Is This Real Life? (Tanzania)

1. Our bus ride to Tanzania seemed to, in a way, set the tone for the month. We loaded the bus at around 6 A.M. Cassie and I sat together and decided to pass the time by watching an episode of Glee. We had brought the supplies to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Nutella to eat with bananas, but we didn’t have a knife to spread anything. The only “utensil” I could find was a small plastic dinosaur that my sister had sent to me in Ukraine. So, Cassie and I sat and endured plenty of African criticism for the sake of a delicious lunch. Worth it. Thanks, Tay!
Later on, while we were attempting to fall asleep, I felt something touching my back. I turned around and saw the hand of the man sitting behind me reaching around the side of my seat. I decided that he must have just been holding on for the bumpy ride, so I adjusted my body away from his hand and tried again to get some rest. A few seconds later, I felt his hand again. I moved my body even further away and watched his hand this time as his fingers moved, obviously searching for my side. I tried gently pushing his hand away, to no avail. Finally, I stood up and turned around to see that the man was leaning forward as he reached around my seat, with an extremely creepy smile on his face. I asked him to move his hand and he tried to put on a shocked and innocent face. At least that was the end of that.
Finally, about an hour before we were to arrive in our ministry city of Morogoro, our team leader, Liz, came back to see us. She was crying and very visibly shaken. She told us that she was going to stay on the bus and go to a hospital in the capital city, Dar Es Salaam. She told us that she was in a lot of pain, had been vomiting for almost the entire bus ride, and had blood in her urine. 14 hours later, at around 8 P.M., Josh, Cassie, and I loaded our things off the bus and said goodbye to our other 3 teammates who would continue on. Their night (and next several days) was another adventure altogether, but that’s not my story to tell.
 
2. We arrived at our home in Morogoro. We were excited to see that it was spacious, that it had a large gate surrounding us for protection, and that there were ceiling fans. However, we quickly learned that running water was hard to come by in our new home. We spent the first 3 days there without running water. By the 3^rd day, most of us had gone 4 or 5 days without a shower and were feeling very disgusting. Cassie and I were sitting in one of the rooms singing and listening to music on my computer. The girls on the other team that was with us that month finished their team time and joined us for what turned into an all-out dance party. All of the sudden, we heard to most beautiful sound… rain on our tin roof. We all ran outside into the rain, just to try to rinse some of the dirt off of our bodies. Some girls even put shampoo in their hair and soap on their bodies. Unfortunately, it wasn’t raining very hard, so they were stuck with being soapy, but it was fun and refreshing nonetheless.
 
3. Cassie and I had joked several times during our time in Tanzania that we were so dirty that someone could write “Wash Me” in the dirt on our skin, like people do to dirty cars in the states. However, we were never quite dirty enough for this to work. A few weeks into our time in TZ, our contact took us with him to minister in a remote village about 3 hours away called Mvuha. We 12 World Racers rode crammed in a tiny van along with 6 Africans for the 3 hour trip to the village. When we arrived and unloaded from the bus, we realized how dirty we had become. Anyone who was wearing white, was now covered in a thick layer of brown grime. Cassie had sat in the back row of the bus, and her shoulders and back were covered in dirt as a result. It was the perfect opportunity to make our ridiculous dream a reality! I got to write “Wash Me” on her shoulders! It was probably the greatest highlight of my entire month. Remember, it’s the little pleasures. Ha.
The only way we could bathe in this village was to go and sit in the river that went through the village. The river would have been nice if it had been deeper than the foot of water that we had, and if it had been cold, rather than lukewarm. Nonetheless, it was a blessing to have somewhere to rinse. We walked down to the river in our swimsuits to find a bunch of naked African babies and topless women bathing and washing their clothes and dishes. Modesty shmodesty.
It is also likely that this is the place where both Adam and Liz got the dreadful typhoid.
 
