DO NOT FEED THE BABOONS

This very well may be the first solitary and rested exhalatory (I think that’s a word, but Microsoft word disagrees with me) moment I’ve had in the past 5 days. Maybe that’s not true, but it does not feel like my lungs have been filled with much but so many shakings of dust*.
I suppose I must start this way, because, in a way, it was the start of the whole thing: British Airways fucking rules. I have never made too much fuss about my birthday, but having it in an airport just plain sucks. Yet, lo and behold, British Airways to the rescue! On the first flight I watched “The Hangover” (hilarious), and “Vicky, Christina, Barcelona” (it was pretty good, I guess, but after it was over I found myself asking “so?” I suppose in his old age Woody Allen has lost his ability to self-edit. But then again, I am more self-indulgent myself). The radio stations had the new Eels album and a myriad of other things that you would never find on any American airline. They also had a huge movie library of current films and classics such as “the Sting” and “North by Northwest.” On the second flight I watched, “Flight of the Conchords,” and “Doctor Who.” Oh, and there was also unlimited gin and tonics and bottles of wine. I didn’t have to even play the birthday card in order to get free shit. I love my life. British Airways, where have you been all my life.

Okey. Just pause for a second, I’m listening to “I’d Rather Be Riding Bike.”

Okey, back.

We arrived in Dar Es Salaam and Br. Jerome, the guestmaster in Dar, picked us up. I thought Europeans were crazy drivers (see blog entries from Ireland for reference), I thought Pete Williams was a crazy driver, I though my sister was a scary driver. This was before I set foot in Africa. I could determine virtually no traffic laws (excepting, sometimes, the side of the road they drove on). No traffic lights. No distinction between road and sidewalk. Bicycles, racks stacked high with eggs and other produce, weaved between traffic jammed vehicles and running pedestrians. Dilapidated junkers and lemons speed along side brand new SUVs. Some buses, new and plush, filled with tourists making their way to exotic Zanzibar. Others were little more than converted cargo vans, filled by bodies pressing rush hours home. Many of the busses toted slogans referring to the owner’s respective deity or religion. God is Good. Allah is Able. Barack Obama. Whomever. Well, I suppose they need it.
The city, the air smells. But not in the bad way, more like in the real way. That is to say, the aromas of thousands of cook-fires and smoldering garbage hung thick over everything. Every pleasing and disgusting odor hyper extended the senses. Banana flowers and open septic pits. The closest place I can think of that I have been is Juarez, but even then, there are fewer paved areas in Dar. Many of the buildings consistted of concrete and corrugated steel sheets with a varying degree of structural integrity (though in the city center, most of the buildings are many storied concrete Soviet-Blocesque structures) Twenty somethings with cell phones and Man U jerseys walked past decaying hovels under a billboard with a brand new awning stretched across it advertising some sort of techy novelty. It is such a weird mix. I mean, like, seriously, I though men in suits only walked next to goats in Monty Python skits and shit.
At the time I spoke no Kiswahili, so it was particularly overwhelming**. You can buy anything on the street. Now, we are not talking American-style hot dog stand and guys selling counterfeit Coach bags and Rolexes from trench coats. Not even the dude in front of the Twins stadium yelling, “tickets, tickets,” in hope of scalping together enough cream to later that night free-base some cocaine. Literally, it’s not like they have, like, a shopping mall where pubescents congregate about and spend their allowance. Anything. Sugar cane stands, fried chicken, watches, knives, all sorts of clothing, cell phones, you name it. There are even young kids walking around selling cigarettes like your film noir saucily flirtatious young broad that has a bit part***. Though I do not understand an ever-loving word of Kiswahili as if it were the Queen’s, it all sounds suspiciously like “holla, holla, hollah.”
That night a couple of the brothers took us (and a couple really cool Germans that were staying at the guest house) to an outdoor pub where there was a live band, for a beer. The smell of meat roasted on a long grill and Sportsman cigarettes permeated everything. There was a live band. This was awesome. The music sounded quite similar to comparable pseudo-dub sorta stuff that you might here in the background of Cool Runnings, minus John Candy and a rolling apparatus hastily constructed with some pallets (actually, there was probably some kids playing with something comparable at that very moment). Also, I suppose, the music would not terribly out of place at a trustafarian-jammy-festival-function. Well, actually, there were a couple deviations. They seem to favor this high-pitched, shrill, almost tonal more than falsetto, whine that actually sounds really cool when sung in harmony. There was one thing that I found simply amazing after years of helping run or running concerts and events. People weren’t talking obnoxiously loudly over the music. Now I’ve been to just about every sort of venue, punk basements, tired college shows, bars, festivals, big venues chucky-jam full of hipsters, and I can tell you this: the only concerts I have ever been to where people generally consistently pay attention to the music include
A. Basement shows
B. Symphony, Orchestra, or Opera performances
C. A concert where the band is just-that-good-no-matter-where-the-venue-is
D. The Kilwa Road Pub in Dar Es Salaam (thus far the only bar on the list).
It was incredibly refreshing. People just watched the music and/or dance. And there was even beer involved. I was floored.
