When I was at my first meeting for this internship, I frantically wrote down any vaguely foreign-sounding thing, to feign understanding at the time and hurriedly look up later. I supposed “Ifakara” was on that list, but as I promptly misplaced the notebook and chose to focus more on packing than mapping, my trip to Ifakara came as a bit of a surprise.
Two nights ago, I found myself mired in a typical last-minute scramble to get ready. I’m both a horrible procrastinator and also a slight perfectionist, a combination that at best leads to sleep deprivation and at worst to meltdowns. My night of packing luckily veered to the better end of the spectrum. Still, I asked myself, what should I pack to go somewhere vaguely rural, for an indeterminate amount of time, with unclear clothing washing and general living? In the end I settled for just about everything, and on Monday morning, I left my hostel bright and early with a small black duffel and backpack. Zippers near to bursting, I tied my black plastic bag full of bananas to the duffel and hopped a bajaj to the Ifakara Health Institute office in Dar.
Expectation: Departing at 9:30, alone in a normal car with the driver, 5-hour trip
Reality: Left at 11, five people and countless boxes in an off-roading vehicle, 8-hour trip
I piled into the car alongside the driver, the director of the Ifakara Health Institute, the director’s teenage son who was on school vacation, and an unnamed woman with an unclear purpose. While the director, Frederick, was the only one who spoke English, that didn’t really matter, as the group was pretty taciturn overall. Early on, I vowed not to be a frequent-bathroom break liability, so that meant limiting water intake, a novel concept! I was glad I did. In the end, it was a beautiful and memorable car ride – and not just because of my miraculously empty bladder!
We started off slogging through the heavily congested and polluted roads of Dar. Even at midday, traffic didn’t ease up – “rush hour” seems to be a 24/7 deal here! Soon enough, though, we made it out of the city and suddenly, out of nowhere, we were hurtling down hilly highways between green fields, nary a sign of urbanization around. I’d brought two books to read, and had in fact been fretting that I hadn’t brought enough to entertain myself. In the end, my eyes never strayed from the windows.
Three hours in, we stopped for lunch at a roadside place. “Don’t eat the food,” Frederick cautioned. “You’re too new here!” I heeded his advice and chomped on the big bag of bananas I’d brought, supplemented by some crackers. Fruit lunches forever!
The second half of our journey was even more scenic. Right after our lunch stop (where I can proudly say I took my only bathroom break of the trip!) we entered Mikumi National Park. (In my last post I thought we’d be driving through the Selous Reserve. We didn’t, but I did embarrass myself at breakfast by pronouncing it phonetically and learning that it’s actually “Sell-OO.”) Mikumi was astounding, despite my confusion. I’m convinced that baboons are the most pan-African primate out there, having now seen them in abundance in Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania. They were all over certain stretches of the highway, which was the only road cutting through the pristine park. Couldn’t they have found somewhere safer to chill? Maybe cars are their TV. My heart would jump into my mouth every time a little baby baboon would wander too close to the pavement, but they seemed rather adjusted and mostly sat by the side, watched us, grooming themselves.
Our road wound through the park for hours, and even when we left the swaying, barren grasses and stark mountaintops, the view never ceased to rivet me. We started passing through populated places about the time the road turned from pavement to dirt, and that was when I realized why we had such an intense car (think external reinforcement, the frame a meter off the ground, thick grooved wheels). In order to make any sort of decent time, we had to drive as fast as we could across bumpy terrain, all while navigating the hordes of bicycles taking up half the street, their steel frames laden with overwrought humans and goods stacked three feet high. If I’d been seriously worried I would have shouted out “Polepole tafadhali” – Slow down, please! – but I figured the Institute wouldn’t hire a driver with a bad record, so I let my stomach swoop as we crested small hills and passed through town after town, honking all the way.
And the buses, oh, the buses! Other than bicycles, personal vehicles were rare, but we passed bus after bus stuffed with passengers. Every bridge was only one vehicle wide. We shot across a particularly long bridge despite our driver clearly seeing the bus at the far side. When we arrived at the other end, the driver of “Africa Bus,” as its massive windshield sticker declared it, was not amused. He motion for us to back up the whole length of the bridge. Our driver honked him into submissiveness and we were off again. My companions had been silent the whole ride, but here was a situation we could all laugh at, regardless of language.
Every long-distance bus here has something distinguishing written on it. It might be our bridge enemy’s hilariously straightforward “Africa Bus,” but we were just as likely to see buses blazed with “ISLAM” or Sylvester Stallone’s biceps, coming at you from a dated Rocky II poster.
