Delivery!

Delivery of the new desks. No more sharing!

Today, just as I was finishing up my last class, the carpenter’s truck pulled up with the desks and shelves he has been working on for the past two weeks. They look great – all new and shiny with varnish. The students helped offload them into one of the classrooms where they will stay until Monday, when another man comes to stencil a number on to them (so that they can be recorded as school property). The carpenter will now get to work on the furniture for the staffroom.

As it was Friday, I went into town to get online and file my reports to OISE. We had to come into town anyway so that I could get the money to pay the carpenter for the work. After going around to a few shops with Deo (he wanted to show me digital cameras here), I was really hungry but also had to get online before it got too late in the afternoon.

Surprisingly, there’s not much in the way of portable street food here. Not like you can just grab a hotdog or a burger and get on your way, which was all I was looking for. Here, either you sit down and do the waiting game, or you try to get a takeout box and still do the waiting game. Fortunately, near the shop we found a little samosa shop. There are a lot of Indians in Tanzania, actually, some that have just immigrated and many that were born here and have lived here all their lives. They invariably run businesses and manage to avoid the poverty that afflicts a good chunk of the general population. In any case, with samosas at 30 cents a piece, I was happy for their presence!

Samosas in hand, or bag, rather, I went off to the internet café and was immediately disappointed to see the door closed and the Closed sign hanging. Again?!? This happened last week! At the nearby tables in the little front area, the woman was sitting with a friend and told me that there was no power today.

“Again?!?” I asked, “You have no power on Fridays, is that it?”

The two seemed to find this very funny, that this random coincidence seemed like a pattern. Anyway, after eating my samosas I headed home, but not before getting a phone number from them. Next time I’ll call to see if the lights are on before coming.

On the bus home, there were a couple of Scottish girls squeezed into the bus with me, so we got talking. They are the first white people that I’ve talked to in the few weeks that I’ve been here. In fact, Deo and I got talking about that point the other night, just by coincidence. He found it strange that I didn’t start talking to the white people that I pass in the street here.

“Why would I?” I said, “I don’t know them.”

“But they are mzungu (white people), like you,” was his reply.

“So I should talk to them because they are white?”

It’s an interesting point, actually, and one that I’ve faced a lot in my travels. In Japan, there was even a kind of name for it, “the gaijin glance”. When you’re an extreme minority in the surrounding population and you spot someone like you, what are you supposed to do? This person is as perfectly random a stranger as all the other people around you. Are you supposed to say hi or start up a conversation because you’re both white? Because by that simple fact you’re sharing some sort of experience that requires you to bond? For me, I’ve found it makes for a strange situation, like you almost feel compelled to acknowledge this person even though you wouldn’t give them a second glance if you were back home on the street of your own town. Sure, if the circumstances put you in close contact for a period of time, such as a bus ride, I’m not averse to striking up a conversation, but just for people in passing on the street, I don’t feel any reason why I should greet them or chat them up more than anyone else.

Deo thought that might be just my big city coldness. He said that if he were in Toronto, he would talk to all the black people he passed.

“Then you’d be doing a helluva lot of talking!” I replied.