Amusing Experiences of Everyday Life, Here in TZ

enjoy!

December, 2007

It’s Saturday. The kids are home, Alex has recovered from his brief illness with fever and sore throat, Keith is several hundred kilometers away in Arusha. He is much cooler than we are here and is lamenting that he did not pack ONE long sleeved shirt. I have little sympathy in this encompassing heat. My day was planned, which was my first mistake (are you laughing, God??). Having let the household stuff go by the wayside for longer than I care to admit, I set out with firm determination and a couple cups of coffee. Laundry. Gerry is complaining that he has not ONE item of clean clothing to wear. Bad mom alert. At least he is not naked! I asked him to check under the bed, and in all the other nooks and crannies that clothes illusively hide in. I should have known. This is the child that willingly cleans his room at least twice a week without me asking. Still trying to figure out what planet he is from. Okay, bite the bullet and do the laundry, already. I am very happy that we actually have a washing machine here in Dar. A wonderful purchase made not long after Leah’s illness, as I was quite reluctant to be washing multiple bed linens, towels and clothes by hand ever again!!! Sometimes I think I am at home in the States, but never for more than a few seconds. I open the washer, throw some rank-smelling clothes in, and stop. No, that smell is not from the clothes, it is from within the washer! It’s pungency is enough to make my eyes water. Something was dead in there. With help from Bilali, our live-in guard, gardener, and all around nice guy, we flip the washer over and begin poking around. We remember that last week Keith had fixed the washer….evidently a family of rats moved in and lodged themselves somewhere there were wires to snack on. He had got it working again, but some of the unfortunate family members must have been left behind and are still resting in their various degrees of decay. YUCK!!!! Bilali and I were unable to locate their source without dismantling the whole thing, so I decided to just let the rodents rest in peace and hope that in a number of days the odor will diminish. Okay, quick, throw the soap in and turn the washer on. No water comes. Great. Not AGAIN!!!! The water supply to the washer is my nemesis. Keith has tried various gadgets to get it to work. He has put forth valiant effort. I walk the length of the hose, checking for problems all the way to the front of the house, where I see the spigot gushing full force and the useless hose lying on the ground. Ok, no big deal, put it back on. I am again reminded that I am not in the States. Instead of a threaded spigot and hose ending, it is finagled together with a piece of tire inner tube. I am becoming an expert at these sort of “repairs” and fix it in a jiffy. I returned to the wash room and still no water! I feel the incoming hose, it is taut and full of water pressure. Kinking the hose, I then unscrew it from the washer and get a friendly spurt of water and green slimy stuff. Great. Luckily, I grew up a tomboy, so this substance was no worse than the animal guts I examined or warm mud or dung squishing up between my toes. It did irk me, though, as I was not having an optimal washing experience yet this morning!!! I noticed that the little screen filter inside the washer intake was completely blocked by the green slime. Great. The whole idea of the washer is to get the clothes CLEAN, not more soiled!!! Evidently algae and other microscopics grow in the hose and in the city water supply. What they all are, I REALLY don’t care to know!!! Anyway, I don’t have a pair of pliers handy to pull the filter out, so I just un-kink the hose and blast some water on. DUMB. Now instead of just a little bit of green stuff in the filter, it is all over the walls, me, and the washer. I am feeling like a character in a Dr. Seuss book, and wondering if Thing 1 and Thing 2 are going to show up?? I just have to laugh and shake my head at all the minor inconveniences and absurdities I encounter on an almost daily basis here. Using the hose, I rinse the walls, myself, and turn around and squirt the dogs who were watching my antics the whole time. It took several hours to get 3 loads of wash done, as it usually does, with all the little quirks that happen. At least I didn’t have to wash it by hand!!!!

