Dalalala

Our first journey (and subsequent journeys) to IMTU (International Medical and Technological University) was by way of "private" bus. Our country coordinator didn't feel comfortable with us taking public transport for the 25 minute voyage from our semi-rural community, a satellite of Dar es Salaam, to the University--also located well outside of "Dar." The buses are called Daladalas, but our Italian professor from University College London preferred to call them "Dalalala"--said with the inflection of an Italian accent. Each morning we waited at our "bus stops," sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour, until our purple ~18 seater arrived. My bus stop was in front of a little corner store, in a neighborhood where dusty dirt tracks met the towering walls of little enclaves with houses which more often than not offered an extreme contrast to the tiny one-room open-front dwellings that lined the back streets of the market near the main road. Under the trees at the corner store, rough-sawn plank board benches that swayed underseat acted as temporary repositories for our bodies, yet to adjust to the Tanzanian heat--already overwhelming at 7:30 am. Not far beyond the borders of shade, brilliant green grass--clipped short from ruminants--reminded us of the sudden thunder showers that sometimes came at night. A few meters further afield a little muddy creek ran west toward the main road, paralleling the line of tall metal towers and their snaking plastic-coated wires, which brought power to the community of Tegeta.
Walking at twilight, nearly breaking the "home before dark" curfews, I sometimes saw children hauling buckets of water from the slow, shallow creek. A creek where each day in the evening drivers of mini-trucks came to wash their vehicles, wheeling them into the center of a wide spot not 3 feet deep. They would splash buckets of water over their machines and scrub them with rags--washing the dust, oil, and sweat of the land into the still water, destined to quench the thirst of gardens and tiny bellies.
Somehow we always managed to squeeze 31 sweaty students, 2 professors, 1 travelling fellow, and 2 or three "bus drivers" onto our little bus. We got friendly. There were always a few people standing, occupying the steps and front 2 feet of the passageway. The aisle was always full, as the flip-down center seats were never without bodies to fill them. The first day at IMTU we took a tour, visiting our long cavernous third floor classroom with its tightly packed desks, open-air windows, and ceiling fans that ran as inconsistently as the power. We journeyed across the grounds, past the dirt and turf volleyball and football zones to a residential building that housed a little cafeteria serving Indian food. Broken in two, the halves of our group passed each other on the stairs to floor five, and there were whispers of disgust from some. They had found the cadaver room, where two medical students worked meticulously, dissecting their dry, gray-brown almost unrecognizable human body. A note on the chalkboard read: "Please do not run away from the cadaver room."
Later that week we discovered a miracle of taste. Hidden in the corner of the Tanzanian food spot on campus, two women worked overtime slicing and dicing in the palm of their hands as foreign customers lined up each day for a perfection which can't be found in the US. Mixed fruit platters prepared to order right before our eyes--pineapple, banana, mango, avocado--served with a toothpick for the price of just ~30 US cents. That was my lunch (usually two plates) more often than not on school days.