Arrival Shock

Hello Tanzania!!! After all the plotting and planning, we are finally here! First impressions: it’s hot, it’s crowded and it’s so dusty that dusty doesn’t really describe it. The sweating began the second we get off the plane and it was only 7am. The professor from the University of Dar es Salaam that I’ll be working with greeted us at the airport and shuttled us to a guest house near the university. The main road from the airport was clogged with cars. On both sides, there’s a dirt shoulder as wide as a regular road equally packed with people walk and selling all sorts of stuff. Our first day in Tanzania was particularly rough for poor Brandt. I don’t know if it was the heat or the stress or what but his brain was definitely not firing on all cylinders. His first act in Tanzania was to “steal” someone else’s luggage. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch his mistake until we arrived at the guest house 25 km from the airport. We rushed back and I was interrogated by airport security- they didn’t want to let me back into the airport and then by the baggage people- apparently I seem like the type to steal things out of people’s luggage and then return it to the airport. In the end, I recovered my bag and all was (pretty much) forgiven.
Back at the guest house we decided to go for a stroll to check out the neighborhood. The guest house itself is a large and relatively modern house with a wall around the outside. It has running water supplied from these huge black tanks (I think). It’s not potable (and is slightly brownish at times) and is only warmed by the sun. The guest house is set back from the main road going to the University along a rough dirt road the winds through a neighborhood where other large gated houses are intermingled with small, tin roofed, one or two roomed homes. As we walked along the dirt road, we passed by many people, some carrying jugs (often on their heads) on their way to or from the communal water tap used by those who don’t have running water. The water taps seems to be a gathering place for women and children. It was along this walk where a Tanzanian stranger first spoke to us. Unfortunately these first words weren’t hello or welcome. They were “zip your flies man” (with sweet African accent). Yup, that’s right. Brandt had been strolling along, smiling at all the small children (who can’t seem to help staring at us anyway) with his fly down. As if we weren’t weird enough. We continue on our way, now fully zipped, and a car comes cruising down the path towards us. Brandt, concerned that we were walking on the wrong side of the “road” (Tanzania is a former British colony so they drive on the left but that’s irrelevant in this case because the road is a foot path that’s only one car wide) literally jumps in front of the car to get to the other side of the path. This causes the car to screech to a halt and squeeze between the two of us. Yeah so we’re definitely off to a good start here, making a good impression and really blending in with the locals.