October 3, 2008

souvenirs

I am glad to be off the bus.

I am so glad to be off the bus.

Yesterday I took a 12-hour bus ride from Mbeya to Dar es Salaam. Two hours into it, we took a pit stop, a bathroom break. Now that I think about it, this was our only stop except for lunch, and it was two-hours into the trip. But on this stop, we pulled off the road and everyone hurried off the bus and into the bush to relieve themselves. I went last and trekked down a path which the men quickly claimed as their own. I walked past everyone else, chose a spot, and reunited with the animal kingdom. I walked back to the bus and sat down in my seat. Now, since I was traveling alone, I had no one to urge me to watch my step, and once I sat down I was met with the sudden, unmistakable odor of human waste and the sneaking suspicion that I was somehow responsible for it despite the fact that I had only “gone onesies,” as the Africans say (which they don’t say.) Since I had no room to check my feet, (a backpack betwixt them, a wall in front of and beside them, another gent’s legs on the other side, and a seat filled by myself behind them) I could not confirm or deny that it was I who had returned with a… souvenir of our stop. I help hope that one of the many other feet on the bus had an unfortunate hanger-on. A few hours later, after much gagging and guessing, I got off the bus for lunch and discerned that it was, indeed, I who had borne great displeasurous* odor upon the bus. I was thusly forced to bear it the majority of the trip, as I had carried a fair amount back with me and shared it with the floor beneath my feet and, quite possibly, my backpack which rested upon it. In short, I smelled people-poop the whole way here.

But all of that aside, it wasn’t so bad a trip. I only had an awful African soap opera on the tube to deal with, and a guy next to me with whom I jockeyed for the arm-rest, and knees that inexplicably burn in agony when I rest them at acute angles for seven hours at a time.

I am so very glad to be off the bus.

And here I am, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. It is the hot and humid time of year, and that is genuinely saying something. I am in the tropics right on the ocean. The air is thick, and I’d bottle it for you if I could. It’s hot enough that I was sweating through my shirt over breakfast, at 8:00 am. (And to think, A week from now I’ll be in a place in the same country where it reaches below zero.) Dar is a fantastic city. There are lots of big buildings and you can sleep in air conditioning and buy ice cream and A&W Root Beer (2,450 shillings each – I bought two for about $4.50 today).

(Hold on, I just remembered the word “Gondwanaland” for no explicable reason. If you know what Gondwanaland is, please tell me.)

We went to Slipway, a bayside resort where lots of white people hang out. And having been away from all but ten of them for so long, I find them fascinating. I want to stare and shout “Wazungu!” Slipway is a resort-ish, touristy shopping and eating place. The shame in this, I thought today, is that many people I guess (and probably guess unfairly) that many people come here and stay in a nice hotel and visit a game park and see some wild animals and buy some carbon-copy souvenir ebony carvings, and then get on a plane and go back home. And they will say that they have seen Africa, without ever sharing a meal of ugali under a kerosene lamp, or frightening a baby who has never seen a white person before, or catching a cold from a village kid, or changing a tire in the bush. I am just arrogant enough to claim merit badges for each of those, and three for the last one. And I wouldn’t mention sleeping by hyenas, listening to a church choir, or staring at the Milky Way from below. But I guess you can say this about anyone who travels anywhere. “Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt,” right? You probably haven’t really seen a place until you’ve been culture-shocked by it, and even then you don’t really know it. I don’t know Africa. All I know is Michigan. And I miss Michigan.

But now, I am no different. I am a tourist. Dar is only a stopping point for me, on the way to Kilimanjaro. Tomorrow morning, we’re getting on a bus to go and do something so stupid as to climb a mountain, something impossibly high that people stay off of and build roads around, the top of which no animals can live on. We’re going to haul ourselves to a dangerous altitude to say we’re no smaller than a mountain, to set before our eyes a fleeting but spectacular sunrise. We’re going to see this place. The truth is, I am super excited (ugh, I just used “Super Excited.” Guess I better go watch The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or something) to do this stupid, stupid thing. But more on that once I’ve actually seen the mountain.

One love,

jim

No comments: