, pointing to some missing beads on one side, he had countered that that was nothing; I could take that to any Maasai and get it fixed right up. I thought it was haggling bravado at the time, but I worked my way over to the Maasai lady running the stall and took off my shoe, pointing to the missing beads and trying to ask via gestures if they could fix it. She gave me a confident-seeming nod, grabbed the shoe and passed it to an older woman sitting behind her, gesturing for me to take a seat. The second woman quickly attacked the leather of my shoe with an awl and got down to work. Within 15 minutes, she handed me back the shoe – completely perfect. Every tiny little bead was in place, precisely color-matched. Most amazing fix job I’ve ever seen. And the whole thing costs me 1000 Tsh (~80 cents). I was delighted.

Since we were traveling with two little kids (the children of Professor Sheryl’s research associate), we also decided dropped by the zoo on the side of the fair. Ah, mistake. Everyone else in the whole of Dar had the exact same idea. I usually feel bad at zoos, worrying that the animals don’t have enough space, but as the size of the crowd surging by the pens made it entirely impossible to control one’s own speed, I felt reassured that the hyena and giraffe at least had way more living space than we currently did. Bit of a mob scene. (Linda and I eventually decided to flee the whole situation by climbing through a nearby fence.) Everyone seemed pretty exhausted after this point, so we headed back to the car, passing by quite a few people carrying stacks of enormous, brand-new buckets. Apparently they really are the thing to get.

There was one other incident, towards the end of the zoo visit, that allowed me to see firsthand something I’ve only heard about here. Being a thief in Tanzanian culture is a significantly more abhorrent crime than it is in the US; you certainly wouldn’t use the term lightly (for example, in haggling), and thieves caught redhanded face some pretty harsh mob justice – or so I’d heard. I’d never seen. But as Linda and I made our way towards the gate, we noticed an angry-looking security guard dragging a small, ashen-looking man by his collar in the opposite direction of foot traffic. Just past us, the guard punched the man hard enough to knock him to the ground, clearing the surrounding crowd, and proceeded to land ferocious kicks in the man’s side as he lay curled on the ground. People initially looked confused, though not outraged, and when an older woman next to me muttered “mwizi” (“thief”), the crowd simply murmured understanding and flowed around the two men. Sort of shocking. Going to stick with my plan of not stealing while I'm here.

Apparently Nane Nane ("Eight Eight", August 8th) is a holiday here as well. Expect future postings.