Return to Dar is a-Slum

We very reluctantly boarded the bus in Ifakara to return to Dar is a-Slum, as we are now fondly calling it. When we bought the tickets we got assigned two seats in a row of three. The bus filled up and no one sat next to us so we started to hope we’d get the extra seat to ourselves. Wrong. The largest Tanzanian woman we have ever seen squeezes herself into her seat and half of Brandt’s. Luckily he’s lost 20 pounds since we got here so he doesn’t really need a whole seat. Half an hour after the bus is supposed to depart, it starts up and drives about 4 blocks and stops again for another 20 minutes. We’re clearly in for a long trip. Tanya warned us that they would play loud music videos on the bus. I said, “Oh that’s ok, we’ve got our ipods.” She just smirked. For the first few hours it was blaring Tanzanian hip-hop. There is clearly one music video producer in Tanzania and he watched 15 minutes of MTV, developed his formula and then made 50 videos that were exactly the same. Male vocalist dressed like R. Kelly raps while woman in tight clothes stands next to him swaying from side to side, man chills with his gansta homies, woman shakes her ass, random English phrase such as “peace brothers” is shouted out as the video ends. I can’t really surf the web for the perfect video but a quick search on Q-Chillah, the one artist whose name I happened to remember produced this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0YWlzRVo-8 My connection isn’t fast enough to watch it so you’ll have to report back. So this went on for a couple of hours. And then it was Celine Dion time. Oh how they love that woman here. Now that she’s done in Vegas, she should really consider moving to Tanzania. I think they would consider granting her deity status. For the last few hours they busted out what must have been the Tanzanian old school stuff. Essentially the same bongo beat was used in each song, someone would sing a little in the beginning and then the background music would repeat for 5-10 minutes while they showed groups of people doing variations on 5 dance steps in very 80’s outfits. It is hilarious and my description really doesn’t do it justice. When, or should I say if, I get a good internet connection, I’m going to try and track down a clip on the internet somewhere. If I can’t find anything, you’ll have to wait for Brandt’s rendition when we get home. It’s awesome. He was voted best dancer in high school afterall. Aside from the sweet videos, we saw at least a dozen elephants chilling by the side of the road when the bus passed through the Mikumi National Park. We were practically hanging out the window to look at them and everyone else on the bus couldn’t have cared less. Can you imagine living in a place where elephants are “Eh, whatever.”?!?