After about 28 hours in plane after plane, we touched down in the Dar es Salaam airport at 11:00pm East Africa time, or 3:00pm EST, you can calculate the jetlag we were experiencing. We wearily piled into two bus/vans with our sea of giant backpacks and ten minutes of bumpy ride later poured out onto the stoop of our 5 day home, the Dar YMCA.
The YMCA has turned out to be an amazing, centrally located, backpackers haven fitted with fans and mosquito nets and a tiny balcony on which to hand your hand-washed underware and bathing suits. The 31 of us (31 with our three professors) have essentially taken over--whenever you make it back safely from the mimi excursions out into the city for class, the post office or the local restaurant, you will inevitably find your peers in the courtyard engaged in frisbee on the unused basketball court, inside the internet cafe, reading at a table in the corner, or chilling drinking the local beer and discussing, well, Africa and/or globalization usually. So far we all seem to get along oddly well.
The city, too, is very cool. It's crowded, noisy, dirty, and according to Fatma Aloo, our country coordinator and Tanzania Resident, dangerous. It takes a little getting used to: the constant company of fellow students even to walk to the store to buy water, the nagging feeling that you should be keeping a sharp eye on the friendly people (usually men)that approach you to chat at every corner, and being locked in at 11:00 everynight by the guard at the Y gate. All in all it's a fun place to start the experience of travel; very in your face and quick to get your mind off leaving home. And of course, there is the added fun of attempting to learn the very fun national languageof Swahili. Jambo is the general greeting that is shouted as you pass, and generally accompanied by a smiling thumbs up.
Classes have continued in true experiential fashion: classes at the University of Dar es Salaam, a walk through a local hospital, lectures from major human rights activists, etc. Actually remambering that I'm still in college is difficult at times, and it takes a good amount of self disipline to make time to do the reading.
Speaking of which....
Saturday is Zanzibar and Eid--the celebration that comes at the end of Ramadan. More update to come.
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