Feeling thoroughly ridiculous due to the amount of luggage I was carrying - overly stuffed suitcase, enormous bag of semsem, purse full of borrowed books, mzungu sun hat - I boarded the 6 AM bus out of Dodoma on Friday morning, choosing the illustrious Mohammed bus line entirely due to the fact that it was the first one leaving the city. But I was also feeling a little smug: I had correctly guessed which side of the bus would be getting the brunt of the sunlight and had accordingly found a seat on the other side, thus at least sparing myself the humiliation of having to wear my mzungu hat indoors.
Riding a Tanzanian bus alone is a much trickier proposition than riding in a pair. Sure, you have to take your luggage with you whenever you leave your seat, but the bigger problem is trying to figure out when you can leave your seat. The average Tanzanian bus stops approximately once every 25 minutes, sometimes for 5 seconds and sometimes for 15 minutes, and I never had any idea what kind of stop we were involved in. Thus, after an alarming incident early on when I ventured off the bus in search of a bathroom and then had to immediately leap back through the door as the driver began to pull away, I decided it would be best to stay glued to my seat for the six-hour duration of the trip. Not the most comfortable, but at least me and my luggage arrived together.
For I was going to Zanzibar! In a classic example of the open-arms welcome I've received from most expats here, my brother's friend Teddy had invited me on a group trip to the "-Zan-" part of Tanzania, where we could celebrate July 4th with a traditional American meal of cinnamon tea and coconut-infused octopus. I dropped the main bulk of my luggage in Dar and headed down to the ferry docks, armed with only a svelte little backpack and a vacation mindset.
I've decided that I love Zanzibari ferries. Both my rides to and from the island were really fun (foreshadowing!), and the ride out was particularly delightful because they showed "Congo" during the trip. I don't know about your family, but I'm pretty sure my brothers and I watched this B-/C+ movie about 80 gazillion times when we were little. I'm not exactly sure why we loved it so much, but we did. It was great to see it again, marveling at Tim Curry's ludicrous "Romanian" accent and trying to figure out what Laura Linney is doing in the cast. Vacation had truly begun.
Teddy met me at the docks ("You'll recognize me - I'll be the white guy") and introduced me to Gene, Kai, Mark, and Sarah, our fellow vacationers. They were very welcoming and friendly, even when I managed to clumsily fall backwards out of my chair into the sand within about 20 minutes of meeting them all...just the smooth entrance I was hoping to make, really.
We sat on the sandy wharf sipping "dawas" (the Swahili word for "medicine", a lime-vodka-honey combination that supposedly cures all your ills), then moved on to an in-home restaurant called "Two Tables", where a little woman serves guests in her small dining room, with just enough space for - you guessed it - two tables. Delicious food, making full use of the nearby Zanzibar spice plantations. We had some tea while overlooking the harbor, then returned to the beach and sat around a sand pit fire until the wee hours, figuring out how to translate classic rap lyrics into Swahili. (Kai's literal translation of one of Teddy's attempts: "I have 99 challenges but my woman, she is not.")
Most of our group had already visited Stone Town, Zanzibar's main city, on previous trips, so we were bound for the northern beach of Kendwa the following morning. I'd left my bathing suit in the portion of my luggage locked away in WD's offices, so I spent early Saturday perusing the Zanzibari options. Probably to the future dismay of all Kendwa beachgoers, I ended up with a cheap but rather skimpy black bikini; apparently the Muslim influence on the island doesn't extend to swimwear. I headed back to the hotel, wondering if I could somehow just dip my whole, pasty body into a vat of sunscreen, Achilles-style.
(I put up some new pictures, by the way - now that I've finally reached posting about Zanzibar I figure I can reveal the corresponding photo album. There's one for Dodoma region, too.)
No comments:
Post a Comment