II. Out on the Town

We go to Mwanza for a few reasons: 1) There is internet and we can talk to all you lovely people. 2) There are specialty items like nutella at U-Turn, the grocery store jam packed with white folks. 3) We need to buy vegetables unavailable in Buswelu at the bulk rates of Mwanza's market, and then squeeze into a daladala with a giant wicker basket on which the woman next to us gracefully places the most dispensable of her three babies for safe keeping.

The baby thing is nearly true. If a child simply won't fit in the back of the daladala it's mother will pass it up to the front seat where there's more room, and somebody else will rock it back and forth for the bumpy forty-five minute ride to town. Everyone in the daladala with you is automatically family, because if they weren't, your physical contact with them would be beyond innappropriate. It's more crowded than an Indian bus (if such a thing is possible) only because there is a vertical limitation. If you are one of the last few to enter the daladala you have the privilege of filling the space above the heads of the other passengers with your torso, because the only way to stand in the vehicle is to bend at the waist until your back is almost horizontal. From this vantage point you may find your field of vision filled by the breast of a woman who has decided that this is the time and place to nurse her baby, and the little fellow sucks away only inches from your face. You are petrified of hitting a bump and accidentally plunging in yourself, so you crane your neck ninety degrees in order to preserve some sense of modest propriety. But soon the old woman next to you gets tired and decides to simply use you as a seat. There's no use fighting it so you just kind of lean on the next poor sap, and along you go, telling yourself repeatedly that this is just a cultural difference that you have to get used to. So, if you ever feel like snuggling with a bunch of African strangers, it only costs 350 shillings each way (which is about 25 cents U.S.) and it doubles as a mode of transportation.

One day Ayesha and I hopped in a daladala that said "TOP JESUS" on the front and "SHARK!" on the side, to make a town trip for all three of the reasons I mentioned in the first paragraph. -- Daladala drivers decorate their vehicles with whatever strikes their fancy as shamelessly as school kids with binders and notebooks. I personally would probably put some ninja turtles and black panthers on my daladala if I had one--. During the ride the sliding, mini-van style door fell off the hinges and started dragging on the asphalt two times (probably because there was so much pressure from the bulge of human mass within) so it took us a little longer than we expected to get to Mwanza.

We had accomplished our first two tasks and were ready to tackle the third, and most dangerous ordeal (the Mwanza market) when some pickpockets attempted to confuse me by yanking annoyingly on one of my arms while rooting through the pocket on the other side of my body. Fortunately the only thing in that pocket was a broken pencil slathered in the saliva of various virus-filled orphans from the nursery class. I would not have begrudged them such a prize, but they didn't even get the pencil because I flipped out, and shoved one of them in the chest while cursing out the other one. He thought I was going to hit him and backed away. I may have even looked scary at that moment, and neither of the pickpockets had any idea that I was a mild-mannered country boy who has never been in a real fight before. They seemed happy to walk away at that point without further consequence from me or from the rest of society (thieves here are often doused with kerosene and burned on the spot. this is not a joke. it's the law).

As soon as they left Ayesha burst into tears, but not because she was afraid of them. It was me and my out of character outburst that had freaked her out. I guess she just didn't think I had the fight or flight adrenaline rush of profanity and potential violence in me. Who knew? But I was pretty proud of myself because it seemed to be effective.

Only a few minutes later, as we undertook our most stressful activity of the week looking for vegetables in the crowded market full of false friends trying to pickpocket or swindle us, Ayesha had her moment of glory when she chased down a child who had unzipped our back and grabbed the first thing he could get his hands on. "It's in the mzungu's bag" he must have thought. "It's got to be valuable." How disappointed he must have been when he discovered that he had pilfered our tissues. Perhaps that's why Ayesha caught him so easily.

As a side note though, tissues can be your most valuable possession in a country with squat toilets and no toilet paper. The no one here even knows what toilet paper is. I showed it to Joseph (our Maasai) and he asked me if it was food. Man did he laugh a gloriously big toothy maasai laugh at my demonstration.

So it was 2 points for the mzungus and a big fat 0 for the pickpockets, and I hope it stays that way. We have resolved to start carrying around snotty tissues, rusty razor blades, scorpions, rabid badgers, crazed vikings, IRS tax forms, and other unpleasant items in our pockets from now on when we go to the market, and I think that should do the trick.

Either that or we could take the Maasai to town with us. As I've mentioned before they are pretty imposing fellows, and they are legally allowed to kill thieves because they play the role of public safety in Tanzanian society. The Maasai and I have a new game called "Me Simba, You Maasai" in which I pretend to be the ferocious but hapless lion who snarls and pounces on the brave Maasai warrior just before Lazer or Joseph slits my throat with his imaginary machete. I'd rather be on the other side of things, but can you blame the Maasai for wanting to play themselves?