Fri 16th Dec 2011
So we stayed up most of last night playing yahtzee (except in Swedish, partly why it took so long) and slept right through chapel this morning. Whoops. At least this was a surprisingly effective antidote for the rooster alarm clock :)
The big plan for today was to head over to Arusha, which is the major city up here in the Northern Tanzania-Kilimanjaro region. We had meticulously planned an almost minute by minute itinerary for our day, but foolishly failed to budget for the increasingly notorious distortion of time in Tanzania.
We got Mr Mushi to call up one of his taxi driver mates at about 10 in the morning and went back home to pack for our weekend away. By 3:30, the guy finally arrived. The Swahili phrase 'pole pole' (pronounced pol-ay pol-ay) means 'slowly, slowly' and encapsulates Tanzania perfectly. The concept of rushing doesn't exist. This is normally very nice, as the people are always relaxed and always happy to stop for a chat. It just becomes a little frustrating when we have places to be! I sincerely doubt there is a Swahili phrase for 'hurry up'.
So we ended up spending much of the day in our apartment, not playing yahtzee. Although quite basic, it's rapidly feeling like home. Essentially, the hospital's student accommodation consists of two self-contained apartments side by side - one that's been taken by some Dutch students who we haven't met yet and the other which we are sharing with the Swedes. Justin and I have one room, the girls have the other and we have a common kitchen and bathroom. Happily, there's a proper flushable toilet and a shower, although shower is probably a slightly generous term for what is essentially a glorified hose. Nothing here is particularly clean unfortunately, although we've been told by the girls that the place was absolutely filthy when they came and they had to spend most of last week cleaning it. So we timed arrival pretty much to perfection!
In spite of the delayed departure, we eventually got to Arusha. The taxi driver was pretty hopeless though, as we almost had two head-on collisions in the first 5 minutes of driving, he didn't know where the hotel was once we arrived in Arusha, he asked for basically all our money for the fare, and then ran over a pedestrian outside the hotel. Luckily she was okay though. Worst. Taxi. Ride. Ever.
Coming to places like Arusha and Moshi helps make us realise just how lucky we are to be in Machame. Machame was one of the first areas the Lutheran Church came to, so the people there are mostly well-educated and wealthier (relatively) than in other areas. We feel so safe there, because everyone is incredibly friendly and used to mzungu (white people). It's hard to describe, but we've been able to relax a lot because we just get the sense that no one is going to try and rip us off or steal from us. Everyone we walk past smiles at us and says jambo (hello) or habari (how are you) or karibu Machame (welcome to Machame) and then patiently corrects our mispronounced Swahili replies. Everyone is super friendly and always chats to us about Australia.
It's a different matter in the big towns though. Here, there are so many people and lots of dodgy characters. People are always trying to sell us stuff and we have to be so much more vigilant with our bags and money belt. We're always looking over our shoulders for fear of being robbed or raped, potentially even simultaneously.
Anyway, we checked into our hotel, which was selected largely because it came with a proper shower. Unfortunately, there seemed to be something wrong with each room they gave us and we changed through three rooms before we just gave up on it all and chillaxed.
The promised shower was a bit of a let down too unfortunately. Looks were deceiving, as it worked much like an old man with prostate the size of a watermelon. I could have had a better shower from the river of tears I cried when I discovered it wasn't going to work :(
Unfortunately, this was a bit of a wasted day, as we didn't get a lot of what we needed to done, such as finding a safari to go on for tomorrow. I'm going to have to rethink my plans for the weekend now. The only good thing was that it did give us plenty of time to brush up on our Swahili though! Although disappointing to discover this is a language without any swear words, it was heartening to learn that 'hakuna matata' is a genuinely used phrase here. Other Swahili from words from the Lion King include rafiki = friend, simba = lion and pumbaa = foolish. Even the English phrase 'mambo jambo' is taken from Swahili - jambo is hello and mambo is what all the cool kids say, meaning something lame like whassup bro.
Pleasantries are such an essential part of the Swahili language. Every greeting has a response that must be said in return. Like if some says 'jambo' to you, you must reply with 'sijambo'; if someone says 'mambo', you must say 'poa' and so on. The Tanzanians are very polite and they always say thank you very much (asante sana) multiple times per conversation, sometimes even half a dozen times in the same sentence. If we're ever in doubt of a word to use, a few well-placed asante sanas tend to do the trick. Even better, if we don't know what to say, the locals will usually say it for us. In effect this means they often have full conversations with themselves, saying both their own and our parts. It makes talking very easy!
The one weird thing though is that everyone has this idea that Australia is full of sheep. I've had about five conversations now about Australian sheep and keep disappointing people when I say I don't have any. One guy did ask me to bring him a kangaroo next time I come, so that's a bit more like it!
We're definitely staring to get the hang of Swahili, although this has been been made much more difficult by trying to learn the language using only a Swedish phrasebook as we couldn't find one in English. Needless to say, we're picking up a bit of Swedish too! Because butchering just one language is never enough...
Baadaye,
Michael
Things that went wrong: Day 5 edition
- Losing Swedish yahtzee.
- Sleeping through chapel.
- Taxi being five and a half hours late.
- Taxi ride taking an hour longer than it should have because the driver had no idea where he was going and then using up all our money paying for it. On the plus side, the long drive gave us plenty of time to listen to trippy Tanzanian radio.
- Hitting a pedestrian.
- Not having time to book a safari for tomorrow, throwing the weekend's plans into disarray.
- Having to change hotel rooms twice.
- Shower turning out to be the biggest letdown since The Lion King 2.
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