Nimefika Tanzania (I have arrived in Tanzania)!

Arriving in the Dar es Salaam airport is a dark, disorienting, sensory overload. The planes coming from Amsterdam arrive in the middle of the night. Without streetlights or billboards, not much can be seen on the landscape from the air besides thousands of glowing kerosene lanterns. After landing and taxiing to the gate, the cabin doors open and the stuffy recycled airplane air is replaced by the  smell of this African metropolis: tropical vegetation, the Indian Ocean, and burning garbage. Despite being the middle of the night, the air is warm and humid, and beads of sweat form on my forehead. I got off the plane and walked past a waiting area with about a hundred tourists who looked exhausted and eager to get home. 3 months from now, that will be me.

I stood in line for the immigration checkpoint with a friend I had met on the plane. I taught him a few Swahili greetings that might ease his passage through the checkpoint. I taught him "Shikamoo" which is an important phrase used to greet people who are older than you. It means, "I wash your feet" and the proper response is "marahaba," (wash them seven times). We sailed through immigration and stood together waiting for our checked luggage. I had four checked bags all of which were over 50 lbs, and one of which was 93 lbs. To my surprise, all four of them came down the chute and my friend and I put all four of these enormous bags onto one overloaded cart.

My new friend and I said goodbye and I proceeded to the next hurdle: customs. Some of the checked bags contained high tech research tools that are hard enough to explain in English let alone in Swahili. I tried to zip by the customs officials but one of them saw me and motioned for me to come over to her inspection table. But, I was lucky--she just wanted to know what I had in the big bag, the 93 pounder. That bag was easy to explain because it only contained one thing and I knew the Swahili word for it. I told her it was a "mashua," (a boat). She may have let me pass because she was impressed that I knew a little bit of Swahili. But more likely, she let me pass because she was just as tired as I was, and the faster all of these tourists move through customs, the sooner she could get home to her bed.

My first few days in Tanzania have been great. My Tanzanian colleagues and I have been working to get ready for the trip out to Kigoma where we will begin our research. Things are going so smoothly that I was able to squeeze in a short trip to Zanzibar! In fact, I'm writing the post from the rooftop of my hostel here in Stone Town. I head back to the mainland by ferry in a few hours. Other American students and professors will be arriving in Dar es Salaam over the next few days and soon we will all be in Kigoma in the thick of our research project.