4. We have become quite accustomed to African men proposing marriage to us because of the color of our skin. This month, however, was over the top. Within the first week of our time in TZ, Cassie and I met a lovely man named Muddhi. He was very open about the fact that he wanted the two of us to be his second and third wives. It didn’t matter to him that he was Muslim and we were Christians. According to him, he was madly in love and our love would be more important than our differences in beliefs. Sorry, Muddhi, we don’t share well. And we love Jesus.
One of our translators this month was a sweet man named Innocent, Ino for short. Ino and I became fast friends because he was personable, lived in our house, and spoke decent English. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before Ino’s feelings progressed and he told me that God had told him that I was to be his wife. He told me that he would wait for me to come back to Tanzania and that when I did, he would marry me. He was very firm in these beliefs and he made his feelings well known to the rest of my teammates, as well. Adam and Josh both took on the roles of my big brothers and told him that he needs to pray and ask God to bring him a wife and that whomever that God intends for him will come at the perfect time. He didn’t want to hear this. He told them that I am 24 years old (which is ancient according to the typical African age for marriage), and that he was going to rescue me from being single forever. Prince Charming. Anyway, I spoke clearly with Ino and we ended up being strictly friends, although he is still convinced that God will change my heart.
Ino’s best friend, Elijah, was another one of our translators and the eldest son of the pastor. Elijah and I were also good friends. We liked to laugh and be silly together. Elijah told me one day that he intended to marry my sister. I reminded him that he had never met her and didn’t even know what she looked like. His reasoning was that he liked me and that she was probably a lot like me, so he would like her, as well. He was also very serious about this, reminding me again and again that I would have to bring her back with me to Tanzania. By the end of the month, he understood more that it was silly to want to marry a girl whom he had never met. But I’m still not sure he was completely convinced.
 
5. There was a hotel close to our church in Morogoro that I had had my eye on for several weeks. I was convinced that if we could just get inside, we would find that they had a fantastic swimming pool, and I hadn’t been swimming in 5 months, so I was itching for a pool. Well, one day, I mustered up the guts to go inside and ask. No such luck. However, Adam, Cassie, and I did come across the restaurant that they had inside. It was nothing special. But they had a menu and would turn on the A/C whenever we were inside. We ordered food and it was decent… a good pizza and some chicken dishes. We decided that this place was perfect for our Thanksgiving dinner! We even had everyone on our two teams go by the hotel and place their order for what they would want to eat to ensure that the restaurant would have the ingredients necessary for the dishes. We showed up on Thanksgiving and were immediately served our food. Fast service (especially for Africa) and it was all very cold. A few of the girls had ordered cheeseburgers, and were given buns with all of the dressing- and NO BURGER. Nevertheless, we still had fun. It was definitely a Thanksgiving we’ll all remember for many years to come.
 
6. On one of our days off, our translators took us to climb part of the beautiful mountain in our town, the Orogoro Mountain. They took us to a waterfall, which we spent most of the day climbing upstream until we reached a place where it pooled. We found a group of small African boys who quickly stripped down and showed us their version of fun. They slid with ease down the large rock and splashed into the pooled water at the bottom. We hesitantly joined in and ended up having one of the best afternoons on our Race so far. I had been bugging my team for about a month and a half to help me find a pool to go swimming in. It was my one and only desire. And that afternoon fit the bill perfectly. Plus, how many people can say that they have slid down the rocks of an African waterfall? Just making memories, folks!
 
 
7. The ladies on our team have a habit of making friends in strange places. One such friend was a lovely elderly gentleman named Sven whom Cassie and I encountered at the grocery store. We were minding our own business in the cookie aisle (don’t judge) when we heard a voice behind us that said, “Have you seen the lovely Dutch cookies?” and when we told him that we hadn’t seen them, he said “You’re Dutch, aren’t you?”. We had to tell him that we were, in fact, Americans. He then informed us that he owned a hotel in town and handed us his business card for the Arc hotel. A few weeks later, our team decided that after a tough month, we needed to take a couple days of recoupe before we headed to Mozambique. We were looking on the internet for an affordable guesthouse or hotel nearby when we remembered our sweet old friend. We looked up the hotel and ended up staying there for our last few days in Tanzania. It was a little sketchy with the air conditioning being broken more than it ever worked, but it was a good time nonetheless. Sven was around and would come and talk to us often. We had some great relaxation time and ate some delicious food to get us rejuvenated for our crazy travel days that were soon to come.