Amazingly, even hours after my rear end had gone numb, I wasn’t eager for the journey to end. I doubt I’ve ever had so much time alone with only my thoughts, for the simply reason that I’ve never done anything so mindless yet interesting for hours on end. I always spend long journeys reading or talking, the view out the windows a secondary distraction. With nature and a fierce breeze to entertain me, I let my thoughts wander in any and every direction for our entire ride. I planned a dream wedding (good grief), imagined late-summer adventures back in Boston, daydreamed about my upcoming Kilimanjaro hike, played music in my head, and let my excitement to see Ifakara increase throughout the trip. By the end, as we were bouncing up and down dust-choked rural roads with clean air and kanga-clad women as far as the eye could see, I knew I’d like it here. Dar is congested and polluted, and while Jeanie and I have found the odd peaceful locale, I knew this trip would be something else.
We watched the sun burn red and fall behind ancient hills. Everyone closed the windows except me. My left arm grew cold as it met the resistance of night air disappearing at 40 miles per hour. “Ifakara: 65 km” the sign read, then “45 km,” then “20.” We pulled in as darkness settled, to a town that apparently holds over 400,000 people but must be spread over countless miles.
And then we were here, and a journey that I’m probably overhyping was over. I was promptly shown to my room. It has ice-cold AC and a TV whose only English-language program is the Disney Channel (guilty, on lunch break yesterday). I once more have ample shelf space (go Tanzania and shelf space!), but no web access. I examined the dining room’s impressive bookshelf. In this Swiss-run hostel, every book was in German. Gott in Himmel. I ate dinner with two entomologists from UC Davis, an older professor and a young post-doc. He had a no-nonsense attitude and she had thick-framed glasses, blunt bangs, and way more tattoos than your average mosquito aficionado. While Tanzanian food is certainly tasty, I think my best gastrointestinal and financial bet is to just keep buying fresh produce and making my own meals.
When I retired to my room for the night it suddenly hit me that this could be a lonely week or two. I’ll spend all day at work and then come back to my room alone at night. I quickly banished any negative thoughts by taking a steaming hot shower and watching the first episode of “Gossip Girl,” saved in my iTunes. Let’s just say it was available free when the show first came out. By staying up until I was exhausted, I quickly fell into a heavy sleep under warm blankets and cold air.
I had a good first day at work here. The compound is sprawling: it consists of this large hostel, a health worker training center, all of the IHI offices, and a hospital. The morning broke cool and rooster-filled – quite a change from Dar! I had an extremely thorough orientation where I met at least three dozen people working in the many IHI buildings (everything here is arranged California campus-style). A nice older man, Mashaka, has sort of taken me under his wing. He keeps teaching me Swahili and patting me on the back sympathetically when I butcher words. My supervisor Alfa gave me some data to sort, I got ample (slow) internet time in the morning, Amos showed me to the soccer pitch where I could eventually jog, I enjoyed the thrilling adventure of squat toilets, and Joffrey walked me to lunch.
Yes, my coworker’s name is Joffrey.
Which brings me to…
It’s been killing me (hah.) that I couldn’t watch the last episode of Game of Thrones. The Red Wedding is absolutely the most astounding moment in the series (sorry, Ned). I remember reading that chapter two summers ago. Pretty sure I had to dig my jaw back from China. I spent so long in the office today trying to find a working stream, but the internet was so sporadic that I couldn’t get any downloads going. Amazingly, at the end of the day I lucked out on a site with tons of working links. By that point the workplace had cleared out and I had access to all of IHI’s bandwidth. I was ecstatic. I walked back to the hostel and promptly sat down to watch.
I’m sorry, I know this blog is supposed to be about Tanzania and all, but I think it’s going to be a GoT one. HOLY. SHIT. That episode was WELL DONE! My heart ached in all the right ways – Bran and freakin’ Rickon, Dario Na90’sMaleModel, “Don’t you want to teach little Ned Stark to ride a horse?” I couldn’t believe I got links to work in the Tanzanian boondocks. I still can’t believe Filch plays Walder Frey. My heart was pounding during the whole wedding scene even though, like so many people, I knew what was coming. SO. GOOD.
Then I had to calm myself down. So I watched the end of the episode again. And then listened to some Enya and Springsteen (but only the saddest songs). I realized I will have no shortage of things to do in my time here, from long work days to occasional runs, to the books I brought to the fact that I have the epically long original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie on my computer to re-watch. I will take a walk around town. I will learn new words. I will eat an entire papaya in one sitting (or do it again – that was lunch today). Maybe I will continue to write insanely rambling, overly descriptive blog posts like this one. I’m sure I’ll do a lot of writing of some sort. After all, there is so much to say.
Until then…Valar Morghulis!