Day 6

Before I arrived in Africa, it hadn’t kicked in that I was going to the field this summer. I thought it would sink in when I stepped on the plane, or when I saw my sister in England. However, being in England felt like a familiar European vacation, and my denial continued through to Dubai. This trip became very real very quickly as soon as we stepped into the airport in Dar es Salaam.

I guess you could say I am experiencing culture shock. Here there is ground and sky and people, but that’s about where the comparison to anything in my experience ends. First of all, there are people everywhere. Nowhere except our hotel can I expect to see fewer than 50 people at any given time. Despite the fact that most people in Dar don’t own a private vehicle, the roads are constantly packed with cars, cyclists, and hundreds of pedestrians. There are 4.5 million people in this city, and they are all out and about. Almost everyone is African. I suddenly feel like what an African must feel like in Alberta. We stick out horribly, and I find myself unconsciously keeping a tally of how many other non-African people I see. Today, it was less than 10. I can’t recognize any of the trees or plants. What I find the most jarring is that everything here has a smell. It’s not necessarily an offensive one, but it always strong. Inside buildings, it usually smells like human bodies and sweat. On the streets, it’s a mix of food, automobiles, animals, spices and incense, and metals. On the road, it’s exhaust, diesel, asphalt, and chemicals. In the supermarket, it’s mothballs and cleaner. Even our room smells strongly of moist walls, paint, laundry detergent, and a little bit like the dorms at my childhood summer camp. I never realized that Canada generally doesn’t smell. We must live in a world of recycled, filtered air slowly dispersing through a scattered population. I have never been so over-stimulated in my entire life. Even I smell different, presumably from the water and the heat.

There are a lot of things to for me to worry about. I’m afraid of being alone, going out at night, walking in the wrong places (like the beach and down alleys, where tourists are routinely mugged), mosquito-transmitted diseases, the spooky abandoned building directly across from our hotel room window (why does it have to look so much like a sniper post?), the men who try to sell things in the middle of the road to stopped cars, and using a dishonest bureau de change to convert USD into Tanzanian shillings. I never feel like I have enough bottled water, and it’s unsafe to drink the tap water or the refilled “bottled water” that people often try to sell on the streets. The heat is like a heavy blanket that sits on my shoulders and clings to my skin and hair. It was about 35 °C today and extremely muggy, even with a breeze or in air conditioned buildings. Last night, Jenn and I forgot to turn the air conditioner back on before we fell asleep. Our hotel room doesn’t have nets because the circulation of air from the AC prevents the mosquitoes from alighting. Not only was I unbearably hot and sweaty in the morning, but I was terrified that we would both be malaria factories. We checked and we don’t seem to have any bites, but I still worried.

Really quickly, it’s getting better. Today we spent the whole day traveling through the city. We have a driver named Phillomenos who jovially takes us around in a land rover, eliminating much of the danger of doing errands. That being said, the land rover has no seatbelts, there are no lines painted on the road, we are constantly almost colliding into pedestrians, cyclists, and other cars, and we seem to have spent a significant amount of time driving on sidewalks (please don’t worry, mom). Today we went to the Idara ya Mambo ya Kale (the department of things of old, AKA the department of antiquities) where we met several administrators, arranged for an antiquities officer to accompany us to the field, and paid for our excavation permit. Afterwards, we went to the department of immigration to apply for residence permits, and to a Vodafone outlet to get some pre-paid cell phones for when we split up around town. I also bought a guidebook to Mikumi National Park, the wildlife reserve we’ll be driving through on our way to Iringa. Afterwards, we had a good Tanzanian lunch on the patio of the Chicken Hut Restaurant. I had ugali (a cassava and corn paste that kind of looks like mashed potatoes) with an amazing beef and vegetable stew that arrived still sizzling in a stone dish carved like a cow. For the Ukrainians in the audience, ugali is very much like nachenka minus the corn meal and with a slightly thicker consistency. It’s eaten by rolling it into balls in your hand and then using them to scoop up meat or sauce. Eating without utensils (especially in public) felt all sorts of naughty and rebellious but hey, when in Dar... Right before we left, a man off the street walked up to our table, purposefully drank the rest of my bottled water, and left a Tanzanian identification card in its place. The waitresses were very apologetic and asked if I was ok, and I felt like telling them that stranger things have happened in Edmonton. Perhaps that was my first blonde moment? We finished the day by walking to a supermarket and buying water and snacks. There I saw one of what I’m sure will be many bizarre African consumer products: Obama cologne manufactured in Ukraine and sold in East Africa.

Tomorrow, we will try to secure two land rovers for the trip to Iringa, and possibly visit the museum. It sounds like the artifacts I want to see are still unavailable, but I have high hopes that I can collect the data I need before we go. Because we have to wait for our residence permits to be granted, we won’t leave until Monday or Tuesday of next week at the earliest. There is a lot more of the city to explore before we go to mashambarani (the bush). All the more time to adjust.