Live Turkeys and Car Chases

I was going to post some pictures and try to write about general life over here. I know that my every day life seems just like dull every day life to me, but to a lot of you back home it's probably interesting to know how I'm living. All of this will wait until later in the week though when I will also post a lot of pictures. It will wait because I had a rather interesting experience on the way into Dar es Salaam yesterday.

So right now because my school is a boarding school and we're basically in our summer break, the students are gone as well as the teachers so it's pretty much a ghost town where I live. This has not motivated me to stay at home too much so I've been looking for some stuff to do on my own. A good opportunity is right now when several of my PC friends, including the two guys who were in Mwanza with me, are in town for the Close of Service stuff which largely consists of paperwork and medical exams. They'll have evenings free though, so we'll be able to go out at night in the big city. I figured it'd be fun to come down for the week and just have a good time then go back to Lushoto for Christmas.

Yesterday I hopped on the bus at 6 in the morning yesterday and made it to the bus station here in Dar a little before noon. I left the station hoping to get a daladala (the crazy, but dirt cheap, mini buses that are the primary mode of transportation) but it was a really busy time and it seemed like it would be pretty hard to get on one. A taxi driver then offered to take people into town for 1000 shillings each (about 75 cents). The dala is only 300 shillings, but no waiting and a more comfortable ride seemed quite worth the extra cash. So I get in with three other people and we're riding toward town. All of the sudden the car in front of us brakes pretty hard to make a u-turn, which wouldn't be so bad if his brake lights had been working. Since they weren't, our driver didn't react quite quickly enough and had to slam on his brakes. He managed to avoid hitting the car in front of us, but the dala behind us slammed into our cab (no one was injured at all). The taxi driver and the daladala driver were pretty irate at the guy who they believed (somewhat fairly) caused the accident. So the dala conductor jumps out of the dala and into our cab and we start chasing they guy! At this point I was thinking two things. One was that I couldn't come up with any scenario where something good would come out of this car chase. The other thing I was thinking was should they succeed in the chase that it would be pretty hard to explain to Peace Corps how I ended up involved in some horrific incident of vigilante justice. After some ridiculous swerving through traffic and a couple misidentifications of the car in question everyone realized we had lost the other driver. I was pretty relieved about this. So the dala and taxi guys traded insurance information and I ended up getting into town, a little shaken up but completely unharmed. The only other annoyance was at the hotel where I had made a reservation. Apparently making a reservation doesn't mean they hold a room for you, but that they'll give you one if it's available when you come. I decided it wasn't worth explaining to them what the word reservation means so I had to go to another hotel for the night. No big deal, but it wasn't exactly the smoothest afternoon. Fortunately I met up with several friends and we went to a really amazing Ethiopian restaurant and had a good time. I think it'll be a good week here in Dar.

As I mentioned, when I get back to Lushoto I'll start putting together our Christmas celebration. I think the highlight of this is that I'm going to get a live turkey from some of the nuns around and we're going to cook that hopefully with mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and green beans. I'm going to have to slaughter the turkey, so that will be a new experience for me. I'll write about that, don't worry. Fortunately Isaac, another volunteer in the region, has killed a turkey before and can give me advice.

Another funny thing that happened yesterday was a Tanzanian guy who saw me assumed correctly that I was in the Peace Corps and said, "Ah, Peace Corps, askari wa amani!" which basically translates to "guardians of peace." That was pretty cool and made me feel like a superhero. As I'm in Dar I have access to cheap and sometimes free internet, so there'll be more this week.