Paper Airplanes

6/16
Before we even had time to get on the bus, our group was foiled by a few city locals. After getting out of the taxi, some people came up with dollies and started putting our bags on them to take over to the bus station. I knew what was going on the whole time and kept telling them "no" but no one was really listening to me- it was pretty hectic. We ended up having to pay them $20 (I wanted to barter but we didn't have change- new travelers mistake) so they would put our bags on the bus. I remember a similar thing happening in Mexico,where kids would come up to your car, wash it and then demand money. Oh well, at least our group is learning!

I was surprised at how nice the bus was. Fairly comfy seats with windows that could open. We ended up getting served soda halfway into the trip, and thankfully got a lot of bathroom breaks. My first time in a foreign bathroom wasn't so bad! There were stalls, and once you got inside there was a hole in the ground with a hose or a bucket of water close by. I just pretended I was rednecking all over again and it ended up being fine.

The bus took us through much of Tanzania as we traveled from Dar es Salaam in the South to Arusha in the North. There were many more cornfields than I expected and much of the ground was a deep red, soil rich with clay. The thatched huts were also constructed from the clay soil, so much of the landscape had a great contrast between the green foliage and the red huts. I also saw a lot of 'controlled burns' in the distance, a common phenomenon in Africa I learned about in my Geography class this past term. We followed a mountain range (Par Mountains?) throughout our trip. Dartmouth is really getting to me- every mountain I see now I have an urge to hike up.

Irresistible- how can you not want to hike that?

At every village stop, people on the streets would run up to the bus and hold up their arms high as they tried to sell us their goods. They had water, nuts, fresh fruit, and even grilled corn! There were even fresh mangoes- I still am smacking myself for not buying one. The villages had cows, goats, and chickens roaming freely. I was surprised that I didn't see very many dogs running around. I also noticed that in a few villages, there were big red Xs painted on the doors and walls of some buildings and homes, something I am still trying to figure out why that is.

The avocados are much larger than in the US and about $0.40 each

6 hours into the bus ride, I noticed a little boy in the seats in front of us staring at me. I smiled at him and he bashfully stuck his head in his mother's skirt. 11 hours is a long time in a bus for a child, so I tore a page out of my notebook and began folding it into a fortune teller. I didn't know how to make it so he'd understand the game, so I just drew a face on it and treated it as a puppet. He started giggling as I acted like the fortune teller monster was going to eat him. I tried to show him how to open and close it like a mouth but his fingers were too small, so I made him a child size fortune teller monster. We were playing with these for a while and then he began treating the monster as if it could fly. So, of course, I drafted the engineers of the group, Nick and Aneesh, into making a paper airplane. The boy and I ended up throwing the plane back and forth, until it began hitting other people on the bus. Thank goodness they weren't mad, and a few even laughed and threw it back instead of just handing it to me. Eventually I fell asleep and then awoke to the boy shaking my arm to say goodbye, because his bus stop was coming up soon. We high fived. It was great. 

So much napping!

Taking Geography was much more useful than I expected. I am now noticing a lot more things related to third world country lifestyles, like women washing their clothes in the streams and the diseases associated with this. I also noticed a large difference in the workforce- whereas in the city a majority of the people were on the streets, selling their goods and making money any way they can, in the rural areas I saw many people, men and women, sitting down and not working much at all. These sorts of things inspire me to take another Geography class. I shouldn't be surprised, but I am still very impressed with the relevancy of many of my Dartmouth courses to the real world!

Mt. Kilimanjaro as we entered Arusha