The Best T.A.B. Moments (“That’s Africa, Baby”)

“That’s Africa, Baby” is a common phrase used to capture things that really only happen in Africa, and justifying them. Here are some of the best moments from my travels here, all of them are transportation-related:

On my first dala ride up to the market, a woman got off and had forgotten her scarf in the dala. The doorman grabbed it and threw it out the window as we were already going about 30 miles per hour---I didn’t have enough room around my head to move it, nor was there an inch of window I could see out of, so I’m not sure if she even retrieved it. T.A.B.

Twenty people from the hostel went to an amazing hot springs oasis about an hour outside of Moshi. We had rented a dala for the day to make the trip. On the way home, our dala broke down in the middle of the desert. We were stranded for 2 hours in the blazing hot sun while the driver caught a lift on a piki piki (motorcycle) to the nearest town for a mechanic who kept having to drive into town and back---it was unclear why. Once we finally got back on the road, we were stopped at the intersection to the main highway by a policeman. The mechanic had gone to the police saying that our drive didn’t pay him enough to fix the car. He was only trying to claim more money because we were a car full of muzungus. T.A.B.

On our walk to the bus station for our day trip to Arusha (1.5-hour drive from Moshi), a bus going to Arusha stopped and asked if the 9 of us muzungus were going there. We negotiated a lower fare within a matter of minutes, hopped on and listened to blaring reggae music the entire way there. On our bus ride back, the bus we were on broke down, so we had to get on another one, where the middle seats that fold down from one side (to accommodate as many passengers as humanly possible) were falling apart… T.A.B.

A new girl showed up at the hostel two days ago. A local guy who works with Tuleeni was supposed to come pick her up Friday at 1:00 p.m. She waited and waited. And waited some more. He called me on Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m. saying that he was waiting outside of the hostel to pick her up. I told him he was 18.5 hours late. T.A.B.