On a brief side note, the beer (mostly of local manufacture) are all pints, that is to say 500ml. However, unlike my previous experience with the most glorious imperial or other pint, the beer has 4.5-5.5 percent alcohol, as opposed, say, to 4.3% stout in Ireland. It also runs roughly 1300-1400 Tanzanian Shillings (tsh). 1300 tsh is roughly one U.S. dollar $ bill, y’all. In other words, I could already see my new found status as a responsible, respectable, authority figure and educator of some repute, rapidly whisked away to the wayside (read: gutter).
We didn’t stay very late, as Andrew (oh, in case you don’t know, he’s my college roommate, friend, compatriot, co-volunteer at Hanga, and the responsible one) and I needed to awaken at 4:45 in the woeful A.M. to get to the bus station. Our bus was scheduled to leave at 6:00 A.M. It was scheduled to arrive at 4:00 P.M. This is what I expected. Lest we forget, I’m in b-fing Africa. We are on African time (similar to what, once, my friend J-Dubz in Atlanta referred to as CP time). Br. Jerome navigated us through this absurdly crowded, not to mention pre-dawn, bus station. And then, we found our steed. The Super Feo express. For those of you of the Spanish speaking persuasion, you will find this both amusing and prophetically accurate. We spent two hours in the bus terminal. There was no semblance of direction. Each bus jockeyed for a good position, and crept toward spaces they could not hope to squeeze through. I felt as though one dude in a neon reflector vest would have gotten us out of there and hour and a half more rapidly. I did not mind too much. I mostly people watched. There were dozens of hawkers all trying to sell various good through the bus windows, or sometimes coming onto the bus itself. They held loaves of white bread and doughnut like things (which I later learned are called mandzi). They propped crates of hard-boiled eggs with a strange whitish powdery substance covering them on their head or hefted racks of sunglasses or watches with upraised arms. Also sorts of snacks available at the finger tips. That is, at least, for those who knew how to ask for them other than with a series of points and grunts that would inevitably lead to getting ripped-off. Roast corn on the cob, peanuts, sodas and bottled water. However, I did not want any of these things. I think Andrew had similar ideas. I did not eat a blessed thing on that bus ride, except for some peanuts. I knew this to be the better option. Better, than waiting in mortal terror that I would be hit with bout of ass-shaking tremors launching ICBM rockets out of multiple orifices on a bus where there was neither a toilet, nor a way for me to ask anyone where the hell I could defecate. Further, the thought of being left at some rest stop in rural Tanzania like some troglodytic creature in a tanning booth did not sit particularly well with me.
After about 2 and a half hours or so, we finally hit the outskirts of Dar. The relatively well-maintained city center could not compare to the shantytown on the periphery. This is where the real poverty happened. Every single building was ramshackle. The ditches teemed with thin plastic packing strips, cardboard, food waste, and other refuse with animals and barefoot children walking amidst it. There is no such thing as road-side garbage collection in Tanzania. If someone does take care of the rubbish, they burn it in a chlorofluorocarbon-ariffic swirling mess of blackish smoke and flickering ashes. Some of the buildings consisted of a patchwork of corrugate metal sheet scraps cut into irregular shapes. Other buildings had a sort of wattle and daub-like construction with dried mud clinging to a half woven, half jammed into place wicker and reed with red earth irregularly chinking the crevices. I saw little pavement to speak of. Sometimes buildings, complete or not, employed poured concrete or cinderblocks. Some corner store-ish buildings had hand painted Tigo or other cell-phone brand advertisements painted across an entire wall.
As we progressed, the view looked a bit less sequestered and desperate. Still, gas stations constituted the only new or well-kept structures. The further west we got from Dar, it seems people favored fired mud-brick construction. Many buildings still seemed half finished, and some long neglected with trees and things growing in the middle of never laid floors. I later found out that people would build as they raised capital instead of waiting until they could afford the whole thing. I guess this is the African equivalent to over-running your credit cards and accumulating many cars on cinder blocks. Grassfires proliferated all along the road either for the ever-present slash and burn agriculture or irresponsible hunting practices (you know furry animals running from a fire are grouped in one place and therefore easier to shoot with things). Andrew and I didn’t talk for most of the bus ride, I was a bit too busy getting used to all the mind fuck. That, and I needed to pee really badly.
About at the midpoint into the trip we began to drive past national park land. The roads became noticeably cleaner. I think that had something to do with the fact that the Tanzanian economy is mostly based on cash crops and tourism, and the anti-littering laws were actually enforced in places where that would be endangered. This shit was indeed quite crazy. All of a sudden, I was, like, holy shit, there’s a giraffe. Now a zebra. A bunch of gazelle or impala (I suppose it doesn’t really matter). My mouth fell so wide agape I felt as though a tsetse fly buzz in there at any moment. Finally to top it all of, an elephant stood no more than 5 meters from the roadside, and out from under my view obscured by the bus, an elephant calf ran out of the ditch literally feet away from the bus. We weren’t the only doe and dewy-eyed folks on the bus, locals, too, pointed and gawked. Suddenly, I began laughing uncontrollably. A dented road sign bearing the seal of the Tanzanian Ministry of Something-or-other in all majuscule letters crossed my vision:

