First Week

Morning comes early in Arusha, partly because they don’t have daylight savings so the sun rises at like 6 am, but also because dogs, roosters, cleaning ladies, and African dance radio don’t really grasp the concept of sleeping in. So despite the fact that I had prayed I would not awake in this place, that I was sick and hadn’t really slept in a over a week, and had no idea what to do with myself when I awoke, awake I did. The fact that I had promised to inform my parents that I was still alive was the only thing that pushed me to get out of bed rather than hiding under the covers and wishing I was dead (well that and the fact that I was still trying hard not to touch anything, including the covers).

I asked the hotel owner, let’s call him Mr. P, if I could get a taxi to town and he gave me a weird look and told me I could walk. He took me to the end of the road and gave me vague directions to get to the city centre. Considering the state of the roads outside Arusha it was more of a hike than a walk, but luckily I was wearing my trusty moccasins. This came back to bit me in the ass exactly 2 minutes later when I reached the main road and men began yelling “Muzungu!” (white person) “Hey Muzungu eye liiike youuuur shooooes!” and “Cowgirl!”. As became a regular occurrence whenever I walked anywhere alone, a random guy started walking along and talking to me all friendly-like and then proceeded to try to sell me things. This one in particular led me to an Internet café, where I realized later he got a commission and I got overcharged for him bringing me there. I sat on the computer sending frantic S.O.S. messages to my parents and sisters and forced “Hey how are you? I’m fine” emails to friends.

My self-appointed guide was waiting outside when I emerged about two hours later and “invited” me to his shop. I told him the sandals were nice at which point he told me they were 90,000 tsh (about 75 USD). Shocked, I put them down and attempted to leave while he began the painful process of bargaining down from a price that had been inflated about 10 times. I finally escaped, or thought I had, when he came running after me down the street, sandals in hand, and grabbed my wrist telling me I had money and he didn’t so how much was I going to pay for the sandals. I gave him 45,000 tsh which is still about 5 times what I should have paid and cried again.

Later on that day a white South African hunter named George found me like a stray dog on the side of the road and took me in, as in took me for lunch at the Arusha Hotel, which is very modern and like an oasis in dirty downtown Arusha. As he told me how he hunts elephants and performs vigilante arrests of poachers, I felt like I was living some sort of weird Blood Diamond Leo Dicaprio-Jennifer Connelly type scenario, minus the phoney accent. Despite our divergent interests, it was quite nice to have someone to talk to.

The first few days felt very long. I ventured out a bit during the day, but in the evenings stayed in my room and read. This was fairly unpleasant because the power would go off between 7 and 10 pm. Mr. P would show up at the door with a candle and I hated opening the door alone in my room in the dark. I seemed to be the only guest at the hotel besides a man who had come up from Dar es Salaam on business, and so I assumed this was the reason Mr. P was so attentive. I also assumed it was some sort of cultural norm to ask young women whether or not they were married, seeing as both the business man and Mr. P did this to me fairly early on. I began to become a bit concerned, however, when Mr. P began to insist that I make myself at home and offering me free wine because “I love you”. This concern became alarm as one night while eating dinner downstairs in the dark as usual, the business man informed me “I will miss you” as I was checking out the next morning to which I responded “I’m sure you won’t” and then made an awkward attempt to say something about going to bed at 8pm while heading for the door. The alarm became outright panic when I realized the doors from the dining room to my part of the guesthouse were locked and I was trapped with the business man and Mr. P moving around somewhere inside.

It turns out the doors were actually just stuck and the businessman called Mr. P who had to come hammer them open (literally, with a hammer), but I still ran to my room and locked myself in until the next morning when Mr. P was banging on my door asking to borrow my cell phone charger. Thankfully I checked out a few hours later. I think I might have left my track jacket there, but at this point I cut my losses.