When I originally started this blog my aim was to keep family and friends posted on my adventures throughout Spain during last semester’s study abroad trip. Little did I know my travels would lead me just a bit farther south. For the next few weeks I will be blogging about my trip through Tanzania, starting in Dar es Salaam, working my way up to the Serengeti, and heading back east to Mafia Island for a month of research on the Mafia Island Marine Park. For now, enjoy my first post.
Somewhere over France or Germany I began to seriously doubt that I would be able to walk down the aisle once we finally got off the plane – if we ever got off, that is. It seemed like we had been traveling for days, but when we finally touched down in Dar es Salaam (after 30 or 40 hours of travel), the exhaustion left me. We had finally made it to Africa.
Walking out of the airport, the heavy, wet air covered us like a blanket. It felt just like the warmest summer nights back in Savannah, only this was supposed to be the cool season. The first things I see are a crowd of African taxi drivers vying for business and a huge bat with a wingspan on at least a foot gliding into a tree. “Oh yeah,” I thought. “We’re in Africa.”
The ride through Dar to the hotel was something else. At 11pm tons of people were still milling about, lining the sides of the highway, darting across at intervals to greet a friend or examine one the many food stands. The main buildings seemed to be well-lit by new, modern street lights, but the street itself was dark and shadowy. The food vendors relied on what appeared to be kerosene torches for light – a small example of the conflict between the new and the old; the rich and the poor; the “global” and the African.
Once I got used to the traffic and suddenly hitting patches where the road simply stopped being a road, I nodded off. When I awoke, we were cruising alongside the Indian Ocean right before pulling into the White Sands Hotel, the self proclaimed “only four star beach resort in Tanzania.” Because of the threat of a potential demonstration in Dar, a last-minute hotel switch landed us at this swanky beach-side resort (built by a former president’s wife and some corrupt businessmen).
But all of that seems like a year ago. Since then there’s been calamari steaks and tangawizi (ginger ale on steroids), boat rides to islands made of elevated coral reefs, fresh caught grilled fish (eyes and all), snorkeling, and listening to the wealth of knowledge Prof Ian has to offer. We learned how German East Africa grew into what is Tanzania today. How the coral sands of Mbudya are different from the silica sands of Dar. How to eat an entire fish with one hand. How the Tanzanians may well be the most gracious and polite people I’ve ever interacted with. In Swahili, the worst response you can have to the question “How are you?” is “Less good.”
Although our landing has been rather cushy as opposed to being thrown in head first, I feel as though I have already learned and enormous amount. I can’t wait to see what Tanzania has in store.
Memoirs of a Yankee 