Two-headed Mzungu Monster

Mzungu is the Swahili version of gringo (aka white person). For the first few weeks we were here, Brandt and I went literally everywhere together making us a two-headed mzungu monster. I remember the first time we separated. We had been exploring the city by foot all day and I had blisters on my feet so when we got off the daladala, I went directly home while Brandt picked up water. It was an amazingly refreshing twenty minutes, but anyway, back to the whole mzungu thing. It's not that there are no white people around...we recently heard a statistic that there are 23,000 South African living in Dar but we seem to be rare enough in the places we venture that most small Tanzanian children can't help but gawk at us. Some won't take their eyes off us for an entire dala ride. The elementary school aged kids also take an interest. Some times this comes in the form of saying Good Morning (no matter what time of day it is) or How are youuu? One time it even seemed to be a dare amongst a group of 10 year olds. They all quietly walked by us then the last one stopped right in front of us, looked up, said good morning and then immediately ran like hell to catch up with his gaggle of friends all hysterically laughing. It was super cute. More commonly, they just yell mzungu at us. We walk by a lot of kids on the way to the university all very keen to tell us we're mzungu. We've even heard it shouted loudly from passing school buses on more than one occasion. I decided one day that I could also play master of the obvious so when the inevitable mzungu call came. I responded by saying watoto, the Swahili word for children. I thought I was being funny. They thought I was being weird and they just starred blankly back at us like the two headed mzungu monster that we are. Oh well.