First Look, Tanzania

I boarded the bus, as usual, set down my basket, and hung onto the rail above me. Next to me, a Maasai man sat with his daughter on his lap. She was maybe around three years old, traditional circle scars on her cheeks. They wore traditional dress, as lots of Maasai continue to do when they venture into the city. The little girl seemed totally amazed at the sight of me. For the first time in my life, I realized that I might be the first white person that a child had ever seen. In this globalized world, I imagine that is an experience you have to trek pretty far to find, and now here she was: remote Africa riding my Msasani/Kkoo bus. She laughed, stared, smiled, repeatedly pointed me out to her father.

If we had been somewhere else, this interaction would have carried an air of, “white woman comes to see the real natives.” I’m sensitive, so I probably would have felt a combination of honored, invasive, privileged, regretful, and socially clumsy. Instead we were each in a foreign city, a place meeting new things. I looked at her, grinning back, equally in awe.

Extraordinary Ordinary, Tanzania

I’ve seen a video of a world-class violinist playing in a subway station, one of the hardest musical pieces ever written, on a roughly million dollar violin. A kind of social experiment, about if we really notice beauty when it is all around us.

There is a rooster outside my window that crows the classic notes from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Did Beethoven get it from a rooster? Or the rooster from Beethoven? Or is it brilliant musical happenstance?

My mom and I stopped to watch some young guys doing gymnastics at Coco Beach yesterday. They used a sand bag for a springboard. To my knowledge, this is the closest thing Tanzania has to a Men’s Gymnastics Team. They could be a Men’s Gymnastics Team, if they had a gym and a coach. What they lacked in facilities they made up for in raw talent. Back handsprings, back fulls, double backs. On the sand. They didn’t intend to be performing, off to one side, away from passersby. My mom and I applauded anyway. They didn’t ask for money; they seemed to be doing it for fun. After a while they dispersed, back to the world of selling sunglasses and hangers on the side of the road.

It occurs to me that roosters and teens doing handsprings and everything in between are all opportunities for us, giving us a chance to recognize beauty and potential everywhere. I hope I would have noticed the quality of the music that day in the subway, but I probably wouldn’t have. And if this is true, then what about the miraculous things that already do surround us on a daily basis? How do we remember to have the right eyes?

When I consciously think of this today, I see that a man with polio, and no ability to use his legs, was in the median of Ali Hassan Mwniyi Road this morning. Scooting around on his hands, before 7am. He is nothing short of miraculous.

Mzungu, Tanzania

Mzungu. Someone hollers, and it floats through the air, always my label. It means white person, but it actually means “one who walks in circles.” I am told it is not derogatory. In the U.S. it seems that any label that points out your different heritage is derogatory. This word would surely be blacklisted back there. But this is not back there.

The legacy of my skin color is that of the colonialists, the people who came and then walked in circles, for all the Africans could tell. I have such a strong aversion to being associated with that era, its people, and their intents. Yet, walking in circles could sum up my experience in Tanzania quite accurately. No one ever sees me work, and I often head out the door with the sole intent of going for a long walk, in a big circle.

The ability to spend time in this culture walking in circles is a huge privilege. The name, much to my chagrin, is fitting. It singles me out, but is only fair. I am not living like they are. And even if my skin were dark, I wouldn’t blend in.

Tanzanians belong here. They move like their ancestors rose up out of this very ground. Those of us with a motley heritage find ways to compensate for this glint of confidence not naturally inherited. And yet, for those that come from a place for as far back as their people can remember, there seems to be a rightful spot in the scheme of things that is buried in their bones. I can see it when they step off a bus, look over their shoulder, or in the way they walk. It is sturdy and deliberate, as if the original design of the foot belonged to them. They linger on a corner without thinking there is somewhere else to be.

We hybrids will never have the same posture, I think, of a Tanzanian or Ojobwa or an Aborigine on Walkabout. I wonder if they are aware of this birthright, and if they know how many of us are missing it. There is a strange magic and sense of place, I imagine, in becoming yourself while wedged into a system that holds you. Harder, perhaps, to find and express your own individuality, and yet easier to not be forced to singlehandedly invent your whole own identity, in the course of one short lifetime.

            Standing on a crowded bus today, stuck in traffic, the driver made an unexpected turn onto a bumpy dirt road. We weaved down small streets, past a handful of people sitting outside their small concrete home/business, selling a handful of vegetables or braiding hair. The bus barely fit in the alleys. I bent over to see out the window.

            A man in a long white robe and a round hat was standing in front of me. He turned and said in English, “This is a shortcut.”

            We started casual conversation. I rarely met another English speaker on the dala dala. He found out I was from the US. He asked what I thought of Barak Obama. I told him I think he is a good man, with a very hard job.

            “You have been to Kogelo?” he wanted to know.

            “No. Where is Kogelo?” I asked.

            He looked taken aback. “In Kenya. You are from America and you do not know of Kogelo?”

            I admitted that I did not.

            “It is Obama’s tribe. It is where your President comes from. Some of his family is still there. Surely Americans must know this.” He seemed surprised, sad, insistent, confused.

            “I am sorry,” I said. “I don’t think most Americans know much about Kogelo.”

            He grew silent for a few minutes. He took a seat when someone got off, and looked out the window, maybe lost in thought. We merged back with the main road, and I moved infinitesimally toward the front as we approached my street. He turned to me, having reached some sort of conclusion. “You must go there,” he said. “Go to Kogelo. Then you must go back to your country and tell your people. Tell them about Africa, so they all know where their President is from. Americans must know that a tribe is something that matters.”

            I told him okay, then got off the bus.

For Sale, Tanzania

I saw a man walking down the street with a sink on his head. It isn’t strange to see something like this here. People carry all kinds of bizarre things on their heads. It seems if they want to buy or sell something, they transport it with their own two feet, all their muscles, and a wellspring of willpower. These rules seem to apply even in the heaviest heat, or even wearing a tie.

I saw someone on a bicycle, pedaling along a congested, 4-lane road, in traffic I never dreamed possible. Hanging off the back of his bike were several cumbersome sheets of huge corrugated metal, like a shack might use for a roof. On top of these, a complete leather sofa. As he passed, the chain slipped off his bicycle. He leaned down, still going along with the cars and his miraculously balancing load, and hooked his chain back up without stopping or toppling. And he kept pedaling, over the bridge.

It seems you can buy anything on the street here: hangers, cashews, live rabbits, clocks, bike tires, poison. If you happen to need something, you think, Wait, where did I see that guy? Sellers walk down the middle of busy streets, products in hand, approaching car windows in the slow traffic. Just in case that man in the black car needs a soccer ball. Or an inflatable pool.

Alternatively, people hang their goods from the nearest tree. The only thing I have seen hanging from a tree in the States is toilet paper from a teenage prank. Rolls and rolls of refined and processed paper (trees themselves, originally) to mock the unfortunate chosen home. In Dar, I passed by a tree displaying a toilet seat, hanging by a string. Likely someone looking for work as a plumber, yet all I can think of is the myriad of ways American culture has found to be wasteful.

Riding on a bus with other newcomers, one woman was complaining about how she couldn’t sleep well on these African beds. While she dreamed about receiving her shipment of her own bedding, coffins the size of children passed by the window, for sale on the side of the road.