In the morning I catch a bus from Dar-es-Salaam headed for Nairobi. I could have taken a flight, but the bus was so much cheaper at 50,000 Tsh ($33 USD). The bus is pretty nice, much nicer than dala dalas. It’s kind of like a coach bus you would take in the states with big seats and overhead compartment storage except there is no bathroom on the bus. I get to the bus station at 6:30am and wait on the bus until it fills up at about 7:30am. I sleep for a good chunk of the ride and commence to finishing Eat, Pray, Love as well as writing a little bit. They overfill the bus, typical, and some people who don’t have a seat actually remain standing for hours or sit on the floor. I marvel at the scenery while driving from Dar to Moshi and Arusha but don’t see Kilimanjaro from the road. I look over at my fellow Tanzanians and wonder how they entertain themselves. Besides a cell phone, nobody has a book or newspaper and they don’t seem to marvel at the scenery like I do. Then I think about how American it is of me, to be on a relaxing long bus ride and still need to neurotically find something to entertain myself.
When we reach Arusha, I ask a man on the bus if I can borrow his cell phone since my half functioning SIM card or phone refuses to allow me to load more credits unless I use someone else’s phone. He ends up sitting next to me and we chat for the next few hours. The man, I forget his name at the moment, is a business man selling beauty products and soap in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. I talk about my work with Operation Smile and Room for Compassion and my new friend is delighted at service work. I always find it easy to make new friends and many times it comes in handy. My new friend helps me get a good exchange rate when we arrive at the border. Some random guys at the Tanzania-Kenya border hand me 400 Kenyan shillings and tell me I need to take this to the Kenyan customs authority since its “compulsory”. So I start walking with it, thinking ok whatever, and the men demand that I give them 4,000 Kenyan shillings for it which they will promptly refund. I told them this makes no sense and try to hand them back their shillings and they say that no, I must go forward with it, its require. I angrily tell them that I’ve been at the Kenyan border several times and have never had to do this and that it makes no sense anyhow to give them 4,000 Ksh for 400 Ksh. After I tell them that I don’t even have that much money in Ksh or USD (which is actually kinda true being a poor mzungu), they finally leave me alone. It’s good to use common sense to avoid scams such as that. Had I been a newby, I probably would have fallen for it. I guess their trick must have worked for them to be constantly at the border making away like bandits with 3,600 Ksh ($45 USD), a significant sum of money if you’re living in poverty or own a tiny business. During the ordeal, my new friend was unfortunately not there, but he did later help me grab a cab at 11:30pm from the bus station in Nairobi to the Mennonite Guest House. I end up staying up all night so enthralled by electricity, hot showers and fast internet.
The next morning around 6:30am, I am jetted off to another mode of transportation, a flight to London and then eventually Los Angeles. I also make friends with the man sitting next to me. He is a Kenyan returning back to his dual business in Boston and Nairobi. We chat for a few hours on the plane ride. I sort of booked the cheapest hotel possible in London which advertised airport transfers. But when I e-mailed the hotel, they apparently don’t have airport transfer and instead recommend taking a taxi from Heathrow to their location past the center of London about 20 miles away. They estimate the one-way taxi costing 40 English pounds, which is actually slightly more than I’m paying for the night. I try to Google Map public transit but it estimates a transit time of 3 hours. I ask my new friend, Peter, about how he is getting back and if he would mind if his friend showed me a cost effective way to get where I need to go. Peter offers that I stay at his friend’s house with his family and after I double check if its alright, I decide to go for it. Peter’s friend Steve is a Kenyan living in London. They happily chat in Swahili as I get in the car and when asked if I mind, I say not at all. To me, it’s comforting and I’m sort of used to it when Fred and his friends were catching up in Swahili and when Pili and Enock converse in Swahili/Luo. Hearing the East African dialect lets me hang on to the last of Africa before returning back to LA and not being able to return for awhile. I love the way Kenyans and Tanzanians laugh. They laugh all the time and heartily about everything. They very much live the hakuna matata lifestyle which is worry-free. I know that the culture is all about hospitality in the mi casa es su casa style of the Hispanic culture and that is why I accepted the offer to stay at a perfect stranger’s friend’s house. When I arrive, there are several families of Kenyans having a barbeque at the condominium. It’s my first time in London outside of the airport and I sit in the backyard eating barbeque ribs with ugali and listening to the moms and dads converse in Swahili while their children, oblivious to Swahili and are first generation Brits, shout and swing on the playground set happily. After the guests leave, I go out to the pub and have a pint of Guinness, I forgot how good it is in Ireland and the UK. Peter and Steve and their friends drunkenly explain to me the culture of Kenyans, some of which I know and others I begin to understand, and are delighted that I know my 5 phrases in Swahili and can count to 10. I wonder how funny it looks, me being the little Asian American girl roaming around the empty streets of London with 5 large Kenyan men. I appreciate Steve and his wife’s hospitality for letting a perfect stranger stay in their home. Steve doesn’t allow me to pay for a taxi to the pub, my Guinness or the chicken wings we order afterwards. He also explains to me that to Africans, it is a blessing to have a guest and that you must dedicate yourself because in turn, you will bless your family and your guest and the world since kindness is circular. I listen to what he says an feel fortunate to be able to spend one more night immersed in the African culture. It’s also funny when the guys talk about cultural differences between Africa and Westerners like how when they hold hands with each other or other men in London, they were shocked to find out how that is perceived as a homosexual act. As I said my goodbyes in the morning while catching a cab to the airport, I genuinely offer my home to them in Los Angeles if they ever came back out to the West Coast and expressed my gratitude in their kindness to a stranger by treating me like family.
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