In the Bag: Arrival in Bagamoyo

We have arrived. Down the hot and dusty roads. Past both laughing and stormy faces. Under a scowling hot sun. And what a landing it was!

After an overnight flight to Nairobi and a bright, hot little puddle jump, we arrived in Dar at 9am in the morning. The sun was low but already molten and we sweat through our clothes before we even reached customs. After securing our Visas in a slow-moving, craggy little customs office, we finally walked out into a blistering, swaying Tanzanian morning.

I had not been feeling well the last 12 hours of flying and turned up weak and a little worse for the wear. We had been introduced via email to a friend of a friend who we had been told would greet us at the airport. As we arrived reluctantly prepared to venture a try at Kiswahili to negotiate on an inflated mzungu price for a  cab, our new friend was waiting smiling at the doors. We were so glad to see his friendly face we almost fell all over each other. Over 30 hours of travel dissipated instantly into euphoria as he drove us through Dar, dodging skirted jaywalkers carrying bananas on their heads, bicycle carts, old buses or “dala dalas” full to the brim with glistening faces and severe eyes. Our friend Omar spoke in a slow and lovely accent, explaining every sight as we passed , and we all laughed out loud at the crazy Tanzanian drivers, listless policemen and throngs of people  casually crossing the road without hurry or apology. We arrived at his house, a beautiful, sandy-colored home with a leafy garden, a spacious white interior and…air conditioning! We sunk into comfortable chairs with glasses of clean cold water thinking we had died and gone to heaven. A fan cast its steady, beating shadow across the white walls. Omar was having breakfast prepared for us. I thought for sure I was the luckiest person alive.

Omar, a native Tanzanian, a stranger when we arrived, became an instant friend. He had an unassuming sense of humor and extensive knowledge about just about everything in Tanzania. He insisted kindly on driving us all the way to our destination, coastal Bagamoyo, along with his brother in law to be who was visiting. As we drove the paved but ribbed road up the coast, our unslept eyes could hardly absorb all the things we saw. If only every snapshot could live forever in my mind. Shanty markets with full wooden walls stacked with fruit, fabrics, and other wares. Buckets upon buckes of newly ripened mangoes for a dollar or two a bucket. Children running joyously in bare feet in citrus colored dust. Dark faces and long bodies lounging in the shade of doorways watching the traffic roll by. Tattered sheets for doors waving in the hot breeze. Men at work in the sun hammering, sawing, whittling or hauling goods in the sun. Each side of the highway was like a cut right down the middle of an isolated, bustling African village, with giant mansions belgoing to foreigners and a few very wealthy locals looming empty in the background.

When we at last arrived in Bagamoyo, we set out to find out village school, Nianjema. To do this, Omar would simply flag someone down from the car window every half mile or so and ask, after an extensive greeting in Swahili, their take on directions to the school. Many renditions, corrections, beautiful Swahili words and small detours later, the car bumped down the dirt road to the school past curious eyes.

Almost steaming in the heat of the afternoon, the school was a series of small white buildings around an open courtyard. A few school elders lounged on the stairway. They knew little of our arrival and so we were glad to find Sylvie and Ian, our starcrossed friends who had been at the school for four months, in a classroom doorway. Ian and I had gone to high school together, and by seeing a random, chance posting on facebook about the school, had discovered a few months earlier that we and our significant others were going to volunteer at the same little school in Africa. Sylvie and Ian had helped us prepare by email and their blog posts, and they would prove to be great friends and vital resourcse for introducing us to African life. Sometimes, when you decide to dive a bit to deep into a pool where you cant see the bottom, life appreciates the gesture and throws you a lifeline. They were unmistakably ours.

We got settled into the home of the school’s founder, Charlie in the spare room with Sylvie and Ian. The house is cement and white, with open screen windows, whirring fans and small lizards legging their way up the walls outside. After a good 20 minutes of starting at each other blankly and sweating in the living room, Sylvie and Ian took us down the twisting path into town for some mango juice.

In African villages, the paths wind right through and all around people’s homes and dust yards. Some can afford cooler cement block houses but most are outside of their mud huts with thatch roofs cooking over a small fire. After a few days, we have begun to get used to the spectacle that we cause every time we travel anywhere down these paths, past peeping eyes, children’s laughs and a wide variety of faces, greetings, and grunts. Most often, the children will up from their play and get to peeping with wide eyes, jumping up and down chanting “Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!” (meaning, white person). We respond with smiles and  “Mambo” (whats going on), and the local reply is “”Poa” (cool). “Mzungu!”’s will come flying at us, even from unseen children shouting from windows. The adults will address us politely with Swahili hellos and sometimes Karibu, welcome or you are welcome here. Some glower at us, some mutter insults in Swahili or jest at us . But every time, even badly disguised in local Konga skirts or mumus we are much like the traveling circus!

Over the last few days , Ian and Sylvie have shown us African life. Scott and I have struggled to adjust to the heat, which never leaves you with a dry brow or a cool morning in the height of the African summer. But we are beginning to manage and with Ian and Sylvie’s wonderful guidance, we have been doused in African language, culture and comings and goings. We visited the beach, ate at local huts, drank Tanzanian beer, lounged out on the porch in the evenings with the mango trees rustling to our conversation. Yesterday, they took us for lunch at the home of an African family, who graciously cooked rice, beef and beans for us, prompting and helping us through our Swahili. Ian and Sylvie’s Swahili is quite good after their months here and they have learned fast. Scott and I on the other hand just stared blankly and smiling at the mother, who spoke no English but spoke to us kindly and repeated her questions slowly for us, allowing us to repeat every syllable, while her children translated in English. We ate with our hands of course, although occasionally forgetting to only eat with our right hands as is customary. They were patient with our awkward Swahili greetings, asked us things about where we were from and poked fun of us good naturedly. We took pictures of all of us together in the living room and Scott taught one of the sons to use the camera, which he took to like a pro and wanted to carry it around proudly with it around his neck.  “This day, I like it very much.“ The father said, patting us on the backs and telling us not to bother calling before we come visit, as we are always welcome there. Their son was one of the students at the school and Sylvie and Ian finished showing him how to send an email on their laptop out in the yard under a thatch hut. A small crowd of village children gathered, most of them not knowing what they were looking at but patiently gawking at the small computer screen and squeezing in to see.
After the computer lesson, the father asked if we would like a walk to the beach. Of course we could not refuse and so in lines of two or three we wound our way through the villages and down to the beach, each member of the family paired with one of us in engaging conversation. As I chatted with the son who was a student of Nianjema in slow English, he reminded me softly when a pikipiki (a motorcycle) would approach us to get off far to the left on the small dirt roads as the pikipikis have priority and can be very dangerous to pedestrians. His younger brother who was about five walked spritely in between us as we walked away from the setting sun. He had not learned English, so he could not understand me but I occasionally addressed him anyway, just to see him smile at me happily, satisfied to walk with us attentively into this cooling African afternoon. I heard Scott talking about Africa behind me with the father. We twisted and turned on paths through the village that we might never feel comfortable enough to venture by ourselves, and from time to time I thought we were going to walk right through the cooking fire of one of the neighbors. The locals watched silently as we passed, the Maela family and their Mzungu friends. As we got closer to the sea you could feel it in the breeze, lifting the heat off of your skin just enough for you to notice, and the palm trees thickened, edged with the setting sun. The older son and I continued our conversation as we neared the beach, with the youngest in between us. Just when I had forgotten the heat and realized how special this afternoon was, the youngest reached up and took my hand - and held it, with arm stretched up above his little head as I was much taller than him, all the way to the sea.