Tamara's Journal

I am back in Moshi for the foreseeable future.  At the request of Peace Corps, I traveled to Dar for an appointment with a doctor.  An 8 hour bus ride to see a doctor for 1 hour.  The trip was quite productive.  I got to see Spiderman 2 at the Dar Theatre.  Also, by an absolute miracle, I purchased the last available copy of Clinton's new book.  I have been searching all over Tanzania for this book.  Mission accomplished.  That book is already responsible for a lack of sleep the past few nights.
 
The trip back to Moshi was unpleasant to say the least.  There were no available seats on the bus I usually take (Scandinavia...well worth the 13,000 Tsh).  Rather than take a death trap from the regular bus stand, I proceeded to pay 4,000 more Tsh to get a seat on Royal Coach.  This bus supposedly had air conditioning and a toilet.  The 6 AM leave time was a little early, but I had to get back to Moshi. 
 
The 6 AM leave time turned out to be "Tanzanian" time.  After driving around Dar for  over 3 hours, we finally left the city limits at 9:30 AM.  At that point, the driver turned on the air conditioning.  Well...he tried to turn it on.  After 30 minutes on the side of the road, he gave up.  In the US, this would not be much of a problem.  People would open the windows.  Ahh...but here it is somehow different.  Tanzanians generally do not like the windows open on buses.  On a positive note, the toilet was operational.  This was a very good thing, considering my intestines had decided, yet again, to go on strike. 
 
After many hours of oppressive heat, we reached the weigh station at Himo (about 20 minutes outside of Moshi).  Before the bus drove on the scales, the driver let a passenger and her luggage off of the bus.  Apparently this was illegal, considering the chaos that ensued.  The weigh station personnel would not weigh the bus.  They started to argue with the driver.  The police were called in.  All this time, our bus was sitting on the scales.  A line of buses and trucks started to pile up in both directions.  The drivers of all these buses and trucks started to get irate with our bus driver.  Mobs of yelling people formed.  A Norwegian tourist took a picture of the scene.  This really angered the police, who started to yell at the tourist.  This whole fiasco went on for 2 hours.  The police finally had our bus move off the scales.  They told our driver that he would have to wait until they had weighed all the buses and trucks that had accumulated.  Realizing that it would be another 2 hours before my bus would be moving again, I quickly hitched a ride on another bus.  12 hours after I set out from Dar, I finally arrived back home in Moshi.
 
Yesterday, the neighbors invited me to a birthday party for their son, Gift (pronounced Gif--tee).  Not having a decent excuse to avoid it, I accepted the invitation.  My social life has come down to sitting with 5 year olds for 4 hours.  I did get a decent dinner out of the situation.  Ahh...what we endure to integrate into our communities.