Visiting foreign countries entails adjusting to new languages, time zones and diets. When we travel, we expect to encounter new foods and phrases, but rarely realize until we are packed into a mode of transportation, that getting from place to place will not be as easy as it is in our home country. Tanzania is no exception to the discomfort that is travel within a foreign country —a discomfort that prompts, for me, breathing through my mouth, lots of hand sanitizer and extra-long showers.
In Usa River, the small dusty pocket of Tanzania that I am calling home for the summer, the dalla dalla and boda boda serve as my two main ways of getting around town. Picture a mini van that can seat 18 comfortably but is filled with no less than 25 at all times —this is the dalla dalla. People sit and stand hunched around the van for the duration of their ride for the whopping price of 500 Tanzanian Shillings, which, respectively, transfers to 0.25 USD.
The first leg of my morning commute to Silverleaf Academy is a 10-15-minute dalla dalla ride from Makumira, the name of the village in which I live, to Momella Junction, the closest the dalla dalla route gets to the school. After dismounting the dalla dalla, touching my toes, cracking my neck and applying some hand sanitizer, my coworker and I are immediately approached by a swarm of motorcycles waiting to take us to our final destination —these are the boda bodas.
Meredith and I, to save some shillings, usually double up on a boda boda, making it three people on a motorcycle bouncing down the road. The boda boda takes us 5 minutes from the main road past coffee fields and small farms before turning onto a mud road that lets you know you are in Africa. Big rocks and bigger gullies occur one after another making the commute curvy and bumpy. We ride up this road for 10 minutes before turning the corner that reveals the rainbow beehive that is Silverleaf.
The stench and risk of transportation within Tanzania are two of the things that make the movement from one place to another enjoyable, memorable, and above all, a joke between Meredith and I. Quotes like "my hand was in that woman's armpit the whole time" or "that man was practically laying on me" are ones that we laugh about when we finally get to our destination, and will continue to laugh about for the remainder of the summer.
Each day we see large safari land cruisers go by filled with wide eyed white tourists. They always seem to do a double take when they spot Meredith and I among a crowd shoving to get into a dalla dalla or zooming past on a boda boda. I realize that these people are going to return home and say the same things that I will: I went to Tanzania. I experienced Tanzanian culture. When I get past the smells, sounds and cramps that come along with the public transportation in Tanzania I realize that this uncomfortable but necessary immersion into another place is what sets someone apart from being a tourist and a resident. I am getting a small piece of this country that the person in the private coach is not.
When traveling, you will never get a true taste of the culture of a place unless you take the subways, the rickshaws, the camels —the whatever it may be according to the country. Culture is in connection. How does a resident get to the store, to school, to work? This is where you will find the customs and lives of locals.
