Sweatin' in Dar

Sweat. That pretty much sums up this past week in Dar, and will probably continue to sum up the next two as well. I distinctly remember the occasions during which my body briefly stopped sweating, and they do not include the nighttime or bucket showers. Once when I was in an air-conditioned car, and once at the mall…that’s it. The wet season is approaching, so Dar is muggy and incredibly humid. I’ve been told it gets a lot worse, so in some ways I am glad to be leaving so soon.

After about 6 am it starts to really warm up, so it has been a bit difficult motivating myself to move. However, I have gone on a few excursions to various places around Dar, and sweated my ass off the whole time. We had a really interesting dala-dala experience going to the downtown area, called Posta. The bus was so jam-packed that my feet were partially lifted off of the ground for most of the 50-minute ride. This was because I was sandwiched between one woman’s particularly large behind and a man who looked less-than-enthused that I was basically on top of him. It was a good day. Other outings have included Mwenge (the giant market close to the university), Mlimani (the mall), campus to use the internet, our Director’s house, Oyster Bay (the wugunzu part of town), and most recently to the beach (the ocean water was so dirty we only got into the pool). The majority of my time, however, has been spent sitting in my bed working on my research project…and of course sweating.

For Thanksgiving each home-stay pair volunteered to prepare a particular “American” dish, which would be supplemented by catered food at our director’s house. My roommate and I decided that we would make salad, which turned out to be an all-day affair. Our baba went with us in the morning to his preferred vegetable stand, and helped us get a good deal on a bunch of veggies. We then went to the mall with the goal of buying lettuce, but it turns out that Tanzanians don’t eat a lot of lettuce. Instead we bought a head of cabbage. Looking back that was a poor choice (no one ate it). In the afternoon we went over to our directors house with all of the food and then chopped vegetables for about two hours. It turns out we bought a lot of vegetables. The dinner was really really delicious – everyone’s dishes turned out much better than expected. People brought platters ranging from sweet potato and apple pies to pumpkin pancakes. I was impressed. We all ate a ton in the spirit of Thanksgiving, and unlike in the field there was more than enough food for everyone.

Thanksgiving was actually my roommate’s, Laura’s, 21^st birthday, so we had a belated dinner celebration for her on Friday. We all went out to this wonderful Indian restaurant in Oyster Bay, and it was a very pleasant experience. Usually when we eat out as a big group, the food takes forever and there are many complications, but everything went seamlessly. Afterwards most of us went out to a nearby bar called “George and Dragon”, but we left after a few hours when the power went out.

Our host family has been in-and-out, mostly because their actual home is in Mongorogoro, where they have a farm and livestock. Our mama is constantly traveling back and forth, and baba is on vacation right now so he has been taking the opportunity to go home when he can. Their son got married the day we returned to Dar, so they were gone for the first few days we were back. It is nice to have them around, but Laura and I are also completely fine on our own. Filomena the house girl is always here, so we still have breakfast and lunch at home. Filomena doesn’t speak any English, so we have been attempting some very broken conversations with her in Swahili. I much prefer living in a home-stay to the dorms. However there are still some awkward moments with our host dad, and I am still adjusting to eating dinner around 9 or 10 pm. Other than that we are very comfortable.

I think that pretty much covers this past week, maybe next time I will have slightly more interesting things to talk about.