Another Bizarre Night in Tanzania

31 March 2010

I’ve had an incredible compilation of strange events occur in my life and my fair share in Tanzania as well though it seems like Arusha may just be a magnet for these kind of odd experiences. If you recall, it was here where I spent the waning minutes of 2009 unable to leave a wedding party for some people I have never met or seen before in my life. You probably weren’t aware of the night I spent last week (or was it the week before?) sticking back at the café/bar talking with the bartender/owner and his friend about some fictional heist while the other guy pretended his camera suitcase was firing bullets and missiles (sound effects included), long after everyone else had already left to go to some dance club. But last night reminded me of something I wrote about damn near seven years ago when I was a lowly high school freshman with a xanga account on a school orchestra trip to Vancouver B.C.

I described what I called “the most diverse moment of my life” as being a dinner of Hawaiian pizza, an Italian/American dish which we shared with a family of Taiwanese immigrants to the west coast of Canada who were speaking Mandarin Chinese while I bumped shoulders with my Vietnamese-American friend and partner in this homestay, Kevin Trinh, while I represented the stars and stripes but spoke the language of the colonizers. I know it’s a bit of a stretch – it was now and it still is then – but it would be pretty cool to track down those old musings of a 15-year-old Scott Berry and his friends.

Since coming to Tanzania, or even before back at UBC, I haven’t had to exaggerate so much to draw so many different connections from all the corners of the world. Last night was an exceptionally globalized night though and all the signs just reminded me too much of that old memory that I just shared. Let me paint the picture for you and show you just why it was so reminiscent though also incredibly unique and absurd as things tend to be here in Tanzania whether in the company of expats or not.

I place my order for some seafood yakisoba though the Tanzanian waitress at this Japanese restaurant says some things to me about pork that I don’t understand and I give her a response that was incomprehensible and she probably didn’t understand which must explain why the dish arrived later with both some surf and turf on it. I sat there, in the city central to East Africa that is constantly referred to as the point halfway between Cairo and Cape Town, taking slow drinks from a nice bottle of cold Tusker lager. To my left is Stephanie, my former coordinator though she kind of quit over some disputes regarding my orientation… eep! To her left are two people immersed in a conversation in Swedish, one of which is my roommate Åsa who is enjoying a glass of red wine which probably was produced in South Africa. Across from the table sits Ariana, a new volunteer hailing from Mexico who just arrived in Arusha the day before and is now talking with Hannah, a Briton, who just got back to Arusha after three months in Nairobi, Kenya. They’re talking with Kala, another (kind of former) roommate of mine who also comes from the UK but has pretty much spent the last 8 years in East Africa. I don’t know the two girls to her right who sit across from me, though I’m pretty sure they work at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which is here in Arusha as well. I thought I heard the younger of the two say she’s an intern there but she grew up in Munich or Zurich or Brussels or some place like that and she occasionally speaks French to the girl next to her whose nationality I just cannot place; her English could have been North American though her ancestry makes her look Egyptian to me or somewhere north and east of there. They don’t really mingle with the rest of the group much and I’m not sure who they know at this dinner. At this point, David has been with us for a while and Richard and his friend Mr. Elvis (I can’t make this up) have recently joined us as well. David is British as well though he was born and raised in Malawi and has spent most of his life either in Kenya and Tanzania or on the sea as a chef. Richard is a new volunteer from Scotland originally and has recently arrived but already has made quite a few friends and acquaintances including this Mr. Elvis guy who is a Tanzanian P.E. teacher that he works with and there’s plenty more on him later.

The evening continues with continued conversation filling the time before food slowly arrives and people slowly start consuming it. As our plates slowly become more barren and we add another drink, some more people arrive. They’re a group of Tanzanians, mostly women, that Richard apparently knows though they’ve got this one white guy with them who I swear I saw just a few days ago. Turns out his name is Chris and he’s an American who has been here in Arusha for just a few days and has no plans really. He can tell I’m American too and I try to make him guess from which state or even which part of the country just for fun. He guess all parts of the east coast (Noooooooo!!) before I have to steer him to the other side of the country where he guesses “California?” “No.” “Washington?” I raise my hands, holding them horizontally and parallel to each other indicating “in between”. “Oh Oregon!” He says it right… bonus, but before we can talk about that Mr. Elvis, who had been mostly silent up to this point and who I thought was maybe only 25, starts joining the conversation… as in interrupting what we were talking about and asking questions that are completely unrelated to the previous topic.

It turns out this Mr. Elvis figure has been putting away a few drinks while none of us really noticed as we were all engaged in our own conversations that he wasn’t a part of. Now he’s come to life and the group has since dispersed, some to another table, some to other parts of this table, the U.N. people may have gone home and Åsa’s inside singing karaoke by herself. We start learning all sorts of things about this guy who seems very adamant to dispel myths and stereotypes about Tanzanians that he was very adamant we possessed regardless of how many times we told him otherwise or tried to change the topic. He didn’t like us to talk in Swahili to him and found it degraded. He insisted that he was related to several very important people including the current president of Tanzania (his cousin?), the first president of Tanzania (his uncle?) and all of these other people that he wanted us to believe he could just call up if wanted though the truth in his statements to me seemed either exaggerated or imagined though I guess it was possible. This was not the extent of his connections, however.

