A Day in the Life

Today’s been a bit stressful so far. Went to the road to catch a bus around 8 this morning, but I just barely missed the 8:00 bus and sat down for some ginger chai at the café on the road to wait for the 9:00 bus. There, I talked to the woman who owns the café and makes the chai and small, greasy baked goods called maandazi. She said my Kiswahili is getting really good these days, which I’ve heard a lot lately. I can definitely feel that I am much better at it now than I was when I first came to Ismani. I’ve reached a new level, one at which I’m comfortable saying most of what I want to say, it’s becoming more fluid (which is one of the hardest things with this language since it has so many prefixes and suffixes and infixes to indicate the subject and object of the sentence, the tense, the time it happens, etc.), and I can understand people much better, even when they speak faster. Still can’t understand the radio completely (though I can kind of follow what they’re saying sometimes, and otherwise I can pick out several key words), and there are some people who just speak so fast and use vocabulary I don’t know so I just can’t understand a word they say. But most people speak clearly enough and use my vocabulary for the most part, so I can get along pretty well.
Anyway, I rushed out of the café at 8:40 when the bus came early. However, it was packed and I had to stand. Not terribly uncomfortable as it turns out, though the conductor decided it was necessary to continually pass up and down the bus, squeezing around people, to go collect money and hand out tickets. At one point, he gave up squeezing around people in the aisle and decided to just climb on top of all the seats (this was while the bus was sailing down the bumpy dirt road to town). At the “airport” (large field of grass) down the mountain from Iringa, those of us standing on the bus had to change to a daladala. A minivan made to seat about 7 people, the daladala this morning carried 20 people and a baby. Don’t ask me how that works; it’s like a clown car.
So I made it to town and made for the bus stand to ask about prices and times to get to various places in the future. I haggled a bit with one lady on the price, but she wouldn’t budge, so I left without my ticket. On my way to the ATM, I realized I’d forgotten my nice REI backpack in the back of the daladala. And then I realized that I’d left my passport in it.
Fighting a heart attack, I walked swiftly to the daladala stand to try to find the one I’d taken. All I knew was it was grayish in color. How to find it? Then a guy about my age came up to me and started babbling about the bus stand and fighting for money. He was holding out a bill to me, offering me money since I wouldn’t pay the price the woman at the bus stand was asking me to pay. This was definitely a first- he’d followed me a few blocks simply to offer to help me with money? Hmmm… I told him that it was ok, I’d buy my ticket later and be sure to get a good price, then decided he could help me in a different way. I told him my predicament with the daladala and my bag, and he took me around to different conductors asking where to find the car. Apparently they all know each other, and all I had to do was tell them when I came in and where I caught the daladala. They led me straight to it. Thank goodness. And I’m so glad that I met that nice guy who offered me money. Odd, yes, but he did seem genuine and helped me find my bag.
So today I plan to go to the safi duka (nice store with good, though expensive, food items such as powdered milk, fake butter, bouillon cubes, oatmeal, and spices. Then to the market to grab a few veggies, a restaurant to splurge on the best cheeseburger in Tanzania (about $3), the posta to pick up some packages and send some letters, and the pharmacy to buy 5 kilos of dog food (Supa Dog) for Batman. And then to return home, hopefully before dark. Big day. After a couple more days at site, I’m off to Morogoro again for a PEPFAR community theater workshop. I’m so excited to learn about how to use theater to communicate HIV/AIDS and behavior change messages. Hopefully, it will be helpful in the health club and HIV/AIDS conference I’m planning (more about that later). I need something to reenergize my ideas and get some projects going for next school term. So, here we go!