The Greatest Night of My Life… well not really but it was still pretty good

Originally started writing Sunday 15 November 2009 9:49 PM

I mentioned last time that we were going to take a trip to Tanga for the weekend and I just got back from that a couple of hours ago so my memories are still pretty fresh. As you have probably deduced from the title, I had an enjoyable time. I want to start by saying that I had a nice Friday evening meeting up with some friends for dinner at a restaurant/popular expatriate hangout called Thai Village which was incredibly delicious after a spending a week eating rice and beans almost exclusively because there was actual flavor in all of the food we ordered. I feel like I write about food on here a lot but if it doesn’t seem that way to you then maybe it’s just because I think constantly of good foods that we will never have while here (tonight I thought about zucchini bread.) Anyways, the cuisine was fine but what was more enjoyable for me was the bajaji ride home from the restaurant. I don’t think I’ve explained yet on here what bajaji’s are and they are most definitely worthy of a detailed description. I’ll try to get a photo on here of these little three-wheeled wonders that serve as a cheaper alternative to taxis. Seeing them is cool enough, but packing six people into one and riding down the shoulder of the wrong side of the road is an exhilarating experience. We always smile when we ride in them but this ride was cool because we didn’t take the main roads to get back to campus and instead were going through less commercial areas after dark and seeing more what goes on away from the big roads at night. I enjoy having these educational experiences much more than any other activity here because it shows a whole other side of life here that we never get to see but happens daily.

We were told that our privately chartered daladala for this trip would be leaving right at 5:00 AM so we were to be in front of the girls’ dorm 15 minutes before that which made the sleeping night very short. The church next to our dorm was apparently doing some dusk-to-dawn event though that made it hard to fall asleep or stay asleep, as did the buses returning from some giant party event thing that would honk when they were dropping students off around two or three in the morning. Actually some of our friends were just arriving back to the dorm after 4:30 AM when we were holding our backpacks for the weekend and preparing to leave. The biggest shame though was that our driver was late so we all could have slept for at least another half hour. We hired a driver who usually takes our big group around to places locally (like to the soccer game or restaurant on my birthday) to drive the 14 of us for the six hour trip there, back, and also chauffeur us around everywhere while in Tanga. We got a fairly reasonable price I think though it’s important to note that daladalas are not meant for distance travel and even as I lay in bed typing this now my backside is still smarting after leaving the daladala over two hours ago. I’m pretty sure I exhausted the cushioning capacity of my chair and was essentially sitting uncomfortably on the metal chair frame for hours on end. The actual drive was actually kind of nice and very scenic which resulted in my camera running out of battery less than three hours into the journey (I screwed up and forgot to bring new batteries, too.) We did get stopped by the police and our driver was fined for having a recently expired license and speeding but we actually expected that we would have to bribe policemen the entire ride so this wasn’t that bad.

We pulled into the city of Tanga about an hour behind schedule at noon or so and checked into our hotel before heading off to see the Amboni Caves. Daladalas don’t really have suspension so we were constantly slowing down all the way too and from Tanga because there are speed bumps all over the road, but it was still able to handle some pretty intense dirt and rock roads on the way to the cave. I was impressed that we made it there and even more impressed to make it out at the end. The caves were pretty cool I thought and I enjoyed trying to scare people or creep them out. There were some difficulties at points due to my height and the massive bat population did there best to make me feel unwelcome/uncomfortable throughout the tour but it was still awesome to check out this place. The little gift hut outside of the caves had the single greatest t-shirt I have ever seen though and I am still regretting not buying it. I don’t know if I’ve written about this before either, but all of the t-shirts that aren’t good enough for GoodWill make it here and it’s hilarious to see some of the clothing people are wearing here because they’re generally completely oblivious to the meaning and cultural attachments to some articles of clothing. On the drive to Tanga I saw a man wearing a basketball jersey-like shirt that said “COWGIRL” right across the chest and shortly later we passed a guy in a “VOTE FOR PEDRO” shirt and talked to a man in a Garth Brooks photo-printed shirt that was also gold. Back to the shirt that was for sale outside of the caves though. First of all, it was the only shirt that they had there and it was just on a hanger above all of these other little trinkets they were trying to pawn off on us. It was just a plain white shirt that was looking dirty like it had fallen onto the ground and gotten the soil from the dirt road all over it. Most tourist t-shirts you buy will have just the name of the place you visited and some image to remind you of it or something but this shirt just said explicitly what all of those other shirts are trying to convey. With no design whatsoever, just plain text across the chest, it read “I HAVE VISITED THE AMBONI CAVES”. ….and?... What do you say to a shirt like that though? …okay, cool. So what? How were they? Where are they?... Seriously.

After checking out the caves though we went to some natural sulfur springs nearby that we also had read about in a guide book. I was once again incredibly impressed by the daladala which navigated down a footpath to get there that at times wasn’t more than six inches wider than the entire van but we still made it. They were also in a much more rural area and you could tell that the locals who populated the area were mostly farmers as there were little crops growing nearby and the many coconut trees had steps cut into them to make them easier to climb. One of the local men that we came into contact with along the way was wearing a “World’s Greatest Grandpa” shirt which was inappropriate given his age but totally appropriate given the theme of inappropriate t-shirts for the day. We were able to stand on this board down the creek from the spring a little more than ankle-deep and feel the warm water and such (apparently it is supposed to be therapeutic or something) and it was cool except a plywood board under water is more slippery than I anticipated and I may have almost gone all the way in on accident.

