The World at Your Fingertips

The Road to Dar El Salam and Everything I Didn’t See

CRISTINA ŞTEFAN, Sept. 2006

I stopped taking photos of places. A white beach adorned with “spinach” seaweed, a sunset over a white breaded mountain, a tumultuous waterfall in a smoking rainforest…they all start to look the same if you take out the people that come with it.

So on the six hour bus ride from Moshi to Dar El Salam, I took notice of the unexpected fertile landscape, of the undulating slopes covered from head to toe with unrecognizable crops, of how vibrant the colors were, almost giving me the impression I was really watching the color palette on my desk back home, but I took no photos of places.

At the outskirts of Arusha, not far from Moshi.

Not having an alarm clock, I hadn’t slept a wink the night before, afraid I would miss my 6am bus to Dar. Instead, I took my time packing and sat on the balcony listening to the morning growing in the streets, with one shop after another opening its doors, the owners over-zealously bathing the sidewalk in front of the store’s windows, setting the flapping, sun-stained canopies and the racks of kitani purposefully in tripping distance of the street.

I climbed the 100 stairs to the top of the Kindoroko Hotel to watch the sunrise over Kili, breathed in the morning dust unsettled by the dala dalas that honked and as impatient as always and headed to the bus station with the hope that I’ll return.

Needless to say, by the time I got on the bus and settled in my seat and propped my head against the window, I was exhausted. Even though it was only 6am, the bus station was overtaken by the rumble and agitation of a Saturday morning market.

That is what bus station in Moshi dubbed as, a market where you could bargain for anything from socks and watches to popcorn and French fries. 14 to 25 year olds would walk around with their various products mounted on a 3 by 2 wood board resting on the top of their heads.

Watching from my elevated position against the window, I could only see the boards moving left to right and occasionally swaying back and forth with a constant speed as if they were on a conveyor belt. I closed my eyes and tried to drown the constant pleas of the vendors to be their first customer of the day.

“Why are you here?” a deep, pack of cigarettes a day raspy voice broke my sleepy state. I felt a sigh building up and I was wishing I wasn’t such a patch of bland color in that bus. Maybe then, I could have slipped unnoticed to get a couple hours of sweet sweet sleep.

I made the effort to part my eyelids to see a grandpa almost turned on his side, arms folded in his lap, leaning close to me. He smelled like wet wood, the years had started digging valleys on his face and hands, and his dark eyes intensely waiting for a reply reminded me of the charcoal buttons we were using as kids to give our snowmen sight.

“I guess I came to see your country.”

“And have you seen it? Or do you mean to say, you’ve come to see our parks, our mountains and our beaches? Have you seen my country, young muzungu (wanderer)?”

I was perplexed and if his manner had not been so pleasantly inquisitive, I would have been transported to my days in ninth grade in philosophy class, standing in front of a packed class, the professor impatiently tapping his pen against the desk, cold sweat building at my temples, trying to come up with an answer to some sort of existentialist question I didn’t comprehend in the first place. What answer could I make up this time to at least get a passing grade?

“I am trying… I am trying to see your country beyond the Serengeti and Kilimanjaro and soon Zanzibar. That’s why I travel by myself, so I can try to see your country beyond the travel groups and all inclusive trekking packages, so seasoned locals like yourself can teach me about the country…but I didn’t know where else to start but with the parks.”

I must have sounded so apologetic that he smiled and called me a crazy muzungu woman because I was traveling by myself in a continent portrayed not quite as a top vacation spot, but as a place ridden in many parts by poverty, diseases, and internal strife. With that image in mind, he didn’t blame me that I went straight for the parks.

I breathed a sigh of relief, feeling like I had just passed a first round job interview. I bowed my eyes, ashamed that he was right, ashamed that even I had doubts before the trip, ashamed that I planned to take a trip to get to know the sights and not the country, ashamed that many of those that knew about my trip advised me against it “Tanzania?! Go to Europe, at least you can drink the water there; Tanzania?! Don’t they have some war going on?! Tanzania?! You should at least be with a western group all the time. Tanzania?! What in the @#!? for?!”

The only thing I knew about Tanzania when I boarded that insanely long EgyptAir flight from New York, was its capital (Dodoma) which I always confused with its largest city (Dar El Salam), and that it had the highest peak (Uhuru Peak – Kilimanjaro) and the deepest lake in Africa (Titicaca).

Two hours into the bus ride to Dar, I learned the story of its independence and the man who pushed for it, the reasons there was no tribal warfare, the Cliff notes version of the history and main differences between the tribes living on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, the story behind the kitanis women wear, four more useful phrases in Kiswahili and even what is the best wood for billiard tables (mahogany!).

Maybe I could have learned some of these things by picking up a book or just reaching for my ever present laptop and Google-ing it. But I think I would have forgotten it. How many history, philosophy, psychology, etc books have we read? How many binders and binders of notes have I taken in college? How much of it do I remember and how much of it do I ever go back to review? I didn’t pull out my pen to write down a word Albert said (I learned his name once we reached Dar, 6 hours after his first pop quiz), I didn’t write it down once I had a spare moment, but I have a feeling I will remember most of his words. What he taught me I don’t associate with history lessons I never think I’ll have to recall, what he taught me will be what I remember as the journey to Dar…an old John Doe Tanzanian grandpa that for 6 hours wanted me to really see his country beyond the mountains, the forests and the lakes but through its people.

Not meaning to blow my own whistle, but I think I have seen enough landscapes and cityscapes, enough clear, blue or purple sunsets, enough mountains with snow, enough mountains with no snow that I am realizing more and more, travel is not about places but about people in places.

So when a German guy I met in Zanzibar asked me what the landscape between Dar and Moshi is like, just Albert and a crowded, five seats per row bus, blasting bongo flava popped in my head and I had to say, “Sorry, I stopped taking photos of places.”

The Road to Dar El Salam and Everything I Didn’t See

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