Ok. So it is now 4pm, the wash is hanging out, the house is reasonably clean. I promised the kids I would take them to this International Bazaar. So, we pile into the Beast, our ’89 Land Cruiser which was modified to be a commercial safari vehicle. Which means it is an extended truck body with lots of seating inside, and pop-up safari roofs on top. There is a huge air intake pipe by the driver’s side, in case you have to drive in water. There is also a cattle bar which covers the front and part of the sides. I, unlike Keith, LOVE to drive the Beast, although I have to admit that I have a bit of an attitude when I drive it. It is the kind of vehicle you could play “chicken” with and know the other guy would get out of the way. Maybe I feel the illusion of confidence when I drive it….I don’t know. Maybe it brings back memories of driving in a demolition derby….who knows. All I know is that it is a cool car to drive here, and I don’t worry about dings, scratches, and the like. Driving is an adventure every time here. So, the kids and I make our way to the dirt road short-cut, as the main road is always a mess on weekends. I was already running low on my daily allotment of patience and did not want to sit in stand-still traffic! We turn onto the road and we are at least moving. We are behind someone who is either a new driver or just extremely cautious, but never-the-less annoying in my less than tolerant mood. I am unable to pass for quite awhile as there are massive amounts of mud and puddles everywhere. I do not want to speed through the mud and shower all the people that are walking, riding bikes, or sitting next to the road. We go around a couple of turns ever so slowly, and I feel guilty for my impatience. I had been riding with a friend recently who has much more patience and compassion than I do. She prays for the people she encounters during her driving adventures. Me, I get annoyed, and long to switch into demolition derby mode!!!! So, we come to a spot in the road where it widens, but there is a huge puddle. The cautious driver stops and considers his course carefully. The driver of the Beast sees opportunity, and lavishly speeds through the huge puddle with a triumphant smile and cheer as brown water flies every which way. But ultimately, justice prevails and the Beast coughed and sputtered a bit, then stalled. I uttered some unholy words, which added to my increasingly guilty stain on the evening. The pokey driver honked his horn behind me, since now I was officially blocking the way. After a number of times of starting, stalling, starting, stalling, I inched toward a place in the road where there was (absurd) road construction going on. The backhoe was shoveling bucketfuls of water ONTO the dirt road (?!?!). It became apparent that the road was going to be a greater challenge driving forward, and the Beast was sickly. I made the decision to try to reverse, turn around and head back. Mr. Pokey driver was already turned and headed back, and was probably amused with my attempts at reversing a couple of feet, stalling, reversing, stalling. Good for him. I definitely deserved to be laughed at!! My mood at the moment was less than ideal, less than kind, compassionate and Christian. Leah complained about not going to the Bazaar and I about breathed fire on the spot. I got turned around with the usual crowd of African onlookers, slightly bemused at the follies of wazungu (white folks). The emotional waters were approaching boiling point. As the Beast inched and jerked its way forward, we were approaching a really big puddle. I knew I did not want to stall in the middle of it and there was no other way to get out. One side of the puddle was close to someone’s wall and gate, the other side appeared to have higher ground. Boy, was I wrong!!! I know that God was rolling around in heaven at my idiocy, I almost expected to hear booming laughter from above. In my infinite earthly wisdom and arrogance I really thought I could do it alone. The Beast obeyed its commands for only a few predictable feet, then promptly stalled in deep, sucking mud, all the way up to the axle on the passenger side. There are not adequate words to describe the range of emotions I had at that particular moment. The emotional waters blew the lid off the pot and erupted in the form of sticky brown mud. Mud which flew as I angrily flung open the door. Mud which encompassed my shoes, feet, ankles and skirt bottom as I furiously tramped around the front of the car, bent down and had a good look at my predicament. Mud on my hands and arms as I locked the hubs for 4 wheel drive. Mud flying as I angrily waved away the onslaught of Tanzanian men hoping for a good weekend score of money from this dumb mzungu chick. Mud covering the floor mat and pedals as I try yet again to get the Beast moving. More mud as I just remove my shoes, toss them out of the way, jump back out of the car in my bare feet, stomp around and all but threaten any man that comes near me. I was in no mood to deal with opportunists, whether or not any of them were genuine Good Samaritans or not, I didn’t know or care. One white man did stop, and he suggested just paying the guys to push me out and called the whole group of them over. I was not pleased. He even told them I would pay them. I told him to just go and that I would be fine. I was afraid I might throw mud at him. The Tanzanian men were overjoyed with their good fortune. They knew they were going to get at least 10,000 shillings since my foreigner friend so kindly loudly suggested it to them. I told them I was very angry. One guy seemed to take charge. By this time, I just didn’t care…I was on emotional overload and Leah began crying in the back seat, upset about the bazaar, mad at me because I told her to stop whining and to zip it, that I was about to explode. Guess I’m not gonna win the Mom of the Year Award, yet again. So, the folly continues with about 15 guys doing various things and telling me what to do. They didn’t understand that I couldn’t keep the car running, so that complicated matters a bit. After several tries and continuous additions to the crowd of onlookers, they actually got it out and the car promptly stalled. The “lead’ guy came to collect money, and I didn’t have small amounts of shillings since I hoard it at home for the kids’ snack money at school. I gave him 15,000 shillings(about $12, which is a lot to Tanzanians), but I told him and the others it was for all of them to split up. The guy proceeded to put it in his own pocket!!! I was angered yet again with my own stupidity, I should have asked them for change first and distributed it evenly myself. I could see there was ugliness brewing and I did not want to be anywhere near it. One guy came up to the window and pleaded for money and I just tossed a few coins into his hand, rolled up the window and tried to inch away as quick as I could. As the kids looked back, it looked like they were fighting. I was trying my best to stay calm as another puddle was approaching, THE puddle which started this whole mess somehow. Predictably, we stalled directly in the middle of it, but by God’s mercy, we were able to start up again and inch our way out. After a few more puddles, a few more turns, and some angry drivers, we finally made it out onto the main road. As we cheered, our joy instantly died as the new realization dawned that this road was much more dangerous and tricky. I had my four-way blinkers on to show that I was “disabled”, but in this land of no road rules, blinking 4-ways mean absolutely nothing to most other drivers. I was pulled off the road as far as possible, trying to avoid people, bikes, and of course the really deep drainage ditches. No, I was not having fun yet. And as I repeatedly saw huge speeding trucks in my rear-view mirror, I wish I could write that I prayed, but I didn’t! Miraculously, in spite of my many mistakes, we safely made it the kilometer or so up to the dirt road by our house. It was there the car stalled completely and I couldn’t even get it started again. I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry, but most of all I wanted to re-wind a couple of hours and start over. Alex and Gerry pushed the car a little ways closer to our gate. Across from our gate there are a number of men who have been building a new house since we arrived in July. Many of them I have at least waved to a number of occasions, but some of them were new. Then I heard the word money and my heart sank. I can’t blame them for trying, and on better days it doesn’t bother me. This was not a “better” day at all. I did not want the whole group of Tanzanian men thing again. I just told them I would wait awhile to see if the car would start again. Some of them insisted that they would push me, that they needed money. I told them if they pushed the car into our yard that my dogs would tear them apart, which is true, but I could have locked them up. They seemed to listen and respect that. Maybe Bob, my dog, should be my constant driving companion. Better yet, maybe I should have God as my constant all-around companion!! Anyway… the car eventually started and I was able to start/stop up our short driveway. We made it home safely, no one was hurt, the car isn’t wrecked, just some minor nuisance of a thing that Keith thinks he can figure out when he gets back in over a week. I just chuckle and shake my head at the plans I thought I had in mind for the day, evening, and coming week here in Dar es Salaam. I should know better!