Amazing Race: Tanzania May X Style. A new city, 11 students, three teams, and no map. It was a competition to get as many objectives checked off in time for 1/2 price drinks. It was both exilerating and exhausting for all who participated- but no student was late for happy hour!
My team, Team Winners, was comprised of Heather, Virginia, Grant, and myself. I admit it started out pretty rough. We were in a new part of town, stuffed and sleepy after an big lunch.The African sun was bearing down heavily on us. We scanned our list and saw that we had to find and collect leaves from three types of trees, so we headed for what looked like a park. Unfortunately for us, the park was across a very busy street. Our resident Tanzanian, Prof Ian, warned us the only thing we should really be worried about here are the cars. Not the lions, mosquitos, or snakes, but the average Tanzanian driver. The only real rule of the road here is to try to stay toward the left side of the road with try being more of weak suggestion.
So my group patiently waited for a clear break in the traffic, sprinted through a narrow gap in a long line of traffic, dodged cars that seemed to accelerate when they saw us, and dove to get across the final ten feet. As I dove, I heard a shriek, Heather did not make it.
After another patient wait, she managed to kuster the courage to get past the stampede and join us by the entrance of the park. Once in the park, we sought out a group of young students-hoping they would have the time available to help us and the patience to try to talk with some American students. It wasn't easy, but after a while we began understanding each other and they were able to tell us where a mkungu tree was. As you could probably guess, it was back across the street we had just crossed!
I'll spare the you the details of that trip and say we were able to find the tree and get the leaf we needed. That made for one of the 19 items on the list. It was a small victory, but one which Team Winners relished! We began celebrating and shouting mkungu, while pulling out our list for what to find next. this would be a mwarobaini tree. I understand that people nearby must have been concerned many gave us looks and two repeated mkungu and mwarobaini back at us. We figured they were making fun of us and tried to ignore them, but their perservance was intriguing so we stopped to see if they might be of some help after all. As it turns out, they were two taxi drivers. The were able to give us leads on the other 18 items due to their knowledge of the city streets and years of speaking English with tourists. The first of which being a mwarobaini tree back across the street!
I can tell you the rest of the hunt was as up and down as the first two items. We met both incredible friendly and scary Zanzabarians, and explored a both beautiful and poverty stricken city. We did not end up finishing the list, but we did make it to happy hour- and had a few good stories to tell too!
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