Tanzania Trip

E and I, along with our friends, N and R, decided to take a three-week adventure to The Great Unknown...Africa! We packed our bags, malaria pills, toilet paper, passports, and cameras / GPS recorders and traveled 24 hours to Tanzania. We spent a week camping in various safaris, a week hiking Kilimanjaro and a week lounging in Zanzibar. I'll be posting a hodgepodge of my thoughts from our trip here.

During our trip, N and I had decided to learn a few Swahili phrases every day. N had brought two pages of conversation phrases that we would practice every afternoon in our tent.

I'm terrible with languages and my brain roams amongst the t's and d's, ou's and oo's with its own free will. E is the polyglot in our family- in both programming and spoken languages- as well as a grammer fanatic. He watched me, amused, as I strung together universally strange words, like mdomo kachizi ("crazy mouth") when I tried to explain my terrible language skills and when I asked our porter for more "naked" ("uchi") when I really wanted more "porridge" ("uji").

In my attempts to compliment our chef, I proclaimed "Chakula quidam!" ("Witch doctor food!"). Donny, the aforementioned chef, paused before setting down the dessert of fried bananas and explained that I really meant "Chakula qui tam!" ("The food was delicious!")

Donny was our personal cook for two weeks. He's a native Tanzanian who attended an American cooking school, catering specifically to tourists like us. We ate a lot of french fries, chicken, vegetables, etc. He is not a witch doctor and, to my knowledge, neither was he cooking for witch doctors.

Day 1: Jambo ("Greetings!" in Swahili) from Tanzania!*

One of the things I really enjoyed about Tanzanian culture was the politeness and common courtesy exhibited everywhere. On the path up Kilimanjaro, on the streets of Moshi, on the plains of the Serengeti. There's a camaraderie amongst the Tanzanians that is not felt in America in the simple acknowledgment. And I feel like it's much harder to behave like a jerk if you have to greet a stranger so civilly.

If you are anywhere on mainland Tanzania and make eye contact with a stranger, there is always a quick exchange of "jambo," "mambo" and, my favorite, "poa kachizi kama ndizi." ("greetings", informal "greeting" and "I'm fine like a crazy banana," respectively).



_______________________
*Actually greetings from San Francisco, four weeks after our trip. But in my defense, I caught bronchitis soon after coming back to work. I did outline this post while lying in the tent near Tarangire.