September 1st: Tanga

I got off the plane, bade farewell to my new Italian missionary friend (“what language do they speak here?”) and waltzed past customs. I looked for a bathroom in the baggage claim section but my hopes of getting one last flush in before a week on the road were dashed, and I resigned myself to a whole day of my breath smelling like microwaved chicken tarragnone and strawberry yogurt. It was 7:40 in the morning and already hot. Outside a gang of taxi drivers were looking for customers, but it seemed like most of my fellow traveller and already had rides. I was the only target. The asking price of the trip, about 25 dollars, had more than doubled since I had left last month, meaning that despite my conversational Swahili these guys took me for yet another clueless mzungu. After ten minutes I threatened to take a public minivan and one of the drivers asked his fellows if any were willing to take me for the still exorbitant price of 15 dollars.
I wanted to talk with the my new friend and get used to Swahili again, but he tried to get a more money by complaining about the rising price of gasoline and the scarcity of gullible passengers, so I got annoyed and shut up. I was tired anyway, having forgone sleep in order to watch Robert Downey Jr.’s masterpiece Ironman consecutively three or four times.
Even at 8:00 in the morning Dar is muggy and hot and a bad place to get stuck in traffic while sitting in a shaking Ford Taurus. African drivers have a healthy disrespect for traffic laws, but the lack of directions and badly-organized street network would flummox even the best group of drivers. One intersection was backed up for many blocks because all four directions of traffic had tried to go at the same time and consequently blocked the center. In the absence of a cop several drivers got out and tried to clear the way. They managed to get three or four cars out of the way before the driver of one of the minibuses decided to ignore them and drive into the center of the intersection again. The line behind him followed, so he couldn’t back up; all the other vehicles rushed to claim whatever piece of the center they could, and the directors got back in their cars and joined the free-for-all. We took another road, and I don’t know how the jam was resolved.
It took almost two hours to travel the 8 miles or so from the airport to the bus stand. I paid my driver the initial 25 dollars he had asked for – he deserved it – and inquired about a ticket to my next destination. The touts informed me that the price had also doubled but that their bus was leaving immediately. We waited for two hours for the bus to fill up. Happily I could take cheer in the the prospects for the trip, a 5+ hour affair inside a sweltering bus overflowing with stinky Africans and, if I was lucky, a couple of goats. And the music is terrible. Karibu Tanzania!