That was about that though when it comes to our tourism of the area and we were incredibly hungry because we had skipped lunch due to our late arrival. The dinner place we wound up thought it would be alright to make us wait two hours for food too though which was awful but it’s nothing that three beers and some pizza can’t solve. We chose to take advantage of having a personal driver for the trip and go out to a club where we had a guaranteed ride home already paid for. This is the part of the trip that gives this post its title. The actual club wasn’t outstanding at all – we weren’t allowed to bring drinks onto the dance floor and I was seriously suspecting every woman in the place that wasn’t one we came with to be a prostitute (I’m almost positive that far beyond half of the women dancing at this place by the end of the night was a prostitute; no joke.) There were also some Peace Corps people who were there celebrating the end of their training thing before they all ship out to various parts of the country or area to work on their projects. I wish I would have gotten to talk to them too and maybe my night still would have been great if I had, but these still aren’t the reasons why last night was outstanding. I ordered my beer, danced a little bit, and took a seat on one of the nearby couches to let more people show up because we got there a little early. Some soccer was on T.V. and they had a crappy projector showing it on a screen there but the game ended soon so the manager or somebody just started channel-surfing. That’s when I saw it. It didn’t even last a minute at first before it disappeared again but I couldn’t believe my eyes. The channels started changing again and it didn’t come back on within a minute so it was time to take necessary measures. Even if I had been mistaken, it was something I needed to know for sure: The Blazers/Hornets game was on television in Tanga, Tanzania after 12 AM.

I took action to find out who was in charge of channel selection and found the culprit pushing the buttons on a T.V. in the main room. I explained to him that this was my team playing from my home town in America and that we would really like to watch the game. He complied without hassle and I returned to my seat to continue living this dream. Regardless of what song came on or who told me I was being lame for spending the night staring at a horribly projected and horribly played game, I did not move from my seat. It really was a horrible game though and it looked to me like Chris Paul got injured again like he did last year when we played the Hornets. It was the first Blazers action I’ve really seen though since last April or whenever we got knocked out of the playoffs. The first time I got to see Andre Miller in a Blazers uniform. It was probably one of the worst games they will play this season, especially against a team whose head coach just got fired a day or two before this game, but it was the most phenomenal thing I had ever seen. It was even the Portland broadcast though we didn’t have audio so I couldn’t hear the commentary of Mike and Mike. It was also a condensed version of the game so there were no commercials in the broadcast which was awesome though it did skip a few minutes of playing here and there. We were able to get a win though and that’s what really matters. Even writing about it now, I am reliving the magic and I can’t explain how good it felt even though anyone who watched at home probably was really disappointed to see such a bad game. At least someone out there watching appreciated it.

I was able to rejoin the group and dance for a little while before we called it a night. I had fun dancing and it reminded me of a lot of time spent in Vancouver back in the day in terms of the loudness, drunkenness, and experience that happens when the two combine. It was a pretty fun night but it doesn’t really even get close to comparing with the miracle that happened with that Blazer game. Seriously. We made it back to the hotel just fine and I finally got to make the phone call I had wanted to make all day. Quinn and I were able to talk for about an hour until I knew I should really get some sleep so I finally crawled into my bed with real sheets in a room with a ceiling fan. Does it get any better than that? (The correct answer is “yes, but not here.”)

Although I snoozed on my alarm a few times the next morning, I was lucky enough to have a moment of clarity where I realized that the hotel would only have breakfast for about another half hour and we had to check out an hour after that so I got myself in motion with just enough time to take care of both. We swam and ate lunch (delicious Indian food) at this place next door for a few hours after we officially checked out of our hotel. It was only 500 shillings for entrance and then we got to swim in the bay area that our hotel and this place are located at. It was alright though the water was dirty and I could feel little jellyfish stinging me towards the end though I only saw one the entire time because they were mostly clear or at least clearer than the water. We finally left Tanga though after lunch and the drive seemed to be much more cramped and uncomfortable than the first time. It was nice that our driver actually stopped to renew his license or something first, but when he stopped to buy a chicken for dinner along the way (a live chicken, which he closely inspected amongst other live chickens before buying and having it stowed in a woven cage in the back of the car) and also stopping in another town to buy some goat meat which he tied to the front left mirror of the car, probably so that flies couldn’t land on it. Did I mention that when you pullover in some little town areas, people will just walk up to you with these things to sell you? It was a pretty hefty chunk of goat meat too but it’s important to note that I’m almost positive most butcher shops and such don’t use refrigeration here so I don’t know what the whole procedure is here to go from slaughter to sales but it looked like it was dry, not still dripping blood or anything. Anyways, we made it back later than we expected because we were stuck in traffic for the last bit as we got back into Dar es Salaam and also because our driver had to buy his chicken and other stuff. Everyone was pretty exhausted but it was a good trip even if it was pretty short.

Before I wrap this up, I just want to note a few things. One is that I didn’t finish this before I was too tired and went to bed last night so I typed up the last bit in the morning. Today is now Monday which also marks the six week anniversary of my arrival. I also officially have residency in Tanzania as of Thursday so I am not a legitimate resident of Tanzania for the next year. This actually comes in really handy as it saves me a lot of money for travel and other activities. I hear taking the ferry to Zanzibar is usually $20 US but because I have residence now it is only like four or less though I probably also get to pay it in shillings instead of USD. Also, getting into the caves on Saturday only cost me 500 shillings because I had a photocopy of my residence permit instead of the 3600 that it cost those who forgot. I hear the internet is out on campus again so I don’t know when I’ll be able to post this but hopefully it’s sometime soon. Thanks everybody for reading though and one last tidbit of information to hold you over until next time is that I went to a class today where I had to stand outside and listen in through the window because it was so full. There were almost more students without desks standing or sitting on the floor than those with and that’s with people sharing the desks. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be like this every week which sucks and is actually affecting my education but it’s good because I’m realizing more as I’m here how invaluable a good, quiet classroom really is and how that can impact education.