I can believe that he really is a P.E. teacher here and I can believe that he really got his education in Zimbabwe or wherever it was that he said. I can even believe that he is an accomplished athlete martial artist, trained in Judo, Karate and also skilled in general athletics. I can even believe that this has allowed him to travel the world where he may or may not have successfully competed. Throughout the night, he would consistently begin just listing places where he’s been. “I’ve been to the U.S., I’ve been to Europe, I’ve been to Hong Kong, I’ve been to Cuba,” he says as he touches his fingers together like he’s counting the lists he keeps forming. “I had Castro – do you know Castro? – I had Castro put a medal on me.” One of his many claims including meeting all sorts of influential people in Tanzanian athletics and depicting himself as being just as renowned and important in this realm. All of this he almost forcefully conveys on us, completely oblivious to our discomfort with the situation. He keeps drinking, now onto whiskey from a little porcelain container that you normally see being used for sake at Japanese restaurants. We keep drinking too, but only to be polite…

“Too many Tanzanians see white people and they think they have a lot of money. They are beggars but I am not and I want to prove to you that we can pay for things too and we don’t just take like beggars. Let me buy you a drink.”

“Oh no thank you, I’m fine. We’re actually going to lea---“

“For my sake! For my SAKE! FOR MY SAKE! FOR MY SA---”

“Alright! Alright! I don’t think Tanzanians are beggars though…”

He commands the waitress bring me another beer which arrives soon later.

“Asante.”

“Don’t speak Swahili! You degrade me when you do! I know my English is bad---”

“Oh no it’s fine,” we all say and we mean it too. He’s better than most Tanzanians. Situation defused… temporarily. He goes back to talking about some other things that he has already said though now we’re trapped because he bought us drinks. Chris gets some warm sake that he clearly never requested or intended to drink but Mr. Elvis puts on the pressure, aggressively making it too awkward and tense for him not to drink any of it and he sips politely just to appease this man who used to be so quiet. I take moments to steal out as I can, and I did honestly want to go inside to see Åsa singing karaoke (though I failed to realize the doorway had been built to Japanese height standards and didn’t learn my lesson until the third time, explaining the sore crown of my head the day after) or sometimes have to go to the bathroom. I’m trying to enjoy what would otherwise be a kind of frightening situation and I could see a bit of terror and discomfort in the face of others and though it was fun for me for a bit, I do somewhat regret involve getting Ariana roped into the conversation. He insists on buying everyone else drinks to prove that Tanzanians aren’t all “beggars” and there’s a tense standoff between him and the British girl who just got in from Nairobi and is on antibiotics, therefore cannot drink and had to persistently refuse the pressure. He quickly became convinced that he is going to marry Ariana and we were having fun asking how many cows he would pay to her father (the twelve he offered is insultingly low). He seemed to seriously believe he was going to marry her too and she was a good sport about it the whole time though it was too much for me. He insisted on buying another drink for me even though mine was ¾ full still and Ariana wasn’t drinking.

“For my SAKE! FOR MY SAKE! FOR MY SAKE! FOR MY SAKE!” He starts chanting.

“For my sake,” I counter, “please let me just be thankful for what you already brought me.” He looks confused. “For my sake, I don’t want to get drunk or stay out late because I have to get up early and go get Ariana.” He looks a little offended and I can tell quickly that I’m not going to win this battle. Thank God for Ariana though who quells him by saying we’ll share it. It arrives and I pour some into a glass for her and take the bottle for myself.

Eventually I was able to free myself and I just camped out by the karaoke machine with Åsa for a while though she made me sing. Even though my microphone didn’t work, she made me sing with her. David sits by her, clearly without any intention to ever sing karaoke but as her boyfriend just sitting nearby why Åsa stares at the screen, white words turning yellow in time with the song while the worst (WORST!) videos play in the background; she sings on as if completely unaware of the oddity of the whole situation or even just oblivious to her surroundings. She makes me sing again with her and even when she somehow winds up with the microphone that doesn’t actually work and starts to get frustrated because her voice isn’t sounding from the speakers, but I quickly trade her microphones fully aware that mine won’t work and even though she’s just learned this, she still makes me sing into it, pushing it into my face like it will make a difference, giving me a fat lip in the process. All the while, I can’t stop staring at the Sears family portrait style photo of the Japanese owner and some of his staff, in their surgical scrubs-like Japanese restaurant uniforms, that is hanging just to the left of the T.V. Pure gold, I tell you. I have to get a photo of this.

After singing “Guantanamera” with Ariana and reliving my days of high school Spanish class in the process, I have to fend off pressure to go to another bar from this place. I wasn’t kidding about having to wake up early for work the next day or being tired from the previous two days. They eventually take off without me, Åsa, David and Hannah though Åsa has no intention of relinquishing the microphone or to stop singing. We stand around awkwardly for a few more songs (which she also makes me sing with her) and I can’t stop thinking about just how bad these videos they play are and how bad Japanese karaoke is in general (IT’S HORRIBLE). They kick us out eventually because they’re closing, much to everyone’s pleasure who’s not named Åsa, and we get to go home. It’s still after midnight on a Tuesday night which isn’t that bad by regular standards and I usually go to bed later than that, but I just get exhausted around here every week so it’s hard to think about anything but resting and relaxing outside of work anymore.

All in all, the whole evening was just so strange and unique compared to anything I can say that has ever happened to me before. And to think that I wasn’t going to go because I’ve been spending too much money lately (and the ATM decided to withdraw some money without actually giving me it the week before). Strange things just seem to happen all the time…

Even today I saw a man riding a tandem bicycle alone and also another man walking his goat down the main highway, then the rope around its neck came undone but with a quick lunge he grabbed its back leg and got it tied back up like a nice leash. I manage to see plenty of strange things back home in Portland and Eugene, no doubt, so this is really just a different setting for madness. You gotta love it though. It’s good to get nice and perplexed every once in a while but then shrug it off and have a healthy laugh at how absurd life can get sometimes though it never ceases to surprise me.