DO NOT FEED THE BABOONS

The sheer fact that baboon feeding warranted enough consideration, and it was a pressing enough issue, that one of the few road signs I saw the entire journey addressed the matter nearly made me urinate on my sticky, cracked vinyl seat. Indeed, there were, in fact, many baboons along the road in various stages of red-bottomed poo-flinging. I wonder if they are a hazard comprable to deer in upper Midwest, or perhaps they more like bears at camp sites. Or, maybe they just want to visit unforgiving ruckus with prehensile tails upon an ill prepared pith helmet and khaki clad populace.
This was quite possibly the most uncomfortable bus ride I have ever been on (and I rode Greyhound through Alabama). The seat was seemingly broken and my head could never quite be supported no matter how I rested it. Our seats were also situated directly over the wheel well, so the twisty, bumpy, Tanzanian mountain roads jostled us about so violently that we could not even think of sleep, lest we be thrown several inches out of our seat (I am not exaggerating in the slightest). It took a couple weeks for the cricks in my neck to recover (also not an exaggeration).
We finally arrived in Songea around 9:00 P.M. where also long suffering Br. Theodore picked us up. When we informed him that we had not eaten, he informed us that we would get some food. This was most wonderful to hear. We got chicken and rice (wali na nyama ya kuku) and boga (a sort of generic term for all mixed greens, mboga being plural). I jokingly suggested that we should get a beer too, but Br. Immediately acted upon the comment and took us next door for a not so cold one (bia ya moto being warm). While sitting in the sorta-bar sorta hang out spot where the staff sat around watching T.V., we opened out beer and joined them in lounging. It was a music video marathon. A Celine Dion music video marathon. The workers were glued to the thing. Remember how I said they like high pitched singing here? Well, they most certainly do. Do you also remember the program/sketch “Alvin and the Chipmunks?” You know how when you speed up a playback (by, say, playing a record a the wrong speed) it makes the voice higher pitched? Some industrious Tanzanian sound engineer jimmied the speed on every single song making it both slightly faster and higher in pitch. About 5 or 6 videos played over the time we drank my beer. I came to a horrible wretched realization. Not only is Celine Dion evidently one of the few wildly popular non-hip hop English speaking acts, but, all of her songs employed a higher pitched voice and sped up-tempo. They didn’t just do a greatest hits thing, but they played songs that I had never heard of. I mean, the freakin’ Quebec-release-only-back-cataloge-shit. Slowly it dawned upon me, this would be some sort of sick, black comedy, recurring theme through-out my stay here. Fuck.

East Africa, here I come. Don’t drink the water, don’t fornicate with the locals, and above all, don’t feed the baboons.



*Note, I did not finish this entry until many days after I wrote the first paragraph.
** Now, I speak about as much as a retarded 4 and half year old with a speech impediment, and probably a hair-lip for good measure.
***Though the kids do not resemble the bit-part actor in any physical manner, respectively.

Post Script: Blogspot does not have the font I normally use, Futura. This sucks.